Via Bayou Renaissance Man I found a quote from Dustbury that goes well with my “Modest Proposal”:
Well said.
Also, I’ve never been comfortable when we passed the “it’s too big for paper” threshold some years ago. How do we really know a certain source of rule/law/regulation is the correct source? How do we know it hasn’t changed, not even one comma, while sitting in a cloud drive somewhere? Can you prove it? Can anyone prove it?
I can go to DC and read the Constitution. I can even fly to Europe and read the Magna Carta. I cannot read Obamacare from a paper source.
I like the “physical checksum” of information printed on paper and physically stored in a million locations. Like maybe every county library in the States and any University or Citizen that wants a copy. I’ve already seen web information and Google searches go down the memory hole. How do we know “The Kumquat Appreciation, Solar Panels for Homeless Rabbits, and Land Based Transportation Overhaul Act of 2018”, all 50 gazillion pages of it, is precisely archived word for word for the long run? At some point we’re just agreeing to whatever the electronic text server du jour shovels our way.
I shall replicate my own ‘modest proposal’ at BRM’s blog here:
How about a ‘Read it or Weep’ bill?
Requires ANY proposed legislation to be read on the floor:
In it’s entirety
In person
By the AUTHOR (no more ghost written bills for you!)
In no more than 15 minutes time (no more ‘we need to pass it to find out what’s in it’ sized bills)
Further, if said proposed legislation is an alteration to an existing law, then said current law SHALL be read IN IT’S ENTIRETY with said proposed changes noted.
Call me suspicious, but just like they reduced the deficit by moving social security “off the books” (and screwing voters in perpetuity) if there’s a way to cheat that could be found by 535 lawyers looking for a way to cheat they will find that way.
Oh, of course they’ll cheat. Words cannot make immoral men become moral. But it gives ’em another hill to climb before they start pissing me off. In my less elegant solution at least Supreme Court Justices get tattooed with the constitution and I’d surely savor the moment.
That’s a brilliant idea. It worked wonders for Jacques Necker.
I simply LOVE that I get comments that involve the finance minister for Louis XVI just before the French revolution. I’d never heard of the guy before, what being less than a scholar on French 18th century politics. Now I gotta’ read up on him! All I gleaned from wikipedia is that he’s either a contributor to the French mess or not and somehow he wound up not guillotined. (The latter is no small feat considering the French revolution’s um… headcount.) I’ve got homework to do!