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Investigating the Similarities Between Laws and Sausages

admin — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 19:01:05 +0000

As Rob Bishop elaborates in the beginning of his Congressional memoir, what he thought he knew about how Congress operated was different from reality. He admits that he had been teaching from textbooks for nearly three decades that just didn’t get it right–he says that his book, THE THINGS I LEARNED IN CONGRESS THEY NEVER TAUGHT IN SCHOOL, is intended to set things straight.

As readers will discover as they go from chapter to chapter, it can be a messy and a hard-to-understand process. Apparently, it’s been said that… “to retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.” That phrase led to the now famous aphorism attributed to the 19th-century German statesman, Prince Otto von Bismarck… who supposedly said that “laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.”

There is even debate among bloggers about the prince that’s been going on for at least 100 years. A 1933 textbook (Government in the United States by Claudius P. Johnson) reinforces Rob’s cynicism about such sources and adds even more fuel to the fire. Johnson wrote that “I think it was Bismarck who said that the man who wishes to keep his respect for sausages and laws should not see how either is made. With reference to the laws, a knowledge of how they are made may increase our respect for them and their makers; and if it does not, we are at least able to express our dissatisfaction in an intelligent manner.”

The tale also recounts a proposed duel between Otto von Bismarck and the German scientist Rudolf Virchow. According to a Berlin journal, Bismarck took offense at language that Professor Virchow had used in a debate in the Reichstag (their parliament at the time). The learned doctor was at that time engaged in investigations relating to trichinosis. He is said to have thus replied to the messenger who bore Bismarck’s challenge: “My arms; there they are–those two sausages. One of them is full of trichinae; the other is pure. Let his Excellency breakfast with me. We will eat the sausages; and he shall take his choice of them.”

So, now we can see with clarity just how messy the making of laws can be, that the innocent sausage, previously used as just a metaphor, has now become a weapon. And, that should give any reader, even more reason to study what Rob has written about Congress, government and the similarity to stuffing seasoned pork meat and other delicacies into pig intestines and then allowing it to cure.

It is a disgusting business, isn’t it?

Editor, GM Jarrard

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“The Puppeteers” A Gripping Tale Well Told

admin — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 00:52:38 +0000

The new best seller by Fox News contributor and former Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz will keep you spell-bound from the first page to the last. But, The Puppeteers isn’t a Grisham-type whodunnit. No, it’s actually nonfiction. And, that’s the scariest part of all. To make matters worse, we’re all playing a part – as the victims of a vast scheme of conspirators and collaborators who want to siphon away our God-given rights one freedom at a time. I keep trying to put the book down, but, it keeps calling me back, like hundreds of drivers slowing down at a grisly accident scene on I-15 gawking at all the carnage. I had already heard of the infamous investment firm of BlackRock and read rumors that it was up to no good. There is no adjective that can accurately describe what harm they are inflicting on the American people. As Chaffetz’s former Congressional colleague Rob Bishop describes it in his book, The Things I Learned in Congress They Never Taught In School, many politicians and power brokers of the Left hide behind the good intentions, sustaining power and influence of what Bishop describes as The Nanny State. Bishop explains that the people pulling the strings in a Nanny State are convinced that normal, everyday American citizens – AKA you and me – are just not wise enough to govern themselves.

Like President Woodrow Wilson more than a hundred years ago, the enlightened management of the powers that be, like BlackRock, for example, are convinced that they simply know better than we do about how to run our lives. We continue to buy gasoline to run our cars, we live in houses far larger than we need, we spend too much on consumer goods and we are warming up the planet unnecessarily. We’re not responsible enough to use the Earth’s resources wisely. We’re just not up to the task of having so much personal freedom. Thank goodness BlackRock and their allies on the Left are protecting us from ourselves! Chaffetz digs into the details of this “vast, Left-wing conspiracy.” He exposes the hypocrisy of the Left. In Chapter 4, “The End of the World Justifies Any Sacrifice,” he exposes many of the wicked and deceitful methods employed by power-hungry Leftists to circumvent the will of the people to get what they want. In many cases, the “End of the World” is represented by climate change. Chaffetz notes that “The Federal government says it will do anything to pay for climate change. What that actually means is that it can do anything, thanks to climate change. Existential threats are great for government. They give it license to justify any sacrifice from taxpayers.” Then, he explains that “printing money and raising taxes aren’t the only way” they accomplish their goals. One way has been to burden the people by slyly tapping into their retirement funds using the Trojan horse of “Net Zero by 2050.” This so-called goal has been used to squeeze compliance from pension funds managers to use retirement funds to invest in various renewable energy and other “Green New Deal” projects through their rules to “remove barriers to considering environmental, social, governance factors.” Rather than focusing on their stated goal of maximizing returns for pensioners, the fund managers toe the line by complying with the puppeteers’ edicts. Chaffetz clarifies what this brand of neo-capitalism ISN’T: “A capitalism that subjugates prosperity to ideology is not capitalism. And a democracy that substitutes the judgment of elite oligarchs for the will of the people is not democracy.”

He explains that elections alone cannot fix the damage that these oligarchs are inflicting upon the people. Towards the end of Chapter 2, Chaffetz uses their own words to indict them: “In this new utopia of stakeholder capitalism, markets are not free, they are manipulated. Compliance is not voluntary – it is forced. Capital does not flow – it is diverted. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink famously boasted in 2017 of his ability to force change on the American economy. ‘Behaviors are going to have to change, and this is one thing we are asking companies, you have to force behaviors and at BlackRock, we are forcing behaviors.” By putting like-minded people on the boards of large corporations with huge pension funds, people like Fink are spreading their tentacles throughout the corporate world. Chaffetz reveals that “Fink preaches as gospel truth the highly speculative notion that only decarbonization by 2050 can save mankind. ‘Every company nd every industry will be transformed by the transition to a net-zero world…the question is, will you lead or will you be lead.’”

When I bought Chaffetz’s e-book, I thought I was going to discover all about the puppeteers who were pulling Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ strings, and to my horror, he exposes that we are all dancing to the tune of oligarchs like Larry Fink.

Now what?

By GM Jarrard, editor/publisher of “THE THINGS I LEARNED IN CONGRESS THEY NEVER TAUGHT IN SCHOOL”

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The Crisis in the Capital and the Cocksure Congressmen

admin — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 12:27:11 +0000

The last couple of weeks in Washington has not been a pretty sight. Right in the middle of a war in eastern Europe and a heart-rending catastrophe in the Middle East we have witnessed an unnecessary crisis in the capital. There are more crises in D.C. right now that are too numerous to count, and we surely didn’t need to create another one.

It sounds like the story of the old farmer’s wife who watched a squabble unfold from her kitchen window overlooking the apple orchard. Nearby stood her husband’s beloved field and brush mower. That was site of all the excitement.

A pair of young cock robins had been carrying on, fighting for the attention of a female nearby. First one and then the other landed on the handle of the mower, then they continued their duel until one flew off and was grabbed by the tomcat. That was the end of him. The farmer’s wife then recalled the final lines of the old English nursery rhyme: “All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing, When they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin.”

The moral of the story: “Don’t fly off the handle when you’re only half-cocked.”

The fact of the matter is that the in-fighting among a handful of wannabe leaders in the slim Republican majority wasn’t about policy or impending legislation. They all agree on all the big issues that matter to the American people. It was about personality, style and who offended whom. It didn’t have to happen and certainly not in public. There are no ideological differences. There is not a “moderate” vs. “conservative” battle, as some media reports contend.

Being “half-cocked” is only half the problem.

Congress itself has some built-in structural problems that also need to be addressed. Put another way, the house needs to be remodeled. What the Founders put in the “blueprint”– the Constitution – has been changed in past decades that has weakened the foundation of federalism. Things like rolling votes, no end dates for legislation and proxy voting have all done their damage.

It’s all spelled out inThe Things I Learned In Congress They Never Taught In School by former Congressman Rob Bishop

Rep. Bishop explains. “I was pretty cocksure myself about Congress and the Constitution when I landed in D.C. in 2003 and took my place among the other 434 representatives of the people. Now that I look back I recall that line from the Wizard of Oz, “you’re not in Kansas anymore.” In my case, it was Utah.

“I had spent 16 years in the Utah House of Representatives, the last two as its Speaker. I had taught government and history in high school for nearly three decades; I had graduated from college in politics and government. Didn’t I know how Congress worked? The answer is NO. My textbooks were wrong.

“Over the next 18 years, I wrote what I saw and learned; I critiqued it, made notes and observed what I thought needed to be changed. When I finished my nine terms and had term-limited myself, I had more written some 220,000 words, so we edited it, polished it and put it into a book.

“First, I laid out the “ground rules” that the Founders set up: The Constitution. It’s only some 21 pages long, but it describes the sharing of power or the balance of competing interests, first among the three main branches of the Federal government – the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches – and then the vertical balance between the central government and the states. Its purpose was to prevent one person or group from exercising “unrighteous dominion.”

Then, Rep. Bishop describes what Congress is actually like; some of it is odd, some of it amusing and other parts troublesome. In chapter 24, ten possible solutions are spelled out.

Chapter four, Facing Nanny Government, Progressivism and Loss of Values, demands that we “fire the nanny.” Bishop continues:“Nanny government had a skewed view of the world as a potential Garden of Eden where desires were fun, free, and risk-free. At least Adam and Eve were smart enough to choose to live in the real world. Nanny government has left for posterity a bloated bureaucracy, huge national debt, and unsustainable entitlements that have become a giant Ponzi scheme.

“The nascent origin of the Nanny state was risk aversion. But, its roots go deeper than that. It was risk aversion or security from failure that gave birth to the Nanny state or, in other words, Progressivism…” (the word “progress” being ripped from its true meaning, a common liberal device used for deception, as in obfuscating the word “liberal” and missing the meaning of its root: liberty).Embracing “Nanny” has all kinds of unintended consequences as the book explains, the worst being trillions of dollars of debt: “Security from failure became almost a religion for those who embraced the Nanny state. As Will and Ariel Durant observed in The Lessons of History’ (1968). ‘Freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies…’” Progressives wanted not equality of opportunity, rather equality of condition. “The American idea of reward according to individual achievement….(was) hostile to the egalitarian impulse.” In 1961, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a satirical short story of a society which forced all to be equal. Persons who were superior had to be handicapped. A graceful dancer had to wear army boots; the pretty had to wear masks; the smart had to implant beepers to distract creativity; and the swift had to wear weights to slow them down. Life was fair. Government enforced it. Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron was only fiction–for now.”

The Things I Learned In Congress They Never Taught In School is now available from Amazon for $25.95, and soon, in bookstores. For details, visit the website, robbishopincongress.com. Or send an email to preservationbooks@icloud.com.

Rob Bishop, (R-UT, 2003-2021, First Congressional District)

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