Rep. Thomas Massie Designs ESP32 Debt Badge to Wear in Congress | Hacker News Reader

Rep. Thomas Massie Designs ESP32 Debt Badge to Wear in Congress

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Agree with him or disagree with him, I want more Thomas Massies in congress. MIT for his undergrad and masters, EE/ME, start-up founder with a successful exit, drove an electric car well before it was viable, did all the wood-framing in his house by hand by himself after taking a class, took a totaled Tesla and built a homebrew powerbank (before the Tesla powerbank existed) fed by solar panels on his roof. [1]

I came to know him when he was in his first few years in congress and went on a 20 minute tirade about the dual-ec-drbg scandal -- which has conspicuously gone missing from the cspan archives. [2] It was brutal, and it immediately put him on my radar because he clearly understood the nuance of it.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18_yXt1s2yc

[2]: (should be at 3:17:11) https://www.c-span.org/video/?326244-2/us-house-debate-fy-20...

I disagree with Massie and also with the notion that there should be more climate change deniers like him in Congress.

Sure, he might be a competent electrical engineer, but he's a climate-change denying edgelord who even Trump called a "third-rate grandsander". Among many, many other things, he is pro-Putin, pr-patent trolls, and tried to force the House to meet in person a the height of COVID.

https://nitter.net/RepThomasMassie/status/171175846540680855...

If politicians have more concern about this than the total credit card debt of US citizens, why should any of the said US citizens have any concern about this? We live in one truly sick society.

As a legislator he's directly responsible for the national debt, what do you suggest he do about consumer credit card debt?

By definition, elected representatives are not "responsible for" anything. At best they are merely accountable. Saying they are "responsible for" something is incoherent.

Different definitions.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/responsi...

You're assuming:

> being the cause of a particular action or situation

But "responsible" also means:

> having the duty of taking care of something

Curiously, Cambridge's definition of "accountable" uses "responsible":

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/accounta...

> responsible for and having to explain your actions

Credit card debt is something people choose to put themselves into. You can't go into debt without signing on the dotted line to be responsible for that debt and agreeing to pay it back.

Congress and the POTUS together are the ones that sign on the dotted line when the House and Senate jointly pass a budget (or a continuing resolution) authorizing the spending and the POTUS then signs it into law. So yes, they are responsible for authorizing the spending in the first place. Conversely, they are not responsible for the debt that individuals—even US Citizens, we are citizens and not subjects nor serfs after all and therefore are beholden only to ourselves—place themselves into.

There are congress members who can program? Must be an exception.

There are Congress members with PhDs in physics...

Bill Foster designed an IC, for example https://www.billfoster.com/meet-bill/bills-science-career/

Wonder if someone will give him shit for using a PRC-designed chip...

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