63 Republicans 37 Democrats
And the Senators answered to the Governor.
Every state now has large metropolitan areas that vote predominantly Dem with ever-shrinking rural areas. Now even the suburbs are turning squishy.
We can't just assume a static model that if there were no 17th Amendment that all of the politicos and voters would have behaved the same.
Excellent article from a usually crappy website...
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By the passing of the 17th, only a very few states did not have some sort of popular referendum on selecting senators. Recall the famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates, which were an appeal to the general voting public rather than to state legislators, who were expected to abide by the people’s choice.
Yes but the founders thought the states would become and remain the most powerful entities in the Union. They did not envision political parties controlling states, so that some states subordinate their own self-interests to the national interests of the political party they serve (e.g. blue states). This was completely unanticipated by the founders.
Yet I post something yesterday saying we should abolish the 17th amendment, and suddenly I’m an idiot?
Repeal the 17th & the 16th, ratify article the first, and let’s get back to basics.
1913 was even worse.
It also featured the chartering of the Federal Reserve Bank, which needed the income tax to collateralize the worthless paper it planned to issue.
This turned the populace into serfs whose futures were mortgaged, returning us to feudalism.
The Senate had to be gutted to prevent the sovereign States from reversing this.
The Senators were supposed to abide by the wishes of the state legislatures. However, once Senators discovered they were under no LEGAL obligations (only a gentleman’s agreement) to do so, they acted largely as they pleased. This was why it was a failure from the beginning. Had their been an instrument in the Constitution allowing for a simple recall of a Senator by the legislature (for failure to follow instructions on how to vote), it would’ve fulfilled more of the Founding Fathers’ vision for that body.
My analogy for the Senate is a convention of high school principals. Sure, they’d take pride in their schools football record and other accomplishments of “the little people” whose welfare they were hired to oversee, but in reality they spend all their time talking high school principal stuff to the other high school principals. After all, they are on an elevated plane, and have big thoughts to think, and big ideas to implement - they’re much more interested in forming relationships with the other principals and getting goodies for themselves through favors and insider deals. In the end they go back to their schools and strut around to show their importance and maybe mumble a few words about how great the school and its students are.
But the thing that really matters, just as in the senate, is THEMSELVES. THEIR career, THEIR perks and bennies, THEIR power. After all they were put in this position because they were better than everyone else who was considered for it, right?
It is not simply who picked them that changed how senators behave today. The larger aspect is that power corrupts and far too much power has gravitated from states and individuals to the central government.
The Founders created branches, levels, super majorities, etc to somewhat protect Freedom from this power gravity.
In their vision it would not matter so much who states send to the US Senate. Because they really should not be doing much of what they do today.
Local state legislators don't need to win back their power over US Senate choices. They need to rise up and demand their power back from the central govt in general. You don't need amendments to get rid of FBI, Dept of Ed, etc.
"Let's focus on one issue: the U.S. Senate. It's clearer than it has ever been that it's just a collection of elected officials, behaving as if they're independent actors with no restraint. It's as if they have no allegiance to anyone. ..."
Evidenced by the alleged stealing of the 2020 elections by desperate, elite Democrats and RINOs, federal and state governments have been pirated by organized crime front-ending itself with very corrupt, constitutionally undefined political parties imo.
Regarding Senate, I hope patriots understand that one of the very few peacetime reasons that you'd want to contact a member of congress is if you were having problems with the U.S. Mail Service, the mail service arguably one of the very few main powers that the states have actually expressly constitutional given the feds to dictate federal domestic policy.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"
"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"From the accepted doctrine that the Unite d 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.
In other words, most "federal" domestic policy is actually based on stolen state powers, and likewise stolen state revenues uniquely associated with those powers imo.
More specifically, post-17th Amendment (17A) ratification federal lawmakers are continuously stealing from the states by means of constitutionally indefensible appropriations bills imo.
"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.
In fact, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had clarified that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had left the care of the people uniquely to the states, not the federal government.
”Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government [emphases added]. I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
Probably most constitutionally "asleep at the wheel" patriots need to ask themselves, "How many unconstitutional “Brooklyn Bridges” (Social Security, Obamacare, etc.) have I bought from my state's crook federal senators as a consequence of abusing my 17A powers?"
In fact, and respectfully to FReepers, consider that patriots hypothetically could have replaced ALL federal senators TWICE since Obama 2010 midterm elections if patriots had a clue about federal government's constitutionally limited powers.
The bottom line is that the states desperately need to get rid of the unconstitutional middleman, the unconstitutionally big federal government, from “helping” the states to manage their revenues.
More specifically, Trump's red tsunami of patriot supporters need to start supporting Trump-endorsed state lawmaking candidates ASAP to do the following.
Trump-endorsed candidates need to stop unconstitutional federal taxes and unconstitutional interference in the affairs of the sovereign states by leading ALL the states to effectively "secede" from the unconstitutionally big federal government by repealing the 16th (16A; direct taxes) and 17th (popular vote for federal senators) Amendments.
Once 16&17A are gone, unconstitutional federal taxes permanently stopped, each state will ultimately find a tsunami of new revenues (imo) that can be used to increase teacher salaries, also salaries of police and fire departments for starters.
Let's also include new state funding for infrastructure maintenance in that list. Undoubtedly many other state social spending programs as well to replace former unconstitutional federal spending programs.
Additionally, no more forced compliance with Democratic politically correct and unconstitutional federal gender-related civil rights protections in order for school kids to eat likewise unconstitutional federal lunches paid for with stolen state revenues for example.
In fact, Justice Louis Brandeis had seemingly reflected on Bingham's words (above) when Brandeis volunteered his "laboratories of democracy" metaphor to emphasize the unique power of the states to serve the people, ultimately depending on the kind of state social spending programs that the legal majority citizen voters of a given state want.
"[...] a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." —Justice Louis Brandeis, Laboratories of Democracy.
Corrections, insights welcome.
Three things happened that year, not two. The third was the creation of the Federal Reserve
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act
The whole reason it is a 6-year term is due to the fact that they’re supposed to be elected by the state legislature not by the public.
I have never understood how the states could do this to themselves.
After the passage of the 17th amendment, ask yourself this:
“What purpose does the U.S. Senate serve?”
“Why does it even exist?”
63-37. We could get something done, even with the RINOs dragging their feet.