When I first received the invite, I thought it would be the regular Presser / Briefing that they have every day at the White House. Briefings – questions! So I thought, hey, they wouldn’t have asked the ‘Grok to come all that way down without a slight chance of being able to ask a question, right? So the original invite came in Monday evening – and the left over part of what used to be my mind started racing. There’s my task for tomorrow!
You all know what its like to lay down for your evening’s sleep – the body says “sure” but the mind goes “eat my dust, dude” and goes off to the races. Well, at 2:30am, I finally gave up and started in on 4 questions so as to make sure I’d be ready: an obligatory one, the real one, a serious one (that I’ve NEVER heard any of those High and Mighty Cream-of-the-Crop Pompous Journalists that inhabit that place as if they owned it, and then an amusing one. Hey, gotta be ready for anything, right?
Question Number 1:
1) Thanks you, Mr. President – hello from the Live Free or Die State! During the Campaign, you told us while in NH that you would be helping NH with this Opioid crisis. What parts of your plan specifically fulfill those promises?
2) A more complex question – first the question an then the lead-up to it as I and my family are personally enmeshed in the Opioid crisis twice over in NH.
As part of this initiative, will there be:
- Specific parts dealing with vets returning home with PTSD and drug addiction and by a reduction in Federal regulations that make it more difficult for parents to help their veteran daughters and sons?
- The same question but for these parents who have become grandparents and have to care for their grandchildren?
The context for the questions:
My Dad patrolled the MA coastline during WW II as part of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. My Step-Dad was a Loadmaster in the Air Force during the Korean era. Between my two sons and future daughter-in-law, we have the Army, Marines, and Navy covered with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and the USS Ronald Reagan (yes, we are part of that 1% that Progressives only give lip-service to).
One son did a year’s deployment in the Pesch Valley of Afghanistan next to Pakistan. He came home with PTSD, night terrors, panic attacks – and “self-medicating”. It hasn’t been pretty.
He took up with a gal that was seriously substance abusing; the relationship didn’t last long; he found out she was pregnant. Our grandson was born 2.5 months early at 3 lbs 11oz and had alcohol and opiates in his system. My wife and I were granted immediate “relative caregiver” status an brought him home after 2 weeks in NICU and literally gave him 24 hour care as he was at extremely high risk for SIDS. Having raised our boys and owning a daycare center, we were almost copletely self-reliant; because he is legally a war of the State (although we are formally adopting him happens next month). we have had assistance from the State concerning his medical issues (diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome).
As a Conservative and having deeply immersed in both sides for years now (son, grandson), the issue is not just throwing money at this problem. The real problem in with peoples’ hearts and souls that lead them into the crevasse in the first place.
Sidenote: on the news last night, it was said that $45 Billion was going to be allocated for this.
The Federal Government is part of the problem as well. As you are doing, with great success, in reducing costly and time consuming regulations, will this initiative start fixing the regulations that are slowing down the velocity of information and permissions to better allow parents / grandparents in aiding their offspring and grandbabies?
I’ve stood in anguish as I kept hearing “no, because I’m not authorized” or “hey, its the regulations that I have to follow” but the bureaucrats never question them. These have a negative trickle-down effect to the State level and then to the social organizations and small entrepreneurial operators. We all know that “free money from the Feds” come with “strings attached” that are often stronger than carbon fiber. Thus, the system never changes.
I’m an engineer – I fix peoples’ problems. In fact, all of us at GraniteGrok have full time jobs where we do just that – fix policies, fix processes, fix systems. And I’ve watched from the inside out from the Progressive ideal of a single payer system (called the Veterans Administration) to the private / public partnerships an recently the Veterans Choice program. And on the other inside of the truly innocents -> the babies and children affected by this scourge. It ain’t pretty, it ain’t cheap, an it sure isn’t pain free.
Your system is broken, Mr. President. Will your initiative contain provisions to have someone or a small dedicated group that with change the regulations, change the processes that do nothing but slow the system down like “fatburgers” in a sewer line? Will you make the Federal / State / local / personal touch points become more frictionless to speed things up?
NOTE: Yes, this second question was going to be tremendously slimmed down – this is way to long to actually ask. However, seeing that I wasn’t really able to attend, I decided to just post it up “as is”.
3) When will you be submitting legislation to repeal the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act that gave rise to all these Executive Branch regulation “as Law” and return us to the Constitutional restriction that only COngress can create legislation? That would require the Executive Branch to return that Power and force Congress to actually, you know, do their job and pass legislation covering the macro an micro-levels (e.g., no more sloughing off their responsibility to others)? And it would get rid of these “Administrative Judiciary” courts (like the EPA and the IRS) and return that to the actual Judiciary?
4) Given that my Live Free or Die State ust past “Constitutional Carr”, woul you sign the National Reciprocity bill now floating somewhere in Congress?
