An American Lion

These men are here to ensure President Norman Rogers has the Line Item Veto, sir…

Over the weekend, I saved the world.

I read a story about some people stuck on a plane in the snow and cold. I Tweeted California Senator Barbara Boxer. I think her panicky staff people have been keeping her from her tweets, especially the helpful ones like mine. The next day, the Department of Transportation put a rule into effect that would solve the problem of people being left on planes for more than three hours without food and water. Case closed.

I like Senator Boxer, even though I sometimes wonder why. I think she looks fabulous as a blonde. I hope she gets re-elected. Carly Fiorina is insane, by the way.As an independent, I prefer Boxer to Fiorina, if only because Boxer is sane.

Today, I noticed this:

The recession’s jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.

The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments.

Debates over the state benefit programs have erupted in South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Vermont and Indiana. And the budget gaps are expected to spread and become more acute in the coming year, compelling legislators in many states to reconsider their operations.

Then, I noticed this:

With 15 million people out of work nationwide, it should be fairly easy for the Census Bureau to hire even that huge number of workers. The temporary jobs promise several weeks of good pay for workers with little advanced training.

But Census officials say that even though the high unemployment rate has helped recruiting in some areas, it’s done little to alleviate their toughest recruiting challenges. That’s because the Census aims to hire workers who know the language, culture and customs of every neighborhood where they plan to collect data.

“Our goal is to hire people who are reflective of the area that they serve,” said Wendy Button, chief of decennial recruiting for the Census.

In Seattle’s International District, where Theam is working on this day, that may mean finding temporary workers who are comfortable conversing in Khmer, Japanese, Korean and various Chinese dialects, among other languages, and yet also have the English language and basic math skills to report the results accurately.

The Census, which occurs every 10 years, aims to get an accurate picture of the size and makeup of the U.S. population. The 2010 Census this spring will help determine how federal money is doled out for everything from fixing potholes to providing emergency services. It also helps determine how many seats in Congress each state is allotted.

Button estimates the bureau needs to recruit about 3.8 million people to take the test required to work for the Census, of which about 1.2 million will be hired. Most of those hired will spend several weeks this spring going door-to-door gathering data from people who did not return  Census forms in the mail.

Everyone who is collecting jobless benefits must be considered for hiring for the U.S. Census bureau. Period. End of story. The Census Bureau should be forced to hire people who are jobless. Once those people have done their work for the census, they should then be allowed to restart their jobless benefits from scratch and continue looking for gainful employment.

President Norman Rogers says that it shall be done. I don’t care if I have to issue a decree or a fiat or a writ of stare decisis or whatever. It makes sense to me. Why doesn’t anyone else have my command of common sense? And, where’s my line item veto? I want my line item veto so that I can strike through a lot of the nonsense people are sending me. If I had a line item veto, I’d go through all of the legislation that is patent pending or whatever and I’d mark it up and make the Census Bureau hire unemployed people.

Forget about eliminating the filibuster. Give the President my Line Item Veto, liberals.