Cheaters and Scoundrels

December 16, 2012

There are several legal challenges still in the court system relating to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as ObamaCare).

I do not understand why I have not read anything about the most basic of challenges that could be made.

The United States Constitution in Article One, Section 7  says “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills”.

The bill creates several new taxes and raises existing ones.  That is raising revenue.

The pages below are the first two pages of the Act as printed by the Government Printing Office:

firstpage

secondpage

As disgusting as it was, what you saw was a bill from the House of Representative (H.R. 3590) entitled “An Act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes”.

The bill was passed by the House and sent to the Senate.  The Senate never passed it.  Instead the Senate wrote an “amendment”.  It was “Strike out all after the enacting clause and insert“.  That was followed by 2,407 pages of the health care bill.

The bill did not originate in the House of Representatives.  You might recall that the Senate wrote the bill in it’s entirety and sent it over to the House for passage.  They even recognize their Constitutional difficulty by trying to amend the old bill.  They knew they could not write their own, new bill.

If the writers of the Constitution wanted the Senate to be able to originate revenue actions, the sentence “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills” would not have been written.

The Senate originated the revenue raising bill.  This cannot be denied.

There was a reason that the power to raise revenue was given solely to the House of Representatives, but our congress has chosen to ignore the supreme law of the land.

Both Democrats and Republicans are complicit in this sham.  If they do not like that provision of the Constitution they should follow one of the procedures in Article Five that allow for it to be amended.  If we have no rules, what rules are we to follow?

What they have done is to violate their oaths as well as the law.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

 

1 Comment | Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

This week in El Paso

December 15, 2012
Every week, it seems like Brutus is about to run out of ideas and then the City Council Agenda is published on Friday and PRESTO, he is invigorated. This week as you can see, they outdid themselves.
I thought last week was the ultimate. They decided to sue the Texas Attorney General because he ruled that they had to turn over their documents, letters and papers between city official and The Hunt and Foster group regarding the Triple A ball team and the stadium. As Brutus so aptly said in ” The truth will not set you free”. If you write it on our time, with our machines, about our city, on our nickel, it is our property. So to prove us wrong, they’ve hired an Austin Law Firm with our tax money to stop the voters from obtaining this information they rightly deserve.
Miss Lilly wrote and interesting editorial about how insulted she is that we don’t trust her and have no right to comment on their Emails. In the same edition, we read about a County Judge and county employees who we trusted, involved in bribery scam to deprive our mentally challenged children of adequate care. Can you get much lower? Who can you trust Miss Lilly?
The best way to avoid and prevent this from happening again, is to clear the air, open up your correspondence. What is there to fear? Or is there?
Last night I attended the closing act of the Insights Museum, soon to be known as “Wilson’s Rubble”.  What a fabulous place. I’m sure you brought your children and grandchildren there and just let them roam. So many ways to learn science. A young surgical resident was introduced explained, how much this place meant to her and her career. Some the generous El Paso Citizens were honored for support of the museum. The Politicos, old and new, were noticeable not a part of this group.
There is however, the promise of a Children’s Museum in the Recent Bonds which according to Brutus, with the changes in the oversight committee and the use of Bond funds for other ventures, such as the overages already in the Stadium and the move, we won’t see a new museum in our lifetime. So several generations of children are going to be without a science museum. But remember, they at least can go to the stadium and learn to chew, spit and scratch. Nice exchange Council. Again another way to care for our children.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by M.T. Cicero

Council Deceit

December 15, 2012

I try to keep each article focused on a single issue.

Next weeks council agenda won’t let me do that.  There are too many things that they are planning to do to us.

Here is a list of the items that caught my eye on my first reading of the agenda:

  • Item 19 on the regular agenda allows the city to sign a lease for antenna space on top of the Wells Fargo building for the public safety radio system.  Those antennae used to be on top of city hall.  Turns out that city hall was a ten story building and the multiple new buildings they want to move into are not tall enough for the antennae.  Cost? $40,800 a year (to start) for ten years.  That’s another $408,000 that I will add to the running total of the cost of tearing down city hall.
  • Item 18 on the regular agenda asks for permission to change the Bond Overview Advisory Committee (BOAC) resolution. Council created the BOAC so that we citizens would feel that we might get someone honest to watch how the bond money was spent — trust us, we will have civilian oversight.  The resolution stated “No member of the BOAC shall hold any other public office of honor, trust or profit in the government of the city, county or state during his or her term of office”.  That meant no elected officials or government staff.  The agenda item includes “The City Council will consider deleting this provision in order to allow more individuals to apply and be considered for appointment to the 2012 BOAC.”  In other words we want to stack the board with our insiders so that we can spend the money without citizen interference.
  • Item 17A on the regular agenda asks for permission for to have “City Development Department staff draft an ordinance implementing urban design standards/criteria for public assembly use buildings to include all City of El Paso civic buildings and schools.  Furthermore, that staff develop a process by which civic buildings and schools are vetted through an Architectural Design Review Committee to ensure compliance with urban design standards.”  In other words they want control over the design and construction of all of our local schools.
  • Item 10A on the regular agenda contemplates the establishment of the “Baseball Stadium Venue Project Fund”.  Maybe that makes sense.  What does not make sense is that it allows the city to use money in the fund to “pay the principal of, interest on, and other costs relating to bonds or other obligations issued by the City or to refund bonds, notes, or other obligations; …”   In other words they can steal money from the fund to pay for other things not related to the ballpark.  Is this an accidental phrasing?  Do they mean they only want the fund to pay for the ballpark?  Regardless of their intentions, the language is clear — they want to be able to pay for anything.

I will stop now to let you think about these things:

  • $408,000 being spent because the antennae on top of city hall need to be put somewhere else
  • Change the bond oversight committee to allow politicians and government insiders to control what is happening
  • Let us decide how schools will be built and what it will cost to build them
  • Let us spend the Hotel Occupancy Tax on whatever we want to spend it on.

We deserve better

Leave a Comment » | Ball park, City government, El Paso Independent School District, Open Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Cheaters and Scoundrels

December 14, 2012

There are several legal challenges still in the court system relating to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as ObamaCare).

I do not understand why I have not read anything about the most basic of challenges that could be made.

The United States Constitution in Article One, Section 7  says “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills”.

The bill creates several new taxes and raises existing ones.  That is raising revenue.

The pages below are the first two pages of the Act as printed by the Government Printing Office:

firstpage

secondpage

As disgusting as it was, what you saw was a bill from the House of Representative (H.R. 3590) entitled “An Act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes”.

The bill was passed by the House and sent to the Senate.  The Senate never passed it.  Instead the Senate wrote an “amendment”.  It was “Strike out all after the enacting clause and insert“.  That was followed by 2,407 pages of the health care bill.

The bill did not originate in the House of Representatives.  You might recall that the Senate wrote the bill in it’s entirety and sent it over to the House for passage.  They even recognize their Constitutional difficulty by trying to amend the old bill.  They knew they could not write their own, new bill.

If the writers of the Constitution wanted the Senate to be able to originate revenue actions, the sentence “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills” would not have been written.

The Senate originated the revenue raising bill.  This cannot be denied.

There was a reason that the power to raise revenue was given solely to the House of Representatives, but our congress has chosen to ignore the supreme law of the land.

Both Democrats and Republicans are complicit in this sham.  If they do not like that provision of the Constitution they should follow one of the procedures in Article Five that allow for it to be amended.  If we have no rules, what rules are we to follow?

What they have done is to violate their oaths as well as the law.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

 

Leave a Comment » | Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Cato

Maybe “The Truth Will Not Set You Free”

December 14, 2012

The City of El Paso  is now suing the Texas Attorney General to try to avoid turning over emails and other documents that were requested for a citizen back in September.

According to the El Paso Times the city claims that “the personal emails, letters, memos and other documents of the mayor and City Council members should not be subject to public information searches even if they regard city business”.   Also requested were copies of communications between city officials and business people linked to the Triple-A baseball team.  According to the Times the city issued a statement saying “Those documents do not meet the statutory definition of public information”.

The Attorney General has ruled to the contrary and has told the city to turn over the documents.  The basic path that the Attorney General applies to the Public Information Act request in cases like this is:

  • Does the city have the information (and it is not a violation of a person’s right to privacy)?  If so,  turn it over.
  • Does the city pay for or control the email account being used?  If so, turn it over.
  • If the email account is paid for privately, does the email discuss city business?  If so, turn it over.

Another case like this has already gone to court and the judge ordered the information to be turned over.  The case is now on appeal.

It looks like the city will lose this court case.  So why are they challenging the Attorney General, especially if nothing is wrong?

Could it be the principal of the thing?  Preposterous!  The law is clear, the case law is clear, and I have not seen much evidence that the people running the city can even spell principal, much less have one.

What are they trying to hide?  This tactic will allow them to delay, but why?  Have they violated a law?  Are they worried about their images in the next election?

As far as the communications between the city staff and business people, they should be turned over without delay if they were discussing city matters or if city email accounts were used.  The law is clear on this.

A committee in the legislature is even considering changes to the law, in part to make clear that the modern methods of communication (text messaging, emails) are specifically included in the law.  Currently the possession of and content of messages become the basis for declaring them to be public information.

Think about what the city wants to do.  If a government official can conduct government business in secret on his or her own device, what will keep them from doing everything that way?  That would be wrong.

Why are they spending our money on a high profile case with out of town lawyers when the intent of the law is clear and they will ultimately have to turn over the documents?  Why do they want to keep these documents secret as long as they can?  Who are they protecting?

I can only conclude that there is something they do not want us to know.

We will eventually.

We deserve better

1 Comment | City government, El Paso Times, Open Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by jcurrey

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