Legislators Mostly Quiet About ‘Title-Only’ Bills
To the editor:
Several weeks ago, The Chronicle printed an article concerning “title-only bills,” or “ghost bills,” that was first (if my memory is correct) published by a Longview newspaper about mid-January.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Title only means legislators can submit a bill with a title of, say, Blue Sky, along with a wink and a nod to their fellow lawmakers, get it passed, then fill in the body of the bill later. Nancy Pelosi once said, “We have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.” This is an identical situation. If that doesn’t make you mad, it should.
After mulling that over for a few days, I contacted my 20th District legislators, Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, and Reps. Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis, and Gary Alexander, R-Olympia, to ask two questions.
First, I asked if any of them have ever voted to approve any “title-only bills” and second, why they haven’t made the voters aware that they exist. I did get a response from Alexander within a few days. He, (or more likely his staff) simply stated, “Rep. Alexander does not support the practice of title-only bills.” Thinking they were busy conducting serious state business, I waited to make sure the other two had plenty of time to respond. Now, after waiting well over a month, I felt I had to write this letter.
During my wait, I kept myself up to date by reading The Chronicle (I’m thankful to have local, rational, truthful news available). I’m sure my eyes dilated when I started reading articles about how busy our state legislators were discussing changing the name of our state rock and bird. OK now, I don’t know the cost, but I’ll bet that changing the name of these two things will cost millions of dollars. First is the cost associated with spending days discussing them, next (if done) is the cost of artwork competitions, then the cost of changing state stationery, then millions of text books, and on and on.
For what purpose? Did you or I ask for those to be changed? I sure didn’t. Spend tax dollars, grow government to make politicians more powerful, hoping we, the taxpayers, don’t give a rip or notice. I think most of us do.
Now, with this state being billions of dollars in debt, do you think these elected officials have their priorities straight? I don’t. They should be focusing on issues like making this state more business-friendly, which would entice businesses to move here, thereby creating the much-needed jobs.
So, can Swecker, DeBolt and Alexander justify time spent discussing rocks and birds, along with passing “title-only” bills? Come on, remember last November? Just because they have an “R” behind their name does not automatically get them a Republican vote. Voters, Republicans and Democrats alike, are becoming more disgusted by the day.
Legislators find it easy to ignore our individual letters and phone calls, but you can bet they are taking our pulse by reading The Chronicle.
Jim Long
Onalaska
Greenspan’s Faith in Bankers Misplaced
To the editor:
In 2008, I instituted a “laugh of the year” event when Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, testified to a congressional committee with shock that his ideology was flawed.
“The Maestro” could not imagine that Wall Street bankers and stock brokers (pirates and bandits) would act with such reckless disregard of financial prudence. His faith, pretended at least, that his deity, the market, could behave recklessly was unthinkable. That was falling off my chair and stomach cramping funny.
What can account for such ignorance? Had he never heard of the fall of Rome? John Law? The South Sea Bubble? The Mississippi Bubble? Tulip Mania? Forty-six previous economic cycles since the founding of the United States, including the Great Depression? Some other depressions were very bad; they just didn’t get labeled.
I expect that I scored my laugh of the year recently when I read a piece by Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate economist, about “birthers.” Birthers are folks who do not believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Krugman referred to birthers as being in a state of agnotology, cultured ignorance. For an economist to hurl such a label is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Nothing defines agnotology better than economics.
There is another phrase that fits economists well — credentialed misinformers. The phrase particularly fits Krugman as a columnist. He continues, generally, to advocate the policy of Keynesianism, deficit spending by the government to stimulate the economy. This policy was originated in the Great Depression. By 1936, deficit hawks got control of Congress and started another recession; dimwitted deficit hawks are repeating history now.
World War II ended the Depression and sextupled the national debt. The financial military-industrial complex continued to build the debt with the cold war and subsequent hot wars. Current national debt is $14 trillion.
There is a solution to cultured economic agnotology. The Congress must exercise its constitutional mandate to create a debt-free currency and stop borrowing money created as debt by private bandits and pirates.
Thanks, Paul, for adding to my vocabulary and giving me a word for Greenspan’s ignorance. Yours, too.
Robert Poteat
Onalaska
