Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/230868
6A Daily News – Thursday, December 19, 2013 Opinion DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes letters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submitted will be considered for publication. Letters will be edited. Letters are published at the discretion of the editor. 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How to reach us Main office: 527-2151 Classified: 527-2151 Circulation: 527-2151 News tips: 527-2153 Sports: 527-2153 Obituaries: 527-2151 Photo: 527-2153 On the Web www.redbluffdailynews.com Fax Newsroom: 527-9251 Classified: 527-5774 Retail Adv.: 527-5774 Legal Adv.: 527-5774 Business Office: 527-3719 Address 545 Diamond Ave. Red Bluff, CA 96080, or P.O. Box 220 Red Bluff, CA 96080 Living out a lifelong dream I have a dream. It's not a big dream – not a mansion in Beverley Hills or winning the lottery or anything like that – but walking the hallways of Red Bluff High School someday with my own children. I am inspired by the words of writer Henry David Thoreau. He wrote, "Walk confidently in the direction of your dreams; live the life you have always imagined." This idea becomes a reality for me when I think of my kids being with me every day at school six years from now. How cool will it be, I wonder, to be that close every day to watch them become teenagers? That thought alone makes my heart warm, to say the least. What a dream! I want my kids to have the greatest educational experience possible at Red Bluff High School. I want them to have access to unlimited programs that would satisfy their curiosity, desires, and needs. I want them to experience a vibrant culture that honors and celebrates student achievement, whether academic, athletic, or social. I want my kids to be honored, respected, and valued for their individuality and work ethic. I want them to have access to a place that will develop their whole person, not just one aspect. I want them to leave Red Bluff High School prepared for the adult stage of their lives, whatever their choice might be. Readers, I want this dream for all kids who attend Red Bluff High School. Recently, I had my 10th grade English class write a persuasive essay on the pursuit of happiness. The prompt asked them to argue the statement: "humans have the ability to pursue their own happiness and fulfill their own dreams." In my own life experience, I am finally to the stage where so many of my dreams are coming true; but this isn't something that simply happens. We don't wave a magic wand and wake up one morning suddenly happy, content, or fulfilled. This is a journey that begins with a simple plan when we are young. We set a goal – for me, having this vision of a life that I how hard it is to fulfill dreams one day wanted to live: a quiet, and they don't even bother to take country life with a wife and kids. that first step. How tragic! To give up and surrender I wanted to grow before even bothering older with my family to fight to get to where close by, and I wanted we want to be. to get up every morning Readers, are you doing all the things I willing to stand up for loved: like dropping your own kids' my kids off at the bus dreams? stop, picking them up This is my dream – after school and, in the that on their graduation middle of all this, night, I hand Ethan and teaching other kids to Mia their diploma, give love life, too. them a hug, and tell There were times them how much I love along the way when I Pat them in front of thougave up this dream. sands of people. Sometimes this is what And, one day, I we do as humans – we want them to look back fail to walk in the direcFace and realize that my tion of our dreams. dream was perfect – Why? Do we simply Time that it was all for them never have goals or – and maybe they will dreams in the first place, or do we look around and thank me. Either way, I will know think there are so many other that my purpose was made compeople out there, that there isn't plete. This is my dream. any room left for our own dreams. Pat Gleason teaches at Red I think people consider this and they quit. I think they see Bluff Union High School. Gleason Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR — Jim Nielsen, 2635 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico, CA 95928, (530) 879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate.ca.gov GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 5583160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-2253076. U.S. SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 3930710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary Executive discretion to the extreme "To contend that the obligation imposed on the president to see the laws faithfully executed implies a power to forbid their execution is a novel construction of the Constitution, and is entirely inadmissible." -- U.S. Supreme Court, 1838 WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans' long-simmering dismay about Barack Obama's offenses against the separation of powers became acute when events compelled him to agree with them that the Affordable Care Act could not be implemented as written. But even before he decreed alterations of key ACA provisions -delaying enforcement of certain requirements for health insurance and enforcement of employers' coverage obligations -- he had effectively altered congressionally mandated policy by altering work requirements of the 1996 welfare reform; and compliance requirements of the No Child Left Behind education law; and some enforcement concerning marijuana possession; and the prosecution of drug crimes entailing mandatory minimum sentences; and the enforcement of immigration laws pertaining to some young people. Republicans tend to regard Obama's aggressive assertion of enforcement discretion as idiosyncratic -- an anti-constitutional impatience arising from his vanity. This interpretation is encouraged by his many assertions that he "can't wait" for our system of separated powers to ratify his policy preferences. Still, to understand not only the extravagance of Obama's exercises of executive discretion, but also how such discretion necessarily grows as government does, read Zachary S. Price's "Enforcement Discretion and Executive Duty" forthcoming in the Vanderbilt Law Review. Price, a visiting professor at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, demonstrates that the Constitution's "text, history, and normative underpinnings" do not justify the permissive reading Obama gives to the Take Care Clause, which says the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." It is, says Price, part of America's "deeply rooted constitutional tradition" that "presidents, unlike English kings, lack authority to suspend statutes" or make them inapplicable to certain individuals or groups. Indeed, the Take Care Clause may have been intended to codify the Framers' repudiation of royal suspending prerogatives. Hence the absence of an antisuspension provision in the Bill of Rights. Congress' excessive expansion of the number of federal crimes, however, has required husbanding of scarce prosecutorial and judicial resources, which has made enforcement discretion central to the operation of today's federal criminal justice system. But Obama's uses of executive discretion pertain to the growth of the administrative state. The danger, Price says, is that the inevitable non-enforcement of many federal criminal laws will establish "a new con- But by claiming a power to stitutional norm of unbounded revise laws through suspension executive discretion" beyond of portions of them, Obama is exercising what Price the criminal justice calls a "second veto." system. Price says the Actually, he is wieldenforcement discretion ing what the Constituexercised in the context tion forbids and no of the resource-constatute can grant -- a strained criminal jusline-item veto, which tice system provides violates the Present"no support for presiment Clause. The dential authority to Constitution says decline enforcement "every bill" passed by with respect to any Congress shall be other given civil regu"presented" to the latory regime, such as the Affordable Care George F. president, who shall sign "it" or return "it" Act." with his objections. The difference is The antecedent of the between priority-setting and policy-setting, the lat- pronoun is the bill -- all of it, ter being a congressional pre- not bits of it. The sprawl of the modern rogative because of Congress' primacy in lawmaking. Absent administrative state requires "a clear statutory basis, an exec- vast delegations of powers, utive waiver of statutory often indistinguishable from requirements" is "presumptively legislative powers, to an executive branch whose scale defies impermissible." It has, however, become "a even adequate congressional nearly irresistible temptation" oversight. Fortunately, in the for presidents to infer permis- Newtonian physics of our consion from the courts' abandon- stitutional system, wherein ment of judicial review that lim- rivalries among the three its Congress' power to delegate branches are supposed to trend essentially legislative powers to toward equilibrium, actions the executive branch. So, Price often produce equal and oppoasks: "If President Obama may site reactions. Obama's aggrespostpone enforcement of the sive assertions of executive disACA's insurance requirements cretion are provoking counterand employer mandate, could a vailing attention to constitutionsubsequent president ignore the al proprieties. His departures Affordable Care Act altogeth- from the norms proper to the Take Care Clause may yet cause er?" In 1998, the Supreme Court Congress to take better care of held that "there is no provision its prerogatives. in the Constitution that authoGeorge Will's email address rizes the president to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes." is georgewill@washpost.com. Will