Obama's 23 Executive Orders translated from the formal bureaucratese
Editor's Note: This succinct, pithy analysis of Barack Obama's 23 Executive Orders was posted yesterday on the Internet and has quickly gone viral. The original author appears to be this blogger.
[UPDATE: According to multiple sources, the President did not, as was widely reported, sign executive orders, but rather executive actions and presidential memoranda.]
So Obama released his Executive Orders to Prevent Maniacs From Being Maniacs today. I've taken the time to translate the summaries into plain English below:
1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
Tell the government to follow the law.
2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
Tell the regulators to stop the stupid and useless regulations.
3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
Pay the states back for the unfunded mandates that the Feds keeps making.
4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
Tell the Attorney General to do his job.
5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
Start another unfunded mandate. (See #3.)
6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
Tell FFLs how to do something no one is ever going to bother to do.
7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
Do the same thing the NRA already does, only half as well at twice the cost.
8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
Do what Underwriters Laboratories already does, only half as well at twice the cost.
9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
Tell the Feds to do their jobs.
10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
Tell the DOJ to do its job.
11. Nominate an ATF director.
Tell myself to do my job.
12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
Spend more money.
13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
Tell everyone to do their [$%^&*#] jobs.
14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
Tell the doctors to figure out why it isn't the feds' fault that they aren't doing their jobs.
15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
Figure out a way to push "smart guns" that don't exist and wouldn't be useful as guns if they did.
16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
Tell everyone that Obamacare doesn't actually mean what it says.
17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
Tell everyone that, seriously, Obamacare doesn't actually mean that. We had to pass it to find out what was in it, after all.
18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
Tell everyone that I've been a partisan hack for the last month every time I said the NRA was crazy to want to post more cops in schools.
19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
Do the same thing that every police agency in the country has already done, only half as well and at ten times the cost.
20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
Tell doctors what they already know.
21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.
Tell people what the parts of Obamacare that don't say anything say.
22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
Tell HHS to do their job.
23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
Hand the rest of the job of telling everyone to do their jobs off to someone else so it is no longer my job.
