Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Who is writing these modern edifices of entanglement called bills?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi Signed the H...

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Health Care : 2700 pages

Cap and Trade : 987 pages

Immigration : 1400 pages

That's a lot.

So tell me, how large is the staff of each senator and congressman? Large enough to read and comprehend this Mammon of content? Or perhaps they are creating it? Which ones?

This is what Nancy Pelosi lists:
Chief of Staff:John Lawrence
Scheduler:Melinda Medlin
Legislative Director: Dick Meltzer
Communications Director: Brendon Daly
But there are more to be sure. Is an unlisted person creating the parameters of a panel which decides what treatment of pancreatic cancer is experimental and which acceptable? What is the expertise?

Or are the staffers taking their cues from those in HHS whose empire will be enlarged? Or over in some suite at Aetna? Or Rahm's brother?

On Cap and Trade, who is deciding how much carbon is too much for Lieberman and Kerry to penalize some entity? A staffer emailing Phil Jones? Greenpeace? Someone with heavy investments in natural gas who wants an advantage vs coal? Someone shorting Fluor or BP?

Who actually composes the content we argue over, which, more than likely is read by the 9 of 535 members who read the 2003 NIE on Iraq before voting on war?




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2 comments:

midnight rider said...

They are written by 13 year circumcised Liechtensteiner and (as yet) (at least until the bioethics committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics has their way) uncircumcised Liechtensteinerin illegal immigrants who are paid the princely (and princessly) sum of 35 cents an hour to work 20.3 hours a day (you thought South American sweat shops were bad), laboring to produce a better life for us all and guarantee them a place in line to suckle at Welfaramerica's very soon to be blind teat.

Or so I've been told.

cjk said...

'In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.'
Tacitus

THEREFORE: In a law where corruption abounds, words must be very numerous.