The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
----
I wouldn't want to ask people to just give me money cause they like my website, but do please take a quick look at Barger's Boutique. You might find yourself a little something-something for 2 or 3 bucks that you just can't resist! Any of the round images you find around MoreThings will get you to an Amazon page to buy my stuff and help ol' Al keep the lights on.
Links
To explicitly state the obvious, these external links go to interesting and provocative websites, but they speak for themselves. I don't necessarily agree with anything they say - especially that no-goodnik Richard Marcus.
*************
All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
February 14, 2009
Read the Damned Bill Amendment: A (Truly) Modest Proposal for Good Government The US Congress just passed President Obama's trillionish dollar "stimulus" package. The more the public heard about the bill, the less the public liked it. Thus, the Democrats rammed that puppy through as quickly as possible with as little time for the public to digest it as they could manage. They only released the text of this bill one day before the vote.
But the damned thing's over 1,000 pages. It's not just that there was not sufficient time to debate or consider the bill. As Rep Tom Price of Georgia put it succintly, "It is physically impossible for any member to have read this bill."
I find it difficult to believe that even a good liberal honestly thinks this should be considered an acceptable way of doing business. That is even if you think that deficit stimulus spending is a good idea for our economy - as if the years of Bush deficits don't disprove that idea. Surely you can't think it a good idea to commit to a trillion dollars of spending without anyone reading the bill.
So here's what I would consider to be a truly (ie not facetious or satrically) modest proposal to ever so gently assert some small and simple measure of sanity back into our legislative process. This seems important enough to merit a constitutional amendment. Some smart lawyer might improve my layman's language, but how about something real simple like:
It shall be the inviolable right of any member of the Senate or House of Representatives to have the full text of any bill read aloud on the floor of Congress before a final vote for passage.
Obviously this would play somewhat into the hands of right wing types with something like this bill - but that's only because the process is so severely out of control. If you think the guvment should drop $1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 into subsidizing electric cars/glorified golf carts, that's fine. I think we just did that, but who knows? NO ONE has read the thing.
That doesn't even require Congress to let a particular representative do the reading, with the opportunity to r e a d r e a l l y s l o w l y. Nancy Pelosi could hire the most quick dictioned auctioneer to slam through it at top speed. In the case of this "stimulus" bill though, she'd probably have to bring in at least a couple of them to take shifts.
Most likely a monstrosity like this "stimulus" bill couldn't survive such an ordeal. By a couple of hours into the reading, C-Span viewers would be calling their people. By the time that a physical reading could be accomplished across even several non-stop days, the lynch mobs would be showing up to tar and feather Reid and Pelosi and ride Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter out of town on a rail.
But that would apply to rightwing legislation as well. We might have gotten a substantially different and certainly better considered outcome if we had minimally slowed down enough to have the proposed Patriot Act actually read publicly.
Now, if the country is under a physical attack, the Commander in Chief can have bombers in the air and boots on the ground right away without any waiting. But the Congress surely doesn't have any business that is so urgent that they should be passing legislation without anyone even amongst their own membership having at least a minimal opportunity to actually read it - or have it read to the American public who are going to be paying for it.
