What Is Governing, and What Is Not
In late September we were treated to a show by the performance artists in the far-right Chaos Caucus of the Republican Party, led by Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. This nearly devolved into an actual government shutdown. It seems like any positive legislative proposal these days must endure a gauntlet filled with warlords and highwaymen ready to exact a ransom. We can all agree that obstructionist grandstanding and political extortion is not governing. Good governance is building, not destroying. It is about persuasion and coalition building, not extortion.
The Big Lie Conspiracy
The Declaration of Independence was based on a conspiracy theory. That theory was that the King of England and his high ministers had secretly agreed to deprive the American colonists of their rights as English citizens and to impose tyrannical rule. This type of conspiracism, which tries to make sense of a disorderly world by asserting that powerful people are controlling events behind the scenes, can be quite useful in a democracy. But this useful type of conspiracism has been replaced today by an insidious type not concerned at all with facts. The leading example is the Big Lie -- that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected President in 2020 because the election was stolen from Trump.
Higher Registration Fees For Hybrid Vehicles – What’s Up With That?
Awhile back, a good friend of mine spent half an hour complaining to me about having to pay an additional $100 when he registered his Prius hybrid vehicle. That caused me to wonder why West Virginia would want to discourage the ownership of these vehicles with a whopping big tax. Hybrids consume lots less gasoline and emit proportionately less greenhouse gasses from the tailpipe. That’s a good thing, right? The answer, of course, is not so simple.
Industry To West Virginia: We Can’t Be Bothered
They’re at it again. Under the cover of the Covid pandemic, when citizens can’t rally in numbers, the West Virginia legislature is poised to gut one of the key protections of the Aboveground Storage Tank Act enacted after the 2014 water crisis that left 300,000 West Virginians without safe drinking water. The bill is pushed by tank owners and backed by industry. The reason? As Charlie Burd of the Gas and Oil Association of WV says, the regulation is too burdensome. Translation: We can’t be bothered.
Can Trump Pardon Himself?
The stink from the pile of Trump’s pardons is palpable – it is the stink of corruption and abuse of power. A high percentage of these pardons have gone to those with a personal or political connection to him. Those receiving his favor include murderers, dishonest politicians, fraudsters, thieves, and liars. The question of the moment is whether a president can pardon himself. The power to pardon has been exercised by presidents over 20,000 times and never once has anyone attempted to pardon himself. We may be about to witness a president try to absolve himself of his own criminal conduct for the first time. Can Trump get away with this?
Finding Where Your Rights End and Mine Begin
I get annoyed by inane government rules and being told what to do by officious clerks. I have always had a small authority problem. I’ll wager I am not alone in this, but a developmental task toward adulthood is recognizing this as a personal failing. It is not evidence of some natural or constitutional right to be ornery.
The Electoral College: How it Works – and Doesn’t Work.
Let’s start with a simple proposition with which most everyone these days would agree – the President of the United States should be elected by a majority of voters. Over this nation’s more than 240-year history, our understanding of democracy has come to mean one person one vote, with each of those votes being equally valuable. Nowhere should that be more important than in the election of the President. But our Founders had a different notion of how the election of the President should work.