Mark Steyn describes the problem of understanding the gargantuan bills that come before Congress. In the NRO he says,
Thousand-page bills, unread and indeed unwritten at the time of passage, are the death of representative government. They also provide a clue as to why, in a country this large, national government should be minimal and constrained. Even if you doubled or trebled the size of the legislature, the Conyers conundrum would still hold: No individual can read these bills and understand what he’s voting on. That’s why the bulk of these responsibilities should be left to states and subsidiary jurisdictions, which can legislate on such matters at readable length and in comprehensible language. As for optimum bill size, the 1773 Tea Act, which provoked the Boston Tea Party, was 2,263 words. That sounds about right.
The information required to describe a system is proportional to the complexity of the undertaking. While the design for a rowboat can be set down on a single sheet of paper, describing the battleship New Jersey required a 175 tons of blueprints “equaling a single strip of paper 30 inches wide and 1,100 miles long”. The only way Mark Steyn’s vision of brevity can be attained is either for Congress to restrict its lawmaking to high level specifications or to construct systems incrementally. Any legislation which hopes to come in under 3,000 words must be either a framework document or an implementing rule within a given framework. But any attempt to comprehensively build a complex edifice — like health care — will almost by definition generate documents as voluminous as the battleship New Jersey blueprints.
So why can’t Congress work at a general level of specification and incrementally after that? After all, that is how many complex systems are designed.
Because to work that way would require giving up power. The framers of the Constitution set out the general principles but were prepared to leave the implementation details to others. Leaving decisions at lower levels of granularity to others requires a concession of authority. But if authority is hoarded at the center, then all specifications must be reached at the center as well. And hence the inevitability of the thousand-page bills that no single person can understand. The central idea of subsidiarity is that matters ought to be left to the smallest competent authority and a central authority confine itself to those tasks which can’t be performed at a more immediate or local level. Mark Steyn is right when he says that unless the subsidiary jurisdictions are enabled, unreadable legislation will not only become more common, it will become inevitable.
The real problem with a bloated central authority is that it cannot process information efficiently and cannot make decisions effectively because of a bad architecture. It contains the seeds of its own demise. The more it centralizes, the less it understands. The politicians at the center will be the last to realize that this undermines their position in the long run; but that only proves the point.
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Bravo! Mark Steyn and Wretchard have nailed it.
And if the Republicans had any brains left (last time I looked they still had 100% vacancy upstairs), they’d be hammering on the unreadable-bill-in-unGodly-hurry theme. Even blue state citizens can understand how destructive this is, of a representative government AND the poor citizens who must suffer the effects.
John Gall’s Systemantics has a lot of applicable thoughts.
“Systems attract systems-people” would be on topic.
The book is still published, albeit in a very bloated form from the privately published gem of 1976.
I’ll leave to others at Belmont Club, who have given quite a bit of thought already to the topic, the discussion of federal government constipation, the kind of toilet paper dispenser it may require, and the direction of the paper dispensing.
An objection to subsidiarity is that decision making at local level, and even the family level, is often disfunctional. This is true. But in the case of county commissioners and school boards, for example, these elected officials are people directly responsible to their neighbors and we can vote them out. They may be jerks, but they are our jerks and not the jerks that some other voters in NYC or some such place elected to Congress.
My biggest nightmare is the emergence of the Walter Peck EPA functionary, enabled by acts of Congress, intervening at every level (see ‘Ghostbusters’). Now we might have “Walter Peck, M.D.”
Unfortunately, many of those 1000 plus pages in such bills come from people going hat in hand to DC and asking for something specific.
It’s an awful lot of work to convince people all the way from the grass roots to DC that something is a good idea. A whole lot of work, and work that requires exceptional commications skills – and that is why so many people, from Fred Ziffle and his son Arnold to the Mayor of Podunk to the local Teacher’s Union to the average 2nd Lt in the military much prefer to just convince someone in DC and have them do it. That is why we get the DoD paying for a Statue of Liberty Museum in New Jersey and NASA paying for a Christopher Columbus Musuem in Baltimore.
The Congress critters’ main excuse for some time now has been “Hey! I just gave the task to the Federal Bureaucracy and they screwed it up!” With that excuse wearing thin and having found they can’t trust the Federal bureaucrats to get things done, they have gotten more and more specific.
back in the day, constipation could be worked out with pencil & paper.
What is it with you guys and toilet paper, anyhow?
The real reason why bills are so large, is so that they can contain items that are desired by the campaign contributors of each of our 535 legislators.
In order to get a bill to pass, you need to get enough legislators to support it. The price of support is to be allowed to tuck in one or more items, to keep happy one or more constituencies or contributors. Thus bills MUST be huge and complicated, both to contain the goodies, and to contain enough roughage to mask the goodies.
The only way Mark Steyn’s vision of brevity can be attained is either for Congress to restrict its lawmaking to high level specifications or to construct systems incrementally. Any legislation which hopes to come in under 3,000 words must be either a framework document or an implementing rule within a given framework.
Unfortunately both of these approaches have fatal flaws as well.
Even if you limit congressional legislation to high-level specifications, that just means someone else has to work out the lower-level details. If that someone isn’t Congress, then who? In all likelihood, the answer will end up being lawyers, judges and bureaucrats. In other words, this approach is just a recipe for transferring power from elected officials to unelected ones.
As for the piecemeal approach to large-scale legislation, the problem there is that Congress would usually end up passing some components but not others, or modifying certain components so that they no longer work with the other components as intended. Depending on the nature of the legislation, having only arbitrarily selected bits and pieces in place could turn out to be worse overall than either having the whole thing or none of it at all.
(mongoose, “arrested development”?)
Buddy,
If that pencil ends up in the toilet, it’s time to call Roto Router.
The only way to have your troubles go down the drain.
Someone here provided this link in a previous thread.
Pretty amazing Graphical Depiction of California
Calif is off the charts!
Welfare leaves California terminally constipated.
—
Senate now trying to finish a bill before recess!
Thank you Chuck Grassley.
For nothing.
I have another element to add to this issue:
Paradoxically, our current federal government is “underfunded” for the missions it has mandated for itself.
Let me explain:
Many government programs are “underfunded” and “understaffed,” and, therefore, unable to fulfill their functions properly. I have “underfunded” in scare quotes, because we all know that the government is hugely wasteful in how it spends money. It knows only one way to spend money, and will not consider any other. As a result, it is often unable to provide its various organs with the financial nourishment they need with this wasteful spending process.
To put it in numbers: the feds are trying to — annually — do $4.5 to $5 trillion worth of “work” for $4 trillion, while being able to collect only $2.5 trillion a year in actual revenue. Most people aren’t even aware of this huge debacle. Visit many a government office, and they are underfunded, under-equipped, and under-staffed for the tasks they are assigned to do. To me, the implications of all this are that the government is even bigger, more pervasive, and more intrusive than even the budget and staffing numbers imply. The other implication is that it’s going to do its invasiveness and intruding incompetently. Nothing new there, except that this lifts up another rock that exposes more wriggly things that help explain why big government solutions are bad.
Even on the municipal and state level, the most dramatic examples are social services, where states with big governments and budgets to match have burned out social workers, kids and elderly falling through the cracks and dying, and what have you. With our new compassionate, caring overlords, they are, in effect, intending to provide all of us with the equivalent of “caseworkers,” which will be a total nightmare.
Absurd, isn’t it? All that money, and it’s still “not enough.”
Joshua @ 9:
The 10th Amendment covers that for you:
Very specifically, The Constitution has got you covered. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that so many, yourself included, do not see the obvious answer right away. They have become so conditioned that ‘The Nanny State’ is the one-stop-shop for all solutions they refuse to see that we have an old organization in place to cover just those cases. But that requires advanced citizenship. And that advanced citizenship is sorely lacking in the country at large these days.
Why? Because we as citizens have abdicated our personal responsibility for ‘goodies’ from DC. In all stages of the polity such as education, public welfare, public defense, etc.
The way to unconstipate the system is to apply some very strong measures to flush the system. Personally I favor ‘Throw The Bums Out In 2010′. We need a high colonic, as it were, in DC and that will require strong medicine. New players on the national scene and grassroots support to those who speak out against the culture of corruption that has become business as usual in DC. Both the DNC and the GoP need to feel the effects of that cleansing.
Just a question. Why isn’t voting for or against legislation that one has not read or understood an impeachable offense?
Can’t we use that to tie all these bozo’s up until they either say uncle or asphyxiate?
In the Canoe Club they taught us the official doctrine called “Control by Negation.” There is even an acronym for it that is used in both verbal communications and message traffic. It is called UNODIR and it stands for “UNless Otherwise DIRected.” You tell your boss what you intend to do and then go ahead and do it unless you hear an order to the contrary. The Captain can send a signal, “UNODIR will precede to Freemantle OZ for 3 days R&R before reporting to contingency Operations in the Horn of Africa.” The Department Head might say to the Captain “UNODIR I’m going to submit a CASREP for gun mount 52 so that we don’t have to use the parts stored for mount 51.” The Division Officer could say to the Department Head, “UNODIR I’m going to have the Gunner’s Mates conduct security drills in Marine Officers berthing during the dinner hour. In each of the above cases it is highly likely that you might then see a hand reach through the message traffic or the shipboad telephone or simply the air to grab respectively the Captain, the Lieutenant Commander and the Ensign by their throats while a voice said “No you will not.” Since people quickly learn only to formulate and then inform their seniors of planned orders unlikely to be countermanded the system works rather well.
If Congress was functioning correctly it would set up structures and guidelines and limits for the agencies and states and courts to fill in. When a court makes a ruling that needed correction Congress has the explicit power in the Constitution to limit the Appellate authority of the Judiciary by issuing Exceptions and Regulations. (Art. III sec. 2 para. 2)
We need an Amendment specifying that no Act may become a Law unless it’s text has been published and read in public at least 48 hours before enactment, with the exception of a Declaration of War and Acts pursuant thereof. Even in that case the actual text of a law, as opposed to an enabling regulation, should be a matter of public record. To vote for something without being on oath as to understanding the text being presented should constitute Fraud.
The problem is less the length of the law and more the incentives of the law makers. Yes, it would be more efficient to decentralize as much as possible – but even guidelines can be bad guidelines if the incentives are wrong. RWE hits the nail on the head that there needs to be enough verbiage in the bills to tuck & hide in all the hand-outs to campaign contributors.
We need real, no fooling campaign finance reform. A hard break on accepting money from any person not an actual living & breathing constituent (and no pooling – checks directly made out to the politicians in the voter’s own handwriting) and a hard ceiling on how much any person (even the candidate himself) can contribute to a campaign. There is no natural limit to campaign spending, so we need to create an artificial one to stop this from getting out of hand. Congress is auctioning off portions of the Federal legal code to pay for their campaign ads.
We need serious, no fooling, electoral reform. Our first past the post system encourages an oligopoly of power that would make Ma Bell jealous and Bill Gates drool. A Range Voting system would break open real electoral competition in the political idea space.
And as long as I’m dreaming here, a House of Repeal would be pretty sweet too.
maineman,
The Members of the legislature are not subject to impeachment. They can expel one of their own members by other procedures. No member however can be charged in a State or Federal court for anything they say while attending a session.
Robohobo, Washington simply ignores the 10th amendment.
Thowing out the bums will only work if their successors are elected on a platform of scaling back federal power, which isn’t very likely.
I hold out hope for Randy Barnett’s Federalism amendment — its chances of passage are remote, but at least it will give this issue the center-stage spot it deserves — plus help educate the electorate about why we should care.
Wretchard:
After reading you today, I went back and re-read Hayek’s Nobel Prize Lecture. I think it’s very apropos and here’s a link:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html
To continue in a scatological stream:
What we are looking at in Washington is beyond constipation. It more like fecal impaction, which in advanced condition compromises pulmonary function. The treatment of fecal impaction requires aggressive suppository intervention. When that treatment takes effect, stand back!
Washington needs an enema, for sure.
One of the main legal principles judges and lawyers use in interpreting and applying laws, when the law itself is somewhat ambiguous or unclear, is to simply read the plain text of the statute and do as it directs. When that doesn’t really work, the next step is to dig into the legislative history like floor debates, committee reports, and Congressmen’s comments on the bill, to get an idea of what the legislature intended the bill to mean.
These canons of statutory interpretation all fall away when it becomes apparent (and a lawyer can credibly argue to a judge) that Congress had no fracking clue what that statute was intended to mean, or that Congress probably didn’t even know that passage was even in the bill because it was written by a lobbyist and then shopped around to a Senator willing to throw it in. Judges will be filling in the gaps, it seems to me, and making more individual policy decisions.
A brave new world.
I am not denigrating any of the conclusions above; but if I may I’d like to make some additions.
Besides a demand that they have absolute power over what happens, Congress wants to have absolutely no responsibility for any results. Absolute Power – Responsibilily = Tyranny.
Factor in also that for at least half a century, it has been the procedure for Congress to lay out a broad plan, add in payoffs to their political sponsors, and then turn over the implementation with no real guidelines to either the courts or to the Federal bureaucracy; neither of which is accountable to anyone or anything.
Consider that for a period of time longer than the average period of incumbency of a Congressman or Senator [and that is taking into account that the two biggest drivers of turnover in Congress are sexual scandals and mortality tables for the age group] the Congress of the United States has not had to actually develop a complex piece of legislation, accounting for its effects, and try to perfect it. Indeed, it is axiomatic that they assume that there will be no unforeseen or undesirable affects in what they do. There is literally no institutional expertise remaining in Congress that has any experience at all with dealing with complex problems beyond a bandaid and kicking them down the road for a later generation to deal with.
Then there is the matter of who, beyond themselves, that Congressmen and Senators see themselves working for. It is axiomatic that one tries to please and avoid displeasing those who either dispense benefits or who can inflict pain.
Given that tenure in Congress after the first term is functionally lifetime, and that no matter how relatively poor one is when one enters the Legislative branch, one always leaves in the top 5% of the nation’s wealthy; the voters functionally have neither ability. Those who can dispense and inflict are: Corporate and individual sponsors, lobbyists, and the media. Just as a business tries to please its customers, an employee theoretically tries to please his employer, and a slave tries to appease his master; members of the Legislative branch please those who can help or harm them.
They do not fear the law, because as regularly shown they are above it. Our governing elite commonly commit what would be imprisonable crimes if performed by a private citizen; with absolute impunity. They do not fear or respect the provisions of the Constitution; because with the exception of a statistically insignificant minority; they have either not read it or do not agree with it if they have. And they are in a position of power to ignore it.
This applies to both parties in the Legislative and Executive branches!
Thus Congress making sweeping laws which no one has read, which have ill results, and being proud of it [See Representative John Conyers] is not a aberation, but rather an inevitable result.
Congress is institutionally incapable with dealing with complex matters because they have forgotten how, it is in their personal interest not to, and they feel no obligation [not even noblesse oblige] to do so even in their own self interest because they believe that they are personally immune from any consequences of their decisions.
Congress is as removed from the world of most Americans as the Second Estate was from the Third Estate in France in 1788. This distance is one of the factors that I believe that will tend to cause them to support any move by the regime to either rig or cancel the 2010 elections.
I have mentioned an imbalance of fear between the government and people in a tyranny in an earlier post. Members of Congress, regardless of party, have no fear of voters and we voters have to fear living under whatever idiocy they come up with. Both parties are wholly invested in the system of privilege they have created for themselves, and are contemptuous of the society and people who involuntarily support their privileges.
I am coming to believe that this Congressional Recess, and the period from that to November 2010 are where it will be decided first, if a Constitutional Republic has a chance to survive short of violence, and second if it has a chance to survive at all.
Having had the government take over the financial system, the auto business, and spend two years of GDP to pay off their sponsors [with only token opposition from the Republicans to any of it, which garners them a large hunk of the blame], and with the prospect of them passing a health care “reform” that would be approved of by Dr. Josef Mengele [all without reading or debate], this Summer recess is going to be an active one. If they dare make appearances at constituent meetings, they are going to get a rude awakening similar to what happened in Claire McCaskill’s district a couple of days ago. They expected 150, they got 1000+, and it was barely civil and quite hostile to McCaskill and Obamacare.
Members of Congress are going to be terrified at having their immunity put in question, even if they send flunkies to these meetings. Since there is a new trend of ACORN/COI, SEIU, and MoveOn trying to disrupt counter-Obama gatherings; there may be violence. It will, in the end, not be one-sided.
It may be as relatively low key as this reprinted story “The Window War which a friend sent me a link to [I vouch for the applicability of the story. I had not encountered the site before and do not necessarily vouch for it.]
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2009/02/back-by-semi-popular-demand-window-war.html
or it may be along the line of P.T.G. Beauregard in Charleston Harbor. But times are getting perilous; and the reaction of the Members of Congress is going to be akin to that of the French “Nobility of the Sword” when the Estates-General became the French National Assembly. They will do or support anything to preserve their privileges. It is now hard wired into the structure and DNA of the modern Congress, along with their incapacity to deal with problems rationally.
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Subotai Bahadur
These Sons of Central Planning are the consequence of our fiat currency being International Money/Reserve Currency.
The existence of this funding conduit is corrupting our politics quite completely. The ONLY way to fund the level of spending/ collapse in tax receipts is to print money in grand style.
We’re witnessing the stepwise functional dissolution of the Republic; a web of nominated Czars morphs the control linkage towards Despotism.
At the end of the day this deluge of economic meddling must trigger a currency crisis and a political upheaval.
Anytime you permit a Gonnabee to run any enterprise he will destroy it. The combination of infantile desires and magical thinking leads to rage based conflict resolution: Obama’s obsession with Obama-Care is a classic example.
It is characteristic of the Gonnabee that contrary advice is not accepted well if at all.
/////
Jim Rogers is calling the Chinese stock markets a bubble. So we’re hardly alone in printing money. The mania there is so great that the Chinese government had three failed debt auctions in the last four weeks; everyone wants their money in commodities!
/////
Up thread California was torched over its astounding welfare spending. The number is huge because of illegal immigration. Illegal immigration is huge because of the easy welfare.
Providing welfare at levels deemed spartan by natives is a moral hazard: you draw in ever more dependents.
That we, as a nation, still have the welcome mat out for the most unproductive members of the planet displays madness and arrogance in equal measure.
But we don’t stop there…
We are engaged in pointless ‘nation-building’ twice over. The problem is that as long as islam is the fountainhead of the alien’s logic and values material efforts are in vain.
It all comes down to limits and the need to accept them.
Perfection isn’t just the enemy of the Good; it’s the Enemy, period.
Kirsten @ 16:
I think that goes without saying. Make sure that those who are newly elected KNOW with an ironclad certainty this is their mandate.
Also, “Throw The Bums Out” is a recurring theme – lather, rinse, repeat.
One of the real issues that has gotten the Republic where it is today is the de facto ‘Professional Political Class’ to which all of the Congresscritters purchase membership. They want to feed at the trough. It is time for:
1. Term limits = 12 years => No goodies from the DC system – Retirement, health care, etc. (Make them us the same health care we do – that will get the system fixed poste haste)
2. Campaign finance reform with real teeth.
3. 10th Amendment resolutions
ETC.
Add your own in the ETC spot. But I am sure you get my drift.
[Sigh. Now I have to go back up thread and read Subotai]
Sounds like the failure, once again, of the concept the Soviets called central planning.
I’ve been less than optimistic about the future of the Republic because I did not see any evidence of the buzz over a unifying philosophy that could counter the Progressive march to collectivism. Legislators voting for 1,000 page bills they don’t bother to read that balloon the debt to destructive proportions can only generate a pushback that may actually speed the end of Progressivism.
I now realize that my sequence may have been out of order. The cultural embrace of individual liberty has weakened over the last several decades because as a practical matter there was no obvious way to translate the significance of the concept into the physical world. For almost all of us, over the same period, there was little that a cultural emphasis on individual liberty would have done to change our lives in any meaningful way.
Technology already well along in the development cycle can change that and kick start a movement toward social organization where average people will be able to connect the benefits of freedom/individual liberty to the world they live in. I am guessing that when large amounts of people have the ability to either control or insulate themselves from the bad effects of events heretofore out of their control that the buzz I’ve been looking for will come on its own accord.
Two of those technologies are (1) MNR (mini nuclear reactors) like those being manufactured by Hyperion. A single MNR is buried in the ground and generates enough electricity to power 20,000 homes for 7-10 years. At 25 million they are within reach of the bonding power even moderately sized communities.
The second technology is being called the next generation of computing power – desktop fabrication of just about anything even to the nano level. Although not quite a Star Trek replicator, from what I’ve read the technology will be able to fabricate things by assembling atoms. Current systems cost $25-40K. 8 year old girls in Ghana have operated them.
Unlimited meterless electricity and the ability to fabricate anything you can think of are liberating. People would create local economies more immune from the tampering and shocks of a centralized economy and a central authority.
Constipation, irritable bowels, sprue, bacterial infections, structural disorders, roids, fissures, fistula, polyps and Barney Frank poking around in there…Congress is long over due for a cleansing purge.
http://blog.mises.org/blog/
…and see ‘toon –the well-to-do Mr. Magoo.
Would that there were a law that required any bill or resolution to come before the Senate or House to be read aloud, to a quorum, and such quorum be required to remain in place and attend the entire reading, no pizza, no beer, no bathroom breaks, under penalty of dismissal from the elected position.
While I agree with the insights expressed above I also think that another reason for 1000+ page legislation is to obscure the deeper agenda under a volume of clauses, definitions that obscure, and details that preoccupy our attention. In this case I offer the following “Modest Proposal” (with apologies to Jonathan Swift).
This health care “reform” bill is the most dangerous piece of legislation I have seen in my lifetime. It is even worse than the Hillary-care effort in 1993. I fear there is a hidden agenda to solve our economic problems by accelerating the deaths of older people. After all, if a cosmic ray or electromagnetic pulse from outer space were to suddenly precipitate the deaths of everyone over age 80, think of how that would solve the social security program, Medicare, and so forth. After all, people over 80 pay few taxes and get many benefits, so having them all die would save a lot of money. And think of this other “advantage.” All their property would be released to their heirs who would be able to put it to “productive” uses, thus reducing the liquidity crisis in our country’s economy. And if there are no heirs, it can go to the government. Get the demented, the frail, the retarded, and the old who have such expensive needs as hip and knee replacements, angioplasties, kidney dialysis, and so forth to die — the sooner the better — and think of how much better the economy will be. And when that doesn’t work, lower the death age to 75, or even 70.
It actually makes me think of the movie Soylent Green. (If you haven’t seen it, it is a dystopian film from a few decades ago. Look it up on imdb.com)
Seriously, I believe this is one of the two real subtexts of this proposal. (The other is, of course, that the favored elites in the government can control everything.)
I rarely use the word, but I truly and deeply believe this legislation is worse than bad. It is evil.
And that evil agenda is wonderfully obscured by the 1000 pages of this ghastly piece of legislation.
ain’t that just the huckleberry. The generation too young to be at fault for the Great Depression nevertheless suffers most from it. Then becomes the private soldiers and ordinary seamen and 90 day liutenants who died in numbers –leaving grieving families –in WW2 –in order to make a brand new world. Then after all that in their golden years the very people who benefited the most from their epic generation (*pffft*) decide to off them for efficiency (and, to get hold of their goods).
Naaaaazzzzziiiies –i’m a-tellin’ ya –
As always, the comments above are top flight.
My personal bias is that the Legal profession is completely corrupted by this process.
Poor drafting of legislation leads to the need for regulators to interpret, which leads to lawsuits based on seeking a different interpretation from the regulators. This creates a huge flywheel of legal work as Federal regulation touches so many different actors across business lines.
The people who draft this stuff have an incentive to keep creating more; no one in the process has an incentive to create less.
So like the J Charles 29 proposal above, we need to come up with some ideas on disincentives for this proliferation.
It is interesting to note that the drawings that made up the battleship would very likely now reside in one memory stick.
As far as overly verbose legislation is concerned, I would like to see the government freeze the amount of written laws in terms of pages and to roll them back to where they were in 1959. Any new legislation required taking off old legislation, you know, like prohibitions to tying up your mule in Liberty Square. God know those kind of laws are there. Also, write a thousand page bill but find a way to reduce the existing laws by a thousand pages. Maybe throw in a balanced budget amendment in there as well. No new spending. That ought to keep the bastards busy.
Roderick Reilly @ #11:
I think the condition that you describe is exactly the desired end state of the Cloward-Piven strategy. They’ve been working on this for 40 years. It was bound to take effect sooner or later.
Annoy Mouse, good idea – Cap and Trade for Legislation! I have never understood the constant ‘need’ to pass new laws, when there are no actual, manifest problems to be addressed.
Joe Buzz:
That’s an image I didnt need.
subotai/22; excellent work. grim but on point. thanks.
That’s why I say a key tenet of conservatism getting back into vogue should be simplified legislative practices. No bill over 2-3 pages or better yet no more multi- issue bills. This would cement the values of conservatism to the real issues and get the center right nation back into the right corner. After all when these representatives regularly speak on all sides of an issue and if you remove the complexity to parse what they actually voted into law, then people can actually interpret the bills and hold them accountable for their actions. That is the root of representative government. Til then it’s strictly a propaganda war with both sides of an issue able to take some measure of either side simultaneously. With the press leaning as far left as they are that will never benefit conservatives.
#30. Batman:
“”"”"I rarely use the word, but I truly and deeply believe this legislation is worse than bad. It is evil.”"”"”
The previous administration just wanted to strip search Grandma. This one wants to kill Grandma.
When voted president I will sign into law no bill that is over 3 pages long. Of course my campaign would be greatly helped if someone would just bury all those skeletons in my closet. (Anyone, anyone??) Of course the upside now is that everything after this presidential campaign can be themed a “distraction” from the real issues and you can press forward without having to answer those tough questions. At least if you’re a Democrat. Jeez, that’s depressing, I just realized I may have to run as a Democrat.
Subotai Bahadur @ #22:
As always, excellent analysis and very well presented. I am coming to the conclusion that one way to address the problems that you discuss is to vote against EVERY incumbent office holder regardless of party or how you view their service. While this is fraught with risks, it could provide the shock to the system that our politicians need. Then, by 2012, we might actually have their attention. I am surprised to find quite a good number of people who have also taken this position. Maybe it could happen.
I don’t understand the Democrats sudden urge to pass a bill come hell or high water. Wouldn’t passing a bill INCREASE their unpopularity as more details come to light of the monstrosity? There has to be just tons of ammunition to be used in the upcoming 2010 election.
If they were smart (*cough*) they would have done this in a more incremental fashion.
Kirsten writes:
Washington simply ignores the 10th amendment.
Exactly. But why is that? We rail against the Legislature and the Executive branches but the real fault lies with the Judicial branch. A lawsuit designed to invalidate a Federal law or executive mandate based upon 9th or 10th Amendment grounds will fall on deaf ears. No one even tries anymore.
I like the idea of the Federalism Amendments, but they don’t really address the central problem–if the Courts will not uphold the written letter of the Constitution then it is meaningless. And that’s how we got to where we are today.
What I would like to see is a constitutional Amendment to the effect that if half of the State legislatures pass resolutions condemning a particular Supreme Court Justice or Justices for a decision that they believe plainly flies in the face of the US Constitution then they shall immediately be removed from office and shall never serve in any position of the Federal Government again, and all benefits accruing
from having served at that position shall be forfeited.
At best the game can only be as honest as the referees. If the players can cheat with impunity, then cheating there shall be. The structure is good, but the “checks and balances” broke down with the Judiciary. That’s where it needs to be fixed. Otherwise all other changes will be made in vain.
kevin/42; they have come to count on complete cooperation from the media. The narrative is all theirs. THAT takes the lid off the box.
Batman, back in the early Bush II years I remember reading somewhere on the net that one shouldn’t count out the boomers just yet, that they weren’t even close to done looting other generations. Gen-X and Gen-Y don’t have enough lucre to interest them. The ones that do are three in number – the remaining “greatest generation”, the “tweeners” (ironically, Obama’s demographic), and the Korean war generations. They’ve figured this out and have targeted them specifically.
lion/38; re ‘getting the center right nation back in the right corner’, take a look at this fine book review:
http://mises.org/store/product.aspx?ProductID=434
Something I’ve not seen mentioned anywhere, that these “1,000-page bills” are actually much longer and harder to understand than one might think, because most of the bill consists of amendments to current law, given without context, just a reference to a sub-sub-section of a law, and the new language. You have to dig up that law and fully, contextually understand the meaning of the section being amended, and then understand the amendment… and of course that law may well refer to OTHER laws that you would also have to understand.
I would not go so far as to say the whole thing is designed or intended to be obscurantist, but that is certainly the result.
Ideas: Constitutionally limiting bills to one topic with no allowance for severability would help, but the coursts would ahve to make those determinations and this could be terribly abused and is therefore risky.
All bills must be available for public inspection on the internet and at 1000 or so designated libraries/ depositaries throughout the nation for 30 days (48 hours is bullshit for a 1000-page bill, Conyers is right) before being voted on, with an exception for national emergency or war (but, someone has to make that call), or require passage by 2/3 or 3/4 of the full membership of each House (which would not be a judgment call). This should apply both to original bills and conference reports (which are what really matters) Just by tying things up for as much as 90 days (30 in each House, sequentially, and 30 for the Conference report) this would place soem limits on the complexity of what could be attempted in a 2-year Congressional session.
No bill or report can specify a particular individual or other entity except appropriations needed to pay court or internationally-required settlements.
The odds of any of this: nil
Wretchard summarized the entire issue in a nutshell in a single sentence.
So why can’t Congress work at a general level of specification and incrementally after that? …
Because to work that way would require giving up power.
In our system, absolute power over the budget is invested in Congress. There is no higher authority. (The President’s veto is a very crude tool, and has been of little value in recent years.) If the Congress is willing and able to exercise fiscal discipline, the issue can be directly resolved. If not, then there are no workarounds. It’s that simple.
And where lies the motivation for Congress to adopt fiscal discipline?
The Founders gave the people the power to discipline Congress, with a short two-year election cycle to enforce that discipline. Madison is explicit on this point in Federalist 41.
We know the process works. We have recent data. In 1996, House Speaker Gringrich selected John Kasich as Chair of the Budget Committee. From that position – using iron discipline and with the Speakers backing – Kasich balanced the budget, the only time it has been balanced in the last forty years.
Kasich left Congress in 2000. We saw what happened then.
It’s a good data set. A House Budget Committee Chair with iron discipline and the backing of the Speaker. That’s what it takes.
Then after all that in their golden years the very people who benefited the most from their epic generation (*pffft*) decide to off them for efficiency (and, to get hold of their goods). Buddy Larsen
In traditional societies it was generally the elders who carried the accumulated wisdom of the group, the life giving and supporting myths of the tribe.
Now if we are getting around to bumping off grandma and grandpa we have really lost what soul we might have had, and our society is sinking fast.
It’s time to revive the movement for TERM LIMITS legislation. Sometime ago Brian Lamb at CSPAN interviewed a journalist who said that if Americans knew the level of corruption in the federal government there would be street riots.
To all (A call to action):
We are coming up to the summer Congressional break. I am getting emails (mostly lies, but…) from my Congresscritters saying they will be home …blah, blah,….
I plan on attending the town halls they may have, visiting their offices, writing via email, etc. Even one Senator now has a Facebook page about which he says:
[Crud. Now I may have to get a Facebook account. Rats.]
I think we have about 3 to 4 months for these critters to understand who they work for (us) and get it right. Kind of like the McCaskill townhall that almost turned into a riot!
What say you?
All bills must be available for public inspection on the internet and at 1000 or so designated libraries/ depositaries throughout the nation for 30 days.
A good idea, but I would take it a step further–the number of days it would have to be available would be dependent upon the number of words in the bill. Thirty days per X number of words. If they want to pass some monster bill the size of War and Peace it would mean that they would have to wait years and years before it would even come up for a vote.
Another Incredible Yon Post
» Michael Yon Dispatch Night Into Day
Iraqi Troops Raid Iranian Dissident Camp, in Nod to Tehran
Charles Levinson and Yochi J. Dreazen
Wall Street Journal.
Iraqi forces stormed a camp of more than 3,000 members of an Iranian dissident group that until recently had been protected by the US military, in the biggest unilateral operation since American forces withdrew from Iraq’s cities a month ago. Iran has long demanded that Iraq take action against the group, the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or MEK, but the US had stood in its way.
ht – Desert Rat
Cordesman Unloads
US officials warned Pakistan on Taliban spillover
Also Wednesday, a longtime observer of the fighting in Afghanistan, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, offered a scathing review of the war effort.
Cordesman spent the past month in Afghanistan as part of a team of outsiders helping McChrystal assess the state of the war.
“This is a war shaped not by strategy but by years of neglect and systematic under-resourcing,” he told reporters. “More than any other set of problems, what becomes clear in Afghanistan is that for half a decade, we failed to react, failed to provide the troops, failed to provide the money.”
Among the biggest problems is an inadequate effort by U.S. and other civilian agencies, he said.
Cordesman said he saw little evidence that the civilian “surge” promised by the Obama administration is taking place.
“The way that they are trickling in—and trickling is the operative term—they can’t possibly meet the needs in a place like Helmand,” he said, referring to the southern province that is the focal point of the latest U.S. military offensive.
“Much of the job will have to continue to be done by the military working with far too few civilians and that will be true at least through the end of 2010,” he said.
Robohobo # 51, as it happens we in North Texas have already started. You may have heard of the little contretemps at Senator Hutchison’s Dallas office in the 17th? Not much different from the mess at Rep. McCaskill’s office in St. Louis. And to think that just yesterday in an e-mail via her official website, I suggested that calling the cops on her tax-paying constituents is not the best way to run for governor.
Marty @ 47 said about these 1,000-page bills: “I would not go so far as to say the whole thing is designed or intended to be obscurantist, but that is certainly the result.” Oh, let me help. It’s obscurantist!
Bother,
Tell her thanks for putting 1 more Senate seat at risk, also, please!
—
Car arson spree claims 4 more
Parked Porsche, Infiniti and Honda torched on S.F. streets, making at least a dozen cars burned since the weekend.
—
We’ve had some of those right here in River City.
Poll Obama loses ground on health care – White House- msnbc.com
—-
Dick Morris Explains:
The more BHO associates himself with “Healthcare Reform” the less popular he becomes.
The less popular he becomes, the less ability he has to promote Healthcare, or anything else.
“The generation too young to be at fault for the Great Depression nevertheless suffers most from it. Then becomes the private soldiers and ordinary seamen and 90 day liutenants who died in numbers –leaving grieving families –in WW2 –in order to make a brand new world. Then after all that in their golden years the very people who benefited the most from their epic generation (*pffft*) decide to off them for efficiency (and, to get hold of their goods).”
–buddy larsen (31)
That “generation too young to be at fault for the Great Depression” came of age just in time for the Great Boom that began as President Truman left. They moved to the suburbs and raised the kids that became the ’60s Generation and the feminists of the 1970s. They’ve never apologized to the rest of us for that, just groused “Where’s my grandchildren?” while forgetting that they themselves had voted pro-abortion politicians into office.
During the same period they turned Social Security into the Third Rail of Politics and before the 1990s began they retired from union wage jobs or salary careers, the latter being the source of the bromide that a college education is worth umpteen-hundred thousand dollars of increased lifetime earnings. They are now spending their golden years spending the pension and Social Security checks paid for by the labor and taxes of other people’s kids. There’s talk of jacking up the retirement age to 72; that’s convenient because everyone in the WW2 generation is way, way past that age. (Hint: former President George H. W. Bush is well into his ninth decade; he was a young aviator in the Big War.)
Try again, buddy.
#57 Doug:
River city = Portland? If so, I’m in Milwaukie.
Nah, just an expression!
Portland = Marx’s Utopia
50th State, Here
I’m just curious what the difference is between a Congress that votes along party lines on a bill written without minority input by a small subset of members, and a king and his cabinet writing the law and nailing it to a tree as writ.
While the former may have the appearance of representative democracy, it has no more of the spirit of it than the latter. Our representatives cannot represent us if they do not even have time to read the bills they vote for, much less consider the ramifications of the language in the bills.
The response to this is “We Won”. Well, so you did. If they believe this entitles them to act as kings, then they should expect an outcome no better than the last time we were ruled by His Imperial Majesty.
Just to finish Subotai’s thought -
Tree. Rope. Legislator. Some assembly required.
It will get worse before it gets better.
All the congress critters need to be tarred and feathered and be made to run naked through streets while citizens chunk garbage at them. This won’t happen, but they do need to be humiliated.
The central idea of subsidiarity is that matters ought to be left to the smallest competent authority and a central authority confine itself to those tasks which can’t be performed at a more immediate or local level.
I find I have to agree with those who remarked that the great obstacle to this approach is that the “courteaucrat” (lawyers, judges & bureaucrats) system will not allow it to happen. Too many livelihoods depend upon insane levels of wonkery and the litigious compelling thereof. “Did you mean the Cross-Eyed Blue-Crested Warbling Woodland Clacker’s Thrush, or the Blue-Eyed White-Crested Thrush Woodland Clacker? AH-HAH!!!! Since there is insufficient clarification of the bird sub-species on page 294 of 837, the entire piece of legislation is null and void!”
I exaggerate, but not by much.
Shakespeare had it right. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Maybe then, laws might have a chance of making sense once again.
The more BHO associates himself with “Healthcare Reform” the less popular he becomes.
The less popular he becomes, the less ability he has to promote Healthcare, or anything else.
In the words of Mr. Ledeen: “Faster, please.”
Doug @ 57 – If I were a S.F cop, I would put a priority on checking tourists/immigrants from France, particularly les banlieues.
BTW, and this is not meant as a critique of anyone here, but I am way past calling them “Congress critters.” That term, to me, implies at least some bemusement or “there, there” tolerant indulgence of folly. And I am done with that. Disgust, contempt, cold fury … kind of like what you feel for the a**hat who obliterates a family of six after 17 DUI arrests. These people have been getting away with far too much for far too long. We are talking about the wholesale destruction of citizens’ jobs, life savings, futures, property … entire industries and vast swaths of the economy. Oh yah, let’s not forget that little thing called liberty.
They are looters. Once upon a time, when we were a nation flush with wealth and a future filled with promise of same, we could afford to look the other way as Mr. and Ms. Senator pocketed the silver salt & pepper shakers and the occasional shrimp fork. But for pete’s sake, they have now taken the entire service setting, the china, the food, the candles, and the linens, and are working on devising a way to dismantle the furniture so as to carry that out with them, too.
At what point does this behavior cease to be amusing?
Sorry, but I am in a rotten mood today. A thousand grains of sand and all that.
There are a couple of tensions.
Right now, with the Steyn note the biggest one is specificity vs. vagueness. Getting a bill like that specific is a quick way to create a bloated piece of legislation as is this one. Keeping it general means it would be vague and give the bureaucrats of the executive a lot of power (or judges). The aim is to try to create a government that works like a machine — given a specific set of inputs the law produces identical outputs. However, this leads to a couple of bad side effects.
Both are related, but I believe them to be distinct from each other.
Side Effect 1 is the empowerment of lawyers — lawyers are required to help figure out the law especially if one is working in an area they are not familiar with.
Side Effect 2 is the loophole the bizarre (or not so bizarre) set of conditions not anticipated by the lawmakers or where the law’s wording leads to unintended coverage. This can lead to loose or tight coverage (loose coverage allowing for behavior thought to be regulated to go unregulated and tight coverage regulating behavior that was not intended to be regulated). This is where the most interesting discussion of judicial activism occur (not the anti-concept partisans often argue about).
Laws are passed and then it becomes interesting the loopholes, like bugs in software (essentially they are the same thing) then either become features or are patched (which sometimes incorporate their own or give rise to other bugs).
In both cases it pays to have a good lawyer at your side.
Ain’t it interesting that the f*ckards who want to impose rationing on National Health Care are exacty the same ones who refuse to consider “rationing” welfare?
It makes perfect sense when you analyse it in terms of the resultant control it garners for the incumbents. Welfare benefits promised to more and more voters produces more and more votes. Health care benefits serve as a carrot when offered, and a stick when the almighty government threatens to withhold the medical care to those who refuse to knuckle under.
We’re seeing the mind of a mugger taking over our government.
Shakespeare had it right. “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Maybe then, laws might have a chance of making sense once again.
With all due respect, the right thing to do is to kill all the Judges. Lawyers can’t do one damn thing without some sort of decree from a Judge. Its not the lawyers per se who are the problem, its the lawyers who get elevated to the position of Judge.
~~~~~~~DISCLAIMER
I am only speaking rhetorically–I don’t advocate killing anybody unless it is done in accordance with the laws of the US or one of its political subdivisions.
Tcobb, yours is a valid point re: the power differential … but if you kill all the lawyers, then you are depriving the bench of its next two generations of crapweasels. When you cull the geezers first, the next gen just moves in to fill the power vacuum. As you said … speaking rhetorically, of course.
Some observations:
8. Joshua: Let the market work out the details – that’s what free markets are for. Some regulations are needed, but keep them simple. And, squash, but good, anyone who tries to screw the market.
11. Roderick Reilly: I have read, somewhere, that 19th century American charities and private schools were far more effective than today’s taxpayer funded “equivalents.” Taxpayer money is usually not the answer.
14. Lifeofthemind: How about these amendments:
A) No law may be passed if it contains more than X words (you pick the number – I vote for 1000) everything included.
B) All laws shall be written in simple declarative sentences of no more than 25 words, each.
C) Each law shall have a preamble which declares, in plain language, the purpose of the law.
D) The total permissible word count of all Federal laws combined shall not exceed one million words.
E) Every law must be voted on separately. Each proposed law shall be published no less than one month prior to a vote – all such publications to be freely available to the general public.
(More than forty years ago I wrote 90% of a Student Constitution for a major University following rules like these. The whole thing fit on a single (large) sheet of paper. It is still in force. Also, I have written many business contracts using rules A, B and C. Every such contract has been successful.)
As a practicing engineer I try very hard to follow the KISS rule: “Keep It Simple, Stupid” (I can say stupid because it refers to me!). Sometimes this can be a very hard rule to follow, but when it works the result is what engineers refer to as “Elegant Design.”
Detailed specifications (i.e. laws and regulations) are seldom necessary for good design. What is really needed is talent and trust and freedom. Probably the best fighter aircraft ever produced was the P51. According to the story, the contract for the P51 (between NAA and the British) was written on one sheet of paper. On one side were the design specs, on the other was the financial and delivery contract. The contract was devised and negotiated overnight. North American Aviation knew that they could meet the contract because they already had a design for a half scale sports plane that was very similar. The P51 was rolled out and flown in about three or four months after that contract was created.
Another case history is similar: Kelly Johnson’s team at Lockheed recognized, in the late 1930′s, that the future belonged to jets. They set to work on their own hook to design a jet fighter – which they accomplished prior to Pearl Harbor. The Air Corps wasn’t interested. A couple of years later the Air Corps, now in a panic, decided they needed something to counter the new German jets. Lockheed resurrected its old design and produced a flying, high performance, fighter in about three to four months. This was the P80 – our first successful jet fighter. There is a photo, taken, I believe, sometime around 1939 or 1940, of Kelly Johnson with a model of the P80 sitting on his desk.
The avalanche of bull excrement being dumped on the country by the incumbent tends to make people forget each outrage in turn as it is overtaken by ten fresh new ones.
We better NOT forget this administration has shown its approval of thugs in paramilitary uniforms insulting voters with racial slurs and intimidating officially credentialed poll watchers.
The Washington Times has an article that names some of the DoJ officials, including No. 3 Pirelli, and a lower level newbie by name of Loretta King as being the ones responsible for the decision, and the transmission of the decision to drop charges against 3 members of the New Black Panther Party.
The New Black Panther Party members were videotaped on election day brandishing a two-foot length police billy club while standing directly in front of the entrance to a Philadelphia polling place. Witnesses of several races have confirmed that these men called a black couple who were Republican credentialed poll-watchers “racial traitors” and while trying to block a white credentialed poll watcher, told him that “White power don’t rule here.” There were other racial slurs and insults reported by a number of witnesses.
Obama and his team have to be insane to think their partiality in forgiving the criminal behavior of Black Panthers, new or otherwise, will help defuse people’s growing sense of alarm and distrust. Coupled with the contempt he showed for the police in the Gates incident, it emphasizes his barking hostility to the values of fairness and decency most of us still value.
Allowing paramilitary strongmen to intimidate people trying to vote is an unambiguous signal of a fascist.
Proposing that we deny health care to “mentally deficient” individuals is a clear sign of FASCISTS.
Proposing that we prod the old and the medically-expensive toward voluntary suicide and euthanasia is FASCIST.
These people are pushing things toward a confrontation, deliberately.
There are plenty of historical examples of authoritarian regimes intentionally pushing things to get ugly and bloody, then use that as an excuse to impose martial law.
You think it can’t happen here in the US?
Funny. Back in 1970, even before Nixon sent troops into Cambodia, leftists and freakazoids were predicting He would cancel the next elections and suspend the Constitution. But the Leftards only believe that Conservatives and Christians can do evil things, so I guess we’er safe with the Messiah in office.
Topic for the next teachable moment/kegger around the picnic table behind the Oval Office
the only thing that needs to be accomplished in the next four years is that the USA has to be got off dependence on foreign oil. Within the same time frame the cost of desalination needs to be collapsed.
If the USA want to remain a country in the 21st century than better boundaries need to maintained.
#73–Chet Richards
Great Post Sir.
But it gets me to wonder–is Evil anything other than a proclivity towards wanting to micro-manage others and lashing back when they resist?
Tyranny of the few and they want everything you have. Don’t kid yourself with ACORN set to receive $8bn+ any facade that we live in a democracy is over. Our representatives and their families control lifetime sinsures. The fact that they now openly laugh about the 1000+ page bills is the writing on the wall.
Great analysis above but it means nothing, we all know the problem and if you think about it you also know the answer.
STORM was an influential group in the Bay Area
“If Congress was functioning correctly it would set up structures and guidelines and limits for the agencies and states and courts to fill in. When a court makes a ruling that needed correction Congress has the explicit power in the Constitution to limit the Appellate authority of the Judiciary by issuing Exceptions and Regulations.”
Actually, this is exactly the basic structure of the modern administrative state. Congress can always reverse with a new statute an agency or judicial “fill-in” of the blanks its broad grants of power have left. Problem is, it’s the most indirect and haphazard form of accountability to voters… Also, despite post-New Deal precedent (unlikely to be reversed any time soon) it may not really be constitutional.
The mega-bills here contemplated aren’t about Congress getting down accountably to the nuts and bolts itself, though… They’re the worst of both worlds: gigantic statutes that set up even more authority for the gigantic regulatory apparatus.
If we really want to give D.C. an enema, how about electing mid-level military officers & noncoms to every office? It might not work out too well, but at least we could enjoy the proud distinction of being the 1st banana republic to have a coup d’etat sans force.
#31 Buddy L,
I think the folks you are talking about are already on the way out by nature. I heard somewhere several years ago that the WWII vets were dying at the rate of 1300 per week. My Dad, one of them, died almost 30 years ago – way too young. The generation that is going to be “put down” is going to be us 60+ boomers. I live in Washington state where “we” just passed a “death with dignity” bill. I’ve never seen a death with dignity – I come from a long line of funeral directors – and no death is dignified. A life well and virtuosly lived is dignified, but death is just death.
Ned
Micha Elyi/59 & Ned/82; I hear y’all –yes my post was sentimental and and acalendrical (if that can be a word). You’re both right. But sloppily rendered sentiments or no the shamelessness of the proposed industrial cost/benefit medicine is pretty shocking when one realizes that a system fouled up technically by misconceived third party payer schemes that are imminently fixable via application of simple economic principle, is being used to foul up morally an entire national culture’s ‘felt’ reason for being.
I’m talking about family –that thing which drains ‘first loyalty’ from the Fatherland. How long in the brave new world until one finds cause to worry that one cares ‘too much’ about the old folks who raised one. How long until one becomes an old folk and begins to distrust the youngers. How long until anticipation of such psycho burden bleeds into distrust a yet un-made family of the future?
Some nasty twits showed up after the party on the Conversations thread. *shakes head
Lots of good suggestions here. But many of the suggested detailed “rules” implicitly assume well intentioned users. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. One has to assume that the users (Congress / government) will actively try to subvert the rules, and to cheat. They do now.
Unless you can figure out a way to dramatically and permanently reduce the amount of money flowing to and through DC, nothing proposed here will matter.
Think a 75% cut.
Detailed, fine grain, process change won’t get it done. Looks for a few things, easily understood and communicated, that would have a very large effect.
For example, most of what the Federal Government does beyond defense – education, health care, most environmental regulation, etc. is simply not constitutional. Remember “Congress shall make NO laws … “. Most of this is now justified under bad Commerce Clause decisions.
There are many ideas, here and elsewhere, that would be helpful. But I think if we don’t dramatically reduce the money, we end up with Imperial State.
Re: 85. The Old Guy:
Words count. Constipate the number of words available and you constipate the money flow. People have to think hard about writing new laws if it means deleting old laws because of a word ceiling. The result will be blood on the floor as factions battle for each new word. It makes a nice picture, doesn’t it?
We’re being somersaulted backwards through time towards a dawn before visions of gods and their religious commandments came to perish the thoughts of sharp-toothed protein-starved youth eyeing around the winter campfires the tribe’s most vulnerable and least useful.
I’d been stirring around in my memory, thinking I’d heard Obama say in the Keyes/Obama Senate debates that he wasn’t eligible to be President, so I went to youtube and all I could find is
This
so maybe my memory wasn’t faulty after all.
#83 Buddy L,
I’m not sure that I understand your reponse to my post at #82. I certainly have no fear of my ultimate demise, but I do not want to make my children responsible for it as I suspect they will be pressured to do because it would be best for the body politic. I have this notion that letting some one do something for you/me makes them a better person. Nobless oblige? Thanks for your response and keep it up on the BC.
Ned
i agree all the way, Ned. Wht we’re seeing is the gov’t, in biz jargon, “deriving demand”.
That is, specifically, since social workers are needed only for broken social dynamics, the way to derive demand for social work is to break any dynamics which work without social workers.
Jeepers al-Bob:
You birthers are giving us a bad name:
How do you explain that the Messiah’s birth was reported in both Honolulu papers?
I’m not a birther, al-doug, but you knew that. Maybe he was born in Hawaii, for all I know. But pappy was a Kenyan/Englishman, there’s the rubadubdub.
If he wasn’t born in Hawaii, maybe the Hawaiian papers had a policy of printing notices they’d picked up from the state document momma had gotten filed.
Kinda like they do divorce records here. You file for divorce here, you’re in the papers, like it or not.
Good discussion of the Wong Kim Ark case starting up at Natural Born Citizen blog now, Doug, check it out.
Wong Kim Ark?
hey, “doug from Hawaii” sounds kinda dumb, too. I’m changing it to Doug Kahanamoku.
***
Anyhoo, the critical question that keeps the issue alive (“If he’s legit, then why won’t he PROVE it?”) may have an easy answer. Consider the steel cage death match mentality of the O war room, and ask yosef, why would they settle an issue that before it can do maximum damage to the oppo? can you say “set up”?
Don’t you guys remember back in some high school or junior high school US governement class, and the question came up, who can be President? Well, you got to be 35 years of age, and, be a Natural Born Citizen. What’s that, someone would ask, and the teacher would say, two citizen parents, baby born here. Seems to me it was common knowledge back then, that’s the way I recall it. Everybody knew what a Natural Born Citizen was.
Under this new idea creeping in, Anne could get knocked up by Osama bin Laden, and the child could be President. Whereas in my day, Winston Churchill himself couldn’t be President.
And Gallup skews pretty hard Democrat
There was some sort of flurry re all this way back at the beginning of the primaries. McCain’s situation was brought in and dovetailed to Obama’s. I’m sure it’s all on the net somewhere. For those who believe the Dems picked McCain as the GOP candidate, there’s a bit of fuel for a fire or two.
If the issue should by some miracle ever get to the Supreme Court, the wise Latina Lady should have to recuse herself, as her position itself would be in doubt depending on the outcome.
jeeez, an entire legion of Red Diapers, all over DC –what a great slithering it would be –
the bothersome hing about the wise latina lady is not that she’s a far leftie, but that she’s so irony-free & unnuanced –obviously, since a wise latina lady judge would have better judgment than to call her judgment that of a wise latina lady –that she’s almost certain to come with more strings than Pinocchio –and we all know who’s one the other ends of the strings, and tho they are experts at its (ab)use, they ain’t fans of the intent of the Constitution.
I agree with Mark Steyn on this one.
I also like the way @22 Subotai states: “Congress wants to have absolutely no responsibility for any results.”
How true.
Most legal documents are written as “hostile documents” meaning the writers purposefully obscure their true goal. Their goal is to fatigue and confuse the reader for personal gain.
I would guess it takes a 24-carat vocabulary to say that the purpose of “0bamaCare” is to kill-off the Old People, abort the Retards, and Enrich a certain political Cronies.
As Wretchard notes: “The real problem with a bloated central authority is that it cannot process information efficiently and cannot make decisions effectively because of a bad architecture.”
True, but this is of little consequence to Chicago Gangsters who only want to take the money and run.
…it would be great to see her turn away early from the boilerplate hard-left position –that would be the wise latina lady political thing to do, as it would make for her great fans of a relieved right, which would be gratefully relieved because it is as usual in the position of opposing a person’s politics whose person makes a superficial (and superficial is good enough for politics) validation of every critique ever made of the right.
There are only three possible means to change the current trajectory:
1. Internal reform of the system; (See Chicken coop, fox guarding to see how well this will work.)
2. A massive change in voter sentiment resulting in throwing the scoundrels out. Ain’t gonna happen. While people may dislike “Congress” in general they approve of their own scoundrel. Thus we have re election rates of 94% or greater for each cycle. And everyone from the corporate CEO to the homeless guy sleeping in the park are dependent on the occasional bone thrown their way by the scoundrels. And our society has become obsessed with popular culture and really don’t have much time to think about anything else.
3. Patriots in the mold of our forefathers who are willing to pledge their lives and fortunes to do that which is necessary. Or a few people willing to martyr themselves for a cause. In what Kim duToit referred to as our pussified society this is also unlikely.
I am not optimistic.
Re: “the Birthers”
While I don’t believe there’s any real evidence tending to disprove Obama was born in Hawaii, the thing that interests me (and why I don’t really mind all the conspiracy theories) is that the “natural born citizen” provision in the Constitution was included by the drafters to prevent some asshole who didn’t grow up in the U.S., and who hates the U.S., and who perhaps is directly opposed to the values, laws, and traditions of the U.S., from being elected President of the U.S.
Obama, I would posit, is just such a man. I’m not sure there would be such an interest in discrediting his birthplace if people didn’t view him as un-American.
i think a LOT of folks would make such pledge and sacrifice, kaba. they just don’t want to do so only to become the crazy guy on page 16 who tried to climb over the fence somewhere.
gonna take someone to break out of the pack somewhere and start the Patrick Henry speeches.
buckets, right, they wanted roots and enculturation and local binds of family and community that spanned one back and infinite forward generations.
What we have now, along that line of reasoning, is a freakishly exotic outlier. With the results, many are deeply afraid, that the forefathers fore saw.
I truly pray that you’re right Buddy. I wish I had more courage but my spirit has been dissipated by my own personal history and age.
I am a modern day Private Joseph Plumb Martin seeking a new Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
Any takers?
patience –steady patience. if they will go too far, that’ll do it; if they won’t, then we are still in this world –with work to do.
bob,
The definition of Natural Born standard does not include two citizen parents. It is an expression of jus soli not jus sanguinis. Citizenship can be conferred either by being born under the sun (on the soil) or by the blood. We have had Presidents before who had a parent who was not a citizen. Winston Churchill was born in England, that is why he was ineligible. Aside from the very unlikely possibility that BHO was not born in Hawaii is the possibility that he gave up his Natural Born status by claiming foreign citizenship after his 18th birthday. That possible loss of the special Natural Born status is not the same as saying he is not a citizen. He would not have lost his US citizenship when he was taken overseas as a child and the US would not deny him his citizenship just because he claimed a foreign nationality when traveling or applying for financial aide. You only lose your US citizenship if you formally renounce it as an adult or if you take a foreign citizenship to avoid paying US taxes.
kaba, #103: 3. Patriots in the mold of our forefathers who are willing to pledge their lives and fortunes to do that which is necessary. Or a few people willing to martyr themselves for a cause. In what Kim duToit referred to as our pussified society this is also unlikely.
kaba (again), #109: I am a modern day Private Joseph Plumb Martin seeking a new Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
Methinks you’ll be lucky just not to get saddled with an Oliver Cromwell, Maxmilian Robespierre, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and/or Che Guevara instead. Even if America weren’t as “pussified” as duToit says, history shows that revolutions tend to take on lives of their own, and get taken over by committed but ruthless, ambitious (and in some cases, not entirely sane) leaders who know how to crush the old government, but who themselves have no business governing afterward.
In other words, even a revolution is a roll of the dice at best. Our first one was a historical outlier. There’s a good chance we won’t be so lucky the second time around, even if we “win”.
91. Doug:
none of the facts contained in the birth announcement in the newspapers was true. The Obama’s didn’t live at the address listed. O wasn’t born at the hospital mentioned. His parents weren’t married at the time he was born.
Obama and almost all the folks he chooses to have around him are aliens in the sense that Buckets describes.
That he has chosen to be around such folks all his adult life insures that his reflexive reactions will almost always lack a solid connection and identification with the values, laws, and traditions of the U.S.
Charles,
Where can I find that info?
Sloooow to judge the cops of Iran, quick to judge the cops of America.
y’all keep in mind that if he is illegit, then nobody knew it (and knows it) better than “who sent him”.
In the hypothetical:
(1) that they sent him anyway
(2) when they did not have to and
(3) indeed had a winner in Hillary anyway
(4) is proof that they wanted him elected and then at some point exposed.
I’ll stop my conjecture there and let your own imagination take over.
what I’m trying to say is “don’t bite the weinie”
…at least, not until you have had it *thoroughly* checked for toxins!
Over time power in a country will tend to centralize. Then follows corruption followed by epic Fail or push back.
The interesting thing in the US, to me at least, is that the push back starts earlier than usual and often slows the centralization of power down. The push back by alternative media and the “Tea Party” phenomena started earlier than I expected. It seems to be that technology has sped up the response to power grabs. Also the influence of the MSM is fading and being replaced by new sources. It seems some of the “progressives” (rat bastard commies) in government have noticed that if push comes to shove their ACORNs and other pets will be outnumbered.
It has been noted that the purchase of military style long arms and center fire pistols has been so large as to constitute voting with your wallet.
toad, i wish i knew *who* was doing all that buying –for all i know, it could be the new community servants spending their new billions loading up while the 2nd Amendment is still not suspended by any emergency decrees (this would account for O’s 2nd Amendment support –so far).
#118 buddy larsen
‘Tis anecdotal, but from what I have heard, it is NOT MoveOn, ACORN/COI, etc. doing the buying. The surge in weapons and ammunition sales began as soon as it became apparent that Buraq would win the election. This was before the regime could start printing money to hand out to their nascent SA. I am assuming that most of the “precious metals” are going into friendly hands. So long as the military ends up remembering their Oaths; we have hope. Mind you, I would not be surprised to see Obama’s minions with government supplied ordnance.
AT Length that God of Battles, in whom was our Trust, hath conducted us thro’ the Paths of Danger and Distress’s to the Thresholds of Security. It hath now become morally certain, that, if we have courage to Persevere, we shall establish our Liberties and Independence. From “The Broadsides of the Continental Congress 1775-1788 (incomplete)” page 10.
Subotai Bahadur
#109 Joshua
The risks of resistance are noted. However in a system where electoral politics have largely been rendered moot; failure to resist guarantees us an Oliver Cromwell, Maxmilian Robespierre, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and/or Che Guevara. And somewhere, there is always a Lavrenti Beria or a Reinhard Heydrich awaiting the summons.
We are now in a world where the only calculation to be made is between rocks and hard
places. There are no good options. The only sane course of action is the least worst option.
[Melanie Phillips, author of Londinistan, 01-05-2007]
Subotai Bahadur
bob @ 96:
For the last time (and why I know this is pertinent):
I was born in 1952 in Mexico City to JFB & CHB, both Natural Born Citizens = Born in the US. JFB @ Alameda, Ca., CHB @ Antonito, Co. They divorced early in my life and JHB went off to Veracruz, NYC and others doing his IWW organizing. CHB & I came to NM.
Fast forward to 1972:
I have a thin letter from the DoD at CHB’s home. She lets me know that. To have some control, I hasten to the nearest recruiting center and sign up. US Army (RA) for those that know the distinction. (The RA gives you SOME control over your fate.) The MSgt. tells me, ‘Oops, son, I need both parents birth certificates because you are born in another country.’ I cannot produce but one because JHB is no where to be found. CHB works for the D0J and contacts a Federal Circuit Judge of our acquaintance and he agrees to meet with us. He tells me, ‘I can make you a Naturalized Citizen but this will not allow you to do a couple of things like run for POTUS.’ Me, I just, ‘So? I doubt I will run for POTUS.’ And we go on down the road. I get the green certificate that says ‘Certificate of Naturalization’, go into the Army and live my life.
Eventually, I do contact JFB and we reconcile. I could at this point reset with his BC in hand but why? This is why I know the pertinent law from that correct time.
1. To be a Natural Born Citizen you must have both parents born in the US and be able to prove it.
OR
2. To be a Natural Born Citizen you must be born in the US or it’s territories and be able to prove it.
This is digital, folks. One or the other. So, why does The 0bamanation not display for all to see his BC? That is all that is asked. He did not have to spend almost a megabuck to hide the truth. Just makes it smell to me.
Now, I agree there are more things under the sun and ways to defeat the current regime. But what if this whole exercise is to some time in the future attack The Constitutional framework in some way? Does it matter?
I say it does.
Subotai Bahadur, #120: The risks of resistance are noted. However in a system where electoral politics have largely been rendered moot; failure to resist guarantees us an Oliver Cromwell, Maxmilian Robespierre, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and/or Che Guevara. And somewhere, there is always a Lavrenti Beria or a Reinhard Heydrich awaiting the summons.
No, failure to resist merely guarantees us a King Charles I, King Louis XVI, Czar Nicolas II and/or Fulgencio Batista, respectively. By the time the revolutionaries who deposed them had left the scene, their people were left pining for the (relatively) “good old days” under the previous regimes.
If there is to be a second American revolution, the trick will be to see to it that whoever replaces the present government won’t leave us pining for the “good old days” when the (relatively) “harmless” progressives were still in charge of things.
#122 Joshua
Then I think that we differ in our evaluation of Buraq Hussein Obama. For all of their faults [and they were many, large, and were fatal to their futures] the royalty and dictator that you mentioned were not innately hostile to their own respective nations, cultures and peoples. They were incompetent, hopelessly out of touch with the changing realities in their worlds, and in the case of the last mentioned, hopelessly venal and corrupt. They were not intent on destroying all that their nations and peoples were and remaking them in the image of a foreign and hostile ideology.
Buraq is definitely already in the mold of Oliver Cromwell, Maxmilian Robespierre, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, and Che Guevara; and intends to use the power of the state to remake us in the image of his political theology. He does not care what or who he destroys in the process, and indeed probably anticipates such as eagerly as Vladimir Ilyich did.
He is already of the ilk that are the worst we can expect.
And yes, I agree that there is a generic difference in the faults of the royalty and dictator, and those of the ideologues. To take just one example, from one of the royalty: Tsar Nicholas II. The Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana [Отделение по Охранению Общественной Безопасности и Порядка] was bumbling, incompetent, and invisible to most of the Russian population. Their punishment of “Exile in Siberia” was just that. You were forced to live in a city in Siberia. You were not a prisoner, you were not a slave, you were not subject to instant death at whim. The Soviet replacement,the CHEKA [чрезвычайная комиссия] and its lineage was personally responsible for the deaths of millions [demographically, for the population of the old Soviet Union to have made sense, they had to have killed off over 1 million of their own people every year from 1917-1989, not counting the deaths from WW II], the operation of the GULAG, and the terrorizing of the people of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for generations.
The worst we have endured in this country; be it in your view the post 9/11 security measures or Waco and Ruby Ridge, etc. are the work of relative bumblers. Obama and his ACORN/COI-MoveOn-SEIU-OFA embryo “Civilian National Security Force” are Chekisti to their core.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
Subotai Bahadur
“They were not intent on destroying all that their nations and peoples were and remaking them in the image of a foreign and hostile ideology. ”
—
The essence of the situation.
Grit
A nation without grit is a nation without manliness and a nation without manliness is no nation at all.
I do recall that Ruby Ridge action was initiated under the administration of George Bush père.
That series of atrocities having been done without serious repercussions, William Jefferson Clinton used the smokescreen of the Waco Branch Davidian assault (following almost three full months of mounting speculation and tension) to distract the nation from his dismissal of EVERY SINGLE FEDERAL PROSECUTOR. Nobody even noticed. Not a stinking word was said by the press, or the Republicans about replacing all those prosecutors, and abandoning all the prosecutions of the DEMOCRATIC looters in the House Banking Scandal. Not that the Republicans were entirely scandal-free, but the only Democrat prosecuted was Dan Rostenkowski, who had a bunch of other felonious activities going on besides criminally sloppy check-kiting, and must have forgotten to keep up the payments to some patron or other.
Anyhow, I believe we are in for a long rough ride.
When the Nazi party came to power, they looked at health care. Among the first groups to come under thier benevolent scrutiny were wounded Veterans from the trenches of WWI and persons with enfeebled minds. For a long time, there was a very quiet period before it was apparent that a lot of families were receiving letters from the old folks’ home or the sanitorium or the asylum that “Hans, or Gerti, or Freide had suddenly taken ill, we tried to help, but the influenza, or grippe, or fever just was too much. Please sign for the enclosed cardboard box of your loved one’s ashes. Guten Tag.”
It has been reported that the “right to die” or Euthanasia legislation in certain European low countries have increasingly been used to bully grammas into accepting assisted suicide, or adding lethal doses of morphine to IV drips, when the families found their continued living … burdensome regardless of what the old biddie wanted.
Funny how easy it becomes to slide down this path, after we’ve spent four full decades now convincing ourselves that the combination of a human egg and sperm are nothing more than a bit of undifferentiated flesh, with no more significance than a hangnail.
Here come da clipper.
Agreeing with Subotai – I encourage folks to read about the imposition of agricultural collective farming system on the Kulaks of Ukraine by Stalin. The methods of Lavrenti Beria and the secret police apparatchiki are instructive.
They would send for a dissident farmer, who may have expressed dissatisfaction with selling his pigs to the government kommisar for the price dictated by the central government in Moscow. When he arrived, he would be escorted to a room in the back with no furniture, a single light bulb, and a drain in the center of the floor.
A single gunshot to the occiput very effectively counters his objections to collectivization.
Later that week, his mother comes looking for him, and she in her turn is escorted to the back room, and shot.
The bodies are not put on display. The people simply never were seen again. The only cost to the government – a few bullets, the petrol for transporting the corpses and burning them at some remote location.
In the fullness of time, people began to figure out that there’s not much percentage in expressing any sort of dissatisfaction with the administration’s policies.
We simply cannot believe that such things could happen in our country.
No. Bad people only live in other times and other places.
Yeah.
MF/127; another feature of that room ws its dark red painted interior, and a cargo door leading directly to outside –where a covered transport truck would be backed up to the building. When loaded, the truck would travel by night to a remote location on the outskirts, where a dozer and operator would be standing by. Not burned but buried, and all done before dawn. They used German pistols & ammo, just in case.
“No Man No Problem” –J. Stalin
Long Live the Revolution!
***
In living memory
from Atlantic to Pacific
across 18 of 24 time zones
ordinary humans became extraordinarily evil
because of ideas they had in their heads
FoxNews banner sliding by an hour ago, missed the first of it, but got the last:
“…the Venezuelan dissident group says the reported 800% rise in kidnappings from 50 to 385 is “far short of the truth” and that many families are afraid to report disappearances to authorities who may be responsible for the crimes….”
Wow. Just freaking wow. Wonder what Jimmy Carter, who got Chavez into office, has to say about this. Nothing? oh that’s a surprise.
Pat Robertson was right.
While old Pat is notorious for getting the timing of the ending of the world wrong, and misses on the tidal waves, terrorist attacks, and what not, he did have a workable solution to Chavez.
I’m going to spend the next year working to defeat our new democratic congressman in our district here. I think it’s doable, he didn’t win by much, he’s running scared already, hedging his bets, and the republicans and old folks are getting as angry as I’ve ever seen them.
They have every right to be.
Our president misrepresented himself in his campaign. Oh i know, to people like the people who gather here he didn’t –we heard the code words –but to non-political junkies, the whole campaign was a gigantic lie.
Fury is the proper response. Screwing around with the nation is screwing around with the whole ball of wax, going backwards and forwards both directions in time, here in the corporeal realm.
***
subotai/119; –i hear ya.
http://www.wntube.net/play.php?vid=1643
nine minute film of a ghost of past futures
of what did happen once
in living memory
in Europe, before Hitler
when a certain type of thinking took over
the armed force of a sovereign state
Please take a look. Listen to the code words.
A longer version of this short film is available (i didn’t vet it), just type [ holomodor ] into google and look down near the bottom of the page, next to the link above.
these people that did this had ideas about the state that i swear to God i can find no air between theirs and the brain trusters behind these people who have control of our government today.
I’m sorry, my English language brain can’t handle “Holodomor” –i mispelled it above. Anyhoo here is the longer film:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3438536352415708547
The only reason to view this extremely disturbing mtrl (besides the moral witness aspect) is to help ask, could it happen again?
my own thought on that is, yes, you bet yer sweet ass it could. in fact, you DID bet yer ass already, whether you know it or not. it happened the day you were conceived –your ass was bet.
The solution I’ve been stuck on for quite a while is what I like to call an “1810 Commission.” Go through all the laws on the books, and whatever doesn’t explicitly (or even implicitly in a sensible way) follow the specific guidelines established for the scope of Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, and throw them out at the federal level; send them to the political sovereignties mentioned in the 10th Amendment: the states or the people. (Hence 1, 8, and 10, for 1810)
109 Joshua: Our struggle for independence has been misnamed. It was a rebellion by elites in the American colonies against England’s authority, and did not seek the kind of the radical change implied by the word “revolution.” It only appears to be an historical outlier because it was not a revolution at all.
The confusion comes from Paine’s radical writings, but Paine was no more than a useful wartime propagandist. He had no influence on the decision of the Continental Congress in 1776 and he was very much out of step with the leadership of our rebellion about its goals. Adams, for example, entirely rejected Paine’s concepts, calling his writings a “crapulous mass.” The record shows that Paine, in turn, came to despise President Washington after independence had been won, fleeing our new country for Europe.
The lessons of history are clear. Revolutions produce tyrants.
Our founders gave us a short two-year election cycle in the people’s branch of government, the House of Representatives. We know from experience that a determined Speaker and a few strong Committee chairs can drive the government, using the power of the purse. In my view our focus at this time should be on how best to use the tools provided by our founders, looking to the election next year.
ScenerioA, You are correct that the American Revolution was not a “real revolution”. I consider it the second English Civil War. Ben Franklin tried to convince the Crown leadership that the future of the British Empire lay in North America. But the British had gained control of India and were moving to the Far East.
Subatol, Why do you include Cromwell in your list of dictators?