Questions for Representative Goodlatte A guest post by Chris Bolgiano

An Open Letter to Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte, VA 6th District

Dear Mr. Goodlatte: Thank you for your letter responding to my concern at seeing avowed white supremacist and anarchist Steve Bannon appointed as President Trump’s chief advisor. Bannon has said he will “deconstruct” the government as we know it. As you pointed out, Congress is not empowered to confirm or deny Bannon’s appointment, or the appointment of Sebastian Gorka as chief counter-terrorism advisor.

Numerous credible reports have connected Gorka with the Hungarian group Vitézi Rend, listed by the State Department as a Nazi-linked group whose members are inadmissible to the U.S. Indeed, Gorka wore the medal of that group to President Trump’s inauguration, and often signs his name with the v. used by members.

One entire side of my extended family was murdered by Nazis in areas not far from Hungary. Thousands of African-Americans were lynched in America by the Ku Klux Klan, whose endorsement President Trump accepted.

Mr. Goodlatte, you may not have legal authority to question these appointments, but that does not relieve you of moral responsibility to speak out against the appointment of self-declared racists and known anti-Semites that are shaping this president’s policies. I implore you to vocally state that you, as a representative of the GOP, have enough moral backbone to oppose the takeover of our government by persons with beliefs antithetical to every tenet of our democracy. I entreat you: Do Not Let It Happen Here -- because as a historian I know that it can, if you and the GOP do not speak out.

Courageous Battles

Wow!   The act of dying, that moment; it’s got to be intense; it’s got to be a shocker.   But, you’re probably going to dead for awhile, and maybe that can be a little calming, maybe even boring.   Now, according to most evidence*, it looks like you might be dead for a long time, maybe millions of years…. maybe longer, maybe forever.  So in a way, being dead for millions of years, or even forever, begins to sound like a pretty OK deal.  It looks like being dead is identical to what it was like before you were born.  Remember that?

 I’ve got a 34 year old dislocated toe, a right pinky finger that was bent twice 90% the wrong way, a missing joint in my middle finger of my left hand where I gave body parts to a table saw, and a left sacroiliac joint that goes “twingey” every now and again.  I wear hearing aids when I remember to, and I’m near sighted (so if I put my glasses down I can’t find them), and even though my prescription hasn’t changed in five years, the opticians of the world refuse to replace my scratched up and broken glasses.  I’ve got a tick bite that still itches eight months after I got it. That’s the easy stuff. 

Arthritis in my left thumb, carpal tunnel (after repair) in my right wrist that now has my hand swollen twice the size of the left one (did I mention that I used to like playing the guitar?) I am finding it difficult to pick up a full coffee cup with it.  Both hands are weak, sore, and inflexible; they hurt when they aren’t numb, often they awaken me from a sound sleep at night.  Both shoulders have had surgery and neither of them are above 60% of normal strength (much less pain free), I’ve got ED, and I have to get up to pee two to three times a night.  Right now I have had six weeks of bloody buggers.  I’ve still got a baby tooth, but the space between it and one of the eight molars I have left (most people have twelve) gets wedged with food debris at every bite.  I’ve aged at least ten years in the last six months.

 

I would never denigrate the “courageous, brave, and inspiring battles” that so many other people have waged; people who have far more daunting physical challenges than I have.  But, they are going to die, and I am going to die; so at what point is it wise to just recognize that simple fact and make a rational decision as to what it is all worth?   I’ve already suggested that being dead can’t possibly be bad.  Are those “courageous battles” really against death, or are they simply denials of reality?  Especially for those who believe in an afterlife!

*All evidence, really.

You Country Boys have been so had

“A Country boy will Survive”…   Think Hank Williams Jr.  Yup, all those virtues of  rural life with the realities of what’s really important…  Yup!  DonDon Trump whose concept of the outdoors is that space between his doorman’s umbrella and a waiting limo at street level below his 40^th floor apartment in New York City...  or maybe it’s the space between his limo and his private jet or when he gets to Florida, his cart on the golf course…   That's the out doors.  Yes!  He’s got your back! He’s a country boy!

You people have been soooooooo had.  How in Hell did you ever think that this spoiled billionaire city brat was your champion?  Is Fox News propaganda that convincing?  And now, will you be able to deny reality as you die from DonDon's and the big business, big city guys' plans to make himself and all his billionaire buddies even richer?  As all your services are cut to nothing.  Health care?  Rural development funds? Subsidies to farmers, medical research, clinics, heat for homes, food for shut-ins… ?  Why would a poor woman in Detroit pay for National Public Radio... when she can pay for poisoned water in her tap and watch her tax money pay her Republican Mayor and Governor's salaries?  DonDon's children's travel expenses?  Think.

DonDon has spent more time on golf in his first nine weeks, than Obama spent in his first year in office.  DonDon is charging YOU to pay for the Secret Service men for their golf carts.

Ah but then; those are alternative facts. 

Oh, it must be Obama/Hillary's fault.

Unintended consequences in the USA

Simplistic answers to complex questions are being proffered by ignorant amateurs with zero experience and knowledge of government.  A few Iowans are beginning to wonder about Don Don’s impulsive and erratic style.  Just wait until Mexico (formerly the purchaser of 25% of America’s corn crop) decides it would rather do business with Argentina and Brazil.

Are automobile tariffs on someone’s agenda?  Forget that, what happens when even 1% of ‘illegal” aliens buy a $45 thousand SUV and drive it to Mexico and blow off the payments?  What happens to all those bankers?  Slap a tariff on China and the price of everything at Wal-Mart just doubled.  That airplane has parts from 25 different countries, so do those SUVs.

What happens when the Mexicans decide that they will no longer feel like blocking the Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, and other “illegals” that they have been keeping from reaching our southern border (is the wall done yet)?  Does Don Don know that the Mexican government has been cooperating in keeping about 100,000 a year from making the trip?

How’s the American tourist industry doing with European travelers this winter?  How about the Silicon Valley companies who are afraid of losing their brainiacs from foreign countries?  You think our guys wearing their ball caps backwards watching football will take up the slack?

See how you like it when Don Don gets to chose all the news that’s fit to print.

There are thousands of issues like these and Don Don is ignorant of all of them.  If you think that Don Don, Bannon, Miller, and Conway can run our economy like Don Don’s been faking his business, then you are in for some unpleasant surprises.

It wasn't pretty before, but now?

I'm absolutely convinced that our Congress, as it presently exists, is an impediment to rationality, good policy, and the continuation of the USA as a viable country. They (both parties) thought nothing of spending their time on "National Nose Zit Day", or even worse! a law that any idiot can see is unconstitutional, just because it resonates with their equally ignorant constituency...  Anti gay rights or Flag burning amendment? Do we really want to be just like North Korea and Iran? And, as for taxes, Federal revenue as a percentage of GNP is projected to be the lowest it's been since 1950, but we're on the ruinous path to socialism... apparently just like it happened after WWII.

As my friend summed it up for me: "Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in TARP money, and paid almost no taxes? Yeah, me neither." Nope, it was the corporations that spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, all the while giving themselves and their CEOs billions in bonuses,     He only left out, “ and started a war against a country 11,000 miles away because somebody wanted to be a war time president and his vice president was an oil billionaire.”

Social Security, which had a surplus for the last 60 years (which congress spent every penny of, on the "budget" and invested not one cent of), now that it is about to go upside down, is the major threat to our national budget.

I’m a nut case. I think that the slippery slope of allowing robots to fight our wars is wrong, stupid, immoral, and likely to end up like the Terminator or Battlestar Galatica series. Why not? Doesn't every military, having developed a new better weapon, assume that the enemy will NEVER get it?   How many Americans have been killed by the "bad" guys using the weapons we sold them?  I don’t see anybody putting toothpaste back into any tubes.  Once we screw up, we rarely back up.  But now?

Nut job conspiracy birthers forced President Obama to show us his birth certificate and Donald Trump took credit for it.  Thank You DonDon!  Now we need you to employ your massive intellect and dogged tenacity to confirm the existence of gravity; we don’t want to fly off the planet tomorrow.  Can you look into that bear in the woods thing too?  And by the way, why do you speak like an eight year old?  And the media are dishonest?  Says the man that gets his news from "Morning Joe".

According to Republicans (I don’t think I’ll call them conservatives any more.  That passing of laws about consensual sexual conduct and controlling women’s bodies did it for me.  What is conservative about government in your bed room?) spending money on  poor people, outside of our country is a bad idea but spending money on rich people inside the USA, as we have been, is a great idea.  The “middle class” in the USA has shrunk drastically in the last 30 years.  And I still think that the difference between billion$ and trillion$ is a qualitative not just quantitative point.  What tax payers are spending on Trump Towers in NY would go a long way to doing some real good.  Pick your favorite: veterans, infrastructure, health care, schools, basic scientific research, how about Flint, Michigan?  Right now, Congress as it is presently functioning is the single worst impediment to the future of our country, they spent million$ voting to repeal the ACA (knowing it was just a show) and on Benghazi, but are letting Michael Flynn off.   As for raising campaign dollar$, the Republicans and their mostly owned Supreme Court opened that can of worms with Citizens United; hold your breath till that gets better.

You’ve heard of the theory of an infinite number of universes, many almost exactly like this one?   You know, with you and me and everything exactly the same except in some of these universes strange things happen like your toast levitates, or a T-Rex appears in the NY subway.  This explains Donald Trump.  We’re in one of those universes.

We're Number One... In gun violence

In response to gun industry pressure, a veil was draped over tracing data:

Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) introduced the amendment that blocked all gun tracing data.   Under the law, investigators cannot reveal federal firearms tracing information that shows how often a dealer sells guns that end up seized in crimes. The law effectively shields retailers from lawsuits, academic study and public scrutiny. It also keeps the spotlight off the relationship between rogue gun dealers and the black market in firearms.  Such information used to be available under a simple Freedom of Information Act request. But in 2003, under pressure from the gun lobby, Congress blacked out the information by passing the so-called Tiahrt amendment, named for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.). The law removed from the public record a government database that traces guns recovered in crimes back to the dealers.

Oh, and BTW, bad as the Tiahrt idea was, it wasn’t even a bill that got meaningful debate.  It was a rider on an appropriations bill.  This is how crap like this happens.  A Congressman will wait for some really important bill to come along, a really good one that everyone wants to happen, then he’ll add his little, sneaky, ugly, nasty, despicable amendment to it.  TA DA! The will of the NRA is done, and he can pick up his check (or cash) from the lobbyist.

And in case you haven’t connected the dots on this one, remember that banning the government from reporting any data on all weapons, stops any meaningful analysis of their impact on society.  It stops NGOs and Universities from conducting research (grants) and further stifles meaningful debate.  Freedom of Information inquiries (a law) are powerless.  Yay, Todd Tiahrt!  We should put up a monument to you - in a cemetery.

NRA: Their strategy has been along to promote gun ownership, increase the number of guns, increase the profits of gun manufacturers... Who's to say that this isn't working? Who's to say that a massacre or two doesn't advance this goal?  Especially, since now they want your tax dollar$ to purchase guns, train teachers and armed guards and cover the guards salaries, and benefits, in every school in America, essentially turning our schools into the National Guard and not too subtle proselytizing for gun ownership to the next generation. And they worry about "tyranny".

You can not govern if your can't weigh options and choose new directions.  All those who have taken a pledge to never raise taxes are abrogating their responsibility to make policy that is capable of change in a changing world.  They should be removed from office by the ballot box.  Wingnuts shouldn't be allowed to own guns.  It's a self fulfilling prophesy, if you scream: "They're going to take away our guns!"  loudly enough, someone might want to take away you guns.  There was a guy in Grottoes, VA a few years back who was sure that the small planes flying over his house were scoping him out to take his guns.  So he shot at the planes.  Guess what happened. 

How I always get my way

Why Thugs Mug, or How the Free Market Works, Unilateralism: the New Religion

          The definition of Unilateralism:  I will make this next decision because:

            1.)        I’m more qualified due to superior: a.) Intelligence   b.) Knowledge  c.) I'm always right, or  d.)  I have the moral and/or political/monetary/legal power to do so (AKA: My lawyers are better than your lawyers [see: “monetary”].)

2.)        I doubt your ability to make either the right or the wrong decision in this matter, and I will not wait and see what you want, (I have lawyers on retainer, doing nothing for their fees until I sic them on you.  See “monetary”).

            3.)        I doubt that you’ll ever find out what I did, or if you do, that you’re capable (see “monetary” again) or likely to do anything about it (see “monetary” again, again).

            4.)        Me Me Me, you do not matter to me.

            5.)        I deserve to have my way more than you do (you probably don’t even want to get into this part; you’d have to talk with my mother, maybe even yours.)  I am not crazy.

            6.)        I trust only myself in this choice; (defined as: I want what I want.) .

            7.)        ERGO, QED, SLAM DUNK, I’m going to do it, sucker!