Thursday Thirteen

President Biden wasted no time in setting about to undo the last president's edicts as quickly as possible. I do not agree with executive orders from either side, as I don't think that's a power the president should have. Rule by edict is not how our system was set up, but it how it has evolved over the last 40 years. 

It needs to be fixed by the legislative branch. Laws, orders, and monetary spending needs to be created and overseen by the legislature. Not the executive branch.

Things being what they are, I can only watch. Here are some things that happened on Biden's first day:

1. He asked Michael Pack, the acting head of Voice of America, to resign, and he did. Pack immediately turned what was a non-partisan news outlet for the soldiers overseas into a propaganda tool for the 45th president. He was also accused of channeling $4 million in charitable contributions into his own production company. He was only in the office for 8 months.

2. Federal officials last night unleashed tear gas against rioters in Portland, Oregon, where protesters smashed in windows of the Democratic headquarters there and declared Biden could not save them or make the changes they required. The New York Times called these people antifascists and radical justice protestors.

3. One of Biden's executive orders appointed Jeffry D. Zients as the official Covid-19 response coordinator. Additionally, he reinstalled the National Security Council, a group the last president disbanded.

4. He signed another executive order requiring masks on federal property. This is not a national mask mandate. He implemented a "100 days masking challenge." This asks all American to wear masks and urges state and local officials to work to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

5. He reinstated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protects immigrants brought here as children from deportation. The order calls for Congress to provide a path to citizenship for these immigrants.

6. He revoked the last administration's plan to exclude noncitizens from the census count.

7. He ended the "Muslim ban," which had blocked travel to the U.S. from predominately Muslim and African countries.

8. He halted construction of the border wall with Mexico, immediately terminating the 45th president's national emergency declaration that allowed for the use of billions of dollars of redirected funds, not appropriated by Congress, to build the wall. 

9. The United States will again become part of the Paris Accord, which address climate change. Additionally, he revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, reversed decisions that had slashed the size of several national monuments, and re-established a committee on the social costs of greenhouse gases.

10. He ended the 1776 Commission (the page was removed from whitehouse.gov within hours of Biden's swearing in), which historians decried as a distortion of the role of enslaved people in the United States. The report allegedly was a white-washed fairy-tale version of American history. I did not see it personally but by most accounts it was a white supremacists' rewriting of history. It was only released two days ago so I don't think many people saw it.

11. Biden extended a federal moratorium on evictions and asked other agencies, such as Housing and Urban Development Departments, to prolong a moratorium on foreclosures on federally guaranteed mortgages. The extensions run through the end of March.

12. Another executive order reinforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requiring that the the federal government not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, reversing policies put in place by the last administration.

13. He established ethic rules for those who serve in his administration. He ordered all of his appointees in the executive branch to sign an ethics pledge. Additionally, he ordered a freeze on all new regulations put in motion by the last administration in order to give his administration time to evaluate them.

You can read about all of these orders, and others, at the New York Times link.

I have no quarrel with any of these actions. I am particularly glad that Mr. Pack is no longer in charge of Voice of America. As for many of these other actions, I would have preferred a legislative solution, not an executive one, but things being what they are, I understand why these executive orders were issued and Biden is using that particular power. He is following the precedent set by previous presidents, including and especially the last one.

This is what happens when the legislative branch collapses, which it essentially did under President Obama because Senator Mitch McConnell refused to move legislation forward under that administration.

Additionally, I (a) have no clue what is going on in Portland and (b) consider all of this to create, at the least, a distrust of the United States from within and without.

If we are going to pivot every time we change presidents because of these executive orders, then we are not a country any nation can securely do business with. Such strident policy changes make planning difficult, even for folks like me. If the rules change every four years, that is an undue burden on the populace, especially the business sector. 

As a personal example, I have heard for most of my life that Social Security won't be available by the time I am of age to take it. I hope it will be, but it's not money I can count on in my senior years, even if I did work all of my life and pay into the system. 

A country needs stability of leadership, and that should be coming from the legislative branch, and not from executive orders that, as we have seen over the last four years, can undo 50 years of regulations at the stroke of a pen.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 691st time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.