“The First 100 Days”
4/28/17, “Open for Business”
Washington, District of Columbia
If I were writing this entry from Annapolis or Austin,
Richmond or Raleigh, I would make sure to find a nice spot where I could get a
good establishing shot of the state capitol building. Well, here in Washington, our nation’s
capital, of course I am writing this entry in view of the national capitol
building, where, earlier today, Congress passed a last-minute bill keeping our
federal government open for business through the end of the week.
As a libertarian, I am drastically opposed to
almost all federal government spending, especially what is called “entitlement
spending.” When our Founding Fathers
included the phrase “To promote the general Welfare” in the preamble, they did
not mean it the way it is used today. In
fact, Alexander Hamilton, the newfound hero of the left, would be rolling over
in his grave if he saw what constitutes modern welfare programs. Spending on defense is way out of hand. Again, these peacekeeping and nation building
programs were not what our Founding Fathers meant when they said “to provide
for the common Defense.” Precisely zero
tax dollars should go to military spending that does not directly protect
American interests. The fact that we
fund half of NATO is beyond ridiculous.
As for domestic spending, again, that is out of control, but one
particular domestic agency that is at complete odds with my libertarianism is
actually very near and dear to my heart.
That is the National Park Service.
Why? Because I want to visit each
and every of the 400+ National Park Sites in our country, and the fact that
they are nationally recognized is what makes them significant. The fact that they almost all have a
similar-looking federally-printed brochure is what makes collecting them
fun. The stamps, though, are right in
line with my libertarianism. They are
produced by a company called Eastern National that sells passport books for the
NPS units and gives away the stamps for free to the parks so that they can
entice people to buy the passport books.
It’s a great business model, and it’s one of my favorite parts of
visiting the NPS units, even though it is actually the free brochures that I
get stamped (and instead buy a lapel pin from Eastern National).
However, while I am a fan of the National
Park Service, I wholeheartedly reject other federal conservation programs, such
as the National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management as a needless
and, in my view, unconstitutional, examples of federal overreach. As a libertarian, I am even opposed to local
government control of this vast swaths of land, but let’s stick to federal
overreach for the moment.
Since Donald
J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, an
event I witnessed not far from this very spot almost 100 days ago, America has
been open for business, with President Trump easing overburdening regulations
and allowing profitable on federal lands.
It has been great, a libertarian’s dream come true. I just wish he had gone further, and my number
one complaint is that the stupid piece of legislation now known as Obamacare
has not been repealed. They had the
votes, but they didn’t do it. A clean
repeal was not should have been done, but they refused to advance that, but I
will talk more tomorrow about Trump’s First 100 Days. Now, I have to talk about my Day 0.
It was a hectic and chaotic Day 0, far more
than it should have been. I didn’t see
my movie last night, since it got terrible reviews. I didn’t even pack, either, since my laundry
wasn’t ready. It was a crazy day at the
office, one of the craziest I’ve ever had, due to a bizarre number of large
projects all becoming due in a short time frame (and being assigned all this
week). I got my usual pre-departure
lunch from Hop Won, shrimp with lobster sauce this time, and brought it back to
my desk, since we were so busy.
Once I
finished the project I was working on, I went back home to pick up my laundry
and get ready and changed and pack.
There was a lot left to do at the office when I got back, and it all
took longer that it should have taken.
Finally, at 6 PM, my mother met me at the office, and we headed
down. She wanted to take the subway, and
I wanted to bike. Besides, I had left my
Graycliff from earlier by the bikes. I
retrieved my cigar, and it was a bit of a wait for a bike, which actually meant
that she got there before I did.
We got
our tickets and then went to get dinner.
I went to the combined KFC and Taco Ball and got a nice assortment. The atmosphere was as to be expected of Penn
Station at that hour. After dinner, I
wanted a coffee, so we went to the Tim Horton’s, and it seemed they were out of
coffee, but we could not get a straight answer from the cashier oddly. Eventually, we just walked away and went to
Dunkin Donuts, which had plenty of coffee.
It was soon time to board, and we found two seats together. I spent most of the train ride playing Zelda,
and I made some good progress, though I didn’t make as much progress this week
as I had hoped, since I got waylaid doing a lot of side quests and cleanup
stuff. We got to Union Station and took
a taxi to the hotel.
There was only one
word to describe the hotel: opulent. Everything
was covered in gold and “yuge.” The room
was just as opulent. I was quite thirsty
and wanted a soda, which caused a bit of an incident that does not need to be
recounted here. I then went out to the
National Mall, asking the receptionist where “the mall” was. She thought I meant a small collection of
shops that was “not really a mall.”
Apparently, they don’t call the National Mall “the mall.” I found a spot with great view of the
Capitol, where I sat down, lit up an Ardor, and proceeded to write this entry,
having to constantly shift to avoid the sprinklers, which I will now close so
that I can publish and get back to the hotel.
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