Saturday's Virginian-Pilot had an interesting and entertaining editorial about Del. Mark Cole's (R-Spotsylvania) House Bill 53 that was reported out of committee after modifications. The title of the piece, Tinfoil hats are not enough, although descriptive, does not do justice to the editorial much less to the bill. To fully understand the bill and the mocking by the paper, read the links provided above and an entry from another blog, Not Larry Sabato, that expands on the history of the bill. Here is just a taste from that editorial of the craziness going on in the House of Delegates:
Virginians are in danger of having top-secret microchips implanted against their will.
It must be true because the General Assembly is considering a law against it, and the Internet is full of warnings about the danger....
The microchips have the ability to record those conversations and play them back. Somehow — perhaps involving lasers — the miniature computer circuits can also make 3-D scans of victims’ bodies while they sleep. It’s not known whether the scans are in color or black and white.
Contrast this to an editorial, Time is Running Out, in The New York Times by Bob Herbert in which he warns that time is running out for our leaders to be serious about trying to solve problems that if not fixed will result in us being a second-rate economy. He quotes participants from a conference, The Next American Economy: Transforming Energy and Infrastructure Investment who discussed the sad and shameful state of our infrastructure, trade policies, education system, and energy policies that impact jobs and our fiscal and economic health. Here is a passage from Herbert's editorial:
The conference was sparked by a sense of dismay over what has happened to the U.S. economy over the past several years and a feeling that constructive ideas about solutions were being smothered by an obsessive focus on the short-term in this society, and by the chronic dysfunction and hyperpartisanship in much of the government.
We have extremely serious problems, so serious that our politicians are not even being honest with us about them lest they be labeled pessimistic in a society that blithly continues to believe that the U.S. is exceptional and that bad things shouldn't and won't happen to us. As Herbert warns, time is running out while Republicans at the national level stand in the way of anything proposed by Democrats or the President, the VA General Assembly focuses on bills like the one described above, our new governor raises the speed limit and pretends that it is a win for his so-called transportation plan, and we, the citizens, are victims of a political system that is failing to work for us and undermining the greatness of our nation.