Election outlook 2016: Here comes Hillary

By 

LeRoy Goldman

BlueRidgeNow

Our Guest columnist

Published: Sunday, November 15, 2015 at 4:30 a.m.

Looks to me like Hillary has the inside track to the White House. Whether such an outcome engenders ecstasy or revulsion is not the point. What is worth examining is how and why she may be the nation's next president. It's not a pretty picture.

There is no doubt that the nation has been in decline for a very long time. Poll after poll tells the same story. Americans in large numbers believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. Large majorities also have contempt for the president and the Congress, regardless of their party affiliation. Voter anger is palpable.

Barack Obama waltzed into the White House in 2009. His campaign of Hope and Change was music to the ears of most Americans. His victory came with large majorities in both the House and the Senate. But by the 2010 election the honeymoon was over. Think Obamacare.

Since then it's been all downhill for the Democratic Party in Congress and at the state level. President Obama's inexperience coupled with the bitter polarity engendered by Obamacare have severely harmed the Democrats. Since 2010, the Democrats have lost 13 Senate seats, 69 House seats, 12 governors, 30 state legislative chambers, and 919 state legislative seats. Republican legislative dominance is now stronger than at any time since 1928!

This carnage at the state level for the Democrats is what has enabled the Republicans to solidify their control of the House of Representatives through gerrymandering. Their dominance of the House is likely to last until at least 2022. President Obama's unforced errors destroyed his ability to work with Congress in a bipartisan manner, and they will cast a long shadow over Hillary Clinton if she is elected.

Here's a useful way to understand better how America has cornered itself politically. On Nov. 3, 2010, the day after the huge GOP victory at the polls, the president held a news conference during which he said, "It makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us. And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth — that used to be us."

A year later, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman and Johns Hopkins professor Michael Mandelbaum borrowed the president's phrase, "That Used To Be Us," for the title of their insightful book that powerfully chronicles America's decline. In the chapter of the book dealing with energy policy, they state, "The Democrats were cowardly, and the Republicans were crazy."

With an additional four years of hindsight, it is now clear that their acid condemnation of both political parties applies far more broadly than just to energy policy. The Democrats, for example, have shown cowardice on the urgent need for entitlement and tax reform. President Obama created the Simpson-Bowles Commission, and when its report was issued, he and the Democrats ran from it like a scalded dog. Similarly, once the House Freedom Caucus began to flex its muscle by putting a choke collar around John Boehner's neck, crazy things began to happen like voting to repeal Obamacare 50-60 times or voting to shut down the federal government.

Although both parties have worked hard and successfully to earn the distrust and enmity of the American people, there is no denying the enormous advantage the Democrats have when it comes to the presidential election. That advantage exists where it counts the most — in the Electoral College. The Democrats basically have a lock on states with 247 of the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory. That means victory is only a couple of swing states away. That's Hillary's ace in the hole.

Alternatively, Matthew Continetti, writing recently in the Washington Free Beacon, believes Clinton can be beaten. He states, "Clinton can't be trusted. Trade, same-sex marriage, crime, foreign policy — she'll betray you whenever it suits her political needs. She lied about the Benghazi video; she lied about her email; she lied about Sidney Blumenthal. That what she does. She lies." And Continetti argues that Clinton will have to defend both of Obama's unpopular and significant achievements, Obamacare and the Iran deal. He concludes, "A race to the bottom is a race we can win."

It's not clear to me that the GOP wins a race to the bottom. That's so because the Republicans have problems of their own that, left unattended, will hamstring their nominee, regardless of Hillary Clinton's character flaws.

In a recent Politico Magazine article, Michael Lind argues the GOP has lost its intellectual moorings. It no longer has a coherent set of beliefs that resonate with the American electorate. Lind suggests that the Republican Party's greatest obstacle to governing is that its ideology is "not only disconnected from the values of the larger society but from the values and interests of Republicans themselves."

Lind suggests that what used to be accepted pillars of Republican thought, tax cuts, a more robust military coupled with military intervention around the world, and the social policies of the Religious Right are no longer fully embraced by most Republicans. Lind believes the GOP must "abandon the old orthodoxy altogether and start afresh." He's right.

Unfortunately, soul searching of that magnitude is not in the cards for the GOP. That's why Hillary has the inside track. If so, the nation ends up where we started — cowards at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue and crazies at the other.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. 

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Stuffing the gerrymandering geenie back in the bottle

Stuffing the gerrymandering geenie back in the bottle

By

LeRoy Goldman

Guest Columnist

Citizen-Times

November 2, 2015

The stars were aligned for the GOP in the 2010 election when opposition to Obamacare enabled the Republicans to take control of the House of Representatives and also win control of many state legislatures and Governor's Mansions. All of this occurred as new census data mandated the redrawing of congressional district boundaries. Predictably the Republicans seized the opportunity to indulge themselves in a gerrymandering orgy.

But gerrymandering dates back to the dawn of the 19th century. It has become as American as apple pie, and has been practiced with increasing vengeance by both political parties. Carried to its current extreme, it is a bipartisan evil that has contributed significantly to the stalemate in the House of Representatives. While it will never be possible to expect politicians to relinquish the opportunity to draw district lines in ways that advantage themselves, gerrymandering has now turned democracy upside down. Instead of voters choosing a Congressman to represent them, gerrymandering has enabled incumbent Congressmen to choose the voters who will assure their reelection. At the heart of this undemocratic abuse lies the Majority-Minority district.

These districts are ones in which a majority of its residents are racial or ethnic minorities. Most all of them are represented by African-Americans or Hispanics. The vast majority are Democrats. In 1982 there were 35 such districts. By 2014 the number had skyrocketed to 118.

But the explosive growth of these utterly safe Democratic districts has had a counter intuitive, boomerang effect. Remarkably they have advantaged the Republicans and helped them maintain control of the House. The GOP figured out that packing districts with minorities who vote overwhelmingly Democratic made it possible for them to win in many more neighboring districts. Thus the GOP took control of the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years and has steadily strengthened it grip ever since.

The Democrats suffer in silence for fear that challenging the necessity for such districts will subject them to cries of racism by the minority groups who benefit from these sinecures. The GOP is similarly silent, gleefully knowing they have become the unintended beneficiaries of reverse racism.

And there you have it. Political correctness, reverse racism, and both political party's obsession with maintaining partisan advantage and exacting retribution have combined to emasculate the House of Representatives. Any realistic hope of reform must be external to those who have been responsible for and who perpetuate this mess.

The courts, ultimately the Supreme Court, could put this matter right. In fact the Supreme Court came within a single vote of doing just that in 2001. Let's look at how breathtakingly close it came to rectifying this problem.

In two landmark cases, Baker v. Carr in 1962 and Reynolds v. Sims in 1964 the Supreme Court thrust the judiciary into a determination of the constitutionality of a state's voting districts. In his opinion in Baker v. Carr Justice William O. Douglas said, “if a voter no longer has the constitutional value of his right to vote and the legislative branch fails to take appropriate restorative action, the doors of the court must be open to him”.

Throughout the 1990s Duke Law Professor Robinson Everett, a Liberal Democrat, was the driving force behind three law suits that were decided by the Supreme Court that challenged North Carolina's two Majority-Minority congressional districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Everett believed these districts violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause. The Supreme Court in 5-4 decisions agreed with Everett in the first two cases, Shaw v. Reno in 1993 and Shaw v. Hunt in 1996. But Everett lost the third and decisive case, Easley v. Cromartie, in 2001 when Justice Sandra Day O'Connor switched her vote.

Justice O'Connor's volte-face was especially disappointing given the fact that in writing for the majority in one of the two earlier cases she had said, “a reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belong to the same race, but who are otherwise widely separated by geographic and political boundaries, and who may have little in common with one another but the color of their skin, bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid”.

Robinson Everett passed away in 2009. But his legacy lives, and, more importantly, a Supreme Court decision overturning racial gerrymanders is all the more urgent. A new case brought by a lawyer intent upon completing what Judge Everett began is the way to put the evil gerrymandering genie back in the bottle.

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Ryan lacks strength to unify House GOP

The Charlotte Observer

BY LEroy GOLDMAN

Special to the Observer

October 28, 2015

John Boehner’s Zip-a-dee-doo-dah exit as Speaker of the House of Representatives has triggered a remarkable and chaotic process among House Republicans. It quickly became apparent that there was no obvious successor who was capable of leading, and who could command the overwhelming support of the entire GOP Caucus.

Out of that chaos, attention began to focus on Paul Ryan, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, and a man who had never aspired to a House leadership position and who said he did not want to be Speaker.

Ryan is a man of substance, a policy wonk, a Republican who, unlike virtually all of the rest of the 246 Republicans in the House, understands that in order to govern, the GOP must demonstrate to the American people that it has workable alternatives to the programs and policies put forth by President Obama and the Democrats. Just voting to repeal Obamacare 50+ times doesn’t cut it.

As the former Chair of the House Budget Committee and the current Chair of Ways and Means, Ryan has been perfectly positioned to offer legislation to address big issues like the debt and the deficit, health care, immigration reform and comprehensive tax reform.

But the pressure on Ryan to fill the Speaker void quickly became irresistible. It was at that point Ryan set forth his conditions. But Ryan blundered badly, sold himself short, and has set the stage for his own demise as Speaker.

He did not take full advantage of the position of strength he occupied as the one person virtually all House members were willing to rally around as the new Speaker. As such, he should have insisted upon a set of conditions that would have brought order out of the chaos among House Republicans. He could have turned the tables on the House Freedom Caucus by saying to them from now on it will be my way or the highway, not yours.

Here’s how Ryan blew it. He first insisted on the support of all three of the caucuses that make up the House Republicans. But then he backtracked when some members of the hysterical Freedom Caucus would not support him. The message his backtracking sent will be lethal going forward. It tells the Freedom Caucus that they will be able to jerk him around just as they jerked John Boehner’s chain whenever they wished.

Then Ryan said he would support the continued use of the Hastert Rule, the mechanism that the radicals in the Freedom Caucus have used to stymie the House legislatively and prevent legislative accommodation with House Democrats, the Senate and the president. Ryan should have reserved the right to abandon the slavish use of the Hastert Rule.

Ryan should have insisted that both Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise be replaced with fresh blood of Ryan’s choosing. He didn’t, and he will regret it.

Finally, Ryan agreed to give up the Chair of the Ways and Means Committee. He should have retained that post so that he could continue to shape vital legislation, and so that he had an avenue of retreat if being Speaker went south.

Had Ryan insisted on these conditions, a new and better day would have dawned in the House or, failing that, Ryan could have walked away from a rendezvous with oblivion.

Instead Ryan has trapped himself. Unwittingly, he has become Don Quixote, The Man Of La Mancha. He dreams the impossible dream; he fights the unbeatable foe; he reaches for the unreachable star; and he cannot right the unrightable wrong.

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Boehner and Meadows: A tale of failed leadership

By

LeRoy Goldman

Guest Columnist

Asheville Citizen-Times

October 2, 2015

House Speaker John Boehner has packed it in. At the same time one of his principal tormentors, Congressman Mark Meadows, has kept a low profile. Thus far he has had the decency to not dance on Boehner’s grave.

Boehner’s demise and Meadows’ role in bringing him down have significance that goes way beyond the bad blood between a 25-year House veteran and an upstart back-bencher. The real significance that their dispute throws into sharp relief is that the House of Representatives no longer functions. It has paralyzed itself with the help and assistance of state legislatures that can’t resist drawing congressional district lines in ways that enable members of Congress from both parties to pick their voters. It’s called gerrymandering, and it has run amok with devastating and unpredictable consequences.

Speakers of the House have become an endangered species. Five of the last six Speakers, dating back to Democrat Jim Wright in 1989, have been ousted. In addition to Wright the list includes Democrat Tom Foley, and Republicans Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert and now Boehner.

Boehner says he had decided to announce his retirement on his 66th birthday, Nov. 17. But he abruptly advanced the timetable when he sensed rising conservative opposition to his leadership as Congress was about to consider stopgap funding for the government.

Boehner knew that the most intransigent members of his caucus, the 40 or so ideologues who comprise the Freedom Caucus, were planning to force another shutdown of the government if they could not defund Planned Parenthood. Boehner knew their effort would fail because the president would veto any bill that defunded Planned Parenthood. He also knew the GOP would be blamed by the voters if the government shut down again as it had in 2013. And he knew that the Freedom Caucus didn’t care.

And all of this was in addition to the resolution that Congressman Meadows, a member of the Freedom Caucus, had introduced in the House just two months ago. Meadows’ resolution contained a motion to vacate the chair. Such a motion, if brought to a vote and approved, would have ousted Boehner.

Meadows, tongue in cheek, simply said he wanted to start a “family conversation on the course of congressional leadership.” Family conversations are typically unproductive when one member of the family has the barrel of a gun in the face of another family member.

Mark Meadows found himself in the right place at the right time in 2012 when he first sought election to the 11th Congressional District. Widespread voter revulsion to Obama, and especially the way he and the Democrats had rammed through Obamacare in 2009-10, gave the GOP control of the House in 2010, and, more importantly, gave them control of many state legislatures and governor’s mansions. All of this came just in time for the required redrawing of congressional district lines based upon the 2010 census.

Here in North Carolina the GOP had gained control of all of the levers of power in Raleigh for the first time in over a century. Not surprisingly, the Republicans in Raleigh went on a gerrymandering orgy. A state which heretofore had seven Democrats and six Republicans in the House, now has ten Republicans and only three Democrats.

Meadows coasted to victory in 2012 with 57.4 percent of the vote, and was re-elected in 2014 with 62.9 percent of the vote. The district has been gerrymandered by removing thousands of voters who live in Asheville.

Therefore, Mark Meadows, like hundreds of other members of Congress from both parties, is congressman for life. His only real threat is if he challenged from the right in a Republican primary election by an opponent more extreme than he. Thus his incentive and the incentive of his GOP colleagues is to move as far right as possible in order to forestall such a challenge. Democratic House members do the same thing, though they race far to the left.

And that process produces two groups of zealots in the House who refuse to work with one another. They don’t care. It’s the system that keeps them in power.

In their own different ways, both Boehner and Meadows have failed. Both are casualties of a process they support — gerrymandering. Both applauded with all the rest of their colleagues when Pope Francis addressed Congress recently and urged Congress to practice the Golden Rule.

Hypocrisy is rampant on Capitol Hill. It’s also bipartisan. A subsequent column will propose ways to curtail gerrymandering.

LeRoy Goldman lives in Flat Rock. He was a member of the federal government’s senior executive service for many years, he can be reached at:

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2016

Secretariat of the GOP presidential race

BY LEROY GOLDMAN

Charlotte Observer 9-23-2015

Special to the Observer

We know Hillary Clinton believes America urgently needs a female president. And we know that she believes 2016 is the year. She’s right, and the only way we can be certain that she’s right is if the nominee of both parties is a woman. I believe the odds now favor that outcome – Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina.

Clinton remains the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination. But the GOP race is wide open.

The Reagan Presidential Library hosted the second GOP debate last week. Fifteen of the 16 GOP hopefuls duked it out in front of President Reagan’s Air Force One. It was high drama – funny at times, combative, substantive. Most importantly, it began the process of separating the field into winners and losers.

History teaches us that Republicans should win the White House next year. The American people usually turn the reins of power over to the other party after one party has had two terms in office. It happened in 1952, 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, and 2008.

What threatens a GOP victory in 2016 is that it’s fractured right down the middle. Its two warring camps include the Establishment Republicans and their longstanding ties to the business community and the Insurgent Republicans with their ties to the Tea Party. These warring factions despise one another. It’s They distrust one another as much as they oppose Barack Obama and his policies. Look, for example, at the Insurgents’ efforts to depose House Speaker John Boehner and their counterproductive willingness to again shut down the federal government.

If the GOP fails to nominate someone who can bridge this chasm, it will fall short next year. It’s Hillary’s key to victory.

None of the GOP hopefuls has, as yet, demonstrated how he or she can not only bridge the divide that has torn the GOP in half, but also how to effectively reach out to Independents and minorities, especially in the swing states that will determine who wins.

That said, the recent debate has begun the winnowing process. Only six of the GOP hopefuls still have a presidential pulse post-debate. Three are primarily Establishment candidates: Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio. The other three are Insurgents: Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina.

Three of them, however, are walking dead, though they and their most ardent supporters have yet to realize it. Bush lacks the requisite fire in the belly, and he can’t change his last name. When Carson opens his mouth we realize that he is sincere, and hasn’t a clue how to master the levers of power in Washington. Trump is Carson absent the sincerity. Put a fork in them. They’re done.

Fiorina, however, has surprised to the upside in both GOP debates. In each debate she was the clear winner. She’s poised, confident, and she far outdistances all of her rivals in her grasp of both domestic and foreign policy issues. She is tenacious and, as a woman, will be able to confront Clinton in ways that no man could. If she taps either Rubio or Kasich as her running mate, she can heal the GOP and reach out to Independents and minorities.

In a light moment Jake Tapper, the debate’s moderator, asked each candidate to pick their Secret Service codename. Fiorina provocatively chose “Secretariat.” Secretariat was the thoroughbred who won the Triple Crown in 1973 by winning the Belmont Stakes in the fastest time ever and by an astonishing 31 lengths!

Put your money on Fiorina while the betting odds are still eye-poppingly attractive!

Goldman worked on Capitol Hill and at the National Institutes of Health. He has retired to Flat Rock and can be reached at:  EmailMe

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article36319368.html#storylink=cpy

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Asheville Citizen-Times

LeRoy Goldman, GUEST COLUMNIST

September 4, 2015

Obama has destroyed the Democrats

By the time a president reaches the last couple of years in office, his attention inevitably turns to his legacy. A president’s legacy, whether good or ill, is built upon accomplishments, not rhetoric. Therefore, it’s not hard to identify what this president would point to as the legacy bookends of his eight years in office. At the front end is the enactment of Obamacare. At the back end is the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Presidential scholars, political pundits, and the American people will debate and disagree regarding the worthiness of both of these two monumental undertakings. You can be certain that when the Obama Presidential Library opens in Chicago it will make the case that healthcare was reformed by Obamacare, and the world was made safer by the Iran Nuclear Agreement. Alternatively, it’s entirely possible that the voters in 2016 and beyond will make the countervailing argument.

But regardless of history’s assessment of Obamacare and the Iran Nuclear Deal, there is another part of the Obama legacy that he won’t acknowledge and that is too little discussed. Obama has virtually destroyed the Democratic Party. And the Democrats, like lemmings, have been willing accomplices in their own demise.

It was opposition to Obamacare that produced the enormous gains the GOP made in 2010 and 2014. Rather than delaying health care reform in the face of an imploding economy in 2009, Obama chose to ram it through Congress with only the support of Democrats. It was a catastrophic blunder.

The numbers are staggering. In 2010, the GOP captured the House by gaining 63 seats. In 2014, they took control of the Senate. And the damage has been just as ruinous for the Democrats at the state level. The Republicans now have 31 governors and fully control 30 state legislatures.

In a recent column in Politico entitled, Democratic Blues, Jeff Greenfield says, “In fact, no president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party.”

Having painted himself into corner, it’s not surprising that President Obama basically chose to attempt to govern as if he were the only decision-maker. In his first Cabinet meeting in 2014 Obama said, “We’re not going to just be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone.”

There is no better current example of Obama’s go-it-alone, go-for-broke approach to governance than the Iran Nuclear Agreement now pending before Congress. It’s his foreign relation’s version of Obamacare. Not surprisingly, it has spawned the same kind of bitter partisan rancor on the Hill and across the nation as did Obamacare.

The Iran Nuclear Agreement aims to prevent or at least delay Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon. In addition, it lifts the severe sanctions on Iran that have been in place for years. The Obama Administration assumes that Iran will become less menacing and easier to deal with as a consequence of the Agreement. In fact, the day after the deal had been reached, the President falsely argued that the choices now facing this nation are to accept the deal or go to war. He said, “Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force, through war.”

Virtually all Republicans on Capitol Hill and a majority of the American people as measured by national polls do not agree with President Obama’s assessment, and they do not agree with the tortured way the agreement is being presented to Congress so as to make it next to impossible for it to be rejected.

Instead of submitting the deal as a treaty that would have required a two-thirds vote in the Senate, it takes the form of an agreement. Congress will almost certainly reject the agreement, but Obama will veto their disapproval and Congress will not have the votes to override his veto.

Former Harvard Law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, puts Obama’s scheme in proper perspective. He says, “if the majority of Americans continue to oppose the deal, it will ultimately be rejected...An agreement, as distinguished from a treaty does not have the force of law. It can simply be abrogated by any future president.”

Obama has decimated the Democratic Party. What remains is a geriatric joke: Hillary 69, Sanders 74, Biden 74, Kerry 73, Warren 66, Reid 75, and Pelosi 75. A political party, unwilling to challenge its president when necessary, deserves its ignominious fate.

LeRoy Goldman lives in Flat Rock. He was a member of the federal government’s senior executive service for many years.

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America needs a 21st- century trust buster 

 The Charlotte Observer

BY LEROY GOLDMAN

Special to the ObserverSeptember 2, 2015

At the dawn of the 20th century this nation was in trouble. The vast majority of its citizens lived in desperate conditions. Vast amounts of wealth were concentrated in the hands of a few individuals such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan. Although the Sherman Antitrust Act had been enacted in 1890, it had been little used to challenge the use of trusts by men like these to amass incredible wealth. But when President McKinley was assassinated in 1901 and Teddy Roosevelt became president, things changed.

Roosevelt went on to become one of our greatest presidents in part because he directed his attorney general to challenge the Northern Securities Company, a railroad trust established by Rockefeller and Morgan. Roosevelt did not oppose all trusts, only bad ones. Roosevelt believed the Northern Securities was a monopoly that sought to control all railroading from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest. When the case reached the Supreme Court, Roosevelt won 5-4. Roosevelt had become a “Trust Buster.”

A century later the nation is again in trouble, and there is another trust that needs busting. It’s a trust that is both bad and good. It’s enormous in size and scope. Its activities penetrate every corner of American life. It has the power to both self-finance and, when that is insufficient, to print money. Worst of all it is accountable to no one.

It is the federal government. It makes Northern Securities look lame by comparison. Its worthy actions need to be preserved. Its unworthy, unnecessary, or outdated actions need to be terminated. We need another Teddy Roosevelt.

The Constitution provides for the most direct way to deal with this problem through the Congress’ power of the purse. Ideally Congress would terminate funding for federal programs that are counterproductive, outdated or don’t work. But instead when bad things happen, the executive branch comes to Congress and says it needs more bureaucrats and more money to fix the problem. And Congress complies.

The only effective way to separate the wheat from the chaff is through major surgery.

Federal support for things like responding to natural disasters such as forest fires and hurricanes is essential. So too is provision for the national defense, but not for unneeded weapons systems. Care for Veterans is essential, but not by a socialized medical system that has killed veterans while serving itself. Medicare and Medicaid are vital, but not when it’s staffed by folks who are incapable or uninterested in accurately answering a telephone call. Tax collection is necessary, but not by an IRS willing to put politics in front of its mission.

The next president needs to do to the executive branch what Teddy Roosevelt did to Northern Securities – break it up. It would be best if both parties agreed on the necessity of this undertaking. Unfortunately, they don’t. The Democrats are the handmaidens of government growth. They see that growth as an appropriate way to bring about desirable social and economic change.

But among the Republicans, a rising star is Carly Fiorina. She does not miss an opportunity to address how she would reform the federal bureaucracy. Such an effort must emanate from the White House and include control over the appointment of every department’s undersecretary. That’s the person who actually manages the day-to-day affairs of each department. The effort must also attempt to reinstate the president’s power to impound, not spend, money appropriated by Congress.

If Fiorina ends up president, vice president, or the appointed Trust-Busting Tzarina of the next administration, the fat will be in the fire! It’s long overdue.

Goldman worked on Capitol Hill and at the National Institutes of Health. He has retired to Flat Rock and can be reached at:  EmailMe

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Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article33585882.html#storylink=cpy