I Am Completely Serious

Cut for Kentucky politics.

( Read more... )

Dad: You have to vote tomorrow, you have to vote for [his friend] and against [mom's enemy]!

Me: I don't know anything about the people they're running against. - wait, in Papaw's neighborhood today, there was this guy going around hassling people, he was sort of shaped like a cinderblock and had a buzzcut, who was he?

Dad: Uh... probably [name], he's running for [office].

Me: Okay. He was parked in a stupid place so I couldn't pull out, so I'll vote so I can vote against him.

Dad: His opponent runs a pit bull puppy mill, though! Keep that in mind.

Me: I'll write in my own name or something.

A congressional committee had to have Bruce Schneier brief them on the NSA's various unconstitutional activites, because the NSA, obviously, was not about to do so:

This morning, I spent an hour in a closed room with six members of Congress: Rep. Lofgren, Rep. Sensenbrenner, Rep. Scott, Rep. Goodlatte, Rep Thompson, and Rep. Amash. No staffers, no public: just them. Lofgren had asked me to brief her and a few Representatives on the NSA. She said that the NSA wasn't forthcoming about their activities, and they wanted me -- as someone with access to the Snowden documents -- to explain to them what the NSA was doing. Of course, I'm not going to give details on the meeting, except to say that it was candid and interesting. And that it's extremely freaky that Congress has such a difficult time getting information out of the NSA that they have to ask me. I really want oversight to work better in this country.

It would be nice if I could feel that decisions were going to be made based on Schneier's input rather than that of the Dementors, but let's be real: Mike Rogers, who's the head of the House Intelligence Committee, was on TV saying that Snowden had had help from Russia getting access to documents on a system for which he had administrative privileges.

What did he need Russia for, were Russian spies going to carry his pen drive for him? Was it an unusually heavy pen drive? Maybe he had trouble starting his car some days, and he needed a Russian spy to turn the key for him, or hold down the pedal.

What the hell does the House Intelligence Committee do when it meets, play Parcheesi? It can't be Monopoly, that's too complicated.

The Millionaire Law:

Anyone possessing more than one million dollars in assets, solid or liquid, is ineligible to run for public office of any kind. The same rule applies to appointees to major state and federal offices. If a millionaire sincerely wishes to serve their country in this way, they have the option of donating the remainder of their wealth to the Social Security fund. Those worthy of the public trust should have no problem with this.

It's a felony for an office-seeker to "hide" money in any way; putting it overseas, donating it to a nonprofit which will hire the individual and/or their family members, divorcing their spouse for the duration of their term in office/term of employment, and so on. It does not need to be proven the individual was "knowingly" a millionaire at the time. If a person has over $500,000 in assets, he or she certainly knows where to find a good accountant. Ignorance is not a defense.*

The minimum sentence is at least five years, and again, the social security fund gets whatever is left over after rewarding any whistleblowers who may have been involved in bringing this to light. Whistleblowers get 25% of the recovered money with a cap of two million. They're also granted immunity from prosecution for any nonviolent crimes which they may have committed in the course of acquiring their information.

There are obviously other things that need to be done - SuperPACs and the revolving door still need to be dealt with. However, the root of our problem is simply that the extremely wealthy don't belong in public office, unless they're willing to demonstrate that they value their duties over their wealth.

We'd lose a few good people from this, I'm sure, and I regret that - but we'd lose a lot more bad ones.

* There may need to be a severance clause for this part. I think the nature of felony convictions generally requires intent, but the thing is that extremely wealthy people often make a choice not to know exactly how wealthy they are. If there are no legal repercussions for "accidentally" misrepresenting yourself, people are going to "accidentally" misrepresent themselves.

It was very small - maybe five people when we got there. I warned a guy Dad was talking to not to let him hold a sign, because he was the 1%. (No, though we were on our way to a law office probably populated by several such.)

I asked a woman how things were going, and if the police had bothered them. She said no, "they're doing their own protest later if you want to come see."

We passed by again after our conference with the 1%, and they were, along with the firefighters. It appeared to be union-organized, and was relatively big and tidy - maybe forty people, matching t-shirts for everyone. I think it was about funding cuts, but I'm not actually sure what the specifics were - I haven't located any news coverage of this.

I kind of feel like there should be some? I also suspect that there must have been at least one other police union protest coinciding with an Occupation by now. Lexington is, after all, our nation's most sedentary city! Not often the first past the goal. Yet when I search for "occupy" and "police" on google news, all I see is stuff with the word "clash" or "confrontation" in it.

It gave me the odd impression that, perhaps, some of our nation's news reporting might be edited to keep it in line with a specific narrative. Surely not, though.