Posted on 04/02/2018 12:51:43 AM PDT by Jacquerie
To the extent that the world’s once most deliberative institution performs its duty at all, the US Senate is reactive rather than deliberative. It reacts to crises of the moment such as school/church shootings and short-term continuing spending resolutions.
Unless your Congressman or senator is Ryan, Pelosi, McConnell or Schumer, it’s unlikely your representative or senator had a say in one of Congress' most important duties: appropriations. The bill was presented to the rank and file Congress on a Wednesday, which gave them scant time to read the ginormous thing before voting on Friday. This insult to the sovereign people conjures up images of taxation without representation, and perhaps more pointedly, it reflects the absence of deliberation in the world’s once most deliberative body, the US Senate.1
The purpose of government is to promote national happiness. To do so, government must be prudent, and to be prudent, it needs at least one deliberative lawmaking institution.
In The Federalist numbers 62 through 66, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay elaborated on the Senate’s place in the Framers’ compound, federal republic. There were safeguards of the people’s liberty in the Framers’ plan not present in our modern and much corrupted Constitution. Central to the retention of liberty were the different bodies of electors to Congress and the Presidency. Electors to the House were a significant percentage of adult males. To the Senate, electors were the people in the business of state government, the legislators. For the President, electors were a temporary body of local leaders immune from corruption. No republic, wrote Publius in Federalist 63, lasted long without a stable, deliberative institution “to protect the people from their own temporary errors and delusions.”
(Excerpt) Read more at articlevblog.com ...
Unless the 17th Amendment is repealed there will never be anything deliberative about the Senate again.
How different would the makeup of the Senate be right now if State Legislatures were appointing Senators?
How different would the makeup of the Senate be right now if State Legislatures were appointing Senators?
The reasons the Senate has so many Progressives in it is that only 33 come up for election at a time. Of those, only a few are much contested. That allows the Media to unleash their power on a small number of races, electing progressives in states that would not do so otherwise.
“Repeal the 17th Amendment and the Senate becomes a whole different ball of wax because State Legislatures can recall and replace a Senator rather than it being full of people who owe their souls to their deep State masters who own the media and Federal election machinery.”
There’s a double edged blade without it, and tar and feathering is probably illegal now.
“Why repealing the 17th Amendment wouldn’t fix the Senate”
https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2017/8/1/16069872/repealing-17th-amendment-bad-idea
How true is either solution? We’ve been deceived and blinded.
Which would be the better of the two.
Our state’s senators are not mentioned in the four named. We are left holding on to our guns (at the moment) and swinging in the wind.
What I like to call "Heard instinct stampede laws" that are seldom useful and more often harmful. Like the anti 2nd amendment laws currently being rammed through against the will of the people.
<>How different would the makeup of the Senate be right now if State Legislatures were appointing Senators?<>
For starters, senators could ignore the media.
Second, say goodbye to consenting to judges hostile to the 9th and 10th amendments.
>
<>How different would the makeup of the Senate be right now if State Legislatures were appointing Senators?<>
For starters, senators could ignore the media.
Second, say goodbye to consenting to judges hostile to the 9th and 10th amendments.
>
Sorry, but there seems to be many a speculation w/o empirical data.
State(s) become responsible? Hell, they’ve done NOTHING re: power-grabs of the 9th/10th for *ages*.
Senators not caring re: MSM? Please, you’d get stampeded by 1/2 of ‘em if you were in the way of a camera.
My $.02, it’ll still remain a ‘you scratch my back, I yours’.
Not saying 17th is the way to go, but, IMO, it needs to be multi-pronged (16th along w/ it?). Maybe pass a ‘Dutch Budget’ along with: Every State must pony up it’s % of the budget for the year prior (no more debt/deficit)?
The author of the referenced article doesn’t seem to understand the Founding States' division of federal and state government powers, the states giving the feds very little power to establish peacetime domestic policy.
From related threads …
In fact, Thomas Jefferson and Rep. John Bingham, Bingham a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified that the Founding States had left the care of the people to the states, not the federal government.
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons [emphasis added], our property, our reputation and religious freedom.” —Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801.
”... the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the States, and not in the Federal Government [emphases added].” —Rep. John Bingham, Congressional Globe, 1866. (See about middle of 3rd column.)
Regardless that the 17th Amendment (17A) was intended as a remedy for corruption, what it has ended up doing is to give corrupt federal politicians a way to exploit low-information voters, voters who have probably never been taught about the fed’s limited powers.
More specifically, politicians now use 17A to exploit such voters by promising them federal spending programs and civil rights to get themselves elected and reelected, voters evidently not understanding that the feds actually have no constitutional authority to establish most programs and rights.
Consider that the post-17A ratification Supreme Court wrongly established from the bench the fictitious constitutional “rights” to have an abortion and gay “marriage” for example.
In other words, thanks to 17A, corrupt career lawmakers have been able to trick misguided voters to abuse their voting power to help unconstitutionally expand the already unconstitutionally big federal government's powers.
In fact, previous generations of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified constitutional limits on the feds powers, including Congress’s limited power to appropriate taxes.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
"The smart crooks long ago figured out that getting themselves elected to federal office to make unconstitutional tax laws to fill their pockets is a much easier way to make a living than robbing banks." —me
"Federal career lawmakers probably laugh all the way to the bank to deposit bribes for putting loopholes for the rich and corporations in tax appropriations laws, Congress actually not having the express constitutional authority to make most appropriations laws where domestic policy is concerned. Such laws are based on stolen state powers and uniquely associated stolen state revenues." —me
Consider that most post-17A domestic federal spending programs and civil rights protections are based on stolen state powers and state revenues uniquely associated with those powers imo, state revenues stolen by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.
The bottom line is that 17A has given us far more headaches than it's worth. It has arguably effectively repealed the whole Constitution and needs to be repealed yesterday imo.
The 16th Amendment can disappear too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.