Category: Political Essay

March 12, 2025March 12, 2025

The Vital Role of Skepticism in Scientific Progress

I recently saw a photo of a group of protesters holding signs that said “Trust the Science.” I found that was, in my opinion, a very incorrect position to take. Science is based upon being skeptical of the claims and always seeking better and better proof. So with the help of AI I wrote a page on the topic: The Vital Role of Skepticism in Scientific Progress

February 23, 2025February 23, 2025

The Case for Smaller Bills: Restoring Transparency in American Legislation

Introduction

The American legislative process has undergone a troubling transformation over the past century. What began as a system producing focused, comprehensible laws has evolved into one that regularly generates massive, incomprehensible omnibus bills thousands of pages long. This shift threatens the very foundations of democratic governance by making it impossible for legislators, let alone the public, to understand what they’re voting on or what has become law.

February 16, 2025February 16, 2025

Executive Power, Legal Precedent, and Political Hypocrisy

Every time there is a new President it seems we have the same arguments over what authorities the President has. Often these debates become hysterical shouting matches and usually they demonstrate both a lack of knowledge about our system of government and history.

February 10, 2025February 23, 2025

Executive Orders: Tool of Governance or Authoritarianism?

I was at a Superbowl party and someone claimed that President Trump is an authoritarian. I suspect an argument for that might be that presidents issue executive orders, especially if you happen to disagree with the policies of the President . Here is a brief history of executive orders and how they have been used historically, compared to recent times.

April 4, 2012February 23, 2025

Budgets

One of my web sites that I frequently read relating to politics is PolitiFact.com. It serves to remind me that what politicians say has to be taken with, not a grain of salt, but a barge load of salt. I was reading it the other day and saw this 100{f21b2e9c886449ccfd883f06fb77471a0806c5f3cb16ac6af4e8bda5ea93c311} truthful statement from President Obama:

President Barack Obama says, “Exxon pocketed nearly $4.7 million every hour”

This was talking about 2011. Now I found this interesting, so I wondered, in comparison how much did the US spend per hour in 2011. So I googled and found this site: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/. According to them, government spending in 2011 amounted to 6.1 trillion dollars. So dividing 6.1 trillion by 365 days per year, then by 24 hours per day gives the hourly spending rate during 2011 of approximately 696 million dollars per hour. Hmmm, perspective is an interesting thing. It seems to me that this country has more of a spending problem than a revenue problem. Now if you take the current US population according to the Census bureau (2011) as 311,591,917, then if everyone paid their fair share (fair being defined as equal in this case) then it is only (approximately) 2.23 dollars per hour (696 million dollars divided by 311 million people) or about 52 dollars a day every man, woman and child needs to pony up. That’s about 19.5 thousand per year.