Author Archives: "Archives"

A REAL ID ACT FOR GOATS?::::::Laura Haggarty sends us information on another government boondoggle that seems almost purposely designed to harass and bankrupt small farmers. It is called the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Its alleged purpose is to “safeguard animal health,” – in other words, to exploit public fears of mad cow disease and the bird flu to give more power to the government. The Department of Agriculture’s NAIS website says that “NAIS is currently a voluntary program,” but its clear intention is to soon make it mandatory.::::::According to the NAIS site, the NAIS will be implemented in three phases:::::::1. Identify and register “premises that house animals. Such premises would include locations where livestock and poultry are managed, marketed, or exhibited.” However, according to NoNAIS.org, homes that keep livestock such as horses and goats as pets would also be registered, with fees and paperwork imposed on these pet owners. Homesteaders who raise animals for personal consumption will also be flooded with paperwork and fees.::::::2. Assign animal identification numbers (AINs) “to individually identified premises. In the case of animals that move in groups through the production chain—such as swine and poultry—the group will be identified through a group/lot identification number (Group/Lot IDs).” Talk about unfair competition! As Ms. Haggarty informs us, “The [identification] tags (which may contain RFIDs [Radio Frequency Identification]) will cost about $2-4 each, and for someone who has a number of chickens, like I do, they will destroy what little profit margin we have … The only exceptions are big agribusiness corporations, (like the Tyson chicken farms) who will be able to give large lots of animals a Group Identification Number.”

Today’s Downsizer-Dispatch . . .:::

Welcome to the nearly 1,000 people who are receiving their first Downsizer-Dispatch. We recently discovered a software glitch that was preventing people who recently registered from receiving these messages. It is now fixed. Welcome aboard! (Un-subscribe infortmation is at the end of this message.):::

The good news just keeps rolling in . . .:::

Total RTBA messages to Congress topped 30,000 on Saturday. We need to keep up the relentless pressure. To send your RTBA message to Congress click here.:::

A First Amendment case the Downsize DC Foundation is supporting seems likely to be heard by the Supreme Court. This is the case where the Social Security Administration fined a non-profit organization for using the words “Social Security” on a direct mail envelope. Thank you to all the Foundation donors who contributed to make this possible. :::

Our RTBA Coalition is just about ready to launch. Stay tuned for the announcement. We’ll need your help to sign-up coalition members.:::

We seem to have won in our battle to get Senator Evan Bayh to accept messages through our lobbying system. Your phone calls made a difference. We’ve negotiated an arrangement that will allow Downsize DC messages to get through to Senator Bayh. :::

Several bills we support have been gaining sponsors in Congress. We’ll have a full report on this soon. :::

Our new media campaign continues to click along. I have another interview booked for this coming Saturday, and we’re increasing the number of media calls we’re making. But we’re going to run through our media list soon. So please help us expand it. Research your local talk shows and add them to our online media database. The instructions and database form can be found here.:::

There’s more good news. Too much to report here. If our blog isn’t part of your daily reading yet please go check it out and bookmark it. Recent articles include a new RTBA response from a Senator, new interviews and commentaries I’ve done, news about RTBA letters published in newspapers, an item about expanding use of the word “downsizing” by other organizations, and an article about a bill Congress recently passed that has a mistake in it! You can reach the blog here.

DC Downsizer Corey Stern has been contacted by one of his Senators about RTBA. The Senator is Mark Dayton of Minnesota, a Democrat. Mr. Dayton’s letter to Mr. Stern is reproduced below. :::

As is becoming usual with members of Congress in responding to RTBA, Senator Dayton sidesteps the issue by saying that RTBA has not been introduced in Congress. No kidding. The point of all of the messages he has received from Downsizers on this issue was to ask HIM to sponsor it!:::

If you live in Minnesota please send Senator Dayton a message asking him to explain why he is not introducing the “Read the Bills Act.” Tell him you know he has the power to introduce this legislation, and that you want him to do so. Send him to the text of the legislation at http://www.downsizedc.org/rtba_legislation.shtml:::

To avoid the “hard wired” text used in our lobbying system message you can write to Senator Dayton directly at this address: Senator_Dayton@dayton.senate.gov:::

If you send a message to Senator Dayton please leave a comment here telling us so. :::

February 16, 2006:::

Dear Mr. Stern::::

Thank you for contacting me in regard to the Read the Bills Act of 2005. This proposed legislation has not been formally introduced in the 109th Congress. However, I agree that our government needs to be more accountable and transparent to the American public and that Members of Congress should be provided sufficient time to read all legislation before casting roll call votes.:::

Please know that I will keep your thoughts well in mind, if the Read the Bills Act of 2005 is introduced and comes to the Senate Floor for consideration. I hope that you will continue to share your views with me as my colleagues and I in the 109th Congress work to create and enact laws of genuine value. Again, thank you for taking the time to be in touch.:::

My best regards.:::

Sincerely,:::Mark Dayton:::United States Senator

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According to Wikipedia, Richard Dawkins coined the phrase meme; to refer to any cultural entity, for example a song, an idea or a religion that might be considered a replicator. Simply, for our purposes, let’s call it a phrase that’s so powerful it gets repeated over and over. ::::::Traditionally, the meme small government advocates have promoted has been the idea of liberty, or freedom, but these words are so abstract, and so open to interpretation, as to be almost meaningless. When communists and facsists alike can speak of freedom or liberty as their goal, and they have and do, it becomes difficult to communicate that you mean something entirely different. Words that have to be explained don’t make very good memes. ::::::But no one can be unclear about what we intend when we say we want to downsize government. It means we want to make government smaller. The word is well-understood in the context of business. When a business is unprofitable it needs to cut out unprofitable activities. It needs to downsize. The idea translates to government. If government is doing things it shouldn’t be, it needs to downsize. It needs to be smaller. Nothing has to be explained. The word “downsizing” in regards to government, is a perfect meme, a perfect replicator.::::::And it is replicating. ::::::For instance, the Cato Institute is using the word more and more. First, Chris Edwards wrote a policy report for Cato that used the word, and now Cato is publishing a book by Mr. Edwards titled “Downsizing Government.”::::::Cato is also offering the book as a premium in a fundraising letter that invokes the downsizing meme six times. Go Cato! Spread the meme!

Jim Babka has done another interview on the “Read the Bills Act.” This one is at the Freemarket News Network. You can listen to it here.

The Associated Press reports that President Bush signed into law a Medicaid bill that the House didn’t actually pass::::

At issue is a provision involving the period of time the government pays to rent some types of durable medical equipment before medical suppliers transfer it to Medicare patients.::::::The Senate voted for 13 months, as intended by Senate and House negotiators, but a Senate clerk erroneously put down 36 months in sending the bill back to the House for a final vote, and that’s what the House approved Feb. 1.::::::By the time the bill was shipped to Bush, the number was back to 13 months as passed by the Senate but not the House.

:::To be fair, this is a technical error and it appears that 13 months is the intent of both houses of Congress. But the fact is, the House did not pass it as such. Two points stand out:::::::1. If Congress was subject to the Read the Bills Act, the House negotiators would have noticed the clerical error and corrected it.:::2. This law is invalid, because the Constitution requires that the House and Senate pass the same, exactly identical bill for it to become law. Thankfully, as the AP story reports, an Alabama attorney, Jim Zeigler, is filing a suit charging its unconstitutionality.::::::But what is the reaction of Congress and the White House?:::

The White House and House and Senate GOP leaders say the matter is settled because the mistake was technical and that top House and Senate leaders certified the bill before transmitting it to the White House.

:::Why won’t they correct the error? Because the bill passed by the narrowest of margins: 216-214. If the corrected bill was put to a vote, it might not pass.::::::This is not a trivial issue. It’s bad enough that members of Congress often do not know what they vote for. But here is an instance where the President signs into law a bill that Congress didn’t even pass. If this isn’t corrected, then the government will be rewarded for its own sloppiness and incompetence. And that’s just a small step from something far worse. Today’s “error” will become tomorrow’s deliberate fraud.

Ed Brayton at “Dispatches from the Culture War” on Seed.com, a very highly read blog, has written a very favorable post about the “Read the Bills Act.”

Noel Gibeson of the Mount Vernon Institute was a recent e-radio guest at the Free Market News Network. The topic of the interview was also the topic of his recent column, Cleaning House (and Senate). In both the column and the interview, his first suggestion for cleaning up government is the Read the Bills Act, and he sends readers and listeners our way.::::::Click here for Noel Gibeson’s column.::::::Click here for Noel Gibeson’s interview at Free Market News.

“Look at a stonecutter hammering away at this rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”— Jacob A. Rils

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Congress is the rock. “Read the Bills” is the hammer. You are the stonecutter.:::

Take action: Send a message asking Congress to pass the “Read the Bills Act” (RTBA). Do so by clicking here.:::

• 324 Downsizers sent 972 RTBA messages to Congress yesterday.:::
• 9,822 Downsizers have not yet sent an RTBA message this week. If they did Congress would be bombarded with 29,466 more appeals to pass RTBA (each message goes to one Represenative, and two Senators):::
• 10,378 subscribers to the Downsizer-Dispatch have yet to use our online lobbying system for the first time. If they did so today for RTBA, another 31,134 messages would hammer Congress.

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It only takes 2 to 3 minutes to use the system for the first time, and only a minute to use it every time thereafter. Join the fun by clicking here to send your first RTBA message.:::

One Downsizer contributed $10 toward our remaining February fundraising goal. We need another $3,909 by February 28. To make a contribution or start a monthly pledge click here.:::

News of the latest media interviews are posted on our blog.:::

Thank you for being a DC Downsizer.:::

Jim Babka:::President:::DownsizeDC.org, Inc. :::

President’s State of the Union