Why stop at Obamacare?
The most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives may be on to something. If we don't like a law that was considered by Congress, sent to the President for signature and signed into law; we'll just defund it.
Social Security is robbing the next generation to pay for the current group of retirees, so we'll defund it. Medicare is way too expensive, so we'll just defund it. Air Traffic Controllers are just way too expensive, so we'll defund the FAA and let the airlines handle it themselves.
Doesn't make much sense, does it? Neither does this stupid proposal to link the de facto repeal of Obamacare to whether or not the federal government of the U.S. will come to a screeching halt at midnight on September 30th. It is insane. Maybe the members of Congress don't need their federal paychecks, but the assistants who generate the lie-laden letters those Representatives and Senators sent to their constituents need to be paid. The janitors who clean the offices at night while these do-nothing politicians are out raising funds for the next campaign or being wined and dined by lobbyists for the special interests they whore themselves out to, need those paychecks. Sadly they may not be getting them after October 1st.
I'm not arguing that once a law is passed it must remain inviolate. Laws need to change with the times. But this backdoor way of repealing a law that you don't have the votes to repeal is wrong.
Here is an idea. Let's push for an amendment to the Constitution. A simple amendment. It would read as follows:
"Once the Congress has passed a bill and the President has signed the bill into law, the annual appropriation called for in this bill cannot be withheld; unless and until the law is repealed, or its authority expires."
They can't defund Social Security. They can't defund Medicare. They shouldn't be able to defund Obamacare either.
To better articulate how upset I am with these idiots, I will say that I'm actually considering changing my voter registration from Independent to Democrat. Because the Republican Party is disgusting me at the moment.
* * *
The Postal Service is making noises that they may have to actually seek an emergency increase in postal rates. As long as I'm throwing ideas out, let's try this. Let's offer to let FedEx or UPS or any other delivery service contract with the government to take over running the USPS.
The catch is, they have to charge the same amount to deliver a letter from Santa Monica to Culver City is that they would charge to deliver one from a military base in Afghanistan to one on Guam.
That's fair. While the U.S. Constitution's "postal clause" doesn't say anything except that Congress is empowered to establish post offices, the basic principle of the Postal Service since its inception is that it will cost the same to mail a letter from anywhere in the U.S. to anywhere else in the U.S.
The cost of mailing a letter from Santa Monica to Culver City is far lower than the cost of mailing one from Miami to Honolulu. Yet first class postage is the same in both cases. As it should be.
Since no business is going to take on that task, with rates to be set by Congress, guess we can't privatize the Post Office after all. Therefore we need to think about following the recommendations of the current Postmaster General.
Stop Saturday delivery. As an alternative, a special Saturday delivery service could be offered as an option to the sender of mail.
Stop forcing the Post Office to prefund retiree healthcare benefits. If it's a good idea, make every government agency do it, start with the Congress. If you don't need to prefund your own benefits, no one else needs to either.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
How many homeless people will I see sleeping on bus benches tonight, as I drive home from class?
A thousand years from now, if our environment survives, a big part of the credit should go to John H. Adams, founding director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
After hearing Jay Leno talk about his long-ago fling with Sharon Osbourne, I realized how much it must suck to be someone who got "dished about" in someone else's memoir.
Guests at the Venetian Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas are angry they can't pay $78.50 for a romantic couple's ride in the hotel's canals. No wonder Sheldon Adelson has enough wealth to spend over $50 million on last year's elections.
Some financial advisors/planners are now postulating that depending on your tax situation, contributing to a 401(k) may not be better than putting the money into a Roth IRA after all. There are two problems with this as a general rule. #1 is that anyone earning over $110,000 ($173,000 if married filing jointly) begins to see the amount they are allowed to contribute to a Roth IRA reduced. At $125,000 ($173,000 for MFJ) it disappears completely. #2 is that if your employer matches part or all of your contribution to a 401(k), choosing a Roth IRA instead means giving up what is essentially "free money".
The death of Joy Covey is really sad. An amazing woman.
When a professional athlete is traded from one team to another, he or she shouldn't have to learn about it from a radio newscast.
Kudos to all those who have donated to make the reward for that homeless guy who returned $42,000 rise above $100,000.
* * *
This Date In History:
335 – Flavius Dalmatius is raised to the rank of Caesar by his uncle, emperor Constantine I.
634 – Siege of Damascus: The Rashidun Arabs under Khalid ibn al-Walid capture Damascus from the Byzantine Empire.
1356 – Battle of Poitiers: An English army under the command of Edward, the Black Prince defeats a French army and captures the French king, John II.
1676 – Jamestown is burned to the ground by the forces of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacon's Rebellion.
1692 – Giles Corey is pressed to death after refusing to plead in the Salem witch trials.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: British forces win a tactically expensive victory over the Continental Army in the First Battle of Saratoga.
1778 – The Continental Congress passes the first United States federal budget.
1796 – George Washington's Farewell Address is printed across America as an open letter to the public.
1799 – French Revolutionary Wars: French-Dutch victory against the Russians and British in the Battle of Bergen.
1846 – Two French shepherd children, Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud, experience a Marian apparition on a mountaintop near La Salette, France, now known as Our Lady of La Salette.
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Iuka – Union troops under General William Rosecrans defeat a Confederate force commanded by General Sterling Price.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chickamauga.
1868 – Spanish revolution: La Gloriosa.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Paris begins, which will result on January 28, 1871 in the surrender of Paris and a decisive Prussian victory.
1870 – Having invaded the Papal States a week earlier, the Italian Army lays siege to Rome, entering the city the next day, after which the Pope described himself as a Prisoner in the Vatican.
1879 – The Blackpool Illuminations are switched on for the first time.
1881 – U.S. President James A. Garfield dies of wounds suffered in a July 2 shooting.
1893 – Women's suffrage: in New Zealand, the Electoral Act of 1893 is consented to by the governor giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote.
1934 – Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr..
1939 – World War II: The Battle of Kępa Oksywska concludes, with Polish losses reaching roughly 14% of all the forces engaged.
1940 – Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz in order to smuggle out information and start a resistance.
1944 – Armistice between Finland and Soviet Union is signed. (End of the Continuation War).
1944 – Battle of Hürtgen Forest between United States and Nazi Germany begins.
1945 – Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) is sentenced to death in London.
1946 – The Council of Europe is founded following a speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich.
1952 – The United States bars Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country after a trip to England.
1957 – First American underground nuclear bomb test (part of Operation Plumbbob).
1959 – Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland due to security concerns.
1970 – The first Glastonbury Festival is held at Michael Eavis's farm in Glastonbury, United Kingdom.
1970 – Kostas Georgakis, a Greek student of geology, sets himself ablaze in Matteotti Square in Genoa, Italy, as a protest against the dictatorial regime of Georgios Papadopoulos.
1971 – Montagnard troops of South Vietnam revolt against the rule of Nguyen Khanh, killing 70 ethnic Vietnamese soldiers.
1972 – A parcel bomb sent to Israeli Embassy in London kills one diplomat.
1973 – King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has his investiture.
1976 – Turkish Airlines Boeing 727 hits the Taurus Mountains, outskirt of Karatepe, Osmaniye, Turkey, killing all 155 passengers and crew.
1976 – Two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jets fly out to investigate an unidentified flying object when both independently lose instrumentation and communications as they approach, only to have them restored upon withdrawal.
1978 – The Solomon Islands join the United Nations.
1981 – Simon & Garfunkel reunite for a free concert in New York's Central Park.
1982 – Scott Fahlman posts the first documented emoticons :-) and :-( on the Carnegie Mellon University Bulletin Board System.
1983 – Saint Kitts and Nevis gains its independence.
1985 – A strong earthquake kills thousands and destroys about 400 buildings in Mexico City.
1985 – Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testify at U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music.
1989 – A terrorist bomb explodes UTA Flight 772 in mid-air above the Tùnùrù Desert, Niger, killing 171.
1991 – Ötzi the Iceman is discovered by German tourists.
1995 – The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber's manifesto.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Leon Jaworski
Frances Farmer
Emil Zatopek
James Lipton
Duke Snider
Adam West
Brook Benton
Mike Royko
Brian Epstein
Moshe Weinberg (Victim of 1972 Olympic Games terrorist attack, RIP)
Bill Medley
Paul Williams
Freda Payne
Joe Morgan
Randolph Mantooth
Tanith Lee
Twiggy
Jeremy Irons
Barry Scheck
Joan Lunden
Lol Crème
Nile Rogers
Kevin Hooks
Lita Ford
Trisha Yearwood
Sanaa Lathan
Soledad O'Brien
Jimmy Fallon
Social Security is robbing the next generation to pay for the current group of retirees, so we'll defund it. Medicare is way too expensive, so we'll just defund it. Air Traffic Controllers are just way too expensive, so we'll defund the FAA and let the airlines handle it themselves.
Doesn't make much sense, does it? Neither does this stupid proposal to link the de facto repeal of Obamacare to whether or not the federal government of the U.S. will come to a screeching halt at midnight on September 30th. It is insane. Maybe the members of Congress don't need their federal paychecks, but the assistants who generate the lie-laden letters those Representatives and Senators sent to their constituents need to be paid. The janitors who clean the offices at night while these do-nothing politicians are out raising funds for the next campaign or being wined and dined by lobbyists for the special interests they whore themselves out to, need those paychecks. Sadly they may not be getting them after October 1st.
I'm not arguing that once a law is passed it must remain inviolate. Laws need to change with the times. But this backdoor way of repealing a law that you don't have the votes to repeal is wrong.
Here is an idea. Let's push for an amendment to the Constitution. A simple amendment. It would read as follows:
"Once the Congress has passed a bill and the President has signed the bill into law, the annual appropriation called for in this bill cannot be withheld; unless and until the law is repealed, or its authority expires."
They can't defund Social Security. They can't defund Medicare. They shouldn't be able to defund Obamacare either.
To better articulate how upset I am with these idiots, I will say that I'm actually considering changing my voter registration from Independent to Democrat. Because the Republican Party is disgusting me at the moment.
* * *
The Postal Service is making noises that they may have to actually seek an emergency increase in postal rates. As long as I'm throwing ideas out, let's try this. Let's offer to let FedEx or UPS or any other delivery service contract with the government to take over running the USPS.
The catch is, they have to charge the same amount to deliver a letter from Santa Monica to Culver City is that they would charge to deliver one from a military base in Afghanistan to one on Guam.
That's fair. While the U.S. Constitution's "postal clause" doesn't say anything except that Congress is empowered to establish post offices, the basic principle of the Postal Service since its inception is that it will cost the same to mail a letter from anywhere in the U.S. to anywhere else in the U.S.
The cost of mailing a letter from Santa Monica to Culver City is far lower than the cost of mailing one from Miami to Honolulu. Yet first class postage is the same in both cases. As it should be.
Since no business is going to take on that task, with rates to be set by Congress, guess we can't privatize the Post Office after all. Therefore we need to think about following the recommendations of the current Postmaster General.
Stop Saturday delivery. As an alternative, a special Saturday delivery service could be offered as an option to the sender of mail.
Stop forcing the Post Office to prefund retiree healthcare benefits. If it's a good idea, make every government agency do it, start with the Congress. If you don't need to prefund your own benefits, no one else needs to either.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
How many homeless people will I see sleeping on bus benches tonight, as I drive home from class?
A thousand years from now, if our environment survives, a big part of the credit should go to John H. Adams, founding director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
After hearing Jay Leno talk about his long-ago fling with Sharon Osbourne, I realized how much it must suck to be someone who got "dished about" in someone else's memoir.
Guests at the Venetian Hotel/Casino in Las Vegas are angry they can't pay $78.50 for a romantic couple's ride in the hotel's canals. No wonder Sheldon Adelson has enough wealth to spend over $50 million on last year's elections.
Some financial advisors/planners are now postulating that depending on your tax situation, contributing to a 401(k) may not be better than putting the money into a Roth IRA after all. There are two problems with this as a general rule. #1 is that anyone earning over $110,000 ($173,000 if married filing jointly) begins to see the amount they are allowed to contribute to a Roth IRA reduced. At $125,000 ($173,000 for MFJ) it disappears completely. #2 is that if your employer matches part or all of your contribution to a 401(k), choosing a Roth IRA instead means giving up what is essentially "free money".
The death of Joy Covey is really sad. An amazing woman.
When a professional athlete is traded from one team to another, he or she shouldn't have to learn about it from a radio newscast.
Kudos to all those who have donated to make the reward for that homeless guy who returned $42,000 rise above $100,000.
* * *
This Date In History:
335 – Flavius Dalmatius is raised to the rank of Caesar by his uncle, emperor Constantine I.
634 – Siege of Damascus: The Rashidun Arabs under Khalid ibn al-Walid capture Damascus from the Byzantine Empire.
1356 – Battle of Poitiers: An English army under the command of Edward, the Black Prince defeats a French army and captures the French king, John II.
1676 – Jamestown is burned to the ground by the forces of Nathaniel Bacon during Bacon's Rebellion.
1692 – Giles Corey is pressed to death after refusing to plead in the Salem witch trials.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: British forces win a tactically expensive victory over the Continental Army in the First Battle of Saratoga.
1778 – The Continental Congress passes the first United States federal budget.
1796 – George Washington's Farewell Address is printed across America as an open letter to the public.
1799 – French Revolutionary Wars: French-Dutch victory against the Russians and British in the Battle of Bergen.
1846 – Two French shepherd children, Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud, experience a Marian apparition on a mountaintop near La Salette, France, now known as Our Lady of La Salette.
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Iuka – Union troops under General William Rosecrans defeat a Confederate force commanded by General Sterling Price.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chickamauga.
1868 – Spanish revolution: La Gloriosa.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: the Siege of Paris begins, which will result on January 28, 1871 in the surrender of Paris and a decisive Prussian victory.
1870 – Having invaded the Papal States a week earlier, the Italian Army lays siege to Rome, entering the city the next day, after which the Pope described himself as a Prisoner in the Vatican.
1879 – The Blackpool Illuminations are switched on for the first time.
1881 – U.S. President James A. Garfield dies of wounds suffered in a July 2 shooting.
1893 – Women's suffrage: in New Zealand, the Electoral Act of 1893 is consented to by the governor giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote.
1934 – Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr..
1939 – World War II: The Battle of Kępa Oksywska concludes, with Polish losses reaching roughly 14% of all the forces engaged.
1940 – Witold Pilecki is voluntarily captured and sent to Auschwitz in order to smuggle out information and start a resistance.
1944 – Armistice between Finland and Soviet Union is signed. (End of the Continuation War).
1944 – Battle of Hürtgen Forest between United States and Nazi Germany begins.
1945 – Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) is sentenced to death in London.
1946 – The Council of Europe is founded following a speech by Winston Churchill at the University of Zurich.
1952 – The United States bars Charlie Chaplin from re-entering the country after a trip to England.
1957 – First American underground nuclear bomb test (part of Operation Plumbbob).
1959 – Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland due to security concerns.
1970 – The first Glastonbury Festival is held at Michael Eavis's farm in Glastonbury, United Kingdom.
1970 – Kostas Georgakis, a Greek student of geology, sets himself ablaze in Matteotti Square in Genoa, Italy, as a protest against the dictatorial regime of Georgios Papadopoulos.
1971 – Montagnard troops of South Vietnam revolt against the rule of Nguyen Khanh, killing 70 ethnic Vietnamese soldiers.
1972 – A parcel bomb sent to Israeli Embassy in London kills one diplomat.
1973 – King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has his investiture.
1976 – Turkish Airlines Boeing 727 hits the Taurus Mountains, outskirt of Karatepe, Osmaniye, Turkey, killing all 155 passengers and crew.
1976 – Two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jets fly out to investigate an unidentified flying object when both independently lose instrumentation and communications as they approach, only to have them restored upon withdrawal.
1978 – The Solomon Islands join the United Nations.
1981 – Simon & Garfunkel reunite for a free concert in New York's Central Park.
1982 – Scott Fahlman posts the first documented emoticons :-) and :-( on the Carnegie Mellon University Bulletin Board System.
1983 – Saint Kitts and Nevis gains its independence.
1985 – A strong earthquake kills thousands and destroys about 400 buildings in Mexico City.
1985 – Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa and other musicians testify at U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music.
1989 – A terrorist bomb explodes UTA Flight 772 in mid-air above the Tùnùrù Desert, Niger, killing 171.
1991 – Ötzi the Iceman is discovered by German tourists.
1995 – The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber's manifesto.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Leon Jaworski
Frances Farmer
Emil Zatopek
James Lipton
Duke Snider
Adam West
Brook Benton
Mike Royko
Brian Epstein
Moshe Weinberg (Victim of 1972 Olympic Games terrorist attack, RIP)
Bill Medley
Paul Williams
Freda Payne
Joe Morgan
Randolph Mantooth
Tanith Lee
Twiggy
Jeremy Irons
Barry Scheck
Joan Lunden
Lol Crème
Nile Rogers
Kevin Hooks
Lita Ford
Trisha Yearwood
Sanaa Lathan
Soledad O'Brien
Jimmy Fallon
posted by me at 11:04 PM
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