I think the wall is a completely stupid idea — based on emotion rather than statistics about the source of immigration violations, not an effective solution even if the problem were people sneaking across the border. But I am seeing a way to get this whole debacle sorted within the Executive branch (which may not be legal, because government budgeting isn’t quite the same as corporate budgeting). When we’ve got projects that are under-budget, the extra money can get moved over to some other purpose. Well, if we can shut down the government for no good reason during budget negotiations … what if the Executive branch shut down all those “non-essential” services for a while to free up money that can be transferred over to DHS? How long would the government need to be shut down?
For a five billion dollar wall (again, HA!) … since the FY2019 budget is like 4.4 trillion dollars, we spend 12 billion a day. Say 90% of that is essential. Five days of shutdown would fund the wall. Which doesn’t make the wall a good idea. Or mean Congress should just approve it to get the whole debacle over with. But it certainly says something about government spending that the wall is half of a day worth of spending. And it certainly says something about our government that it gets shut down over half a day worth of spending.
Will withdrawing from Syria and Afghanistan be move that swings Senate Republicans against Trump? Matt Taibbi speculates exactly this. I’ve wondered why Republicans stand by Trump so relentlessly — it’s not like Pence *wouldn’t* deregulate environmental and financial industries, create refugee crises at the border, and cut taxes without a care to deficit spending. Figure it’s got to be the 30 percent (or whatever) of the voters who actually think Trump is doing the right thing. Say the country is split pretty evenly between the two parties — and that the 50% on the Democratic side aren’t likely to be talked into voting Republican … that means Trump’s deplorables *are* the majority of the Republican voters. Now a historically successful (not to mention reasonable) ploy is to adjust your platform to appeal to more voters … but evidently no one wants to walk that path. Motivate your voters or put the other guy’s voters off works too — but the circus act that is the Trump campaign is about the pinnacle of motivating voters, and no one is sure who is running next cycle to dissuade people from fully supporting the individual. So they’re sticking by Trump … unless. Could the military industrial complex — and all of that money — be the thing that turns them?
The question makes me think of Trent Lott. Who had all sorts of faults, but public opinion turned on him when he said “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.” Which … anyone who bothered to find out could have known Lott liked Thurmond. It’s like Capone going down on tax evasion — yeah, I’m glad the dude got put in prison (or resigned from office, or thrown out) but over that?!?
Good news, we know know Trump’s secret plan to defeat ISIS — have Erdogan do it! Now I don’t think we’ve got much business in the Middle East (or Afghanistan). And “have countries in the region – Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan – sort it” isn’t exactly a novel approach. But it is especially ironic for someone who touted their secret plan to subsequently say anyone else told him they’d take care of it.
Good news — at this rate, they’ll have collected enough money for “the wall” sometime before the fourth millennium.
The wall costs 5 bill (ha!). They raised 6 mil between 16 Dec and 3PM today — which I’m calling three and a half days because today isn’t over & maybe he created it at 23:58 on the 16th. A five billion dollar wall would be fully funded in a mere 8 years — or the year 2026. But there’s also the half billion a year to maintain the wall — failing to maintain the thing creates a dilapidated monument to Trump’s … oh, wait, that’s fitting. Their daily contribution rate exceeds the estimated operating run rate, so they’ll need to keep raising funds until they’ve got a trust to cover the wall’s expenses.
From one way of looking at it, legislative moves to limit the power of incoming administrations are brilliant (I mean, it sucks beyond the telling of things but still). I’m losing the majority, dump money into local races and gain the power to reorganize voting districts so I still win. I *still* manage to lose even in my gerrymandered districts, redefine what the elected government can actually do while I’m still in power. You can find yourself screwed over by your own rules — see: Scott Walker but if you’re losing voters … it’s a decent gambit.
It also, short term, addresses a concern I see because compromise is no longer a thing. If we cannot agree on some middle ground, regulations are going to vacillate between extremes as the side in power flips. So we get 4 years of fuck the environment, who needs to publicize accounting nonsense we know your books are right, drill baby drill, hey food producers – inspect yourselves and fill out this form if you find a violation otherwise we’ll assume it’s all good man. Followed by four years of umm, I wanted to breathe that air, remember Enron. How about Deep Water Horizon? Upton Sinclair? How was that hospital visit after your last bowl of romaine? It’s expensive for companies to change processes and re-engineer to meet the new laws on short time-frames like that. So I get rid of all of those pesky regulations, then legislatively change it so the next dude cannot change those regulations without a 2/3 majority vote during a full solar eclipse. Boon to business, since they can actually change their processes/products without fearing a complete rework two years out.
Problem I see, though, is that these moves are predicated on the a priori assumption that Americans will keep playing the game no matter how many dirty moves each team makes. My daughter likes to play games I call “Anya wins” — where the rules of the game change during play to ensure whatever she did beats me. Even knowing that she’s a five year old kid and having fun … it’s not a lot of fun to play Anya wins unless you get to be the Anya. How long can we sustain a peaceful transfer of power when those leaving play ‘we win, you lose’?
Here’s the latest pie charts of how the federal government spends its money. Again, there’s discretionary spending — spending from appropriation bills and the full budget which includes spending for things like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid which vary depending on the number of recipients and how much each recipient is being paid. This doesn’t mean the non-discretionary components couldn’t be changed — there’s been discussion of means testing Social Security payments and Medicare eligibility — but these changes are generally considered politically untenable (would you vote for the guy who just reduced your SS cheque because you happened to have a pension or money saved in a retirement account?).
I store a lot of code in Git-based systems, and I read through parts of my state’s Revised Code on occasion. But it never occurred to me to store the Revised Code in a Git-based system. Washington, DC has started doing exactly that.
First, some basic terminology from GitHub — a “commit” is a change. In this case, a change to the revised code text. An “Issue” is where someone points out a problem with the existing code or proposes an enhancement — in this case, someone either pointing out a typo or suggesting a new law. And a “Pull Request” (aka a “PR”) is used to accept a commit into the code — in this case, applying the change to the revised code text.
Imagine being able to comment on a pull request and have your commentary considered during the public hearings for the proposed change. Sure, there’s elitism to assuming everyone’s got a computer and time to peruse proposed changes. But not more than assuming everyone’s got an hour to head over to Town Hall and attend the public hearing. And resident-initiated changes could be proxied through a third party — city government staff, for instance.
The process could increase transparency — GitHub users can subscribe to get notifications when issues and PRs are entered into the system. An issue could be created when discussion over a proposed change begins. Links to public meetings and even discussion about the proposed changes could be available online. A pull request created by government officials finalizes the changes and commits them into the online revised code.
The git storage system retains history — a resident who is convinced an auxiliary building was totally in compliance of zoning regs when it was built could run through the history and identify exactly when the setback requirements changed.
Clicking into a specific “commit” will show you what changed — the left-hand column is the old version and the right-hand column is the new version. Something that was removed is highlighted in red; something added is highlighted in green.
From a procedural standpoint, there are some challenges. Their code is now maintained in XML, which isn’t necessarily something that will edit well in your favorite word processing program (Word, as an example, has some limitations when it comes to editing XML and, in my experience, generates really sloppy code — multiple style elements that all cancel each other out). Build automation is now a requirement of legal documents — a process that ingests changes to the XML and spits out an HTML web site or a PDF file. These challenges require someone with technical knowledge to maintain the revised code.
Logistically, it might be challenging to convince residents — especially those who don’t work as software developers — to use what is a software development tool to interact with local government. Even without citizen interactions, I think having a change history is an incredible advantage to using GitHub to store the revised code. It would be interesting to chat with the people who implemented this in DC and determine if (1) they get a lot of malicious submissions and (2) actually see citizens propose changes through GitHub.
Document retention implications would need to be considered as well — user comments, maliciously entered issues or PRs, etc may be undesired. It’s possible to restrict “interactions” (comments, issue creation, PR creation) to an approved list of individuals. But there’s an advantage to allowing residents to copy edit the code and to propose changes to code.
The migrant caravan illegally invading the United States has been a gigantic heap of “alternative facts” — or, for the old fashioned, inaccuracies and lies. Is there anything to gain from proving individual tenants of Trump’s argument to be the abject falsehoods that they are? People walking from Southern Mexico are not at the US border. 5,800 US military personnel, *they* are at the border in what I am sure is a fairly expensive political stunt. But people hiking across Mexico have a few weeks of walking ahead of them.
And what exactly are they doing that is wrong?? How many people know step #1 of the asylum process? Here it is — from the US Department of Homeland Security website. To apply for asylum, you need to be physically present in the US or seeking entry into the US at a port of entry. So … people who want to request asylum in the US that head to a port of entry are, wait, following the legal process.
But while there are a bevy of proximal arguments being made, the distal complaint is essentially “we don’t like other, keep them out”. So I wonder about the efficacy of of providing actual facts to counter the litany of alternative ones. Are there people rooting for militarization of the border who will change their mind when they realize asylum seekers showing up at a port of entry are following the proper process? Or will they come up with some new “fact” to heap on the pile.
I remember watching the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings broadcast back in 1996. It was my first exposure to the idea of restorative justice, and an incredible lesson in forgiveness. Do I consider the slight against me more heinous than murder and rape that withholding forgiveness might be justified? The weekly broadcast was a reminder of how powerful forgiveness can be.
Juxtaposing those hearings with the Ford/Kavanaugh debacle yesterday highlights a failing in the guilt/punishment driven “justice” system. There are certain crimes where it makes sense to ascribe guilt and mete out punishment — financial reparations when someone has caused monetary loss, removing a person from society when they are apt to continue harming others. I doubt that is the case here. I know what I wanted from the guy who assaulted me — for him to own it and to learn from it. Had Kavanaugh admitted to terrible behavior as a young man, said that there were occasions when he was so drunk he does not recall his actions (thus cannot confidently recall or deny assaulting Ford), been truly remorseful for both his behavior and how his behavior impacted other people, and acknowledged that he is aware of his faults and has stopped drinking (or ceased drinking to excess) and acting in a domineering/privileged way … but, no. We get a belligerent assertion that he is not, well, belligerent. And never drank to excess.
I’d still object to a SCoTUS nominee who thinks it’s debatable whether a president can be indicted while in office. Or that criminal investigations into a president should be deferred until he is out of office. Or that George W approach to torture, extrajudicial detention, and war was a bit of all right. But I would at least get the desire to forgive someone for their decades-old actions if they owned those actions, regretted those actions, and changed.
