The Failed Congress

Observe for the record that the Republican-led Congress is primed to pass tax legislation that few members of Congress have read, much less debated. The American government system is supposed to vet and vigorously review the law. If Congress doesn't do that, they are derelict in their duty.

When members of Congress fail to uphold their oath by performing responsibly, they should be impeached, and surely removed from office.

My book, How to Select an American President by James A. George and James A. Rodger (c) 2017, describes the duties of President and addresses members of Congress. Here is a review.

To perform the responsibility as a citizen to recruit, evaluate, and select candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, I propose the following process:

1.              Define the job
2.              Derive skill, knowledge, and experience requirements
3.              Solicit candidate resumes
4.              Compare resumes with the requirements and seek to verify the candidate's claims
5.              Score the resumes
6.              Select the highest scoring candidates

First, begin by understanding the Job Model for a US Member of the House of Representatives.

“As per the Constitution, the U.S. House of Representatives makes and passes federal laws. The House is one of Congress’s two chambers (the other is the U.S. Senate) and part of the federal government’s legislative branch. The number of voting representatives in the House is fixed by law at no more than 435, proportionally representing the population of the 50 states.”
 http://www.house.gov/content/learn/

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for representatives. Each representative must: (1) be at least twenty-five years old; (2) have been a citizen of the United States for the past seven years; and (3) be (at the time of the election) an inhabitant of the state they represent.

As with other Constitutionally-defined requirements, they are out of date and wholly inadequate. Yet, leave it to Congress to correct that. They won’t.

We the People and our political parties can force changes and improvements.

Understand that at the time of the birth of the nation, citizens didn’t live that long and rose to maturity in life early. The economy was largely agrarian, and the population was sparse. The nation has grown and is vastly more complex as are the needs of the people.

Job Model of a US Member of the House of Representatives

“Whether working on Capitol Hill or in his/her congressional district, a representative’s schedule is extremely busy. Often beginning early in the morning with topical briefings, most representatives move quickly among caucus and committee meetings and hearings. They vote on bills, speak with constituents and other groups, and review constituent mail, press clips and various reports. Work can continue into the evening with receptions or fundraising events.” 

 http://www.house.gov/content/learn/ 

Task 1: Represent the needs and issues of constituents of their respective Districts.
Subtask 1.1: Meet with and listen to constituents
Subtask 1.2: Communicate with constituents
Subtask 1.3: Share their sources and contributors to legislative content

Task 2: Create laws, amend, and retire them.
2.1: Create implementation schedules.
2.2. Define systems for implementing laws and regulations.
2.3. Enact budgets and funding mechanisms.

Task 3: Caucus and participate in Committee meetings.
Subtask 3.1: Collaborate with members
Subtask 3.2: Acquire knowledge about legislative topics through participation
Subtask 3.3: Negotiate and compromise

Task 4: Research and review sources of legislative input.
Subtask 4.1: Engage external sources of expertise
Subtask 4.2: Consult with Department Heads
Subtask 4.3: Engaged representatives of the Executive Branch

Task 5: Vote for or against political measures, motions, and bills

Task 6: Impeach as necessary.

“The House is charged with the passage of federal legislation, known as bills, which, after concurrence by the Senate, are sent to the President for consideration. In addition to this basic power, the House has certain exclusive powers which include the power to initiate all bills related to revenue, the impeachment of federal officers, who are sent to trial in the Senate, and in cases wherein no candidate receives a majority of electors for President, the duty falls upon the House to elect one of the top three recipients of electors for that office, with one vote given to each state for that purpose.
The presiding officer is the Speaker of the House, who is elected by the members thereof and is therefore traditionally the leader of the controlling party. He or she and other floor leaders are chosen by the Democratic Caucus or the Republican Conferences, depending on whichever party has more voting members. The House meets in the south wing of the United States Capitol."

Please Read Part 2.

Tormentous Year With Trump

Sixty-two percent of Americans favor the Special Prosecutor's investigation into Russian interference in elections. The public has witnessed indictments, guilty pleas, and house arrests of members of the Trump campaign. They are a dishonest group, and the investigation continues with apparent reach into the Trump family members.

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he had no business dealings with the Russians and that is untrue. So, why is there no impeachment action by Congress at this point?

The rule of law and due process takes time. If Donald Trump makes further attempts to interfere with and obstructs the process, then we Americans have an exacerbated national crisis.

Trump's attacks on the Special Prosecutor and his premature talk about wielding his pardoning powers are trouble indicators that he has something to hide and has not learned that his behavior in office is unacceptable.

This American will not tolerate another year of abuse of democracy by this Congress and President without a fight.

My sword is my words.

Paul de Vree - 'My word is my sword' (1969)

Costly Turnover in Trump Administration

Several media outlets are addressing "turnover in the Trump administration." They have very different slants on the subject. Mine is based on my book, How to Select an American President by James A. George and James A. Rodger (c) 2017 Archway Publishing.

First, I believe that the historical approach to staffing the Presidency is flawed. Comparisons with past administrations are amusing but may have no relevance.

When a new administration arrives, it is dependent on holdovers to continue operations. Among the existing staff are highly competent and knowledgeable people for which it is wise to keep them.

For the most part, the President will want to appoint department and agency heads who are aligned with his agenda and his party's platform.

From a citizen's perspective, we want Presidents to appoint staff who will stay the course of one to two terms in office. Why is continuity important? The answer is that it is costly to recruit and hire senior staff. It is vital to have continuous management which can be held accountable for their performance. The government cycles of planning, budgeting, program initiation and implementation is at least four years with overlap among cycles and processes.

Changing staff is disruptive and evasive of responsibility and accountability. Effective executives nurture the team and keep it together. Turnover is a significant trouble symptom that management isn't performing well.

Staffing the administration is a President's first primary task, and President Trump is failing at that with grossly noticeable problems.

Members of his campaign are under arrest and indicted. His National Security Director resigned for lying to the FBI. His Attorney General has recused himself from the Russian election interference investigation.

These are nontrivial problems, and the press is correct to call Trump on the carpet for his ineffective leadership. They are the citizens' voice.

The New Yorker addressed the situation this way. (Way too wordy.)

"Staff departures have been a constant of Donald Trump’s first year in the White House. Michael Flynn has put in a guilty plea. Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, and Anthony Scaramucci were pushed out. Sean Spicer is off working on a book. Omarosa Manigault, the former contestant on “The Apprentice” whom Trump installed in the Office of Public Liaison, was reportedly fired, on Tuesday. In September, Politico reported that “a fast-growing number of White House staffers” were updating their résumés, making lunch dates with headhunters and prospective employers, and counting the days until 2018. “There will be an exodus from this administration in January,” one Republican lobbyist told Politico. It has already been confirmed that Dina Powell, the deputy national-security adviser, will leave the White House early next year and that Paul Winfree, the deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and the director of budget policy, will head back to his old job at the Heritage Foundation after this week. Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, has signaled that he will leave the Administration once the fate of the Republican tax bill is decided.

This degree of churn is “off the charts,” according to Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who has spent years tracking White House turnover rates. Next month, Tenpas will release her findings about Trump’s first year in office. The data—some of which she shared with me this week—is striking: even if every one of Trump’s senior aides stays put until January 20th, the anniversary of his Inauguration, his first-year turnover rate among top staff—some sixty positions in total—will reach or exceed thirty-three percent. Turnover, as Tenpas defines it, includes resignations, firings, and shifts of opinion within the White House. Trump’s first-year turnover rate will be three times higher than both Barack Obama’s (nine percent) and Bill Clinton’s (eleven percent) and double Ronald Reagan’s (seventeen percent), which is as far back as Tenpas’s analysis goes. And this, almost certainly, is just the beginning. Every one of the past five Presidencies saw a massive jump in departures during its second year: typically, the rate more than doubles as staff burnout intensifies, legislative initiatives bog down in Congress, and midterm elections, almost inevitably, deal a setback to the President’s party.

Turnover isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Trump traded up when he hired John Kelly to replace the ineffectual Priebus as chief of staff and H. R. McMaster to succeed Flynn at the helm of the National Security Council. But the coming and going of key players have a cost. When senior staff members leave, institutional knowledge leaves with them. Valuable relationships—with members of Congress, state officials, or interest groups—can be weakened or lost. Junior staff members are often left without a sponsor, a portfolio, or clear direction. During his campaign, Trump often promised to run the White House like a business, but few C.E.O.s would accept or survive, a level of staff attrition as high as this Presidents.

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It began almost immediately.

Morning Blast from Trump

The President addressed FBI law enforcement officers this morning at Quantico. The general theme is that law enforcement needs our full support and respect. Fine.

However, his posture included that he appreciated their loyalty to him because no one is more loyal to them than Donald Trump. That is surely debatable. It is most certainly Trump's style of patronizing the audience in a manner sounding like an authoritarian dictator.

Trump, the manipulator, added the attack on the immigration process that uses a lottery system to admit people into the country. He alleged that "many of them" are criminals of various types.

I agree that the lottery idea is ignorant. Congress should fix that immediately. However, to make generalized accusations against a segment of immigrants is wrong. That is the trouble with Trump. He takes something that is correct and adds his personal "wrong" ingredient and spin. That undermines his credibility.

Americans have the backs of law enforcement. Donald Trump serves Americans so long as he enforces the law and if he has not broken the law. Stay tuned for the outcome because this presidency is on probation and We the People are the probation officers.

On Probation

Population Size and Natural Resources

One of the topics in my new book on sustainable economics discusses the fact that many populations result in living in locations that are inhospitable to their numbers. Where people live, and work must have sufficient resources. For a variety of reasons, people end up in the wrong places where the population is too dense.

Whether locations can support them or not, they attract people. One instance is the State of California. The state's popularity includes Pacific Ocean beaches, mountains, and consistently warm weather. In fact, much of the region is a desert without a natural potable water supply. 

The climate is attractive however the geophysical problems are dangerous such as earthquakes and tsunamis. Applied technology attempts to mitigate deficiencies. Still, excess population contributes to environmental damage including unhealthy air and water.

There is a limited capacity to support people, though there is deficient political will to address the problem. 

Issues such as illegal immigration manifest in California because the state promotes farming due to the multiple growing seasons. 

Agriculture is automated, yet migrant workers are needed to support crop tending and harvesting. Migrants find it more attractive to stay in the state in contrast to going home when the job is complete. They have families and want to keep them with them. Doing that places an extraordinary burden on public services for which business, government, and taxpayers haven't adequately accounted. 

The problems aggregate from local and state government to the federal government that shares responsibility for protecting the borders and managing population migration.

Laws are on the books governing the circumstances. However, legislators failed to enforce the laws and to provide adequate resources to manage the situation. That manifested into a national crisis. 

The questions remain:

What are California's optimal population size and demographics including the workforce skill, knowledge, and experience profiles?

What are California's limits regard to clean air and water?

What is the deviation between the present situation and what is acceptable?

If there are too many people living in different places, what is being done about it?

"In February its eight “jail facilities” held an average of 17, 362 men and women: more than the 15, 300 inmates held in all 63 county jails in New York state. All but one of Los Angeles County's facilities are overcrowded, and the system as a whole has 38% more prisoners than it is meant to house. 

The Economist

Jones Turns the Tide, 'Alobama"

Doug Jones' margin of victory is 20,000 votes that are 0.5 percent or less though enough to win with confidence. What does that say for the state of Alabama and the Republican Party?

The fact that Donald Trump and the GOP backed Roy Moore, a candidate with despicable character revealed the level of immorality prevalent among the political community. The percentage of Republicans who are deplorable, individuals with flawed behavior is greater than the twenty-five percent that this analyst had previously estimated.

That circumstance points to a lack of intellectual development and shows how elastic individuals can be in trading "Christian morals" for accepting sexual misconduct, racism, bigotry, and discrimination.

This morning, Donald Trump awakens to the news that once again, he has failed to defeat his nemesis, Obama.

"The upset win by Jones means the GOP will have just a 51-49 edge in the Senate for the next year. A Democratic victory in a traditionally Republican state will also doubtlessly have GOP lawmakers in both chambers worried about next fall’s midterm elections." 

The Hill

"Jones wins Alabama Senate seat for Dems 

MONTGOMERY, AL. — Democrat Doug Jones is projected to win Tuesday’s special Senate election in Alabama, dealing a huge blow to President Trump and costing Republicans what should have been a safe seat in a deep-red state. 

Jones's victory over Republican Roy Moore comes after Moore faced multiple allegations of molestation or sexual assault against teenagers." 

The Hill email

Doug Jones defeated Roy Moore
New York Times Image

Throw Out the Morals

The deplorable rule now. The Republican Party has embraced immorality and illegality on many fronts. The President of the United States is illegitimate. The party the elected him are insurrectionists. Democracy in America is going down, and the popular majority is too quiet in their protests.

Republicans are so ideologically committed to greed, racism, and bigotry that they will embrace a child molester for the Senate. They accept a misogynist as their President.

Will they stop and change course when the Special Prosecutor makes the case that this President and regime, including Congressional leadership, are traitors?

As it stands, there is only one legitimate American political party, and that is the Democratic Party.

Image: The Daily Beast