Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Government Creeps Further into Every Facet of American Life

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At least we can be confident that the government is focused on what’s really important.

WASHINGTON – House lawmakers are gearing up for a vote as soon as next week on a bill aimed at forcing a national college-football playoff.

Approval of the legislation by an Energy and Commerce subcommittee would represent the most significant action yet by Congress in its oversight of college football. The plans for a markup next week – still tentative as of late Friday – appeared to signal growing congressional support for the idea, which President Barack Obama also backed during the 2008 campaign.

And here is part of the bill, HR 390: College Football Playoff Act of 2009

Congress finds that

(1) college football games, including post-season football games, depend upon competition between college and university teams traveling in interstate commerce;?
(2) the competitions involve and affect interstate commerce and are therefore within Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate;?
(3) the total economic impact in the host cities from the 5 Bowl Championship Series (BCS) games in January 2008 was estimated at more than $1.2 billion;?
(4) collegiate athletic conferences whose teams participate in each BCS bowl game share $17.5 million in revenue;?

(5) the BCS system recognizes the important economic impact to a city hosting the BCS championship game and therefore rotates it among cities; and?
(6) the colleges and universities whose teams participate in the post-season football bowls experience significant financial windfall including increased applications for enrollment, recruiting advantages, increased alumni donations, and increased corporate sponsorship that provides a competitive advantage over universities whose teams are ineligible or statistically at a disadvantage from the BCS bowl competitions because of their conference affiliation.

Translation:

2 – They live in America, we should regulate and tax them.
3 – They have money! We want some!

Shifting FHA guidelines, HVCC, bank failures, unemployment … do a search for “health insurance” on GovTrack – there are 2475 bills … and this is what the House debates?

Why don’t they do this crap in their free time?

What does this have to do with real estate? Directly, not very much. Indirectly, this represents yet another example the government interjecting themselves and interfering in American life.

At what point do we say, “enough is enough”?

Contact your Representative, start with the co-sponsors of this bill.

Rep. Joe Barton [R-TX6] (Sponsor)
John Carter [R-TX31]
Michael McCaul [R-TX10]
Gary Miller [R-CA42]
Bobby Rush [D-IL1]

jimduncan
jimduncan
Dad, Husband, Charlottesville Realtor, real estate Blogger, occasional speaker - Inman Connects, NAR Conferences - based in Charlottesville, Virginia. A native Virginian, I graduated from VMI in 1998, am a third generation Realtor (since 2001) and have been "publishing" as a real estate blogger since January 2005. I've chosen to get involved in Realtor Associations on the local, state & national levels, having served on the NAR's RPR & MLS groups. Find me in Charlottesville, Crozet and Twitter.

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