Tax Reform Amendment
Section I
No tax, federal or state, shall ever be withheld from the wage of any citizen of either.
Section II
No property shall be seized for failure to pay taxes until after conviction in a jury trial; the right of the jury to nullify (and thereby forgive) this debt shall never be questioned or denied.
Section III
The second amendment is hereby recognized as restricting the power of taxation, both federal and state, therefore no tax (or fine) shall be laid upon munitions or the sale thereof. The seventh amendment is also recognized, and nothing herein shall restrict the right of a citizen to seek civil redress.
Section IV
No income tax levied by the federal government, the several States, or any subdivision of either shall ever exceed 10%.
Section V
No income tax levied by the federal government, the several States, or any subdivision of either shall ever apply varying rates to those in their jurisdiction.
Section VI
No ex post facto tax or fee shall be valid; No tax or fee shall ever be applied retroactively; any and all laws imposing taxes/fees which have violated prior portion of this section are also invalid. The congress may not delegate the creation of any tax or fine in any way.
Section VII
No federal employee, representative, senator, judge, justice or agent shall ever be exempt from any tax or fee because of their position and all laws making any such exemption are invalid.
2. An amendment to repeal the 17th Amendment OR a new amendment to allow state legislatures to recall their wayward US Senators would boost the 10th Amendment and bind US Senators to state interests.
Senate Reform Amendment
Section I
The seventeenth amendment is hereby repealed.
Section II
The several states may provide by law the means by which a senator may be removed or replaced.
3. An amendment to preserve the US dollar and to enact a process of governing its value.
Fiscal Responsibility Amendment
Section I
The power of Congress to regulate the value of the dollar is hereby repealed.
Section II
The value of the Dollar shall be one fifteen-hundredth avoirdupois ounce of gold with impurities not exceeding one part per thousand.
Section III
To guard against Congress using its authority over weights and measures to bypass Section I, the weight in Section II is approximately 28.3495 grams (SI).
Section IV
The Secretary of the Treasury shall annually report the gold physically in its possession; this report shall be publicly available.
Section V
The power of the Congress to assume debt is hereby restricted: the congress shall assume no debt that shall cause the total obligations of the United States to exceed one hundred ten percent of the amount reported by the Secretary of the Treasury.
Section VI
Any government agent, officer, judge, justice, employee, representative, or congressman causing gold to be confiscated from a private citizen shall be tried for theft and upon convection shall:Section VII
- be removed from office (and fired, if an employee),
- forfeit all pension and retirement benefits,
- pay all legal costs, and
- restore to the bereaved twice the amount in controversy
The federal government shall assume no obligation lacking funding, neither shall it lay such obligation on the several States, any subdivision thereof, or any place under the jurisdiction of the United States.
4. A social amendment that prohibits the federal government from interfering in any religious belief that was prevalent at the time of the founding. New groups would not be able to circumvent or evade by defining themselves to be a religion. New proposed religions would be required to have a lead time before they were officially recognized by the US government by vote of 2/3s of both chambers of Congress. A marriage provision defining it to be between one man and one woman would fit in here.
That's a bad idea. Here's why: by placing marriage into the constitution you are acknowledging the authority of the law (legal system) over it; therefore, even if it wins you have sown seeds for marriage to be redefined legalistically. (We are even seeing that this can be used to strip many legal rights from the people and the states: look at how the USSC denied that the CA supreme court could certify standing.)
5. An amendment to limit abuses of the commerce clause as Constitutional law professor Randy Barnett wrote about so well in the WSJ in 2011.
Commerce Clause Amendment
Section I
The federal government shall directly subsidize no product or industry whatsoever, saving that of promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts.
Section II
The federal government shall never prescribe nor proscribe what the Several States teach. Neither the federal government nor the several states shall ever deny the right parents to teach and instruct their children as they see fit.
Section III
The congress may impose tariffs, excise taxes, and customs duties on anything imported or exported, provided that they are applied uniformly and in no manner restrict, subvert, or circumvent the second amendment.
How's that? — I admit the last one was the most unpolished [I'm not an economist], but overall I think they're good showings.
That’s actually a very good draft. You should be participating in drafting amendments in a State Conventions process.
The Social Amendment I outlined is indeed tricky. What needs to be done is to protect the People’s religious convictions and beliefs, and if that means holding homosexuality to be perverse and unnatural and against God’s order, then that belief must be respected under the First Amendment.
But with respect to homosexuality as categorized as some sort of civil rights issue deserving of minority protection, the 14th and 1st amendment conflict with each other. We need then to define in the Constitution what marriage is, how it is recognized.
The commerce clause needs an amendment to guard against abuse. Professor Barnett offers strong draft of such an amendment here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124044199838345461.html
As for the 17th Amendment, I take a more practical approach and I respect those Freepers and others that disagree with my view.
I don’t think the 17th should be repealed because the People enjoy now a right to vote which is a positive right. Once voters have this right we shouldn’t take it away from them for then we can become their enemy no matter what our motive and intention is.
But we can recover the original intent of the Constitution before the 17th by ratifying a new amendment that allows state legislatures and only state legislatures to recall wayward US Senators. This resurrects the original intent by causing US Senators to answer to state interests, to be held accountable to state legislatures while at the same time allowing the People to continue to enjoy their right to vote.
It is interesting that the 3 amendments under Woodrow Wilson who I hold as one of the worst if not the worst president of the United States, namely the 16th, 17th and 18th, that all were damaging to the States and the People.
16th Amendment - negative right to the people, positive to the federal government (must be replaced with the Fairtax)
17th Amendment - positive right to the people, negative to the States (States in conflict with the people)
18th Amendment - negative to the people (repealed).
Whatever the society was thinking in the time of Woodrow Wilson, they certainly were not thinking about American freedom or state rights. These 3 amendments were ill-conceived and damaging to American ideals, damaging to what makes America special and to what has made America the greatest civilization in the history of the world.