It could be a gotcha

View 706 Friday, December 23, 2011

· Silly Defeat or Gotcha?

· Iraq and Kurdistan

·Starswarm by Jerry Pournelle available on Kindle and Nook. Compares favorably to Heinlein juveniles according to many reviewers.

Absurdity or Gotcha?

The ABC News reporting the AP headline says it all: Payroll Tax Deadlock Ends as House Caves

House Republicans on Thursday caved to demands by President Barack Obama, congressional Democrats and fellow Republicans for a short-term renewal of payroll tax cuts for all workers.

Surprisingly, there was no objection to the “unanimous consent” decree restoring the House-rejected Senate Bill extending the temporary suspension of Social Security insurance payments for two months, after the Tea Party elements of the House had rejected the bill. This is widely touted as a sign of weakness, and “caved” is the most common term used. And of course the Democrats are taking a victory lap.

The Senate quickly approved and sent the Bill to the White House, where the President signed it on his way out the door to his wonderful Christmas in Hawaii; one of the perquisites of being President of these United States.

This is widely proclaimed as a great victory for the Democrats and a humiliation for the Republicans. Perhaps so, but there is another way to look at it.

The bill, a two month extension, was passed. It includes an instruction for the President to decide on the Canadian pipeline within sixty days. It’s his move now. The extension expires in sixty days. And the House comes back to Washington in early January.

Now that it has been demonstrated that the House can act quickly when it has to, it is time to do more. It is time to enact legislation representing what will come forth next year.

Let me suggest some. First, a bill declaring that the United States no longer is interested in federal licenses for those who raise pet rabbits, nor in licensing stage magicians who use rabbits in their acts, and no money appropriated in any budget or act or appropriation or authorization shall be spent in enforcing any act or regulation concerning federal licensing of pet rabbits. Any expenditure on licensing or inspecting pet rabbits must be from a bill explicitly appropriating funds for that purpose. Anyone authorizing expenditure of federal funds in violation of this act shall be dismissed for cause from federal employment, and shall be required to repay to the United States any such money he or she spent or allowed to be spent.

The fact that it takes so many words to end the silliness of paying Federal Bunny Inspectors is revealing – and I bet some smart lawyer can find a way around this. But surely the people we have sent to represent us in the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States are clever enough to be able to accomplish this?

The bill should be passed and sent to the Senate where the Democrats can either speak in favor of paying Bunny Inspectors, or simply pass the Bill and send it to the President. He can either sign it or veto it. If he signs it then they have to start firing the bunny inspectors. Perhaps we will be lucky and the federal employee unions will strike, possibly shutting down the government in an election year.

I can think of a lot of other regulations that can be defunded by this means. The House should be digging for more. If someone accuses the House of wasting valuable federal time on trivia surely the response, after this long dance over a two month extension, is one of gaiety and mirth?

As I say, I can think of dozens of acts of this sort that can be passed, most of them by unanimous consent, and sent to the Senate; and the Speaker ought to be hard at work on them. As should Representatives Ron Paul and Michele Bachman, who are among those unanimously consenting to this “cave”. I am certain then can find practices in the TSA worthy of the attention of the House. Surely there is much in the Department of Education that ought to be examined. But the list is endless.

My point is that this has been called a humiliating defeat for the Republicans, but regarded properly it is a gotcha.

Iraq continues to boil. The Shiite Prime Minister has issued an arrest warrant for the Sunni Vice President of Iraq. The Kurds (who have a Vice President of their own) are giving him refuge in the part of Iraq called Kurdistan; in theory Kurdish Iraq is a province of the Iraqi state, but Baghdad’s writ has never run there. We now have a de facto alliance between Sunni Iraq and Kurdish Iraq. The borders of Kurdish Iraq are much clearer than the borders of Sunni Iraq, in part because the Sunni do not accept that they are a minority in Iraq; the official Sunni position is that the Sunni, who include Arabs, Turmen, and Kurds, are actually a majority in the whole country, with the Shiites (mostly Arabs but including Persians) having a majority only in certain areas, Baghdad being one of those.

The presidency of Iraq is a collective office: the President and two Vice Presidents are all in theory equal. The powers of the office have not been tested: one presumes there is the traditional power of pardon which may or may not lead to a way out of this impasse in which the Prime Minister, head of government, is seeking to jail one of the co-presidents on a charge of terrorism. Meanwhile I see little media discussion of Kurdish Iraq, which is tranquil (I wrote peaceful, but that’s not the right word), well armed with well trained militias (mostly American trained), pro-American, Sunni, and unlikely to submit to the writ from Baghdad. The American media don’t seem to have much understanding of the Kurds.

Kurds are not Arabs. Like the Iranians they speak an Aryan derived language, and consider themselves Aryan in descent. Saladin, the Saracen leader who destroyed the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and restored Islamic rule to Jerusalem, was a Kurd. He is featured in Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Talisman. His truce with Richard Lionheart effectively ended the third crusade, and he united many of the Muslim states into a new caliphate. The Lion of Saladin is still revered in many places including Kurdistan.

I am no expert on the Middle East, but I would not bet heavily on the survival of a united Iraq; the decision for the United States will come when the Kurds (with parts of Sunni Iraq) claim rights of independence and ask the United States for recognition and help. That is a very likely event in the future. Meanwhile the Sunni faction in Baghdad continues to drive out all the Christians, Sunni, and Baathists, and does not seem hesitant to ask Iran for recognition and help. I foresee interesting times in the Middle East.

Perhaps a pipeline from Canada will look attractive?