#platformpod

Episode 13  - “Government Reform”

Recorded 08/11/2016

More on block granting: a 27-page 2014 Congressional Research Service report titled "Block Grants: Perspectives and Controversies" starts with a good definition:

Block grants are a form of grant-in-aid that the federal government uses to provide state and local governments a specified amount of funding to assist them in addressing broad purposes, such as  community development, social services, public health, or law enforcement.  

Block grant advocates argue that block grants increase government efficiency and program effectiveness by redistributing power and accountability through decentralization and partial devolution of decision-making authority from the federal government to state and local governments. Advocates also view them as a means to reduce the federal deficit.  

Block grant critics argue that block grants can undermine the achievement of national objectives and can be used as a “backdoor” means to reduce government spending on domestic issues. [...] Block grant critics also argue that the decentralized nature of block grants makes it difficult to measure block grant performance and to hold state and local government officials accountable for their decisions. 

This is the one with the "Information Freedom Highway" reference. That's not a thing. The information superhighway is a thing, the Staple Singers song and album "Freedom Highway" are also things. Maybe they were thinking of that.

This is also the one where we use "Voldemort" as a verb. It happens a lot over the course of all the stuff we read – talking about Presidents and presidential candidates without saying their names.

A lot of states have adopted English as their official language.

Immigrants are less prone to violent crime and per this massive 2015 report, incarcerated at half the rate of Americans that aren't immigrants:  

[R]oughly 1.6 percent of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born. This disparity in incarceration rates has existed for decades, as evidenced by data from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 decennial censuses.

We proposed - threatened? - an episode on the border wall. At this point, it seems unlikely. The episode, not the wall. But the wall too.

A Voldemorted official: John Koskinen, Commissioner of the IRS. The text refers to him like this: "[T]he IRS has become an ideological attack dog for the worst elements of today’s Democratic Party. [...] Its commissioner has lied to Congress, hidden evidence, and stonewalled investigations." We had to look him up.

Search for "GOP party platform" on Google. See what it turns up. It may have changed since we recorded this.

In 2013, SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of adults told Gallup they'd "vote for" term limits.

We couldn't find any Native American – or, as the document would say, American Indian – among the document's authors. That doesn't mean there wasn't one or more, just that we reviewed the list and couldn't find one.

A 1997 lecture by Peter d'Errico titled "American Indian Sovereignty: Now You See It, Now You Don't" is relevant to our discussion.

The history of the American flag is something we'll always link to.

67% of Washington D.C. residents want to be a state instead of a District as of November 2015, per the Washington Post, which they say a record-high.

Attribution because CITE YOUR SOURCES:

Theme Backing Song - Parasite by Lamprey - Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0)  

Political Speech Quotes from American Rhetoric