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Commentary: Why we should repeal the 17th Amendment
The Elko Daily Free Press ^ | September 24, 2014 | Thomas Mitchell

Posted on 09/24/2014 11:11:00 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

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1 posted on 09/24/2014 11:11:01 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
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To: Jacquerie; 3D-JOY; abner; Abundy; AGreatPer; Albion Wilde; AliVeritas; alisasny; ...

PING!


2 posted on 09/24/2014 11:12:47 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks (The mods stole my tagline.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Don’t stop there, repeal the 16th Amendment, too. (I never did figure out how exchanging my time and expertise for some pieces of paper became “income”. It’s an even-up exchange.)


3 posted on 09/24/2014 11:50:33 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I’d have a much easier time with the 19th if it hadn’t given an automatic majority to those our Constitution was never designed to govern.....


4 posted on 09/25/2014 12:04:52 AM PDT by papertyger (Those who don't fight evil hate those who do)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Oh BS. Absolutely not. No no no no. So we can have power brokered Senators? Run good conservative candidates.

This is idiocy. Fortunately, it will never happen.


5 posted on 09/25/2014 12:38:28 AM PDT by RIghtwardHo
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

We could have the state legislatures send a delegation to the Senate as the German lander to do the Bundesrat. South Africa has a similar system of appointment of its senators.

Two popularly elected bodies will never constitute a check on the other. In few bicameral systems - apart from Australia - is the upper house elected by the people.


6 posted on 09/25/2014 1:06:28 AM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Thanks!

Here's a short post on the hundredth anniversary of the 17th:

The 17th Amendment and Republican Freedom.

7 posted on 09/25/2014 1:31:56 AM PDT by Jacquerie (Article V. If not now, when?)
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To: RIghtwardHo
Run good conservative candidates.

Okay, but that will never be enough to restore our freedoms.

Recall the Left tells us that socialism hasn't 'worked' anywhere at anytime because the right people haven't been found?

The 17th made our eventual descent into Obamunism inevitable. The 17th must go!

8 posted on 09/25/2014 1:39:14 AM PDT by Jacquerie (Article V. If not now, when?)
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To: RIghtwardHo
" So we can have power brokered Senators?"?

As opposed to what we have now - the best Senators that money (or blackmail) can buy.

9 posted on 09/25/2014 2:53:05 AM PDT by shibumi (Cover it with gas and set it on fire.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

“That’s how we got FDR’s New Deal.” And a whole raft of other crap...

But it took concurrence by the House...the POPULARLY elected House for any of it to come to pass.

I don’t think repeal would matter one whit....


10 posted on 09/25/2014 3:01:38 AM PDT by Adder (No, Mr. Franklin, we could NOT keep it.)
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To: Adder
I don’t think repeal would matter one whit....

Then why did ratifying the amendment make a whit?

11 posted on 09/25/2014 5:00:57 AM PDT by MosesKnows (Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.)
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To: MosesKnows

I don’t know that it did.

Its hard to argue that the direct election of Senators resulted in the New Deal and all the leftist ills that plague us.

It was state selected Senators who voted for the amendment to be put forth for ratification by the states and it was the states who approved it.

I hear the arguments and perhaps I am not sharp enough to grasp it, but I do not see that a leftwing state like California is going to select or elect Senators who are much different from the loons they have now.

Here in NC, we were under dumblecrat control for decades, yet we elected Jesse Helms, Richard Burr, Elizabeth Dole...none of whom would have gotten to the floor in the dumblecrat led legislature.


12 posted on 09/25/2014 5:26:55 AM PDT by Adder (No, Mr. Franklin, we could NOT keep it.)
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To: Adder
I don’t think repeal would matter one whit

It would change the attitude of all Senators. Instead of trying to please voters, senators would try to please their respective state congresses. Polls would be almost meaningless to Senators.

It would give more power to the states.

Without the 17th Ammendment, Republicans would control the Senate and there wouldn't have been Obamacare

13 posted on 09/25/2014 5:28:45 AM PDT by kidd
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Absent the 17th Amendment David Dewhurst is the junior senator from Texas, Bob Bennett is still the junior senator from Utah, Mitch McConnell and Thad Cochran and Pat Roberts have no need to campaign, and the GOPe is saying, “Teaparty? What Teaparty?”


14 posted on 09/25/2014 5:45:17 AM PDT by DoodleDawg
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I agree!

HST, how about a two-fer: 16th and 17th?


15 posted on 09/25/2014 5:49:41 AM PDT by Taxman (I am mad as Hell and I am not going to take it any more!)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
There was a grand design

The design was indeed grand.

A bicameral Congress is part of the grandness of the plan.

House members elected by the people because the House represents the people.
A Senate elected by the state legislators because the Senate represents the state.

America's founders took into account the nature of man to advance himself by fraudulent means and created our founding documents accordingly.

House members in numbers determined by the population elected by the population they represent. Senators in numbers fixed at two by the Constitution elected by the state legislators.

Where is the flaw in the grand plan that led to the 17th amendment?

The 16th amendment changed the grand plan by doing what all of history and America's founders warned against, direct taxation.

America’s founders provided for the operation of government through taxation. The Constitution provided a path to tax the people indirectly by taxing the states in proportion to the population.

As example imagine the Congress is proposing legislation that would cost $100 Million and the population is 100 Million. The government was empowered to tax each state $1 for each person in the population determined by the census. That is why the Constitution empowered the government to conduct a census. How the states pay that is up to the states, not the Federal government.

Now imagine the discussions between the people and the states when the state levies that $1 tax. One of the questions open to discussion may well be … is the government empowered by the Constitution to legislate the matter that requires the funds.

Where was the flaw in the grand plan that led to the 16th amendment?

16 posted on 09/25/2014 5:52:41 AM PDT by MosesKnows (Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.)
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To: Smokin' Joe
It’s an even-up exchange

Correct!

The founders envisioned taxing gain. If a person provides one hour of their efforts for money, there is no gain. It is an even exchange.

17 posted on 09/25/2014 5:57:58 AM PDT by MosesKnows (Love many, trust few, and always paddle your own canoe.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
I've supported the repeal of the 17th amendment for a long time. The founders of this nation had a reason for everything that is in the Constitution. People don't realize that the reason why the States were given the power to appoint Senators was to give the states themselves a voice in the federal government. You'd be seeing a whole lot less unfunded mandates being handed out by FedGov if the states had a say about it.
18 posted on 09/25/2014 7:13:51 AM PDT by zeugma (The act of observing disturbs the observed.)
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To: RIghtwardHo; Jim Robinson
Oh BS. Absolutely not. No no no no. So we can have power brokered Senators? Run good conservative candidates.
This is idiocy. Fortunately, it will never happen.
I’m telling Daddy on you . . . ping to Jim Robinson.
Seriously, there are problems with state legislators - but the crying need is to have the state governments be responsible for the behavior of the Senate. That would nationalize the state races - when you vote for legislator, you are indirectly voting for senator as well.

The reality is that the state legislators - although they don’t elect Represenatives - really do, when they draw Congressional District lines. That’s how Allen West became former Representative West, for example.


19 posted on 09/25/2014 9:07:08 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ("Liberalism” is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

You’re going to try to convince U.S. citizens to cede their constitutional right to elect their own U.S. Senators to their state legislatures?

My Magic-8 Ball says “Outlook not so good.”


20 posted on 09/25/2014 8:55:52 PM PDT by ConstantSkeptic (Be careful about preconceptions)
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