Misc. Ramblings

Speaking of testimony, I've been hit twice with the task of drafting testimony with less than 24 hours to do so. Which, as you may have noticed, has left me no time to do anything with this site. Sorry about that.

When this type of situation occurs, bad things happen. First, all other work has to go on hold while I put out these fires. Many times, the work put on hold is itself pretty important. Secondly, 24 hours doesn't give me a lot of time to analyze the proposed bill. Some of these bills are very long and make a lot of changes. Hence, I am not able to, many times, offer much in the way of insightful thoughts. In fact, mostly, I try to find the one main thing the measure is trying to do and project what the impact to the affected parties would be (I think I've mentioned it before but when I first went to a seminar on bill writing, put on by the Legislature, the presenter said; in any legislation, someone is helped and someone is hurt. Hence, to analyze a bill, one must determine what is the bill intended to do, who is affected, what is the impact, and what new problems the measure would create (all solutions create new problems). Wise advice to anyone reviewing bills.).

Aloha!