Tag Archives: government

Congressional Term Limits?

Posted on by
Reply

Sure, but only sort of.

Texas Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger has been absent from duty in Congress since last July. The discovery of that shirking (or coverup of disability) is leading to renewed calls for term limits for Congressmen. For instance,

Republican Utah Senator Mike Lee on Sunday…claimed Granger’s absence made a “compelling case” for term limits….

Yes and no. I remain adamantly opposed to Government dictating to us, in anything resembling absolute terms, who we might or might not choose to represent us in that government. I am just as adamantly opposed to one generation of Americans attempting to dictate to future generations of Americans who they might or might not choose to represent them in government.

Rather than hard and absolute limits, Article V of our erstwhile Articles of Convention has the optimal application of term limits.

…no person shall be capable of being a delegate [to Congress] for more than three years in any term of six years….

That Congress was a unicameral body, but that relative limit is easily adaptable to our bicameral Congress. It would be easy enough, too (as easily as enacting any Constitutional Amendment…), to add the requirement that no Congressman, during a period of non-Congressional service, can serve on any government staff, whether for pay or pro bono, nor can such a one work for or with any government lobbyist during that period.

Separate from that, and additional to it, former Department of Education Press Secretary Angela Morabito:

WOW: Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), who hasn’t voted on a bill in six months, has been living in a nursing home in secret. Records show she has a staff of 25. If any of them knew—and it would be hard not to know—they are complicit[.]

Granger’s, or her staffers’, concealment of her incapacity and absence from Congress should suffer serious consequences from their deception. Those consequences should begin with Granger forfeiting her Congressional pension, if she was/is of sound mind during this period, and should include every single one of her staffers forfeiting any pension they might have accrued along with the barring of all them, including unpaid staffers in DC or in her district, from Federal and Texas government service for life.

That group openly and dishonorably and in a most unamerican fashion deprived Granger’s constituents of their Congressional representation for a quarter of the just concluding Congressional session.

Pick One

Posted on by
Reply

A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section wrote that FBI Director Christopher Wray is a good man, but that he was wrong for the job he had as Director.

Stipulated, arguendo, the first part.

Then, though, he closed with this:

Mr Wray should have been the insider who reformed the FBI and restored it to its former place of respect. Having missed that chance, the bureau may now be treated as another institution in need of disruption and a significant reset. This may or may not work out well for our nation’s premier law-enforcement agency.

An agency that is an institution in need of disruption and a significant reset due to its senior leadership’s involvement in interfering with the election of a politician of whom they personally disdained, as the letter-writer noted, cannot possibly be a premier law-enforcement agency.

On the contrary, the FBI is an agency badly wanting a thorough and widespread purge of upper and senior management or an outright disbandment and replacement with an entirely new agency completely devoid of the FBI’s existing upper and senior management personnel.

Legalized Extortion

Posted on by
Reply

Elon Musk says he’s been ordered/threatened/whathaveyou to “settle” an SEC beef, or else. The SEC’s capo, Gary Gensler, has told Musk he must agree within 48 hours to either accept a monetary payment or face charges on numerous counts.

This is the Federal government, which has no authority to do so, requiring a settlement be agreed. This is more than just an effort to stampede a defendant so an arm of government can avoid the embarrassment of taking a weak case to court and getting a public failure and a potful of opprobrium when it loses.

This is that arm of government demanding the defendant pay the vig or suffer damage to, if not destruction of, his business. Crime syndicate capi do that. It’s behavior that doesn’t belong in the government of a free people.

Gensler should face far sterner sanction than just loss of his job.

Promises, Promises

Posted on by
Reply

President-elect Donald Trump (R) has nominated a number of folks for various Cabinet and Agency positions. Three, in particular, already are (potentially) having a salutary effect: Matt Gaetz for AG, Robert F Kennedy Jr for HHS, and Pete Hegseth for SecDef.

Folks in those departments now are threatening mass resignations should they be confirmed.

That’s a built-in promise to shrink government employment, and by itself it’s reason enough to confirm Gaetz, Kennedy, and Hegseth. Then hold those bureaucrats to their word.

Chopping Blocks for DOGE

Posted on by
Reply

There are several such in the form of overlapping and shared responsibilities across a variety Executive Branch Departments and Agencies.

Three that come to mind are anti-trust enforcement, which is shared between DoJ and FTC, among others; environmental concerns, which are shared among EPA, Interior, Energy, and DoJ among others; and energy development/production, which is shared among Interior, Energy, and EPA, among others.

There are many more.

What DOGE needs to recommend and what President Donald Trump (R) and Congress (because much of this must be done statutorily) need to do is designate one Department/Agency in each of those areas as the Responsible Department/Agency, remove all responsibility, including the Civil Service positions and authority to consult “outside experts” from the other entities, and return the associated personnel to the private sector (no reallocating them to other areas of the Federal government). This both streamlines government and reduces its size by eliminating the jobs altogether.

With regard to DoJ in particular, that Department’s role in any of this should be limited to bringing cases to court; those personnel are enforcers of existing law, not definers of what the law is or should be (though, in the latter case, they certainly can recommend to Congress).

Another target rich environment for DOGE is entirely within the Pentagon. Defense systems development and acquisition is entirely too byzantine, and that labyrinth contributes in large part to the excessive amount of time—years—it takes the Pentagon to develop a system from an initial idea and to the excessive amount of time—more years—to acquire the systems in operationally useful numbers, once a decision to acquire is made. Those interminable delays also vastly increase the costs of both development and acquisition. Here, too, the Responsible Office needs to be designated, and the number of bureaucrats required to sign off (and the number permitted to sign off) need to be reduced, with the others (particularly the erstwhile required signers) returned to the private sector.

The Pentagon moves need especially to be centered on reducing the civilian workforce and on increasing the role and the responsibility of the Combatant, Transportation, and Materiel Commands, with the Combatant commanders being the sole definers of their requirements and numbers, Transportation and Materiel being the definers of the requirements and numbers needed to satisfy the Combatants’ requirements.

The moves and cuts need to be draconian, too; half measures will only perpetuate the current waste and opportunities for waste.