Fresh from watching Dylan perform "The Entertainer" at his piano recital, which due to a glitch I only found about a few minutes before it was to begin, I've been pondering taking one chunk of the writing I've done here and publishing it as a short book.
You might call it a bookie, except that the only odds it would offer you is the extremely long odds that anybody would ever actually read it.
Well, I think I know one person who would read it. One of my faithful readers and friends took great exception to my recent suggestion that Obama establish a New New Deal, or a New Deal 2.0. As he and I have exchanged long email messages back and forth, debating this issue, it occurred to me that, much like software, the type of "smart government" Obama needs to implement should come with expiration dates written into each measure.
At the very least, form requirements should be established that upon expiration of such programs, a new majority of Congress would be necessary to authorize updating the legislation; otherwise, it would expire.
My friend and I do draw similar conclusions abut the long-term effects of the New Deal. Because at that time in our country's history, no one had the concept of short and medium term fixes, all of FDR's reforms eventually grew into unmanageable bureaucracies, ossified entitlements, and unexamined bloat.
Therefore, the idea of this book, should I actually compile it, would be to propose a new legislative, regulatory and governance model -- based on my knowledge of software development.
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