Thought for the day

[unixronin]

From my own personal aphorisms:

There is one overwhelmingly simple reason why bills before the Legislature should be strictly required to address only a single subject, with no non-germane amendments or riders permitted. That reason, quite plainly, is that no politician should ever be allowed to take something that you cannot live without, and tie it to something that you cannot live with. Any proposal so bad that even career politicians refuse to pass it on its own merit, does not deserve to ride the coat-tails of something that must be passed; and likewise, no bill so vital or so good that it can be defeated only by attaching a rider so bad that it cannot possibly pass so amended, deserves to be so sacrificed on the altar of gutter politics.

Comments

[hugh_mannity]

You'll get no argument from me on that one.

If nothing else, it would get rid of those 1,000 page monstrosities that no one ever reads completely.

If it takes more than a couple of pages (legal paper, 10 point Times New Roman, single spaced) then it's too complicated. Legislation which the common man is expected to abide by should be written in language that he can understand. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were written in the lingua franca of the day. So too was Magna Carta -- well almost, as most educated people then had a working knowledge of Latin and the serfs didn't count for much back then anyway :D

[robhansen]

Unfortunately, I don’t give it a whelk’s chance in a supernova of ever coming to pass. Legislatures like the rules the way they currently are: making that change has nothing but downsides for them.

I agree that this is the way things ought to be, but I give very poor odds for things ever becoming this.

[unixronin]

Regrettably, I can't dispute your analysis. I only see it getting worse until the whole house of cards collapses. Unfortunately, the professional politicians have got the system set up so that it can't be effectively changed from outside the system — bringing us to John F. Kennedy's dictum that those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent change inevitable.

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

I hear you!