Thursday, January 6, 2011

Constitution

For the first time, the Constitution was read aloud by Congress on the House floor. Rep Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) organized it.

Maybe they'll start following it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

....picks self up off floor from laughing....

I'm pretty sure, being politicians, that before the ink was dry, people were abusing the spirit and loopholes of said document.

America has made a more gallant attempt at a solid republic than other places (such as the Russian Federation), but over time, any system gets infested by lawyers (vermin mostly) and politicans (see prior observation on lawyers). Most systems start infested by them. And then there are the criminal and corporate elements and the lobbyists (oh wait, as Clemens would say, I believe I repeat myself).

We're lucky our systems have stood as well as they have this last while.

Maybe the continuing insanity in the financial markets (setting up another market bubble, raising the debt limit to avoid default, crashing the housing market further, etc) will drag us into a bad enough state that we'll need to take a good look at the nightmare and realize that the UK, France, Portugal, Greece, Spain, etc. all got into the hole because they spent more than they earned....

And increasing taxes (vs. growing the economy) is NOT how you fix a fiscal shortfall in a depressed economy.

And for that matter, spending lots more to cover all sorts of handouts to banks (too big to fail? break it up!) and car companies (ditto) and then trying to protect everyone from acknowledging that our consumer spending is all out of whack with actual priorities (you don't need an iPhone, you do need a roof)... the only result of that is further folly and a false sense the sky has not fallen.

Well, it may not have fallen, but it is hanging like the proverbial Damoclean Sword and it will be coming down....

We're idiots, we've dug our own hole, and the Chinese are going to buy up the best assets and resources at firesale prices. We've done it to ourselves; They are just being prudent and optimizing opportunity. I hate their government, but I have to respect its cold calculus of advantage and its ability to be in a position to act on opportunity.

Somewhere along the line we forgot how to be entrepeneurs, manufacturers, makers of things. Now we think the value is in research... no strike that, not much of that done.... invention... no strike that and the patent system is an albatross... service... no that's all immigrants and we wouldn't soil our own hands with that... ah, yes, I have it... MIDDLE MANAGEMENT.

We can add value to the world by telling people how we who don't do think they who do should do things and how we've got a powerpoint with a matrix and a process that will solve all of the problems.

Sometimes the idea of an end of days seems like delayed justice...