{"id":31753,"date":"2019-04-15T10:01:46","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T15:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/?p=31753"},"modified":"2019-04-15T10:01:46","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T15:01:46","slug":"just-how-stupid-are-elected-representatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/15\/just-how-stupid-are-elected-representatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Just how stupid are elected representatives?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>New Trope Warning!<\/strong><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><em>I have a particular position on a particular policy.  Everyone who disagrees with my position is too stupid to understand my position, so ignore them. This especially applies to people who actually made the laws and\/or policies pertaining to that policy area. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>You all saw this coming from Sanders regarding Trump&#8217;s taxes.  She made the claim that members of Congress are too stupid to understand Trump&#8217;s tax forms, she says. So, her position is that people who make deploy and enforce these laws and regulations, or enforce them, the very laws and regulations that cause those very tax forms to exist to begin with, don&#8217;t know what they are or how to read them!<\/p>\n<p>The thing is, I&#8217;m hearing the same thing from other Republicans at other levels of government. If the citizens want something to happen, the Republican answer is, &#8220;this is something that can&#8217;t be understood except by a few, including myself and maybe one other guy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>My advice: Go to your representatives (you probably have five elected legislative reps in total) and ask them to explain some policy issues, especially focusing on those for which that elected person sits on a relevant committee. If you get a good, understandable, answer, consider voting to re-elect. If you get gobbledygook, you are either being sold a bill of goods from someone who does not want you to understand, or you are taking to an idiot. Either way, consider not voting for that person.<\/p>\n<p>If you are told &#8220;nobody can understand this policy&#8221; then ask for the names of the other electeds who don&#8217;t understand the policy, and compose a joint memo asking for clarification, and fashion that into a Letter to the Editor. There are stupid people in congress and state legislatures. But it is incumbent on those who claim most of them, or all of them in a given party, are as such.  Because, frankly, most of them aren&#8217; that stupid.<\/p>\n<p>With this sort of activism we may be able to stop this madness!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Trope Warning!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5026],"tags":[1563,845,5922],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/hypothetical_stupid_congressman.png?fit=574%2C344&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-8g9","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31755,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31753\/revisions\/31755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}