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Why I don’t trust Versailles on the Potomac any longer…
Posted by Duncan on July 8th, 2009
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.
“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.
Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.
In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.
Wonderful. Representatives no longer read the bills that they then vote on but are dependent on “staffers” to spoon feed them the Cliffs Notes version. What exactly do we play these no-talent a-clowns for again? The same reason there is no real “filibuster” anymore with everyone sitting there listening to one dude read the phone book, because our Representatives are lazy, money-grubbing politicians bent on their own selfish desires, or so it seems by their collective, single-minded behavior.
I bet you thought that if you bought a house, you actually own it and can, with reasonable exceptions, do with it what you want. You probably think that if you want to live in a log cabin, with wood stoves that belch smoke into the air for heat, and an old washer and dryer that don’t have those little EnergyStar stickers on them you can because it’s your life and your property. You paid for it with money you earned with the sweat of your brow and what the heck is America anyhow if a body can’t live in the home they want furnished with the appliances they want?
Ah, silly you. You didn’t reckon on the Democratic Party’s desire to control every miniscule aspect of your life.
Let me introduce you to a little section of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill called the “Building Energy Performance Labeling Program”. It’s section 304 of the bill and it says, basically, that your house belongs to the state. See, the Federal Government really wants a country full of energy-efficient homes, so much so that the bill mandates that new homes be 30 percent more energy efficient than the current building code on the very day the law is signed. That efficiency goes up to 50 percent by 2014 and only goes higher from there, all the way to 2030. That, by the way, is not merely a target but a requirement of the law. New homes must reach those efficiency targets no matter what.
But what does that have to do with current homeowners like you? Well, I’m glad you asked. You’re certainly not off the hook, no way, no how. Here’s what the Democrats have planned for you. The program requires that states label their buildings so that we can all know how efficient every building (that includes residential and non-residential buildings) is and it requires that the information be made public.
And it only gets worse from there… trust me… the control over what is yours only gets more insidious..
Mark Steyn asks the question:
I confess I’m finding it harder and harder to see why you fellows bothered holding a revolution.
I find myself asking the same question. We seem hell bent on giving back our hard fought freedoms back to modern day bureaucratic tyrants…
(I think you are getting the visual equivalent of my point through these pictures, hopefully)
July 8th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
did you read the cap-and-trade bill?
July 9th, 2009 at 9:09 am
This question is supposed to somehow question the validity of my post, as if whether or not I’ve read it in its entirety changes that fact that the bill contains provisions that give the federal government the ability to intrude into places they’ve never been allowed to go before at levels of control unthought of, except maybe for Orwell.
Perhaps if I just read the same amount as the average congress-critter, would that be sufficient dj? Maybe just the having other bloggers give me the Cliffs Notes version just like our “elected representatives” get from their staffers who wade through these massive bills? That cool?
Or if I told you I read the entire thing, every little word and section? Has the validity of my post been somehow secured in your mind. Probably not, since you were attempting to insinuate that had I actually read the entire thing, I should realize that it really is not that much of a big deal and how this bill is simply going to help us all be saved from the looming threat of
global coolingglobal warmingclimate changeclimate crisis.Watch out! The sky is falling, and I need you to give up your freedom and property to my control in order to save you from yourselves…
July 9th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I am questioning the validity of your post. I’m also questioning your judgment. You seem so adamant about how evil this bill is that I’m going to give you the benefit of my doubt and say that you have fully read this bill. After all, you just tore into the senators who vote on bills without reading them, so I can only assume that you couldn’t possibly decide a bill is trash with out reading it first.
I agree with you that its wrong for senators to vote on a bill without reading it. Its not “cool” so don’t put words in my mouth. However, I would up the validity of your post if you told me that you read the bill. All I see is a quote from a slanted third party source. How is anyone suppose to believe you (or your source) when go all Michigan Militia on an issue.
July 9th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I’d hate to be the guy in the first pic, when the monk (who is probably also a martial artist) gets a chance to kick back.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Dj, I’ll confess that I’ve not read the “Cap & Trade” bill, but if the provision noted about residential energy conservation requirements is true, I wouldn’t compare the congress critters to a box of rocks for fear of offending the rocks.
In most sections of the country the existing energy conservation requirements are borderline sense-making at best. Where do Waxman, Algore, Obama, McCain and the rest of the “save the earth” crowd think all that batt and rigid insulation comes from? That it grows on trees and is harvested, like apples or plums? Or maybe it’s mined and processed in it’s final form?
Of course, I wouldn’t expect such people (including our Hawvud-grad prez) to understand the Law of Diminishing Returns. It’s obviously waaaayyy too complicated for them.
And yes, I do know of which I speak. I had to study the entire subject extensively as a plans examiner, and as a member of our state’s Energy Conservation Board.