jeff.kaneko(a)juno.com wrote: > Part "A" is actually true of *any* legislation made in the > past twenty years (probably even further back than that). > It's almost a requirement. > Part "B" is irrelevant, because the whole legislative > exercise in this country is about getting re-elected, and > aquiring the money to achieve this end. Period. If > it pleases the guys who sign the checks (and if the > aforementioned checks have the requisite number of > digits), it will become law-- one way or another. And never mind the damage it does, because whole industries do have to retool and change over whole processes and technologies to accomodate, people get arrested and charged for the new bullshit felonies, leading to more bad karma and societal dysfunction, opportunists use every new regulation and law as a tool to screw with other people and get in their business or take it from them etc. Parasites riding on the backs of parasites. Real wealth diminishes as less effort is put into creating it rather than in finding justifications for appropriating other people's slices of the pie. Actual productivity shot to hell. This is exactly why the U.S. is going down the toilet, and no amount of distractions provided in the form of foreign adventures, (un)timely terrorism, and crusades against one evil or another will stop it. The whole system is rigged to implode on itself. Has been since Hamilton's central bank or DeWitt Clinton's pioneering use of public funds to back the Erie Canal, a private infrastructure project. We managed to get along in the past, despite all odds, because we collectively had a consensual notion of civic duty and responsibility that was in the maximal benefit of everyone, or at least tried to be, and a clear sense of the division between private and public affairs, and the limitations of the government's role in either. Nowadays the rapid assimilation of the latest desired propaganda and memes peddled by those manipulating the system, including the media, seems to be more important than inculcating the thorough grasp of history required to assess them properly. No one's really mentioning how thoroughly unconstitutional Sen. Hollings et al.'s (Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Stevens, and more need to be retired, too) bill is. On about a half-dozen counts or more. That's a sad commentary in itself. Whoever's running the show is either asleep at the wheel, or determined to send us all back to about the 10th Century. I'm not talking about Presidents, Senators, ministers, royalty, executives, or other sock puppets here. I mean the money people. Either way, it's dereliction, at best. Criminal negligence, I'd say. Or worse. But definitely criminal. And that about exhausts what I have to say on the subject. Except to say it's not something I worry about, because it just don't confront me. jbdigriz