An Open Letter to President Obama

An Open Letter to President Obama

Dear President Obama,

As a simple American citizen – one of the millions of people you answer to – I have a few questions for you. I believe that a highly educated person such as you should be able to answer these few questions in a matter of moments so this should not take much away from your busy schedule.

Mr. President I did not attend Harvard. I have never been a professor of Constitutional Law as you were Sir and seeing as how I never went to law school, have never had the benefit of attending a class on Constitutional Law. So I am completely ignorant of the wording or even in which article of the constitution an educated man like you finds authority to break legal contracts. It appears you have found constitutional authority to void legal contracts made between AIG and its employees. So please simply point out that section of the constitution me.

Also, I am asking you Mr. President for the benefit of your knowledge as to the language in our country’s foundational document that gives you and members of both parties - from both houses of the legislative branch of government - the right to retroactively tax a group of private citizens. I haven’t been able to find that.

Based on what is going on in our country these days I have only fairly recently developed a ravenous appetite for reading America’s most sacred document. My newness to constitutional studies must explain how I have missed the section that explains where you have the power to fire company executives from a private sector company. I don’t have the benefit of a law degree as do you and many members of the senate and congress, so I just need to be shown.

Sir you are my President, and as such I can only ask that you abide by the oath you took in front of me on January 20th of 2009. In that oath you swore to protect and defend the constitution of the United States. So please tell me what verbiage in our Constitution you found that allows you to prescribe to a private sector company what automobiles they can and cannot build.

And Mr. President while I’m asking questions here I have a few more. Did I miss the stimulus plan amendment? As I read the constitution it does not give you and the congress the right to spend money that is not your money to spend. Sir, to me it looks like that is just what you have all done. Being the constitutionally ignorant person that I am I am simply asking that you put my mind at ease by pointing out to me what might be called the “stimulus package clause” so I can go away and you can go about the very important business of protecting and defending our constitution..

There is a large and ever growing group of my friends who have become increasingly interested in the constitution recently. Try as we might we cant find the paragraph or even the sentence in the United States Constitution that allows my President to sign into law a bill that takes away my rights to determine my treatment if I get cancer or when my parents develop heart disease. You see Mr. President as we interpret it, the constitution restricts the rights of the federal government to those specifically mentioned in the constitution. As we read it all rights begin with us, the individual, and then filter down to the state and then finally to the federal level. As such Mr. President we only need to be shown how we constitutionally undereducated American citizens could have missed what I suppose we could all call the health czar amendment. And search as I might I cannot locate the article and section that takes away our right to pay for own health care from our own pocket. Perhaps there is an amendment we all missed that allows the federal government to get into the medical business. We are confused when we read that the government is primarily responsible for governing and protecting our rights. Did we miss the wording Mr. President that declares a visit to a doctor a right?

Mr. President reading back through the journals and letters of the framers of the constitution it appears that they intentionally designed our representational form of government so that the flow of power starts with us and from there goes to our local governments then to the states and then finally to the federal level. (I found it interesting that these men were so thoughtful and attentive that it took them as many as 60 ballots just to agree on how we should elect our presidents.) My friends and I have as of yet been unable to locate the article giving you Mr. President, the right to reverse the rights of states and force them to take the money you call stimulus – which, by the way, we are again still looking for the section that gives you the right to use our money for things like that in the first place.

I only ask, Mr. President, for these clarifications because to me it looks like you are in violation on the constitution on these and several other points. I only ask Sir because it appears to me that you personally are destroying private citizens and private sector companies. President Obama when you openly declare that American citizens are criminals that to me is something that is reserved for the judicial branch of government. As we understand this document anyone declared guilty of a crime has the right to the due process of a conviction by trial that flows through a jury of their peers. I am confused Sir when you go on television and appoint yourself judge and jury in declaring that these honest employees – who took contractually valid bonuses, are now criminals because you now don’t agree with those bonuses because you feel they are illegal. When the President announces in front of the entire country that the bonuses he personally signed into law are now illegal – that President has without the aid of trial declared himself judge and jury and in so doing has found them guilty. And as an interesting aside, we would like to know Mr. President since you are an attorney, how you would interpret your legal culpability in this - as you signed these bonuses into law. Most of my friends are like me and they are not attorneys or judges so we can’t possibly understand that fine point of the law. In appointing yourself judge and jury and trying these people in the media the sentence you have given these citizens, President Obama, has been illegal harassment by state and federal government, threats and harassment from under-informed citizens and what appears to me to be the threat of a blatantly illegal and punitive retroactive tax. Please Mr. President show me again where those rights are granted to you and the federal government by the U.S. Constitution.

And Mr. President you and your fellow public officials have systematically run major U.S. corporations out of business while they have simply been trying to conduct their business lawfully in this country, all while navigating around restrictive, burdensome and obstructive federal regulations. I would like to have you explain to me, what is the exact passage in the constitution those acts fall under. As an uneducated ordinary citizen it is plain to me that AIG will be very shortly run out of business. I know enough about the insurance business to know that new business in the form of new written policies are the life blood of an insurance company. If no new policies are written, even in the course of normal insurance policy attrition, an insurance company is doomed by its restricted cash flow. That insurance company will very rapidly not have the money to pay everyday claims and when an insurance company cannot pay claims they are out of business.

With all of the attention that you and your fellow elected officials have drawn toward AIG no prudent insurable citizen in the United States will opt to purchase a policy from AIG, and many who have policies with the company will be rushing to cancel their policies before they are informed that the company has cancelled them.

I may not be a brilliant Constitutional Law Professor, but I understand business well enough to know that AIG will not be viable long enough for you and the Congress to unconstitutionally break the contracts for next year’s “big bonuses” that you all seem so intent on doing.

Mr. President I would like to have you explain to me under what constitutional authority you can take over the job of the board of directors and fire the CEO of General Motors. And while you’re at it maybe you can enlighten me as to the exact clause that sustains in you the power to tell that car maker what types of cars they can and cannot build. I know that in this letter I mention several times that I do not have a law degree but I am blessed with common sense. My common sense tells me that if by law or decree a company can no longer make and sell its most popular AND most profitable products it will soon go out of business. Is there an article, section or amendment in our country’s founding document that grants you rights of veto over private sector products? If so I need to have you point to that for me.

Mr. President as far as the constitution goes I may not be as educated as you but I know enough about business to recognize when a company is about to breathe its last breath. AIG and GM, two American institutions and monuments to the capitalistic system set up in our constitution, will soon be declared dead. This will happen on your watch and I will even go so far as to say by your hand. I need to hear from you President Obama what law these companies broke that allows you and Congress to invoke whatever constitutional rights you and your Washington DC cohorts uncovered to do what you have done.

I understand Sir that you are a busy man but it will take but a bit of your time to answer these questions. Being the educated man that you are you should be able to answer these questions certainly much faster than I can write them. But it is incumbent upon you to answer these questions because unless we are all reading the constitution incorrectly - you answer to us – not the other way around.
Sincerely,

Dennis Rowley
United States Citizen