Why Should Regulators Have to Listen to You?

By Cass R. Sunstein

Since 1915 in a Supreme Court ruling it has been the law of the land that regulations have a special place in law.  A place that excludes your rights.  That piece of information is both frightening and enlightening because it explains so much.

“In light of the defining importance of the due process clause, many people are stunned to learn a remarkable fact: When the government issues regulations, the Constitution doesn’t require officials to listen to you, even if your liberty and your property are at stake. [...] For regulations, these words have an unmistakable implication. If the Agriculture Department issues a rule significantly affecting farmers, or the Transportation Department issues a rule imposing big costs on the railroad industry, or the Labor Department issues a rule with major effects on workers, the Constitution does not create any right to a hearing. As far as the Constitution is concerned, the government can act unilaterally. ‘Regulatory due process’ has been like a unicorn or a time-travel machine or a bipartisan Congress. It doesn’t exist. This state of affairs was far from satisfactory in 1915, and it is even less satisfactory today.”  To Read More......

My Take - Cass Sunstein is a former Regulation Czar in the Obama administration who absolutely loved regulations and holds views abou government, taxes and regulations that are all about consolidating power in the hands of an elite few that will make all the decisions for everyone else because people are incapable of thinking correctly so often.  Correct thinking is of course a leftist concept that was highlighted in Orwell's 1984.  His views about animal rights makes him the perfect candidate to head PETA.   He wants to end marriage as a legal institution, he doesn't like the first amendment.  He has also taken the followng positions;

Sunstein has argued, “We should celebrate tax day.”  Sunstein argues that since government (in the form of police, fire departments, insured banks, and courts) protects and preserves property and liberty, individuals should happily finance it with their tax dollars:

In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live? Without taxes, there would be no liberty. Without taxes there would be no property. Without taxes, few of us would have any assets worth defending. [It is] a dim fiction that some people enjoy and exercise their rights without placing any burden whatsoever on the public… There is no liberty without dependency. 

Editor's Note -  Does anyone wonder where Obama came up with the idea that businessmen didn't build their business…that someone else did?  He also loves “positive rights” and most importantly doesn’t seem to understand the difference between positive and negative rights.  This has been the effort from the left for years.  Cloud the definition of both in order to redefine the whole issue to insure central government planning in all aspects of life, as is shown below.  RK

Sunstein goes on to say:

If government could not intervene effectively, none of the individual rights to which Americans have become accustomed could be reliably protected. [...] This is why the overused distinction between "negative" and "positive" rights makes little sense. Rights to private property, freedom of speech, immunity from police abuse, contractual liberty and free exercise of religion—just as much as rights to Social Security, Medicare and food stamps—are taxpayer-funded and government-managed social services designed to improve collective and individual well-being.