“Congress is gradually moving toward having only one bill per year,” former congressman Justin Amash (L-MI) tweeted recently. And that bill will have “everything stuffed into it, negotiated by just a few congressional leaders, completely behind closed doors, with no floor amendments permitted.”

Amash presumably has the current “infrastructure” bill in mind. Weighing in at more than 2,700 pages and chock-full of stuff only tenuously (if at all) related to infrastructure, it’s more of a leadership-negotiated door stop than an honestly debated policy proposal.

It’s hardly the first such bill. The Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, also weighed in at about 2,700 pages, but entailed another 20,000 pages of rules and regulations to implement. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) infamously said, Congress had to “pass it to find out what’s in it.”

If there’s anything worse than a law passed by Congress, it’s a law passed by Congress that no one, even Congress, knows the contents of. Many big bills end up on the floor for debate and voting before they’re complete enough to be printed and distributed to the people who are supposed to debate and vote on them.

Short of abolishing the federal government (now there’s an idea worth considering!), there’s probably no cure for bad laws. But there’s a cure, in three parts, for not knowing what’s in those bad laws.

The first part of the cure is called the Read The Bills Act. The RTBA was proposed by Downsize DC in 2006. It’s been introduced in the US Senate by Rand Paul (R-KY) six times, dying in committee each time.

The RTBA would require bills to be publicly posted at least 72 hours prior to Congress formally taking up those bills for consideration. The leadership log-rolling  production of “Infrastructure Week” has been dragging on for months now, so 72 hours of having the final product available/visible doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

Part two, also courtesy of Downsize DC, is the One Subject at a Time Act, which is exactly what it sounds like. Every bill would have to be about one thing. No more grab-bags full of unrelated party favors for every constituency under the sun in the name of “infrastructure” or “defense” or whatever.

Part three is a steroid shot for the Read The Bills Act. In my opinion, the bills should not just be “posted.” They should be read aloud on the floors of the House and Senate before they can be voted on.

Yes, every word.

Yes, every bill.

And if a member of Congress doesn’t sit through it, he or she doesn’t get to vote on it.

We’d quickly start getting  brochure-size legislation instead of encyclopedia-size legislation. And we’d be better off as a result.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

On October 21, actor Alec Baldwin shot and killed one person (cinematographer Halyna Hutchins) and wounded another (director Joel Souza) on the set of Rust, a western film he was making in New Mexico.

Reportage generally describes the shooting as an “accident,” but it wasn’t. There are two kinds of firearms discharges: Intentional and negligent. This incident is no exception. But that doesn’t mean the intent or negligence was wholly Baldwin’s.

Was the shooting intentional or negligent? And whose intent or negligence contributed to it? From afar, this looks like a complicated question.

Don’t write off intent entirely. The motion picture industry in general, and the Rust set specifically, were in the throes of ongoing labor disputes. It’s not beyond belief that sabotage was involved.

Negligence seems the more likely explanation, though.

The gun was supposed to be a prop. It was presented to Baldwin by assistant director Dave Halls as a “cold gun” during a rehearsal, to indicate that it held no ammunition. But when Baldwin drew it, and presumably pulled the trigger, it turned out not to be “cold” after all.

Did Baldwin personally check the gun’s chambers for live ammo before using it?

Did Halls personally check the gun’s chambers for live ammo before pronouncing it “cold?”

Did production armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed personally check the gun’s chambers for live ammo before authorizing its presence on the set?

Is it true that, as The Wrap reports, crew members had taken the gun off-set for some target shooting with live ammo earlier in the day, then returned it — possibly with live ammo still in the chambers?

Is it true that, as the Los Angeles Times reports, one of the complaints motivating a walk-off of crew members that day related to previous discharges of prop guns?

It sounds like there may have been plenty of negligence to go around on the set of Rust. And Baldwin may bear a good deal of responsibility for that negligence in his role as a producer trying to squeeze a lot out of a small budget ($6-7 million, a pittance by Hollywood standards). Competence, experience, and trustworthiness may be expensive, but they aren’t optional where guns are involved.

As an actor,  Baldwin probably bears a good deal less responsibility, but certainly not none.

Yes, the shooting occurred at the end of a long chain of people and protocols which should have made it impossible for what happened to happen. But he, not those other people, drew the gun and pointed it at Hutchins and Souza.

Even on a movie set, personally checking a gun for live ammo before pointing it at someone is the absolute bare minimum of personal responsibility (off a movie set, by the way, one should never point a gun at someone one does not intend to shoot, even if it’s certainly unloaded).

There’s seemingly plenty of blame to go around here, for everyone and everything except the gun. It’s an inanimate object. Guns don’t kill people. People do, whether intentionally or negligently.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

Facebook “whistleblower” Frances Haugen, the Washington Post reports, has “repeatedly accused [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg of choosing growth over the public good.” The Post‘s headline puts it a slightly different way: “Growth over safety.”

The meaning of “growth” in this context is pretty obvious: Zuckerberg’s company makes a lot of money, and he wants it to make even more.

The meaning of “safety” is somewhat more nebulous. Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever refers to “difficult decisions between free expressions and harmful speech, security and other issues” before going to a place that should chill the blood of anyone listening:

“Drawing these societal lines is always better left to elected leaders which is why we’ve spent many years advocating for Congress to pass updated Internet regulations.”

The Post story opens with a more accurate account of what Lever proposes:

“Late last year, Mark Zuckerberg faced a choice: Comply with demands from Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party to censor anti-government dissidents or risk getting knocked offline in one of Facebook’s most lucrative Asian markets.”

Zuck decided to work for Hanoi instead of for Facebook’s users in Vietnam. And in the US he’d be happy to work for Congress rather than for Facebook’s American users, as long as doing so doesn’t get in between and his real customers (advertisers), and perhaps even herds more of those customers his way.

Neither “the public good” nor “safety” (for anyone or anything but the political class’s power and Facebook’s profits, at least) enter into the equation.

Zuckerberg’s job is to grow his company’s profits, thereby growing his and his shareholders’ wealth, full stop. That’s what companies do. Their goal, in three words, is to “increase shareholder value.”

One of the most effective ways of doing that, if he can manage it, is getting governments to ensure that Facebook faces little or no competition in its chosen marketplaces.

With market capitalization approaching $1 trillion and annual net income of $30 billion or so, Facebook is well-positioned to meet the costs of complying with whatever censorship regime Congress might choose to impose to protect the interests of the ruling class (not “the public good”). Smaller social media platforms or potential new competitors, not so much.

As for the politicians cosplaying as Facebook’s opponents while actually working overtime to turn it into a monopoly, they’d have you believe that any speech they dislike (they call it “misinformation”) equates to shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, and that they’re heroic guardians of your safety. In reality, they’re just muggers attempting to run off with even more of your freedom than they’ve already taken.

Mark Zuckerberg may not be your friend, but if you let him become Congress’s friend he’ll surely be your enemy.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY