Tag Archives: government

Right Idea, Wrong Answer

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Congressman David Jolly (R, FL) had a piece on Fox News in which he lamented the amount of time Congressmen spend raising money for their future campaigns for Congress.

He’s right. Congressmen do spend too much time doing this.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently greeted an incoming crop of freshmen with a prescribed schedule that highlighted fundraising “Call Time” of four hours a day as the chief priority for any new member of Congress. The actual time they suggested working in Congress each day: just two hours!

It’s not just Democrats, though; Republicans do this, too.

However.

I’m introducing legislation called “The Stop Act.” It simply says that that no member of Congress may personally ask you for money.

This does not mean that you as a citizen cannot choose to contribute to a candidate. It is your constitutional right of political speech to do so.

And

We can’t have a part‐time Congress in a full‐time world.

He’s mistaken here. Congressmen don’t need to be banned from personally asking me for money. If they were, each Congressman would only hire a staffer to do it for him—driving up the need for money. What does need to be addressed, and not necessarily with a new law, is the incentive to raise money.

Why is it so expensive to be a Congressman? A couple reasons, far from the only ones (I’m eliding inflated campaigning costs), are the high cost of living in DC and the surrounding area, and the cost of travel. Modern communications technology, though, greatly reduces (though it does not eliminate) the need for Congressmen to be personally present all the time.

Another reason is the existence of a full-time Congress. We don’t need a full-time Congress, even in a full-time world, though Congressmen do need to be fully present and fully focused during part-time Congresses. Congressmen think the only way to measure how much they’re doing for their constituents is by the number of laws they get passed. A full-time Congress simply emphasizes that pressure.

In fact, though, the best measure of what they’re doing for their constituents is how many law proposals they successfully block. The best measure is how effectively they’re keeping government out of the lives of their constituents, not how successfully they’re injecting government into those lives via another law. Changing their mindset would greatly reduce the incentive to raise money.

This proposed law is an example of misplaced incentive.

Malfeasance

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It’s rampant at the Veterans Administration. And “leadership” there and in the White House plainly don’t care, as their decision to be inactive demonstrates. Here are some examples, from The Wall Street Journal.

  • After the biggest scandal in VA history, in which 110 VA medical facilities across the country maintained secret lists to hide long waits for care, only three low-level VA employees have been fired for wait-time manipulation.
  • In September the VA’s Office of Inspector General revealed that two VA senior executives inappropriately used their authority to game the agency’s hiring system, allowing them to benefit from more than $400,000 in taxpayer-funded relocation expenses. [The VA reassigned them at their existing salary rather than terminating them for cause.]
  • In December the public learned of two internal VA investigations that found whistleblowers at the Phoenix VA Hospital were retaliated against by two senior managers…. More than a year after…the VA has refused to hold them accountable.

Robert McDonald, VA Secretary, promised to fix this sort of thing when he was handed the job 16 months ago. These failures are demonstrations of his decision not to rock the boat. That his decisions have been allowed to stand unchallenged are clear demonstrations of President Barrack Obama’s lack of concern for the welfare of our veterans.

veteranos administratio delende est

Progressives and Language

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Democratic Party ex-Presidential candidate and Vice President Joe Biden had this to say, this time about our Constitution:

…Second Amendment says which he [Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (D, VT)] has of late, the Second Amendment says you can limit who can own a gun.

What the words on the Constitution’s parchment say:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

However, to Progressives, words have exactly the meanings Progressives say they have. Not more, not less. And so “shall not,” of course means “shall.”

All the rest of us should just shut up. We don’t understand the words.

“No Room for Negotiation”

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A French journalist is being tossed out of the People’s Republic of China because she wrote factual articles about the PRC’s behavior in Xinjiang province. Her visa to be in the PRC expires at the end of the year, and the government has told her it will not be renewed.

The proximate cause of her expulsion is an article she wrote noting that the PRC’s expressions of solidarity with France over the terrorist attacks in Paris last month were not motivated by sympathy or shared condemnation of terrorism, but were rather motivated by the PRC’s reach for sympathy for its own behaviors in Xinjiang regarding the generally Muslim Uighur population’s demurral from government mistreatment of Uighurs.

Ms [Beijing-based Ursula] Gauthier said Chinese officials had met her three times to protest over the article and had demanded a public apology each time, without specifying exactly what form the apology should take. She said a Chinese official telephoned her on Friday to demand again that she apologize, publicly acknowledge that China was a victim of terrorism, and distance herself from any organization suggesting her case was a violation of press freedom.

“He said there is no room for negotiation,” she said.

Indeed, there is none. Either there is freedom of the press, freedom of speech, or there is not. There can be no middle ground to be reached through…negotiation.

Update: Corrected an idiotic typo in the first paragraph.  I need a keyboard that types what I mean rather than mindlessly repeating the keystrokes I give it.

Another Thought on Encryption

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Apple’s Tim Cook had one [emphasis added].

On your iPhone, there’s likely health information, there’s financial information. There are intimate conversations with your family or your co-workers. There’s probably business secrets, and you should have the ability to protect it. And the only way we know how to do that is to encrypt it. Why is that? It’s because, if there’s a way to get in, then somebody will find the way in. There have been people that suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is, if you put a back door in, that back door’s for everybody, for good guys and bad guys.

The Democrat District Attorney for Manhattan Cyrus Vance thinks Government should be in our pockets; he thinks Apple, et al., are undermining Government power.

IPhones are now the first consumer products in American history that are beyond the reach of lawful warrants. The result is crimes go unsolved and victims are left beyond the protection of law. Because Apple is unwilling to help solve this problem, the time for a national, legislative solution is now.

Here’s what our Constitution’s 3rd Amendment says:

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner….

Vance just wants to skirt this by quartering virtual policemen in our cell phones. No. Government just needs to go back to doing actual police work, and not rely on such quartering.

Undermining? If anyone is undermining anything, it’s the New York Democrat, who’s undermining individual liberty. This is a clear and present demonstration of why Government cannot be trusted with such a weapon.