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Here's an idea for our elected tyrants in D.C:
"No read? No show? VOTE NO!"
Mr. Legislator, does the bill weigh several pounds and have a thousand pages of fine print? You don't want to be bothered to take the time to read it? I don't have a problem with that--if you do the responsible thing. The solution for you is logical and simple: VOTE AGAINST THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL!
That's all in the world there is to it! Simple, ain't it? You don't have to read it and you can do the responsible thing by voting against what is probably some pork-filled travesty of law anyway.
Legislators voting for passage of unread bills is not only a case of taxation without representation, it is a case of representation without comprehension! How supreme is the arrogance of those in power who mock our insistence that they read bills completely before voting for them?
On May 21st when considering whether to double or triple our power bills, the House Energy and Commerce Committee went to the extreme of putting a speed reader at the microphone to read the bill as others had insisted that they do. Oh, it was a hilarious antic and jolly good fun, it was! By Jove, they had a great laugh--at OUR EXPENSE!
On July 24th, Representative John Conyers (D-MI) got in front of an audience at the National Press Club luncheon and told them:
“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill!'”
“What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”
In those sleazy words of of a petty tyrant extraordinaire dismissing critics of his incompetence, is there not a kernel of truth? Is there not also by implication an obvious answer?
The taxpayer bail-out of mega-corporations was claimed by Lindsey Graham, Joe Wilson, Gresham Barrett and others to be necessary because those corporations were "too big to fail." Of course, their idiotic assertion begged the question that very few at the time asked, "why not use existing Federal law to break up those mega-corporations with anti-trust suits?" They could have then been made to reorganize into smaller, more manageable units that would not, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, threaten the economy of the entire world if they failed. That sounds like a national security issue to me.
It is also a national security issue to make sure bills are read in their entirety by every member of Congress who votes for them. It might also behoove them to package laws in to smaller, more manageable units that we and they could read over several times before their voting for them.
That might make the whole process a little too easy and transparent for us to follow what they're doing, however. I think sometimes they admit to not reading bills so that they can later claim that they didn't realize such and such a bad thing was in it. As long as we let them get away with it, they'll continue to climb to such stratospheric heights of patent absurdity in their pursuit of power and money.
If the ALMIGHTY Representatives and Senators will not deign to simply read the bills they vote for, whom then do they trust so much as to let them write them? Lobbyists?
Lobbyists.
Yep, that's right! In case you didn't know this or were in a state of denial about it: lobbyists for mega-corporations and other special interest groups are the ones writing up the bills for our high-salaried and highly fringe-benefited members of Congress. In order to allow this egregious sin against consent of the governed, the mental process of rationalization by a member of Congress must go something like this:
Corporate and other lobbyists = LOTS of money for me.
LOTS of money for me= Good.
By transitive property of equality, if a = b, and b=c, then a = c:
Corporate and other lobbyists = Good!
How could politicians NOT love lobbyists with lots of money for their campaign and other funds? Rich, mega-corporate lobbyists are the most sponge-worthy of all according to the politicians who constantly prostitute their votes. The road to fascism is paved with unread bills and lobbyist money.
It is an obvious quid pro quo situation. So many loophole$ and $pecial favor$ to corporations and other entities are included in most bills that it takes hundreds if not thousands of pages to contain all the pork. If you doubt me, start reading the nearly 70,000 pages of tax code and call me back in a few years to let me know what you think of it.
What we have here is a failure to properly legislate! The longer a bill, the more corruption contained therein. A lie is usually complicated and so is the typical bill being considered in D.C. What we need is TRUTH and its attendant, SIMPLICITY. This is definitely a case where the idea of "K.I.S.S." ("Keep It Simple, Stupid!") is needed.
It actually is as simple as voting "NO!" if you have not, and perhaps do not want to, read a particular bill, Mr. Legislator. Think of the eventual results of enough legislators following that line of logic: shorter bills addressing fewer issues, greater transparency due to ease of citizens and politicians reading shorter bills, and, hopefully, less government intrusion in the end.
Another thing we, the people, should demand is the immediate publication of bills on the internet and allowing at least one day per every 10,000 or 20,000 words for the citizens to read the bill over before it is voted on. If that delays or destroys huge bills, then so be it!
Imagine their trying to sneak in pork under such potential daily scrutiny. Obviously, we'd be much better off in every case if no law were passed instead of a bad law passing. If the Federal government temporarily shuts down due to this, that's even better! We don't "need" the Federal government for 90+% of the time--and hardly at all if the state governments were to re-assert their authority as recognized by the 9th and 10 Amendments. Stringent requirements for reading bills would engender a refocusing of the Congress on those very limited areas where they are Constitutionally authorized to legislate.
Imagine a Congress that doesn't hold hearings on everything under the sun such as baseball players' steroid use or some other issue brought up by a bunch of enviro-wackos and Hollywood stars. Such hearings are all show-biz, anyway, only intended to pump up the pomposity of the blowhards in Congress. We simply don't need them. Very little is usually accomplished in those hearings and a lot of very bad legislation can be initiated or reinforced by such useless distractions. It would be far better for the Senators and Representatives to spend that oh, so valuable time of theirs reading bills and writing the laws themselves. Hell, they could probably cut their staffs in half if they were to actually start working themselves.
"No read? No show? VOTE NO!"
wtc
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