Just Do Your Job.

Just Do Your Job.  A short “shout out” edition of CenterlineRight; going out to all those wonderful public officials who forgot exactly why they are called public officials.

To Baucas and Hatch:  This is so incredibly ridiculous that it tests our belief.  It has apparently become so difficult and dangerous to offer fundamentally good ideas for legislation that these two have offered “50 years of secrecy” to Senators who submit proposals for tax reform.  Where do I begin….In most universes, one would want their efforts to actually perform the job to which they were elected to be a matter of public record.  Only in the bizarro world of the U.S. Senate do they wish to perform their necessary work in secret, afraid that voters might find out that they are actually trying to do something that really makes sense.

To Eric Holder:  So many issues for America’s leading law enforcement agent to pursue and so little time; and yet, he still manages to somehow ignore the fires and continue the fiddling.  Now, in all of his infinite wisdom, he has determined that Texas should not exercise its fundamental right to conduct its own electoral business (within constitutional parameters) and they should first submit any changes to that process to him for review before implementation.  Judging from his record as Attorney General and how he has managed the legal affairs of various federal departments and agencies, is this a good idea.   NOT!!!!!

To President Obama: Having graduated from throwing his political appointees under the bus to throwing entire cities (Detroit anyone??) under the bus, the President has once again demonstrated that he has forgotten not only that he is not running for re-election (sorry, two terms of incompetence is at least one too many) but also that he has now been president for four and a half years.  Lecturing us once again about class warfare, he raises the specter of phony scandals (really...phony?), Republican intransigence (Dem control in the White House and Senate anyone?), and once again beating the long-dead cow of “the economy”.   Own it, Barrack; the only economic activity going on these days is the artificial pumping being performed by you and Congress and the props being manufactured wholesale by Ben and the Fed.  Like the Spanish train, we are going way too fast with our priming when we consider the condition of the rails on which we are running. 

What Is Driving Racism?

What Is Driving Racism?  To honestly seek an answer to this question, we must first ask another, or subsequent, question: Who profits from racism?  The answer to the first question has now gotten immensely more difficult to ascertain because the answer to the second is limitless.

Let us start the list.  Our President counted on, and courted, racism to get elected and continues to do so to maintain authority.  Capitol Hill is populated with elected and appointed officials who stoke the fires of racism to maintain vitality in their supporters and thereby remain in office.  The “Hip Hop” culture nourishes racism in order to make tremendous profit from commercial successes.  The media fans the flames of racism in order to attract viewers and sell air time for commercials.  Sharpton, Jackson and other such characters live eat, and breathe racism so they can….well…so they can continue to live, eat, and breathe.   The faculty of our country’s secondary educational institutions continues to focus on racism in order to appease their innermost liberal tendencies; to keep that “warm and fuzzy” feeling glowing inside.    Bigots of all colors continue to espouse hate and venom because they feel threatened by diversity and change; they like things just the way they are.    

The plain and simple fact is that there are premiums to be gained by keeping racism strong and healthy in our society.  All people, black and white and brown and yellow, are born with a tendency to join with people like themselves.  It is life that teaches us that all men are created equal and there are good and bad among all groups.  It is life that demonstrates the character of a person lies within and not without.  It is life that will give us all the opportunity to live, love, and enjoy a diversity of people in our lives rather than live in a secluded and lonely world.  It is the people who are gleaning the premiums, the ones who use racism as a tool or device, the ones who sell themselves as martyrs for the cause when the cause is nothing but themselves…these are the people who keep the seething, hateful anger and resentment of racism alive and well in our society. 

Until we as a people stand up and stop delivering the premiums, these people will continue to be successful.  The answer lays within each us.

Trying To Do It Right.



Trying To Do It Right.  A couple of kudos go out the House this week and one big raspberry to the Senate.  While the Senate continues to bicker about nuclear options, hold meaningless, bi-partisan press conferences on the steps outside that create enough hot air to launch a dirigible, and of course, continues to pass legislation in massive bundles with large ideas and very little substance, the House has made a common sense move to how farm bill and food stamp law is passed and has continued their process of rational and reasoned immigration reform

First, let us address the nuclear option.  It is nothing short of hilarious to see Reid make such a plea for the nuclear option when not that long ago, he was so adamantly opposed to it.  Likewise, what was once a great idea for McConnell is now a move that would wreck the Senate?  Bloviating aside, the plain and simple fact is that no legislation should pass the Senate with a party-line majority of only 51 votes.  If the majority party cannot get at least a handful of the opposition party to support a bill, it should not be passed.  This nuclear garbage is the kind of idiotic thinking that brought us Obamacare.  Can we learn nothing?

Now let’s jump over to the House.  The House has moved and passed 4 separate pieces of legislation dealing with immigration reform.  They are now considering, not with a “gang of ???” but with the proper Committee chair, a bill to deal with young illegal immigrants who were born and raised in this country.  Whether or not we agree with the substance of the legislation, this is the way to make law.  You take a bite that you can reasonably chew, you take sufficient time to chew it, and then you swallow.  The only reservation I have about Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor in this particular process is how much input came from the House Democrats.  I don’t think any of the 4 bills passed on a party-line vote, but I am not sure that very many Dems had a real opportunity to influence the content prior to the bill coming to the floor.  In the area of farm bill and food stamp law, the House made the common sense decision to split the combined bill for both into two separate bills.  Even though both areas are under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Department, they are clearly programs of interest to two distinct demographics; urban versus rural.  They need to be split and be addressed separately to eliminate the unholy tradeoffs that have been occurring between the two factions for decades.  Examine each on its own merit and try to pass a good farm bill and a good food stamp bill.  

The point is that regardless of the rancor and venom that is being spewed on Capitol Hill these days, the House is demonstrating, at least in these areas, that they know how to legislate.  It is yet to be determined if they know how to legislate wisely.

We Get What We Pay For.



We Get What We Pay For.  Why have we, the USA, been saddled with so many arbitrary, capricious, and simply wrong-headed laws over the last couple of decades….and increasingly so?  The blame lies at the feet of all three branches of our government, but for this post, I will give the Judiciary a pass and dump on the Executive and the Legislative.

I think there is a large misconception with the public that makes them believe that the laws and regulations that they encounter in their everyday lives are actually passed by Congress.  It is true that a good many of them are; but a good many of them are not.  Rather than legislating an actual law or regulation, Congress has given the authority to do so to the Executive branch and their appointees.  This trend, that I will refer to as “legislating on the slide”, has been more prominent over the last few years (predating Obama) and shows no sign of letting up.  It is best illustrated by huge boondoggles such as farm bills, tax reform, Obamacare, and (if passed) immigration reform.  I see two ready explanations for this occurrence.  First, the fact is that actual legislation must be written and put in hard copy; it should be read, debated, and understood and that requires a colossal amount of work.  It is far easier to limit that effort to grand ideas, far reaching directives, hypocritical language, and to forgetting that every government benefit requires, at some point, an application process and benefit processing.   This is why many times a Senator or Representative has a clearly different interpretation of a law (after passage) than that of a Department Secretary or Administrator.  Mr. Congressman…If that is the way you want it, put it in the bill in plain language; do not pass the buck to the Secretary or Administrator.  Is it any wonder that each Administration finds new and creative ways to weave their agendas into our laws and federal programs?  The fact is that Congress gives them the openings and they take advantage of them.  The best illustration of this practice is Ms. Pelosi’s remarks that we should pass Obamacare to find out what is in it; ‘Nuff said; those chickens are just now beginning to find their way home.  Secondly, the plain and simple truth is that Congress and their staffs, as bright and intelligent as they are (and many of them are), and as great as their resources are, simply are not competent to legislate in the areas they address.  They refuse to do the heavy lifting that requires public hearings and actually interfacing with the affected citizens.  They refuse to limit themselves to the budgetary limits that each of us have to do on a monthly basis. Their glowing rhetoric notwithstanding, they (each and every one of them) still spend money like it grows on trees.  And finally, and most important, they DO NOT utilize the greatest resource available to them when trying to write law and regulation; that being the legions of career government employees who deal with these programs on a daily basis.  I am talking about the ones who stand at counters and desks and fill out the forms; the ones who have to explain why eligibility and compliance rules are so arbitrary; and the ones who pay those who clearly don’t need it and bypass many of those who just as clearly do need some help.  Every time a Senate or House Committee or Sub-Committee turns its membership over, the incoming personnel feel the need to “reinvent the wheel”.  They feel empowered with such an abundance of wisdom that all that went before them is irrelevant; they have arrived with a better way.  Thus our government is locked in the cycle of repeating the same errors in judgment over and over through the years.  The escape accountability for this because we, the voters, have such short memories and the time elapsed between the reinventions allows us to forget.  Is it any wonder that our government is so inefficient and riddled with waste and duplicity? 

Government employees have a bad reputation; an undeserved stereotype.  When we talk about government employees, it is essential that we separate political appointees from career employees.  Political appointees have the power; career employees do the grunt work.  Political appointees take all the credit for the good; career employees take all the blame for bad policy (crap runs downhill).  Political appointees come and go for a period of months or a handful of years; career employees work for 30 years or more and watch Presidents, Senators, and Representatives come and go like yesterday’s news.  Like all professions, there are good career employees and there are bad ones; but the overwhelming percentage are hard working folks just like you and me that are busting their humps every week to earn their paycheck and do the best they can with what they have to work with.  These people, the ones who know what actually works and doesn’t work because they have seen it proven in the real world, should be utilized when our Congress tries to write new laws.  Rather than insert language that passes “administrative and discretionary authority” to the Secretary or some other political appointee, Congress needs to knuckle down, do their due diligence, listen to people who actually know what they are talking about based on life experience, and…perhaps most importantly…be a damn sight more efficient with their language and regulations.  The hard truth is that sometimes…the less government, the better.  When viewing some of the nonsense that Congress passes and the President signs, one has to believe that they are simply trying to justify their existence by signing something…anything.

I have been very critical of the Obama administration and what I perceive to be its abuse of executive power.  But as low as my esteem is for this Administration and this President, I think a greater portion of blame must go to those who have sat in Congress over the last couple of decades and forsaken their responsibilities to promulgate good law.  They took the easy way out; they chose to “legislate on the slide”.

Through A Glass...Darkly.

Through A Glass…Darkly.   As scripture and Bergman tell us, it is difficult, if not impossible, to see things clearly while we are in the midst of them; true clarity requires either death or removal from circumstances.  So it is with Presidential administrations.  This is likely the main reason that most presidents tend to see their favorability ratings rise in the years after they leave office; as we gain greater appreciation after-the-fact for the challenges faced by our presidents during their term(s) in office.   I do believe also that it is human nature for our memories to gravitate towards the pleasant and away from the unpleasant; we are, by nature, forgiving creatures.  With these things in mind, we might reflect for a moment or two on the likely legacy of President Obama.   These reflections, of course, will be processed through my eyes and they will not necessarily reflect the views of many.  However, I do cling to the belief that the way I look at life is not that different from everyman and everywoman and will be, by and large, quite fair towards our President.   It must also be stated that any evaluation of this president will be incomplete at best and also subject to the ripening of history, but is that no what prognostication is all about?

In my lifetime (60 plus years), there has never been a president enter into office with a greater opportunity to coalesce majority support behind fundamental change in how our government does business.     The major portion of this good will was based on the fact that he is our first president of color; but a good deal of it was also attributable to his youth and his idealistic view of the world and how our nation fits into that tapestry.  Given this rare opportunity to affect monumental change, history will likely view his initial term in office as a colossal waste of opportunity.   Now some may say that Obamacare certainly qualifies as “monumental change” and that is a valid argument.  But I did qualify that change in my first sentence as change with majority support and in that sense, Obamacare is certainly dubious.  I also believe that even if Obamacare is judged by the ages as being a fundamental change, Obama did not lead the legislative effort to pass it; he delegated that task to Reid and Pelosi.  So even though Obamacare occurred on his watch, it was hardly a child of his making.  His presence facilitated its passage, but his intellect had little if anything to do with its content.  So…let’s take Obamacare off the table for now.  Let’s see…that leaves us with……?.   It would seem that any realistic assessment of Obama’s first term would reveal that he spent basically all of his political capital on the passage of Obamacare and having accomplished that, he was content with filling the administration with believers of his ilk, turning the ship of state over to them, and then conducting a perpetual campaign.  Such a waste. 

Now if this mode of operation was limited to a single term, it would easily fit into a frame and one could see how it might be revised, revoked, or otherwise factor into the long string of presidential terms going back over the decades.  Unfortunately, that will not be the case.  Obama will be our President for another three and a half years and the decision has apparently been made to continue, with renewed determination, the quest for a permanent change in how our government looks, acts, and functions through the use of executive fiat.  This quest, at the expense of our prominent place in global affairs, is apparently well on its way towards a surprisingly successful conclusion.  The pathetic Republican presence in Congress has shown its only retort to this president is delay and disregard.  They are as bankrupt as the Democrats when it comes to real and practical change in how our government does business.  Lost on many is the fact that our President must lead both parties; not just the one of which he is a member.  The laissez-faire approach practiced by Obama is beginning to show its faults, however.   Many of the trusted lieutenants selected by the One have allowed their authority to go to their head.  They have abused their power, pursued ideology over good government, and demonstrated an alarming lack of competence and ethics.  The fashion in which the Administration has reacted to the first few episodes of these failures does not bode well for the next three years plus.   

For a man who was held so highly by so many, Obama has proven to be quite the disappointment.  His promise as a great orator has been exposed as a knack for reading electronic screens.  His agility as a negotiator has been pathetically slow and has instead morphed into the character of a petulant high school student.  But perhaps the most alarming indicator of all for the immediate future is his apparent intent to continue his model of allowing his minions to do the everyday work of implementing government while he floats above the fray; venturing in occasionally to toss a partisan barb or to pose for a photo op.  Whatever the content of his character and wisdom may be, and indications so far are not at all promising, it seems we will never really know much about it due his penchant for sitting on the observation deck while other hands man the wheel.