Words, Words, Words.

Yes, I know.  I have an obsession with the appropriate definition of words and phrases.  Words, after all, are the very foundation of any interaction between two people or among millions of people and their governments.   

When I first became involved in politics in SLO County, phrases such as, “We support agriculture” bothered me a lot.  Either the speakers were Herculean in their physical abilities in order to “support” all of agriculture on their shoulders, or it was an incomplete sentence.  They supported agriculture to do what?  Stay in the business of providing food and fiber for the general population, or for the owners of the agricultural land to sell their properties into ever smaller economically non-viable parcels, or to sell the whole parcel to real estate developers.  These last options were based on the proviso that the land owner had certain inalienable property rights.  Which they do have to a certain extent, but the citizenry as a whole also has the right not to have their properties, or lives, impacted in such an adverse manner that they could no longer live on their properties in a safe and healthful manner.  Thus, government has the right under the police powers of the state to restrict the use of land for the general good.  That is, a land owner cannot begin operations of some noxious business next to an elementary school, nor can an elementary school be permitted next to a noxious business.  Noxious in the sense of contaminating the general physical environment.  This explanation is very simple.  It requires land use lawyers to completely understand the whole process, and applies in my experience to California only. 

When speakers of any stripe, but particularly politicians who use such trite phrases, the populace ought to stop and ask for definitions.  When I hear politicians such as Mitch McConnell say that he wants the President to work with him, what does he mean by that?  Does he mean that he wants to sit down with the President and work out some solutions to some of the major problems this country is suffering from, or does he want the President to sit down with him, listen to what McConnell has to say, and then do what McConnell wants?  There is a big difference here.  I strongly suspect the latter action is what McConnell intends.   

Speaking of Mitch McConnell, I nearly screamed at the TV the other night when I heard McConnell say that he keeps telling the President what the President should do, and if he doesn’t do it, the President will be sorry.  McConnell is telling the President what to do?  Frankly, I interpreted those words to mean, and I could be wrong, “Listen, boy, you do what we tell you to do, or else down the river with you.   And to prove our point we’ll file articles of impeachement against you and shut down the government.  It must be what you want to happen because if you didn’t want it, you would do what we tell you to do.”  Talk about the classic abuse syndrome!!

Further, all of this yammering by the radical right about impeaching the President if he takes a stand on immigration reform and issues an executive order is absurd.  An impeachable offense, they say.  I don’t remember anyone wanting to impeach W. over his Executive Order #43944, 2007.  That was the one that stated if anyone, citizen or otherwise, was determined by the Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury to be undermining the sovereignty of Lebanon could have their property confiscated.  No trial.  No nothing other than that determination.  There were some vague criteria on which such a determination could be made.  Could writing an article for a national publication which the two entities determined to be undermining the sovereignty of Lebanon result in the loss of any private property owned by the author?  You doubt this?  Google George W. Bush Executive Order #43944.   

One of the things that disturbs me the most about this last election is the fact that there are more Republicans in the House and Senate than any time since 1920.  My God!!  Remember what happened then?