Again, e-mail...

To continue my earlier rant on the impediment that a web-form represents in communicating with your elected representatives, consider my last post, on my communication with Senator Boxer. I sent an e-mail, via her web-form, and received a reply. The reply clearly stipulated, in a postscript:

Please do not reply to this e-mail. This is not an active e-mail address.

If you wish to comment further on this issue or an any other issue and want to ensure an answer--please complete the form at http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/webform.cfm

So, even after the office staff has deemed an e-mail worthy of a categorical reply, no possibility of dialogue will be tolerated. Instead, it's back to the web-form, if I wish to continue. Now, here are some of the objections I would raise to that process:

1. If I wish to record my communications to Senator Boxer (or anyone else using that fouled up approach to "communication", I will have to edit them in some text editor, save a copy, and then paste to the web-form. Standard e-mail would alleviate the need for those extra steps.
2. If I wish to communicate again, on the same issue, and make them understand that it's not a new letter, but a continued communication, I will need to cut and paste from the record I had to save separately, as the web-form clearly doesn't support quoting from an earlier message; in the web-form world, there is no earlier message. No context. No history. Scale the mountain again; from the base.
3. Now, supposing that I did save a record, and further, that I quoted from that record, I will before long run afoul of their fairly standard 10,000 character limit. And for anyone not conversant with computerese, characters means not only letters, but spaces and punctuation, as well. And line breaks.

Do you really suppose that any one of our elected representatives that so carefully avoides giving out an e-mail address has any slightest interest in what we may wish to communicate? Really? Then no doubt you also believe in the Easter bunny!

Cloture: Its Use and Abuse

I recently wrote to one of my Senators regarding the present silliness in which they are indulging: the application of the cloture rule to override the intention of the U.S. Constitution. I received a reply:

Dear Mr. Meyer:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the
confirmation process for federal judicial
nominations. I appreciate the opportunity to
respond to your views.

The rules of the Senate, through the
cloture rule, provide a means to bring debate to
a close. The cloture rule states that 60
Senators can vote to place a time limit on
debate. If some Senators strongly oppose a bill
or nominee, they can vote to continue debate.
Unless all Senators agree to have a final vote,
a final vote on any matter can be taken only if
and when 60 Senators vote for cloture. The so-
called "nuclear option" would change, through
back-door parliamentary maneuvers, this long-
standing Senate tradition so that debate on
nominations could be ended by just 51 votes.

I am strongly opposed to changing this
long-standing rule of the Senate to make it
easier for judicial nominees outside of the
mainstream to be confirmed. As a Senator, I
have always taken very seriously my
Constitutional duty to provide the President
with "Advice and Consent." I will continue to
consider each nomination that is sent to the
Senate by President Bush very carefully, keeping
your views in mind.

Thank you again for writing to me on this
important issue. Please do not hesitate to
contact me in the future about matters that are
of importance to you.


Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer

United States Senator

First, let me say that this is a terrific improvement over my first experience with Ms. Boxer's office. On that occasion, I sent a letter strongly opposing her position of the moment, and her staff mindlessly offered up a letter thanking me for supporting her position.

So much for representation.

In the current matter, however, Ms. Boxer's efforts to impress me with the cloture rule fail utterly. First, while it's true that the cloture rule has a long tradition (though as she does not state, its tradition includes at least as much abuse as use), the long standing tradition does not include any precedent for its current application to violate the Constitution by effectively requiring a supermajority for confirmation to the judiciary. And worse, when this is invoked in committee, it's not even the full Senate that stops the process, but a superminority!

Let me observe in passing, however, that I had not really expected better, given Ms. Boxer's record; I am not so foolish as that.

The issue here rests on a few key issues:

• The Constitution calls for advice and consent, not advice and denial. To me that suggests that this was intended as a process not expected to routinely do other than confirm. And history supports that supposition.
• The cloture rule is now being used (and remember this is only a rule of the Senate -- something of considerably less importance than the Constitution) to require a supermajority in the advice and consent process. The Constitution is very clear about the contexts in which a supermajority is needed; they are:

• Convicting an Impeachment (2/3 majority in the Senate - Article 1, Section 3)
• Expulsion of a member of one house of Congress (2/3 vote of the house in question - Article 1, Section 5)
• Override a Presidential Veto (2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate - Article 1, Section 7)
• Ratify a treaty (2/3 majority in the Senate - Article 2, Section 2)
• Passing of a Constitutional Amendment by Congress (2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate - Article 5)
• Calling for a Constitutional Convention (2/3 of the state legislatures - Article 5)
• Ratifying a Constitutional Amendment (3/4 of the states - Article 5)
• Restore the ability of certain rebels to serve in the government (2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate - 14th Amendment)
• Approval of removal of the President from his position after the Vice President and the Cabinet approve such removal and after the President contests the removal (2/3 majority in both the House and the Senate 25th Amendment)

• Cloture is not the filibuster, per se, but the means of ending the filibuster through a supermajority. It is quite apparent that the framers of the Constitution could not have foreseen this abuse; had they done so, I have no doubt they would have written expressly to forbid such abuse.

Of particular interest in this case is the net impact of the filibusters, which is to exclude from judicial office (at least at the appellate level, or above) anyone, it seems, who holds strong religious beliefs. This is, on its face, unconstitutional. It is a particularly egregious form of discrimination.

Finally, we should bear in mind that we elect these people to do our work -- to manage the government we find essential to the preservation of the union. When they persist in filibuster, it may rightly be argued that they are effectively refusing to do their jobs. And in that case, we should turn them out, at the next election, and replace them with some who take more seriously the needs and wishes of the electorate.

Not One Thin Dime...

The battle cry has been raised: On the Captain's Quarters, the Captain has held forth on the subject of the filibusters, vowing Not One Dime for the Republicans unless they get off their backsides and fix the filibuster mess. How many weeks have we heard about the nuclear option or the Constitutional option? How often have we been told that this won't go on forever?

I'm with the Captain, enough is enough. I want to see the judges passed out of committee for an up/down vote, as they should have. I want to see an end to the shenanigans over the John Bolton nomination.

How long can we be expected to pay these adult delinquents to carry on their debate society games, rather than doing the work for which they were elected? I'm angry, and can't for the life of me imagine how any honest working person could be less than irate.

Free and Easy e-mail...

Ever tried to e-mail any senators? Know how difficult it can be, if you want to contact more than one of them?

I tried it out today. Many, perhaps most, have so-called web-forms for e-mail. What that means in practice is that instead of having the convenience of your e-mail tool of choice for communication, what you get is a web page on which you can compose a message after you provide full and detailed contact information about yourself. Oh, and the message must be kept to fewer than 10,000 characters.

Senators appear not to think much of their constituents. So when next you go to vote, keep that in mind. They need to work a good deal harder for the people who put them in office, and spend a lot less time wasting time and money on foolishness such as filibusters in committee.

In the meantime, I would like to suggest that as many as possible write to their senators and representatives, and lodge their complaints with that system, and insist on simple e-mail addresses. They are so fond of referring to what they do as serving the people that I believe we should let them. But what that should mean is serving in a way satisfactory to citizens, not to themselves, nor to their office staff.

Feeling Overtaxed?

Jeff Cornwall posted a singularly appropriate collection of thoughts for this tax day on his blog. We're long overdue for intelligent change to the tax code, instead of the seemingly endless tinkering, all of which seems to result in higher taxes for most of us who are not indigent.

I've been watching and listening to the various proposals to replace the income tax for about 25 years now, and I'm getting damned tired of the wait. And with the AMT bidding to assault most of us sometime in the next 5 years, it's high time that our Representatives and Senators got off their collective posteriors and fixed this mess. Almost anything would be an improvement, but the usual problem obtains: Is there an adequate number of politicians in D.C. with guts enough to act, and integrity enough to choose one or another of the plans that would improve the situation?

Tired of Waiting?

There's an excellent post over on Captain's Quarters about the frustration of waiting to see any sign that the majority leadership in the Senate will do anything to end the filibustering of nominations.

Now I don't always agree with the Bush administration, but I rarely agree with Harry Reid and his gang, and above all, I detest the games played by men and women we elected to work for us when they decide not to work at all.

It's time to get their attention, and Captain Ed has it right: cut off the contributions, and they will listen.

Being an American

The core concept of being an American is our citizenship. It's something those of us born here may often have taken too much for granted.

Being an American, a citizen, means being a committed member of this society. It includes the franchise, which is both a right and a privilege, the opportunity to participate actively in voting for the men and women to whom we entrust our safety through their management of the American government.

Being a citizen also means that we mey be called upon, from time to time, to serve on a jury. Since we cannot choose when this occurs, we may find it inconvenient, even annoying, but it is our responsibility to present ourselves to the court on the appointed day, and to be selected, or not.

Being a citizen means, or should, that we will make a determined effort to educate ourselves with regard to the issues facing our various governments, federal, state and local, so that when the day comes to vote, we may do so in a responsible and informed manner, not in ignorance.

In bad times, being a citizen means that we may also be called to defend our country, and if necessary, to die in that cause. But as the saying goes, freedom is not free.

Being a legal immigrant (a redundant term, as immigration is intrinsically a legal process) brings with it some of the rights of a citizen. Being an illegal alien (the too much heard phrase illegal immigrant is an oxymoron — one cannot be an immigrant and illegal) brings, or should, none of the rights of a citizen, and should routinely result in deportation, not a mere serving of papers, but the forthright eviction from our country, our home, to that from which the illegal alien originated. Overwrought oration that references phrases such as due process and legal entitlements has no place here; those are due a citizen, but not to an illegal alien.

When illegal aliens (also known as federal criminals, as that's precisely what they are) are given the opportunity to remain here, simply because of the efforts of some overly empathic folk whose understanding of the law and of the U.S. Constitution is nil, what we see is the criminal application of inflation cheapening the treasure we call U.S. citizenship.

When a state refuses to participate in the responsibility of policing our national borders from an informal invasion by aliens, we are witnessing the malfeasance of our politicians, and it may even rise to the level of treasonous behavior — they took an oath, each of them, to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution, and the laws of our land. Nowhere in that oath is there an escape clause.

When illegal aliens are afforded expensive health care at no cost — health care not available to a citizen or legal immigrant other than at great cost, then each of us is being robbed, not by the aliens in question, but by our elected representatives, and worse, by the unelected judges those representatives appoint, and who render judgments against the welfare of citizens.

When President Bush referred to the Minutemen now patrolling the southern border of Arizona as vigilantes, he was in grave error; they are patriots, and they are doing a spectacular job, a job that must be done by citizen volunteers because the government employees hired for that function are not doing it.

Should we at some future date find ourselves outvoted by a population of people whose ability to vote (I won't call it a right) was obtained through some dilution of immigration laws, or worse, through an outright amnesty, then not only has the value of our citizenship been lost, but we will have lost our country.

...and Speaking of Inflation

Today the notable Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) held forth on the airwaves repeatedly, and in shrill tone, defending the health of Social Security on the basis of those special class T-bills that replaced the real money they took from us, declaring that of course the money was protected by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.

/long pause/

How's that again? The government has only such funds as they take from us, folks, so redeeming those T-bills (currently some $1.7T in value) will mean yet another trip to our hip pockets, mattresses, and bank accounts. Unless they simply fire up the presses and print new cash, thereby avoiding the ugly detail of a legal tax increase. As Milton Friedman pointed out, "Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."

Let us all remember, though, that as they make us pay, so too, must we exact payment from them, when the time comes. Vote 'em out. All of them.

The Inflation of Lies

So first we heard that the transition costs resulting from partial privatization would come to some $2 trillion. Last week, I heard a new figure — $5 trillion — being tossed about as debt load that would result from the same partial privatization. I have yet to hear or see any cogent discussion of the foundation for such claims.

Let's do some math. If the revenue for 2004 was $658 billion, then 4% of that would amount to some $26.2 billion. If we relate that to $5 trillion, we're talking (5x10^12)/(26.2x10^9), or a factor of about 190. Now how on earth do you suppose that even a bunch of knuckleheaded politicians could achieve that sort of catastrophic result? I have to admit it, I'm impressed.

On the more mundane side of things, I've noticed that while the pols speak of the terrible damage to be done by the diversion of 4% of the revenue — and note that the 4% is still a modest fraction of last year's $157 billion overcharge (another factor on which they remain silent) — not one of them has, in my hearing, mentioned that a similar diversion of liability is paired with the reduced revenue. Folks, the 4% that goes into private accounts represents a 4% reduction in benefits, too.

So the (t)wits in D.C. are doing their best (on both sides of the aisle, sad to say) to blame the entire impending catastrophe on that niggling 4% proposal that Bush advanced. Oh, and let's also recall that the proposal was no more than a sketch; Bush clearly left the implementation ball in the Congressional courts. But then, as those fellows seem to have far more balls nerve than brains, perhaps that one was simply lost?

One cannot help but wonder just what fools they believe their constituents to be. And if we send them yet again to do our work, their beliefs are well founded.