State Things

You can often tell when state business has slowed down enough....that state legislators get to a point where they start to discuss the topic of a state flower, a state chainsaw, a state pick-up, or a state poem.

This week, Utah got around to discussing the idea of a state gun.  You would have thought that Bama or Georgia would have been first, but Utah claims that title.

Utah has wasted time before...on a state cooking pot, and a state folk dance....if you didn't know.

The weapon suggested?  The Browning M1911.  It was a Utah guy who invented the M1911.

This topic of discussion has upset some folks.  The idea of discussing weapons in this fashion stirs up the anti-gun crowd who think it's inappropriate to think about such things.  I'm more of the mind that you need to limit the legislative crowd to a mere 60 days a year....to prevent episodes like this.

At some point, you'd start to have discussions over the state spoon, the state eraser, the state peanut butter....maybe even the state wrench.  These guys need to be sent home at a point like this....to clean the garage, landscape a bit, or to wash the dog.

Just a Nickel or Two Adds Up

Someone sat down and finally to realize what things cost in Washington DC.  If you walk around DC at night (you'd prefer to drive because of threat's to your life)....you tend to notice almost every government building is illuminated at night.  It is inspiring....and it cost a fair amount of money.  This finally got noticed by someone who made it into an article.

In a lot of communities across America, at least through the 1990s....illumination had been a popular thing.  At some point, folks began to realize the extra electricity involved and then started to limit illumination to just two or three hours after dark.  Here in DC....things tend to go from sundown to sunup.

The Department of Health and Human Services here in DC for August of last year....paid just under $800k for one month of electricity.  The Department of Commerce paid in June of last year....around $794k for power.  Course, a bit of this has to do with air conditioning but folks have now started to comment locally in DC about illumination and the sheer amount of electrical cost for just one building.

When you sit down and consider what folks have to pay in taxes....just to provide power for one month at one of these DC buildings....you start to shake your head.  There's something wrong when a bill starts to get like this.

Something to Imagine

It is an odd article from the New York Times.  Basically....they went back and found that the founding fathers had this vision that members in the House of Representatives were supposed to represent around 30,000 citizens.  So the jest of this article is that 435 Representatives aren't enough.  Yes, they are suggesting a House with 1,500-odd members as a minimum.

I sat and pondered upon this.  First, the Capital building would not be big enough to house this size of a group and an entirely different structure would have to be added onto the back of the building.

Then you start to take into account the sheer size and amount of money to finance 1,500-odd members.  Toss in those odd trips to Paris and the Bahamas....then toss on the staff folks for each member, and then top it off with office space in the DC area for everyone.

The driving force for this idea?  To make Representatives actually represent the folks that put them there in the first place....not the party.

This is an idea which will never go anywhere.  Just the voting situation of every two years and having 1,500 folks coming up for re-election....would make this difficult to imagine.  Toss in the fact that Bama alone...would likely have 28-odd Representatives would be an amazing thing to think about.  Or the fact that Texas would have over a hundred Representatives.

Once in a while, the Times does challenge your imagination, and I would put this in the five-star category.