Date: 2008-06-15 02:09 Subject: More Notions.... Security: Public Mood: contemplative

 ON RECYCLING:

I've just remembered why I decided never to drink soda from cans at home any more.

From time to time, my brother and his family go out of town and I house-sit for them.  Jeff pays me in Mountain Dew, as his finances are fairly tight, and because he knows I'm not really fond of diet drinks (which is usually the only kind of beverage present in his house).  The last couple of times, its been in 12-packs of cans.  So my recycling bin is piled high with empty cans of sugar (well, high-fructose corn syrup, but hey...)-sweetened soda.  And my apartment is piled high with fruit flies.  As I type I can barely see the screen from all the little noseeum's flying around between my face and the computer.  Very annoying.  Luckily tomorrow is recycling day, and the fruit fly breeding grounds will end up at the bottom of a compactor at the other end of North Hollywood.  Hopefully, the flies will follow.

As annoying as it is to deal with all the little (winged) problems, recycling my empties gets me $7 - $15 a week.  (Read that: Lunch Money.)  At LASFS, recycling the SF fen's empties allows us to put on a $50 spread of snacks and treats at each monthly 2nd Sunday Open House, and still save up enough to contribute to refreshments at Seasonal Holiday Parties.  Given how lucrative it is to trade in metal and plastic and glass (oh, my) for green folding stuff, I'm amazed that homeowners use those blue bins so that their recyclables can get collected by the trash collection companies.  Basically, they're paying someone else to make $$ from their empties.  It just seems counter-productive, somehow....

ON THE SUPREME COURT re: GITMO:

So, foreign nationals hostile to the USA in time of war can now claim their constitutional rights.  Foreign nationals have constitutional rights?  How do you suppose the original framers of the Constitution would have responded to that?  It seems that a majority of Supreme Court Justices are unclear on the concept of their jobs.  I wonder how many of them have actually ever bothered to read the Constitution?

I get so sick and tired of foreign nationals standing on US soil demanding their "constitutional rights". Imagine someone from the USA going to someone else's homeland and demanding special treatment for being an American. (Okay, we don't have to imagine it...American tourists do it all the time. And they get a rude shock when they learn that the locals consider them bound by local laws, and their US Constitutional protections don't mean squat outside of US borders. Visitors to our shores should get the same kind of wake-up call from time to time.)

The language of the Constitution may be a bit flowery but it is not difficult for a person of normal intelligence and average education to work out the gist of what is meant by each line and passage. For instance, in the Preamble, it states: "We, the People of the United States of America...". Not "We the people of the North American Continent, its neighbors, friends, enemies, and all ships at sea". The very first line of the document spells out who is meant to be protected by it. Citizens of the USA, period. Not Mexicans. Not Palestinians. Not Russians. Not anyone except legitimate and legal citizens of this country.

So the next time you hear someone yelling in a foreign language about being denied his constitutional rights, hand him an application for US citizenship, and direct him to the nearest INS office. I'm sure he'll be SO VERY THANKFUL to you for kindly pointing out his misconceptions. (...that he'll probably punch you in the nose, and then swear out a complaint against you for assault.)


ON AMENDMENTS WE SHOULD NOT PURSUE, AND AMENDMENTS WE SHOULD:

I am opposed to a constitutional amendment which forbids gays to marry. I am also opposed to a constitutional amendment which allows gays to marry. I am opposed to a constitutional amendment which forbids women to get abortions. I am also opposed to a constitutional amendment which allows women to get abortions.

I am opposed to any constitutional amendment which allows or forbids the PEOPLE of the United States of America to do whatever might be at issue. The Constitution of the United States of America is a framework of rules which describe what the federal government is and is not allowed to do. Any amendment which relates to activities of the PEOPLE is a perversion of the document.

Example: Bill of Rights, Amendment 1 - The government is not allowed to tell US citizens what they can and cannot say, is not allowed to tell US citizens where they may assemble for peaceful discourse, is not allowed to limit what US citizens may print, and is not allowed to tell US citizens who, what, or where they may (or may not) worship.

Amendment 2 - The government is not allowed to disarm US citizens.

Amendment 3 - The government is not allowed to station its agents in the homes of US citizens.

Amendment 4 - The government is not allowed to lock US citizens up with no trial and throw away the key. The government is not allowed to manufacture evidence. The government is not allowed to conduct fishing expeditions in US citizens' personal records, or confiscate their posessions on a whim.

Amendment 5 - The government is not allowed to force US citizens to be put on trial without an official declaration of the charge in question. The government is not allowed to try any US citizen twice for the same capitol crime. The government is not allowed to force an accused citizen to testify against himself. The government must make fair-market recompense for any property confiscated for public use.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

If it doesn't put a limit on the behavior of the federal government, it has no business being in the Constitution. Period.

That said, there is an amendment which I was eagerly awaiting proposition of from the moment the Republicans gained majority control of Congress back in 1994.  (Waiting, as it turned out, in vain.)  A constitutional amendment, long overdue, which would put definite limits on the behavior of congress, forcing them to act in the interests of the people of the USA, rather than in their own interests at the expense of the people.

Imagine you are Governor of the State of California. In an address to the people of the state, you promise that for the remainder of your term, there will be no new taxes signed into law. You also promise speedy passage of a much needed Education Reform bill to divert existing tax funds to higher teacher salaries and better-equipped classrooms. Immediately, the state assembly votes to approve said bill, and then sends it to closed committee, where it is cleverly rewritten by your political opponents to include a host of new taxes. Then, without allowing the newly-added line-items to be voted upon individually, they present it to you.

You glance through it, red-pencil the newly-added lines, veto the new taxes, move the money from myriad political pork projects into education, and sign it into law. Everyone (except that closed committee and a few parasites no longer living high on public funds) is happy.

Now imagine you are President of the United States. In an address to the people of the nation, you promise that for the remainder of your term, there will be no new taxes signed into law. You also promise speedy passage of a much needed Education Reform bill to divert existing tax funds to higher teacher salaries and better-equipped classrooms. Immediately, the congress votes to approve said bill, and then sends it to closed committee, where it is cleverly rewritten by your political opponents to include a host of new taxes. Then, without allowing the newly-added line-items to be voted upon individually, they present it to you.

Unlike the State Governor above, you are not armed with a line-item veto. You have no choice, and the political hacks in that closed committee know it; you now need to either veto the entire bill due to the new taxes it now contains and thus go back on your education promise (political suicide), or sign it into law for the education benefits and go back on your tax promise (political suicide).

Which will you choose? Would you prefer to eat the barrel of a .357 Magnum, or a 12-gage Remington pump-action shotgun? Arsenic, or cyanide? Lick the third rail, or jump off a tall building? In the end, only one choice will ever make the slightest difference, and it's a choice that needs to be made (and loudly demanded) by the people, through their elected congressional representatives and senators.

The line-item veto can only be granted to the President of the United States by an Amendment to the Constitution. Back in 1994, when the Republicans gained a majority in Congress, the notion of a Line-Item Veto Amendment was very popular. Now it is 2008, and after 14 years of bluster and demagogery, of filibusters and cloture votes and Supreme Court nominations and scandals and hooraw and noise, we are still no closer to having a Presidential Line-Item Veto than we were the last time the Democrats were in power. And now they're back, probably for another 50 years, and it'll be more of the same dreary old song, again and again, over and over and over.

We need to either pass and ratify a Constitutional Amendment granting the office of the President of the United States the power of the Line-Item Veto (not just for one president's term as was attempted during the Clinton administration, but for all presidents of all political persuasions for all time), or abolish the tradition of sending newly-approved bills to closed committees to be altered dramatically and/or laden with unrelated language & tax hikes which were never part of what was voted upon on the floor, prior to being presented to the President for his blanket signature or veto.

We've only got another couple hundred thousand years before the sun explodes, so we don't have time for all this tail-chasing legislative bullshit anymore. State governments have survived the line-item veto. (Most of them have thrived because of it.) It is time the Federal Government was brought up to speed with the rest of us.

ON UNTESTED, UNPROVABLE PSEUDO-SCIENCE:

Global Warming does indeed exist, as does Global Cooling. Oddly, they exist at the same time. Some parts of the world get warmer, others cooler; some glaciers get thicker while others calve and fall into the sea. Droughts in some regions, torrential rain in others. Nothing is lost but that it is gained back somewhere else. 

Global Warming and Cooling are purely natural aspects of that strange and wonderful thing we call "weather". It has been going on long before there were factories or SUV's or aerosol cans. And it will continue long after those things have been outlawed, dismantled, and buried in mass graves under 60 yards of soft peat.

Mr. Former Vice President Alphonse Gore believes that glaciers are an endangered species, and what a damn shame it is that such forces of grandeur and majesty and raw elemental power and beauty will soon disappear from the Earth. My reply: True, it's such a shame that frozen wastelands where nothing can grow will soon be gone, but when they do vanish, they'll leave behind arable land which can be broken up (nothing bizarre, nothing obscene, just use a little of Alfred Nobel's brainchild here and there), pulverized, fertilized, plowed and sown and watered and lived upon. In my book, life is more important than grandeur, and having the flood waters (even the frozen ones) recede from the land is generally a good thing in the overall balance.


ON POINTLESS POLITICAL HOOPLAH: 

Congress should not spend its valuable time making non-binding resolutions. That's what the United Nations is for.

And, speaking of the UN....

Since the US no longer sits on the UN Security Council, and since the bulk of the UN is openly hostile to us and to our allies, I suggest that it is inappropriate to continue to host that august international debate society here on our own shores. A more central location for them would seem to be more fitting, particularly if it is one in international territory. Therefore, I suggest we move the United Nations, lock, stock, and barrel, to Antarctica.

(I predict that, robbed of the prestige of meeting in NYC, attendance at the UN General Assemby would probably fall off sharply. The small percentage of nations that would continue sending representatives even though the new meeting place was a frozen wasteland instead of a thriving capitalist metropolis would demonstrate far more effectively than any amount of toothless resolutions and ineffectual peace-keeping troops could ever hope to do just how pointless the UN has truly become.)

MWT