Here’s the important part of the State of the Union address, edited for clarity:
“. . . my fellow citizens . . . the State of our Union is [a mess].”
That, at least, would be an honest appraisal of the situation. In all the years I’ve been watching the State of the Union I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that was so much an unoriginal cut n’ paste job from speeches of the past. I’m afraid the President’s behaviour a rhetoric has crossed the line from resoluteness to mulishness. My God! How many times do we have to hear about the “Wetbacks for everyone!” plan that’s not – no really – not an opportunity to wildly increase the number of United States citizens who can’t pronounce “George Washington”. In fifty years we’ll be learning about Padre Weems’ apocryphal story of Jorge cutting down the cherry tree.
And we’re going to cut the amount of gasoline used by 20% in ten years? Would that be 20% less than today or 20% less than ten years from now? And how precisely do you expect to do that? Am I the only one who thinks the downside to all these new fuels is still waiting to be discovered? What happens if in five years we find out that biodiesel byproducts cause your toenails to fall off? I guess we’ll be back to gasoline. At $300 a barrel.
I find myself happy to see Democrats in charge of the Congress. I am increasingly convinced that the best possible outcome for government is complete and total inaction. The less that gets done the less likely things are to get worse. I am fully in favor of one entire congress being dedicated entirely to repealing laws: make no new laws, change no existing laws. Spend your entire two years solely repealing existing laws that are old, useless, harmful or insane. Then Congress would be permitted to spend the following congress solely modifying existing law. Still no new laws. Once that job was done, then – and only then – would they be permitted to enact new law but only to repair or strengthen those glaring omissions discovered in the full examination of the previous two congresses.
Less forward progress folks, that’s what we need. A nice long breather. Many of the problems we’re all so eager to see fixed could be repaired merely by repealing the laws that caused the problem in the first place. Less damned laws for everyone.