Tom, I mostly know you from your Twitter wars in which I'm an occasional participant and avid spectator. I hope that occasions will arise in which you will address and engage with a room full of district residents. I don't feel the urgency that some do, and wish such occasions be constructive, not confrontational.
That said, this is my first occasion to reach out to you by the House email. The enforcement of immigration law is my issue. You might recall early in your Twitter career making a quip about sanctuary cities, to which I responded with a request to Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer to consider making it a sanctuary city. My position on such places is that their absence gives sanctuary to law enforcement from Due Process and other proper restraints. Sanctuary cities affirm our Constitution, while it is circumvented outside of them.
The activities of ICE agents has been newsworthy this past few weeks. Some say the pace of apprehensions has been consistent with recent trends. Others say the manner and target of apprehensions is categorically more hostile and arbitrary than before. You would know better than I the truth of the matter. I hope you are receptive to the truth of things despite what I regard as an extreme partisan lens.
I am moved to write by an article in Salon (we have such different preferences in news sources) by Matthew Rosza, dated this morning, Feb 16, 2017. The article suggests that ICE is specifically targeting places of refuge such as shelters from domestic abuse and cold temperatures. I shudder to think how sexual traffickers are cheering this development.
My own perspective comes from brief experience as a Census enumerator in the years leading up to the 2000 Census. I was often called to assure residents from whom, at the time, my one concern was collecting address information, that information was entirely confidential and unavailable to law enforcement, tax authorities or other possible sources of jeopardy.
The nature of my request is simple. The 2020 Census must maintain firewalls against any government object other than obtaining accurate aggregate information with which allocation of Congressman and other government resources are guided. The confidentiality of individual Census information must be inviolate. I expect from you an email or postal response specific to the 2020 Census.
BTW, when my car needed a jump start during my Census work, the one who stopped was a migrant apple picker. I did not ask his right to be here. I expect his employer followed applicable laws. But that incident, about 18 years ago, has ever since colored my appreciation of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. He was my neighbor.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
As I watch the sit-in
A vote is coming. A vote is coming because a person struggling with lustful feelings he found repugnant got caught up in the culture wars. He sought a champion. He sought to be a champion. On Sept 12, 2001, a decision was made, to call the perpetrators of that criminal act champions of a cause. Holy warriors, not the debased thugs they were. And so, this tormented man saw the Junior League thugs of Daesh as champions, and adopted their tactics. And he was abetted in his quest to be a champion by a gun culture that affects potency as capacity for carnage. That's not specifically American culture. Most kleptocratic, autocratic and failed states (and criminal gangs) have a group of predators packing heat as a cultural ideal of empowered manhood. The integrity of this armed caste produced a convoluted etiquette among men that cannot abide acknowledged sexual lust or behavior. Gun culture killed the Orlando 49. The designation of the 9/11 bombers and their exploiters as warriors, not criminals, killed the Orlando 49. The self-loathing of a man whose cultural heritage could not abide or direct or relieve his homosexual impulses killed the Orlando 49.
And so a vote is coming. A vote to create a caste of people who are trusted with guns, and a caste disarmed. A vote to identify people by edict as disqualified for full citizenship. A vote to say yes to disarming for life (disenfranchising as well) the young man with a rock of cocaine base, while preserving full citizenship for the young man with a vial of cocaine powder. A vote too say yes to disarming the young man who calls Allah God with enough fervor to cause others discomfort, but to preserve the right of the young man who does not know God by name, but keeps evoking Him against the dreaded stranger.
Keeping guns out of the hands of people who ought not have guns is not the vote that should be taken, whether is involves universal background check, no-fly/no-buy, or good-guys with guns being the remedy against bad-guys with guns. All such designations create, whether by edict or some pretense of due process, a cohort who regard themselves as our protectors, but, like George Zimmerman, become our tormentors. No such cohort should exist among free men except under discipline. So says the Second Amendment. The vote ought be -- how to make access to that discipline consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment. How to have a national uniform discipline of armed citizens which resembles Dumas' Musketeers and not Duvalier's Macoute. How to encourage this body to be an enterprise of civic hospitality, not xenophobic hostility.
Last fall, I lobbied my Congressman for the second time on behalf of America Walks. My partner on visits to five Congresspersons (VA 3, 5, 7, 8, 10) and both Senators was a sports medicine physician. The easy access of hostile people to firearms came up in our travels. We both agreed that hostility was the issue more than firearms. And how to address hostility? Get outside. Get active. Get engaged in the world as it is, and not insist (and let ourselves be gratified by those who let us pretend, for a fee) that the would ought and could be just the way I like it. Infrastructure for unstructured spontaneous play and activity is the best investment Congress can make toward greater civility, satiety, and safety in the lives of the people.
And so a vote is coming. A vote to create a caste of people who are trusted with guns, and a caste disarmed. A vote to identify people by edict as disqualified for full citizenship. A vote to say yes to disarming for life (disenfranchising as well) the young man with a rock of cocaine base, while preserving full citizenship for the young man with a vial of cocaine powder. A vote too say yes to disarming the young man who calls Allah God with enough fervor to cause others discomfort, but to preserve the right of the young man who does not know God by name, but keeps evoking Him against the dreaded stranger.
Keeping guns out of the hands of people who ought not have guns is not the vote that should be taken, whether is involves universal background check, no-fly/no-buy, or good-guys with guns being the remedy against bad-guys with guns. All such designations create, whether by edict or some pretense of due process, a cohort who regard themselves as our protectors, but, like George Zimmerman, become our tormentors. No such cohort should exist among free men except under discipline. So says the Second Amendment. The vote ought be -- how to make access to that discipline consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment. How to have a national uniform discipline of armed citizens which resembles Dumas' Musketeers and not Duvalier's Macoute. How to encourage this body to be an enterprise of civic hospitality, not xenophobic hostility.
Last fall, I lobbied my Congressman for the second time on behalf of America Walks. My partner on visits to five Congresspersons (VA 3, 5, 7, 8, 10) and both Senators was a sports medicine physician. The easy access of hostile people to firearms came up in our travels. We both agreed that hostility was the issue more than firearms. And how to address hostility? Get outside. Get active. Get engaged in the world as it is, and not insist (and let ourselves be gratified by those who let us pretend, for a fee) that the would ought and could be just the way I like it. Infrastructure for unstructured spontaneous play and activity is the best investment Congress can make toward greater civility, satiety, and safety in the lives of the people.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
House Speaker
My email to Bobby Hurt (Rep VA 5th Congressional District)
I've a few litmus tests for politicians. They need to avow a belief in an ancient universe and natural selection. They need to be receptive to the notion that human activity influences climate, and have serious proposals on international cooperation to avert climactic disaster. They need to loathe predatory consumer finance.
I expect you fail all three of my "must have" criteria in a politician. But I can be persuaded otherwise. I wonder if any Republican congressman could meet all three criteria. If such exist, I hope he could be drafted as Speaker. I expect a sufficient number of Democrats could embrace such a person to provide votes to counter any opposition from the Crazy Caucus, and elect what is, essentially a national, not a party leader. I hope you will chose such a leader.
I've a few litmus tests for politicians. They need to avow a belief in an ancient universe and natural selection. They need to be receptive to the notion that human activity influences climate, and have serious proposals on international cooperation to avert climactic disaster. They need to loathe predatory consumer finance.
I expect you fail all three of my "must have" criteria in a politician. But I can be persuaded otherwise. I wonder if any Republican congressman could meet all three criteria. If such exist, I hope he could be drafted as Speaker. I expect a sufficient number of Democrats could embrace such a person to provide votes to counter any opposition from the Crazy Caucus, and elect what is, essentially a national, not a party leader. I hope you will chose such a leader.
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Bobby Hurt again
I notice gas prices lately have not given you an opportunity to demagogue. Though perhaps you're tempted to gloat, as lives have been jeopardized and communities ruined for tertiary recovery of fossil energy. I remember the days, in Nixon's administration, and Ford's, when I worked as a summer intern for what was then ERDA, I believe, predecessor to the DoE, abstracting proposals for such technologies. I'm delighted to see them brought to fruition. I'm not so delighted at the methane cloud above New Mexico and contaminated well water in other communities. Perhaps even aquifer depletion is occurring. (I forgot about earthquakes when writing Bobby Hurt). All these externalities by which we are subsidizing the current cheap price of gas. These externalities must be internalized into the price of crude and methane and gasoline, by regulated compensation and strict tort liability for the extractors. Let's pay at the pump for their increased direct and underwriting expenses.
I've said as much in the past. Why I write now is because I got an email from the Union of Concerned Scientists about the issue of proprietary formulations of fracking chemicals as an impediment to community and plaintiff action. I call on you to set low thresholds for presumptive evidence of harm, sufficient to subpoena and force disclosure of chemicals used, and as I've said in the past, to create a rebutable presumption that such chemicals in groundwater both originate from the fracking operation and contribute to illness if such contribution is evident in laboratory animals. Underwriting costs will likely soar in a just legal and regulatory system for tertiary extraction. SO BE IT!! PAY AT THE PUMP!!!
I've said as much in the past. Why I write now is because I got an email from the Union of Concerned Scientists about the issue of proprietary formulations of fracking chemicals as an impediment to community and plaintiff action. I call on you to set low thresholds for presumptive evidence of harm, sufficient to subpoena and force disclosure of chemicals used, and as I've said in the past, to create a rebutable presumption that such chemicals in groundwater both originate from the fracking operation and contribute to illness if such contribution is evident in laboratory animals. Underwriting costs will likely soar in a just legal and regulatory system for tertiary extraction. SO BE IT!! PAY AT THE PUMP!!!
Friday, August 15, 2014
Bobby Hurt Wrote Back!!!
And I reciprocated .......
I was quite fond of Virgil's "Goode News." Virgil had some peculiar views. He was proud of them. They marked him as a maverick, not a marionette. Your newsletters have consistently pointed to the latter. I think I've expressed myself on that point repeatedly. I won't belabor.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote on the subject of your evident glee in thwarting the private property rights of St. James College, and your gratuitous parroting of unfounded and pejorative characterization by the looney fringe of the motivations and actions of our President. Also, you were proud of legislation that guts humane and wholesome laws, rather than fully fund their enforcement, and encourage Lawrenceville's participation in upholding the Rule of Law.
None of the recent response to my email addresses my concerns, but neither does it reinforce my concerns. You speak as a Congressman -- saying essentially nothing, but in a way that reflects a consideration of broad concerns which indeed have thwarted even the heroic efforts of Bush 43 to bring about a consensus. We are a similar age. If my father has his way, I'd have been Hampton-Sidney class of 1976. Instead, I went to Carnegie Mellon, and remember a fondness of Woody Guthrie, especially his Hobo's Lullaby and Los Gatos. That was 1948. It ain't going away. They ain't going away. I remember at Carnegie being a fan of Milton Freedman. Funny how Chile suffered under his advisorship. Funny how Alan Greenspan regrets the failure of objectivist ideology as a governing principle. Funny how those same principles failed Bremer's consulship in Iraq. YOU AND PAUL RYAN ARE IN THRALL TO A PROVEN FAILURE. -- but I digress. Dr. Freedman spoke of voting with your feet. What is more violent? The intrusion of our borders, or what is necessary to deflect that intrusion? Are people coming here to be given stuff? I think not. They want to be safe. They want to pursue aspirations. They want to be Americans!
I digress again. I was doing Census work in 1999 in the orchard country around Covesville during harvest season. When I had car trouble -- who came to my aid? Not the priest. Not the Levite. THE SAMARITAN! I'm proud to have such neighbors. I wish the law would adapt to the facts on the ground rather than promote violence to alter those facts. In fact, I demand it. Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Pope Francis all demand it. And that is a much better governing principle than the "Triumph of the Will" philosophy prevalent in the Bush Administration. Perhaps Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand aren't so bad after all -- it's the Leni Riefenstahl aberration of the wingnut Right that screwed up Chile's and Iraq's economy, and are working hard (out of Wichita) to undermine our own.
In closing -- I wasn't particularly pleased by your response to my email, but was at least pleased to not be so aggressively and egregiously displeased as is routine from you weekly newsletter.
I was quite fond of Virgil's "Goode News." Virgil had some peculiar views. He was proud of them. They marked him as a maverick, not a marionette. Your newsletters have consistently pointed to the latter. I think I've expressed myself on that point repeatedly. I won't belabor.
A couple weeks ago, I wrote on the subject of your evident glee in thwarting the private property rights of St. James College, and your gratuitous parroting of unfounded and pejorative characterization by the looney fringe of the motivations and actions of our President. Also, you were proud of legislation that guts humane and wholesome laws, rather than fully fund their enforcement, and encourage Lawrenceville's participation in upholding the Rule of Law.
None of the recent response to my email addresses my concerns, but neither does it reinforce my concerns. You speak as a Congressman -- saying essentially nothing, but in a way that reflects a consideration of broad concerns which indeed have thwarted even the heroic efforts of Bush 43 to bring about a consensus. We are a similar age. If my father has his way, I'd have been Hampton-Sidney class of 1976. Instead, I went to Carnegie Mellon, and remember a fondness of Woody Guthrie, especially his Hobo's Lullaby and Los Gatos. That was 1948. It ain't going away. They ain't going away. I remember at Carnegie being a fan of Milton Freedman. Funny how Chile suffered under his advisorship. Funny how Alan Greenspan regrets the failure of objectivist ideology as a governing principle. Funny how those same principles failed Bremer's consulship in Iraq. YOU AND PAUL RYAN ARE IN THRALL TO A PROVEN FAILURE. -- but I digress. Dr. Freedman spoke of voting with your feet. What is more violent? The intrusion of our borders, or what is necessary to deflect that intrusion? Are people coming here to be given stuff? I think not. They want to be safe. They want to pursue aspirations. They want to be Americans!
I digress again. I was doing Census work in 1999 in the orchard country around Covesville during harvest season. When I had car trouble -- who came to my aid? Not the priest. Not the Levite. THE SAMARITAN! I'm proud to have such neighbors. I wish the law would adapt to the facts on the ground rather than promote violence to alter those facts. In fact, I demand it. Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and Pope Francis all demand it. And that is a much better governing principle than the "Triumph of the Will" philosophy prevalent in the Bush Administration. Perhaps Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand aren't so bad after all -- it's the Leni Riefenstahl aberration of the wingnut Right that screwed up Chile's and Iraq's economy, and are working hard (out of Wichita) to undermine our own.
In closing -- I wasn't particularly pleased by your response to my email, but was at least pleased to not be so aggressively and egregiously displeased as is routine from you weekly newsletter.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Bobby Hurt is pissing me off yet again.
Rep Robert Hurt of Virginia's 5th Congressional District (our Represntative from Wichita) sends out a weekly email, touting the Kleptocrat party talking points. Last week, he was calling our President bad names. I sent a quick note there, especially in light of his pride in the interference in the private property rights of a local entity. Didn't blog it. This week it's a repeat of the "House Republicans have paved the way for the rape of our communities and wage-enslavement of our neighbors, BUT THE SENATE WON'T YIELD" trope that shows up every few weeks, on slow news weeks (or embarrassing rich news weeks).
I just cutting and pasting what I wrote. Maybe a few links thrown in for context...........
I've written in the past advocating private and public infrastructure investment. It would be nice to see a US Govt balance sheet where debt was balanced against income-generating assets. Then your 17 Trillion figure would be, hopefully, a net positive, and not a bankrupt government.
But my concern is the recent report that greenhouse gas emissions from Alberta oil sands are projected to exceed by a factor of three prior projections. And yet, with our cooperation or without -- say a British Columbia route to China or a Saskatchewan route to Europe -- extraction, refining, and combustion will proceed. Those gases are there, like it or not. (OR pretend it doesn't matter or not).
TAX CARBON!!! Build the pipeline, and tax carbon. Tax Western Virginia coal carbon. Tax the release of methane by fracking operations. Tax cow flatulence. Don't indemnify groundwater contamination and other externalities of extraction and transport. In fact, write laws which make it a rebuttable presumption that contamination originates from extractive use or transportation spill of the contaminating substances, with specific, preferably treble penalties. PAY AT THE PUMP!!!
Stop the subsidizing of harmful externalities. Create systems of compensation and remediation. Then, we will end up paying more money for our BTUs, entirely voluntary, when we pay at the pump. The system you are perpetuating with your very un-Republican objection to cap and trade, is one of violent coercion where I am enslaved by the consumer of cheap energy, who pollutes my air, my water, my vistas, my sacred natural spaces, even the very weather, to keep fuel cheap, at his neighbor's expense. I should think Ayn Rand would abhor the kind of coercive violence you have been advocating. And certainly Pope Francis has expressed his explicit abhorrence.
TAX CARBON!!! perhaps Cap and Trade. PAY AT THE PUMP!!! These are not socialist values. THESE ARE CHRISTIAN AND AMERICAN VALUES. INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE -- the Whig and Republican parties were born on that value. In times of cheap capital -- Where are the investments in low-unit-cost, large-capital energy production and conservation projects? Private projects? You, in your committee assignments, have and have squandered opportunities to alter that. Where is the information, transportation, electrical distribution, waste disposal, water impound, and other investment, both public and private? Why is Congress wanting to see America squander the Whig/Republican ethic that fed our prosperity? Why is Congress facilitating the erosion of the physical and moral fabric of America to subsidize the Plutocrats and Kleptocrats, who impoverish communities when they come waltzing in with their unregistered private equity advisors.
I just cutting and pasting what I wrote. Maybe a few links thrown in for context...........
I've written in the past advocating private and public infrastructure investment. It would be nice to see a US Govt balance sheet where debt was balanced against income-generating assets. Then your 17 Trillion figure would be, hopefully, a net positive, and not a bankrupt government.
But my concern is the recent report that greenhouse gas emissions from Alberta oil sands are projected to exceed by a factor of three prior projections. And yet, with our cooperation or without -- say a British Columbia route to China or a Saskatchewan route to Europe -- extraction, refining, and combustion will proceed. Those gases are there, like it or not. (OR pretend it doesn't matter or not).
TAX CARBON!!! Build the pipeline, and tax carbon. Tax Western Virginia coal carbon. Tax the release of methane by fracking operations. Tax cow flatulence. Don't indemnify groundwater contamination and other externalities of extraction and transport. In fact, write laws which make it a rebuttable presumption that contamination originates from extractive use or transportation spill of the contaminating substances, with specific, preferably treble penalties. PAY AT THE PUMP!!!
Stop the subsidizing of harmful externalities. Create systems of compensation and remediation. Then, we will end up paying more money for our BTUs, entirely voluntary, when we pay at the pump. The system you are perpetuating with your very un-Republican objection to cap and trade, is one of violent coercion where I am enslaved by the consumer of cheap energy, who pollutes my air, my water, my vistas, my sacred natural spaces, even the very weather, to keep fuel cheap, at his neighbor's expense. I should think Ayn Rand would abhor the kind of coercive violence you have been advocating. And certainly Pope Francis has expressed his explicit abhorrence.
TAX CARBON!!! perhaps Cap and Trade. PAY AT THE PUMP!!! These are not socialist values. THESE ARE CHRISTIAN AND AMERICAN VALUES. INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE -- the Whig and Republican parties were born on that value. In times of cheap capital -- Where are the investments in low-unit-cost, large-capital energy production and conservation projects? Private projects? You, in your committee assignments, have and have squandered opportunities to alter that. Where is the information, transportation, electrical distribution, waste disposal, water impound, and other investment, both public and private? Why is Congress wanting to see America squander the Whig/Republican ethic that fed our prosperity? Why is Congress facilitating the erosion of the physical and moral fabric of America to subsidize the Plutocrats and Kleptocrats, who impoverish communities when they come waltzing in with their unregistered private equity advisors.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Boehner
The IRS where? Cincinnati, you say? Boehner cronies in a false flag operation, I think. And the destruction of data only makes that seem more likely. But I believe truth will out.
It was like the cold war days. Russia hates China hates USA. The object is for A to harm B, while implication C. Then B and C are at war -- and A prevails. False flag, that's what I think.
Now this lawsuit. WTF!!! I would think that exemption from regulation, temporal or absolute, are part of the unmitigated power of the president to pardon. Perhaps unitary executive doctrine requires a specific exemption from the President -- an explicit executive order. Given the Republican preference for a strong (unitary) executive, then perhaps they are pursuing an action which they win by losing, solidifying the doctrine of absolute pardon power beyond criminal clemency. Boehner must be a genius. An evil genius, alas. Braniac from Superman, colored orange not green. There must be a word for a lawsuit that one wins by losing. Unconstitutional certainly.
It was like the cold war days. Russia hates China hates USA. The object is for A to harm B, while implication C. Then B and C are at war -- and A prevails. False flag, that's what I think.
Now this lawsuit. WTF!!! I would think that exemption from regulation, temporal or absolute, are part of the unmitigated power of the president to pardon. Perhaps unitary executive doctrine requires a specific exemption from the President -- an explicit executive order. Given the Republican preference for a strong (unitary) executive, then perhaps they are pursuing an action which they win by losing, solidifying the doctrine of absolute pardon power beyond criminal clemency. Boehner must be a genius. An evil genius, alas. Braniac from Superman, colored orange not green. There must be a word for a lawsuit that one wins by losing. Unconstitutional certainly.
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