{"id":254,"date":"2008-06-09T10:59:47","date_gmt":"2008-06-09T18:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/?p=254"},"modified":"2008-06-09T10:59:47","modified_gmt":"2008-06-09T18:59:47","slug":"congress-a-well-oiled-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/congress-a-well-oiled-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress:  A well-oiled machine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No, I&#8217;m not being facetious.  Regular readers (thank you my fine few dozen!) would know that I am not a big fan of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hodakvalue.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/bribing_people_with_their_own.html\">Congress&#8217;s work<\/a>.  In fact, it&#8217;s fair to say that if Congress passes legislation, I&#8217;m almost certain to think our country is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.quotationspage.com\/quote\/26207.html\">worse off<\/a> for it.<\/p>\n<p>So why would I rationally and sincerely consider Congress a &#8220;well-oiled machine?&#8221;  Because, as an institution, as unpopular and frighteningly wasteful as it seems to those of us on the outside, it is extremely functional at serving the values of those on the inside.<\/p>\n<p>How can one reconcile this graph&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/media.gallup.com\/poll\/graphs\/congress_approval_ratings.gif\"height=\"200\" width=\"320\" border=\"0\"><\/p>\n<p>With this one?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fairvote.org\/media\/research\/dubdem\/InReElection.gif\"height=\"200\" width=\"320\" border=\"0\"><\/p>\n<p>One way is to view our Federal government as a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/washington\/2005-11-14-fiscal-hurricane-cover_x.htm\">broken business model<\/a> that simply cannot go out of business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No, I&#8217;m not being facetious. Regular readers (thank you my fine few dozen!) would know that I am not a big fan of Congress&#8217;s work. In fact, it&#8217;s fair to say that if Congress passes legislation, I&#8217;m almost certain to think our country is worse off for it. So why would I rationally and sincerely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-patterns-without-intention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hodakvalue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}