{"id":1455,"date":"2009-02-13T08:31:41","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T16:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=1455"},"modified":"2009-02-13T08:31:41","modified_gmt":"2009-02-13T16:31:41","slug":"am-i-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2009\/am-i-guilty\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I Guilty?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last fall (is that when it was?) when Congress rushed some multi-billion “package” through and President Bush signed it, I wondered how they could put their signatures and votes to something they had not read carefully and studied thoroughly.<\/p>\n

I marveled at such reckless irresponsibility.<\/p>\n

Now I see that such an approach must be the norm.<\/p>\n

Yet voters continue to send them back to keep doing such things.<\/p>\n

Amazing.<\/p>\n

I guess.<\/p>\n

But do I do the same type thing as the politicians do? Perhaps more than I realize.<\/p>\n

But before further introspection, the “news”: <\/p>\n\n\n
Democratic Senator Predicts None of His Colleagues ‘Will Have the Chance’ to Read Final Stimulus Bill Before Vote<\/a><\/p>\n

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would “have the chance” to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think anyone will have the chance,\u201d Lautenberg told CNSNews.com.<\/p>\n

The final bill, crafted by a House-Senate conference committee, was posted on the Website of the House Appropriations Committe [sic] late Thurday in two PDF files.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

(I put the sic<\/i> there. Did I use it correctly, oh ye grammarians?)<\/p>\n

Reckless irresponsibility aside (since I already addressed it), they posted the final bill as two PDF files?! Two!<\/b> \ud83d\ude2f<\/p>\n\n\n
We? Hiding Something? Huh? You say what?<\/a><\/p>\n

Democratic staffers released the final version of the stimulus bill at about 11 pm last night after delaying the release for hours to put it into a format which people cannot \u201csearch\u201d on their home computers. <\/p>\n

Instead of publishing the bill as a regular internet document — which people can search by \u201ckey words\u201d and otherwise, the Dems took hours to convert the final bill from the regular searchable format into \u201cpdf\u201d files, which can be read but not searched.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

That’s neither reckless nor irresponsible. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

Oh, and here’s the last paragraph from the first story I quoted above:<\/p>\n\n\n
The bill is expected to land on President Obama\u2019s desk no later than Monday, and the president is expected to sign it into law–whether the nation’s lawmakers have read it or not.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

But what about whether or not he<\/b> has read it?<\/p>\n

Mr. President, sí se puede! Read it all. Carefully. Thoroughly. Responsibly. For the sake of your two daughters. At least. Then go before a joint session of Congress and tell them they must do the same. Then lead them in a rousing rendition of “Yes, we can!”<\/p>\n

Change we can believe in.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to my top of the fold musings….<\/p>\n