Month: March 2017

This is still about the debt ceiling. We’ll get to that but first there’s some historic scenery to set.

It is certain now that there are not two but three parties in the House of Representatives, probably the Senate too.

We know the two major parties. The Democratic Party, which currently has 193 members of the House, and the Republican Party, which ostensibly has 237 members (there are five vacancies since the start of this session of Congress).

But actually the highest number of votes in the Republican Caucus is 207 because 30 of the 237 call themselves the Freedom Caucus. President Trump is at war with them. But he’s late to the game.

They are not Republicans. Continue reading “The Next Complicated Thing: Part II”

The next big decision likely facing the United States Congress after the failure of legislation to undo the Affordable Care Act is probably not, as you have been reading, tax legislation or infrastructure program legislation. No, it is that nasty item called the debt ceiling.

It is not supposed to be a big hard decision but it could well be if the Republican Party again insists on making it so. Because it did that 17 months ago, the United States is in the proverbial pickle barrel.

And this time it is a big, big, big, big problem because since November 2, 2015 to right now, the U.S National debt has risen $1.41 trillion and it has not been acknowledged because of a really peculiar law that took effect that day. More about that as we go one. Continue reading “The Next Complicated Thing: Part I”

Herein is a short explanation of the very strange thing they do in the House of Representatives when they vote  whether to pass a law.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about majorities. It says in every session the members of the House of Representatives and Senate shall choose their leadership.

Contrary to those like Judge Neal Gorsuch, who espouses belief in understanding and being able to divine “the original intent” of the drafters of the Constitution, the well and long established historic truth is they never imagined, envisioned, wanted or made room in that document for a two-party system. Continue reading “Committee of the Whole”

Otto von Bismarck, called “the Iron Chancellor” had a project, to unify Germany under the leadership of his homeland, Prussia, and its king, Wilhelm I.

He succeeded when in 1871 Wilhelm I was proclaimed Kaiser, (emperor). Bismarck through three carefully plotted and planned wars, by diplomacy, with cunning, threats, and political will and skill had forged a new German Empire, a second Reich, in the heart of Europe.

It united Prussia with 25 other German kingdoms, principalities, grand duchies and duchies under the forceful national leadership of Prussia and the Kaiser as the head of state with Bismarck as chancellor, the head of government. Continue reading “A Conservative’s Health Plan: Part I”

Henry Kaiser, born in 1882, was a self-made man. His first job was as a clerk in a department store. Eventually he owned construction companies, an aluminum manufacturing company, auto manufacturing plants and lines of automobiles long since discontinued. His companies helped build the Boulder (Hoover) and Grand Coulee Dams.

He also owned four shipyards on the West Coast and when the war came those shipyards began to produce what came to be called Liberty Ships and later larger ones called Victory Ships. They also built about 100 small aircraft carriers for the Navy. Continue reading “A Conservative’s Health Plan: Part II”

We do not know very much about Rex Tillerson. We know he is tall, that he has a deep sonorous voice, that he has an elegant Texas accent, that he spent 45 years with one company, rising through its ranks until he became CEO of Exxon Mobil.

We know he negotiated deals all over the world for that company for oil and mineral exploration and extraction rights and, by accounts in news reports, achieved among other things the largest drilling rights the Russian Republic has granted to any company, perhaps the largest oil exploration and drilling rights anywhere in the world.

In fact, Exon Mobil, through the offices of Mr. Tillerson and Vladimir Putin, has the right to drill in 63.6 million acres of Russia and Russian waters. That is the equivalent of about 100,000 square miles. By comparison, the state I live in, New Jersey, covers barely 8,900 square miles and Mr. Tilerson’s vast home state, Texas, contains some 27,000 square miles. Continue reading “A Most Peculiar Man”

On March 20, the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate will begin a hearing into whether the Senate should advise and consent to the nomination Judge Neal M. Gorsuch of the Tenth United States Court of Appeals, which sits in Denver, to be a member of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

To set the stage for that hearing it is important to remember that the SCOTUS vacancy he will fill, if confirmed, evolved from the Feb. 13, 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Continue reading “Confirming Judge Gorsuch: Part I”

(The imagined dialogue with Judge Gorsuch continues at his confirmation hearing).

Welcome Judge Gorsuch on behalf of the minority members of the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate. We have some questions for you, which I will being to ask and others of my colleagues will continue if my time runs out.

Let me start by establishing that you are a graduate of Harvard University School of Law. I would observe that while there are 202 accredited law schools in the United States only three are represented on the Supreme Court – those of Harvard, Yale and Columbia. I have always taken umbrage that, by way of example, the Stanford law school or those of USC or UCLA, again only as examples, are not represented on the court. Of course Judge Garland shares the same infirmity. He too graduated from Harvard Law.

It is a fact I find it not surprising but astonishing. Do you think it right that there is an inside track to the high court that has been laid only to those three schools? Maybe we need an informal rule — one justice per law school but no more than that. Continue reading “Confirming Judge Gorsuch: Part 2”

(The imagined dialogue with Judge Gorsuch concludes at his confirmation hearing).

Now, returning to an understanding of original intent, am I correct that the only language in the Constitution concerning the appointment of Supreme Court justices and their consideration by the U.S. Senate is stated in ‘ARTICLE II, SECTION 2, Paragraph 2 (concerning ‘THE POWERS, &C., OF THE PRESIDENT”?

Let me read that portion of the Constitution to you. It says – under the heading, “TREATIES, AMBASSADORS &C.” — noting that the word “He” means the president:

“He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.”

Judge Gorsuch, have I accurately quoted the Constitution there? Continue reading “Confirming Judge Gorsuch: Part 3”

So, you know, there is an election this week in Holland, Wednesday in fact, to choose a new government.

And we all know the Dutch to be a tolerant, democratic people, a beacon in the dark for more than 400 years of European history, from the time they broke away from Spain and became a Republic about 1600; a people open to change and discourse, democracy and diversity. That tolerance plus  windmills and ice skates, tulips and a boy’s finger in the dike are our images of Holland.

But now, it seems, there is a chance that the boy will pull his finger out of democracy’s dike and let loose in Holland the worst and ugliest impulse of humanity, which is hate and fear that is always aimed at the other, whoever the other is deemed to be. Today in Holland some deem it be their Muslim community. Continue reading “The Dutch Election”

What can I tell you? I couldn’t resist this one, just kept going through my head all day the way a tune does.

Well, they sent Kellyanne back for rewiring after the Ivanka thing, and then they let her out this morning to talk about the Trump Tower wiretap allegation.

Wow.

They are going to have to put her back in the shop for more work because she really had — well she really had her wires crossed.

Which reminds me of a tune, snappy one from a few years back. If you’re old as me, maybe you remember it.

Adapted chorus goes (homage to “The Hollies”):

Hey, Kellyanne, what’s your game now
Can anybody play
Hey, Kellyanne, what’s your game now
Can anybody play

See you next month, probably, maybe, though could be the last chance Kellyanne — see how it goes the next time.

Maybe Elon Musk can make you self-drive because the mechanics at the White House? They just seem to send you off in the wrong direction — like every time.

Kellyanne, you are an auto-drive caution, unsafe at any and every speed.

This one is a brief diversion, something I didn’t really plan, want or intend to do here and I am working on a two or three part piece about a current event, one that will be current on Monday, March 20. But tonight, this brief note about walls. Continue reading “Walls”

From 2005 to February 2017, Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon now in Trump’s cabinet committing health policy malpractice, represented Georgia’s 6^th Congressional District.

On April 18 there will be a special election to choose his successor. There are 18 candidates, 11 Republicans, five Democrats, 2 independents. The election is a “jungle” primary — meaning there will not be separate contests to nominate a Republican and a Democrat but a free for all. If someone wins at least 50%, he or she will be elected. If not the top two finishers advance to a June 20 runoff.

One Democrat, Jon Ossoff, has the endorsement of the great John Lewis and has emerged as favorite, not only in Georgia but nationwide, among progressives. Continue reading “House Math: Getting to 218”

I never heard of this man — David Fried — before tonight and that is really a tribute to what he has done, how he has done it and who he did it for – for you and me and our country.

Tonight I did, I heard of him and about him.

I am not quite sure how this Blog stuff works but if it does as I think it will, I am now about to paste in a link to the Time article about his retirement and what he said on retiring just now after 40 years working for us at the United States Department of State. Continue reading “Daniel Fried”

I did not write the last third of this, George Washington did.

At Page A13 today — March 8, 2017, –the New York Times reports 15 new telephoned threats against Jewish organizations and facilities in the nation the day before, bringing the total to 140 bomb threats against 110 such institutions in the U.S. and Canada since Jan. 1.

Why?

Because anti-Muslim tirades, anti-anyone tirades desecrate the presidency the same way Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated: desecrate the office that George Washington consecrated to freedom of conscience and belief. Continue reading “Desecration or Consecration”