…when the people telling me that there is start acting like it. ($550,000,000 edition)

McKAY: I think it’s highly unlikely. Besides, geo-engineering’s a dumb pursuit anyways. I mean, no one person’s gonna solve global warming. We all have to do our part.

KELLER: Like not take private jets.

McKAY: Well, they were going our way anyway.

There’s been a bit of an uproar over the fact that the House has budgeted $550,000,000 to buy private jets for Congress.

I’d like to say I’m surprised by the hypocrisy involved in Congress’s working on legislation intended to combat Global Warming while wasting $550,000,000 to buy private jets, but nothing about corrupt government officials (I repeat myself…) spending money on things they’d like to have while doing their best to keep the common citizen from having any money (or freedom) to buy things for himself surprises me anymore, sadly.

Why does Congress have its own fleet of private jets? In theory, congresspeople could just as easily travel using commercial aircraft on their own dime, rather than passing the cost off to the taxpayers for private jets that just add more pollution to the air.

Perhaps a better question is, why do we still send Congresspeople to DC? Wouldn’t they be able to better serve their constituents if they stayed at home, where they could actually meet with the common citizen?

Sure, they have to meet and discuss bills and such, but we have technology that could handle that much cheaper than the cost of sending them all to DC to meet. It could work much like Xbox Live’s 1 vs. 100, and the resulting virtual Congress could be broadcast on C-Span just as easily as the current one is. I bet it would get more viewers, too – Congressman Big Daddy (I-Rapture) would almost certainly be more fun to watch during a long-winded speech than, well, pretty much anyone else.

This would have quite a few advantages. Taxpayers could save money on travel expenses for our legislators. Travelling legislators would not be contributing to pollution. Common citizens could meet with representatives (and senators) more easily, and lobbyists wouldn’t find their jobs quite as easy. Both of those last two would contribute to making our representatives actually, you know, represent their constituents.