Is everyone scared to challenge Obama?

After Obama’s speech from the Oval Office Wednesday night, the rumors that BP would “voluntarily” pony up $30 billion, by demand of the White House, to compensate Gulf victims seems reality.

The funds are to be administered by the government. BP and others involved in that deep water rig certainly acted with disregard as to response in the event of a failure at the oceans floor in a mile deep environment. The catastrophic effects are unfolding 24/7 on cable and network news.

What scares me is Obama demanding the transfer of a huge amount of stockholders’ wealth without any legislation or court ruling. The president’s job is to enforce the laws made by the elected Congress, not to create new laws enforced all by himself. He is not the law, he is supposed to enforce what Congress decides. Firing the GM CEO, spending returned TARP money on his pet industries, demanding BP pay all workers suspended by his moratorium on drilling — all examples of serious executive action by implied threat without legislative authority. He acts like a big-city boss or a Third World dictator.

This president has big business laying low, tea partiers and others scared. Can anyone in Congress or the Supreme Court stop him, this “I am the Law” Obama?  Or is everyone too scared to challenge the guy in the White House?

BRUCE JOHNSON

Sandpoint