Posted on 11/18/2014 2:23:08 PM PST by Arthur Wildfire! March
First imagine if our state legislatures had just been elected by the most anti-leftist voters in US history.
[And that just happened. The democrats hadn't been this weak since the 1920s at the state and local level — a different party back then. They were klansmen more than leftist.]
People are ‘screaming bloody murder’. Well they should!
The amnesty blitz, o-care betrayal, ebola-VISA policy, unimaginable government debt, and ...
Let's not forget two other wildly popular ideas: Voter ID and a ban of Gay ‘Marriage’.
We the People want more religious expression too. “Merry Christmas”, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Ten Commandments enjoy overwhelming support.
We want it all BACK!
o o o o
So yes, We the People are ready.
And please bear in mind, the worse things get, the more people are willing to support decisive change— people want more than just slapping band-aids on gangrene. This government needs surgery.
And these should be our most pressing amendments —
1) Voter ID enforcement. [Mark Levin's idea btw.] All but the last of these are ‘single-subject’ constitutional amendments.
2) ‘Gay’ Marriage Ban. This could also be a more comprehensive “Under God’ agreement that I will try to post soon in another thread. Would include Ten Commandments in every classroom, etc.
3) No adult illegal immigrant and no future legal immigrant should benefit from federal redistribution [such as social security].
4) States are free to enforce illegal immigration laws however they may choose.
5) The federal government or federal judiciary may no longer question any state's interpretation of what humane treatment of criminals is. [Among other things it prevents federal meddling of how illegal immigrants are procssed]
6) State empowerment that endures perpetually but also includes an ‘emergency option’ for a ‘Border Czar’.
... or to explain ‘6’ in one painful paragraph of ‘legalese’ ...
Targeted suspension of congressional rules for a multi-problem-solving constitutional amendment that empowers the states’ new Chief State Executive who can also, if empowered specifically through through super-majority state support via state legislators, appoint a term-limited ‘Border Czar’ who temporarily holds paramount authority in both a legal and constitutional sense to commandeer related federal executive branch authority with impunity, but only to focus strictly on border safety, illegal immigration, VISAs, and airport security. Only during our current controversy would this include a temporary power to correct flawed Obama policy regarding expedient amnesty measures even if it means that citizenship due to such expediency is later repealed.
Now back to plain speech ....
Ping. More coming up ...
Each CSE [Chief State Executive] should be term limited to [perhaps] three years.
‘Anti-power’ is the main idea long term. So all but one aspect of the CSE’s authority should be based on ‘anti-power’ and ‘anti-spending’ concepts, authority that prevents the federal government from ever being this powerful or wasteful again.
But when it comes to emergency border safety? Yes, the CSE should be capable of solving that problem in a VERY decisive way since illegal immigration is a threat to the safety of US citizens as well as a drain on water reserves, oil refineries, healthcare, prisons, schools, infrastructure, unskilled labor opportunities, and illegal immigrant children might well remain a drain on Social Security.
So let's start with a quick list of what the CSE’s sole power and numerous ‘anti-power’ authorities could look like if states agree ...
o o o o
1. Emergency Border Czar Option
If there is 2/3 super-majority support by the states, the CSE could appoint a ‘Border Czar’ who is term limited to three years.
[Specifics of this and other concepts will be posted separately further down in this thread.]
2. The very first CSE in existence should be the only one to have this much [temporary] power, but that pioneering individual should have the authority to ‘sweep clean’ both the executive branch and the federal judiciary to his or her satisfaction.
The very first CSE may dismiss any unelected federal official or any federal judge for any reason during her or his first twelve months of service. This includes supreme Court justices.
This should be a transitional clause that is expunged after those twelve months end.
[And would be more smooth to move this down as the last clause of the amendment so expunging doesn't create a ‘missing number’ of the clauses. But during this deliberation, its significance should not be hidden or buried.]
— Except for ‘2’, all other solutions suggested should be permanent —
3. The CSE could be empowered to censure federal officials and even the President. With three censures, a hearing launches an ‘impeachment-by-the-states’ process that considers ‘dereliction of duty’ or ‘violation of sacred oath’ specifically.
4. The CSE could veto new legislation and repeal any executive orders.
5. The ‘Chief’ could also be empowered to cut and freeze any federal spending except for Social Security benefits.
[I'll suggest a 99% pain-free Social Security reform fairly soon. That will be a separate thread.]
CSE cuts would be 1% at a time and as frequently as once every two months [but not on S.S.]. Such cuts and freezes can be as broad or targeted as the Chief so chooses and may disregard federal union agreements. [The two month delays provide the states opportunities to replace a Chief who cuts too aggressively.]
6. No federal judge or cabinet member may be appointed without the CSE’s confirmation. And every time the President nominates someone to the cabinet or the judiciary, the House may competitively nominate someone else, and both nominees engage in daily fair debates [no moderator, fair time] until the CSE confirms one of the two.
The Senate [which has such a miserable confirmation history] should no longer play a role.
7. The Chief could also recommend that specific federal court opinions be ‘tainted’. If the majority-of-states agree with a certain number of tainted opinions, then the federal judge would be personally tainted, impeached, and removed by default.
8. The CSE could recommend deeper spending cuts or that any legislation or treaty be should be repealed. Then the CSE can back up such suggestions through *mandatory debates*.
Please note ‘number 5’ in post 3. You’ll love it.
Imagine Hannity or Beck or Rush or Levin or Drudge or Joe Farah or one our FRiends debating Harry Reid via web-conferencing or over the phone. And Reid has no choice in the matter. Failure to oblige would mean larger-and-larger fines and ultimately incarceration. No congressional immunity from this. And it's not asking much either — just an hour of his time while at home or ‘wherever’ each week.
Someone debating could also prepare a ‘visual aid’ website so that every time Hannity [or whoever] says “See ‘Page 9? That's a graph of our economic history. See Page 10? That's a graph of the history of Russian healthcare. Page 11 is a graph of our nation's healthcare. See? We were the top nation, far ahead of Russia's communist healthcare, and now we're plummeting.”
Each ‘visual aid’ page could link to info that confirms everything the debater claims. But that doesn't mean that Hannity is uncomfortable. He could be debating on the phone, lounging at the beach.
And Reid would probably be in a stuffed suit wanting ‘face time’ via web conferencing. Good luck with that. A ‘crease in the pants’ won't mean a blessed thing during such a debate.
And here's the kicker — Reid could be mandated to one debate every single week! Over 100 people could get their chance at him every two years. Same with Pelosi. Same with McConnell and Bone-head. No congress critter would be safe unless he or she agrees with common sense ideas.
Fair Scheduling for Fair Debates
As for the specifics of how a debate can be fair here's a quick summary:
1. Fair time.
2. No moderator.
3. Ten ‘three minute’ turns each. Microphone off during other speaker's time.
4. Regarding professors, possibly ‘pre-recorded’. People would pay $2 [or more] for the unedited version but the free version would be edited to remain ‘on topic’. [Might be the same for judges too.]
[I'm adding tedious humdrum details in a post further down, but this is mainly going to be worked out by the state legislators.]
I will be suggesting other ideas, but this needs to be out there as a ‘stand alone’ plan in case states need to act quickly and decisively on an idea that can be understood quickly.
The Border Czar could take control of all VISA policy, airport security, border security construction, border patrols, the Coast Guard, and any National Guard assistance which the governors might offer. With state assistance, the Border Czar could also commandeer or incentivize prison inmates and illegal immigrants to work for construction of detention camps and border safety infrastructure.
Such laborers may be subjected to any kind of tracking device the Czar wishes, they may be kept in line through any version of ‘Invisible Fence’ technology imaginable, they will earn merit points based in part on their work record, and they may be penalized for a poor work ethic according to the Czar's discretion. No federal or state laws may interfere with such construction.
[The United Nations will scream bloody murder. But it's high time that We the People tell the UN in no uncertain terms to ‘butt out’ of our affairs. And the EPA might be green on the outside, but its red on the inside and would meddle any way it could if permitted.]
And the Border Czar would hold complete authority over ICE and have the authority to arrest any politicians who make ‘safe haven’ announcements to welcome illegal immigrants. Conviction of ‘safe haven’ announcements would be a felony punished according to the CSE’s discretion, and conviction for that crime would require a petition signed by 2/3 of all state attorneys general.
No court room may call into question the Border Czar's policy decisions unless such a policy is sited in the Czar's impeachment-and-removal. The Czar's authority is paramount regarding budgeting, personnel decisions, conviction of non-US-citizens and enforcement policies but may also be held to a high standard of morality by the CSE. The CSE may censure executive branch officials accordingly in support of the Czar, even for a ‘spirit of contrariness’ that appears to physically slow progress of the Czar's constitutionally-valid objectives.
[It's one thing for someone to make a negative remark. That's just ‘free speech’. It's quite another thing if a suspicious ‘bureaucratic snafu’ or contrary interpretation actually bogs down headway. And the best way to prevent such things is to give the CSE temporary subjective power that is as narrowly defined as possible.]
The only congressional authority of the the Czar should be a modified version of impeachment that prevents ‘hearing-harassment’ or even lengthy ‘impeachment trial harassment’ that would disrupt the Czar's team. For example ...
“No impeachment hearing of the Czar may begin without a 2/3 super-majority vote in the Senate to initiate one. And the Czar as well as all of the Czar's subordinates may testify during that hearing via web-conferencing which only lasts for two hours, once a week. Each witness of such a hearing schedules the time and date one week after each hearing subpoena. After the Senate hearing, the House may also initiate a hearing with a 2/3 ... [et cetera] “
[Really up to the states to deliberate, but you get the idea.]
Simple majority votes should not be an option for congress to ‘go after’ the Czar. Even for the House to impeach the czar it should require a 2/3 vote.
Most constitutional scholars prefer vague wording, but vagueness would be foolhardy in light of all the amnesty schemes we've been up against dating back to the 1990s. Most specifics could be put in a specified co-written manual {that the amendment briefly refers to} so that the Constitution is less cluttered. But to save time during a crisis, we could ‘cram’ the Constitution now with long amendments and then a future amendmentment shift most of the ‘clunky’ specifics to a manual that matches the wording perfectly.
One transitional clause [that can later be expunged] is giving the Czar authority to repeal recent citizenship that's obtained through Obama’s current scheme.
To prevent federal meddling, the Border Czar should be immune from arrest, indictment, or lawsuits while serving. But a majority of states should be empowered to impeach and remove the Border Czar for any reason at any time. And perhaps the CSE could pardon the Border Czar, and also pardon anyone whose ‘safe border’ actions the Czar agrees with.
Note that the CSE’s censure authority will help ensure cooperation with the Border Czar and even punish contrariness toward the Border Czar. More about censure further down the thread.
You might have noticed a few changes.
I originally planned integrating more ideas all at the same time like a complex machine. But ...
In light of our current crises, I worked out a way to first offer this streamlined plan. It's planned out to dovetail with future ideas later on and to get people used to various concepts such as ‘mandatory debates’. For example, veterans should also be able to elect their own representative who can mandate debates. But it might be best for the plan above to ‘stand alone’, and some of us can work together hash out ‘Campaign 2’ with greater deliberation at the same time.
After people here had a chance to ‘kick the tires’, those who are more ‘action-oriented’ can spread the word about this one plan.
Just warning you — I'm not going to be taken seriously as a person. If someone in talk-radio compares me with ‘Dr. Strangelove’, please just laugh because I will. Once in a blue moon I posted some stupid things [to my eternal regret]. And I'm no role model either. So hey, please just think of me as a ‘sick twisted freak’ who sometimes swerves into good ideas.
I hope people make suggestions about how to spread the word on this thread. I once foolishly discouraged a guy from offering ‘business cards’ to FR activists. Hindsight - it was a great idea. Business cards don't have to be about a business. Each line of a card can briefly jog the memory or briefly summarize a point. Or a web address.
How the state legislators can help is posted further down in ‘Phase Two’.
Great thinking! This, and the Liberty Amendments.
I’ll add that it would help garner GOP support if the threat of multi-state secession was on the table, as Plan B.
Tainting Court Opinions and Judges
This is the ‘short’ summary and more specifics are further down. So this is the ‘plain language’ version.
First off, the activist-judges will have plenty to fear from this idea. Enough marks [I recommend three] means that they get tainted personally. A tainted judge is not merely removed, impeached, stripped of pensions and perks. Any time their names are mentioned in future text books, they should be preceded with: “that tainted gavel-jockey, [add name].”
I recommend numerous other penalties as well down further.
But we shouldn’t alarm our heroic legal scholars along with the ‘bad guys’. If a judge is simply basing his or her court opinions on ‘tradition’ [aka ‘precedent’], then there shouldn’t be anything for him or her to worry about. [As will be explained further down.]
In fact, as the tainting process evolves, a lot of needless confusion will come to a blessed end. It will help new scholars because they won’t need to grapple with the convoluted interpretations of judicial activists that don’t always ‘pass the giggle test’.
Court precedents keep leading to silly contradictions of illogic or legal expectations that are either unenforceable or fiscally absurd or even too strange to take seriously. And as that mountain has grown, so have most people grown increasingly intimidated and unable to know what is legal and what is not.
It became so bad [as one example] some states even had to run ad campaigns to assure parents that spanking children is actually legal. Many families have suffered terrible disfunction and horrible outcomes due to improper child rearing as a direct result of how confusing the legal system has become, in large part because it is trying to ‘reshape’ natural law. Any ‘reshaping’ is supposed to be through constitutional legislation.
Through tainting opinions, fewer precedents will need to be studied. And as for the more venerable scholars, they would simply need to check online to find out if a precedent had been rendered invalid lately.
Here is what I recommend ...
Each censure includes a fine and three mandatory debates.
While the CSE may censure any number of federal officials at the same time, including the President, normally the Chief State Executive may not follow up on each future censure of the same person until two months have passed between each one.
[That way, the states can dismiss or replace a CSE who wages an irrational vendetta before the third censure triggers impeachment.]
But a 2/3 super-majority of the states may permit more rapid censures of named executive branch officials including the President.
After the CSE has censured someone three times, states deliberate impeachable offenses.
If the executive branch official is guilty of ‘dereliction of duty’ or ‘violation of one’s sacred oath’, then it is the duty of the states to impeach and remove the executive branch official which requires a 2/3 super-majority of states to be in agreement.
[Each state still represented through majority vote by its legislators.]
States might consider adding ‘tainting’ to this verdict as well.
They might also consider a mechanism for repealing a censure, such as a 2/3 vote by the House. And then the Chief could mandate debates over why that censure was repealed — fairly decent checks and balances.
And states might not want censure of the President to be so easy either. But I hope they consider the courage it would take for a CSE to dare censure the President. If it's for a frivolous reason, then the states should give their chief the boot. But if it's over something like Ben Ghazi or Fast and Furious, etc, then states might be inclined to agree.
Humdrum Tedium Alert
If you thought the Border Czar specifics were tedious, I don’t blame you. And be forewarned, the rest of these information-posts are even more tedious than that.
States need to realize that when this amendment is ratified, any time the federal government infringes on their Chief's rights that confrontation needs an official way of being resolved.
For example there was a strange moment in US history when President Andrew Jackson quipped [paraphrase], “Let the supreme Court enforce its own ruling.”
I recommend that it be specified that ...
“It is unconstitutional for any federal employee, federal judge, federal law enforcer, and any member of US armed forces to interfere with state enforcement of the CSE’s enumerated authority. And it is the duty of all governors to offer assistance in such enforcement in the form of state police, the national guard, or even through seeking patriotic voluntary payment of private investigators to gather information that the CSE wishes to have.”
Something along those lines. Since military forces swear to uphold the Constitution, that should ‘do the trick’.
Also it would be shrewd of the states to codify the right to dismiss or replace their current CSE at any time prior to the limited term. They might also consider allowing the Chief to choose his or her Lt. Chief State Executive. But the Lt. should be incapable of replacing his boss prior to the ending term without the Chief's endorsement [unless it is due to death or incapacity]. And the Lt. should not have a vote in determining incapacity. This way the two are natural allies, and the CSE would not be threatened if his Lt. gains experience.
[As one historic example, the Vice Presidency can at times be a useful post, but not until after the position was reformed after Adams. And if the President were more sure of loyalty, the Vice President could play more of a role.]
The states should also include the right to collectively agree on a choice in advance of who could ‘fill the slot’ in a smooth transition at the end of the CSE’s term. But it should not be automatic that the Lt. Chief State Executive is the ‘anointed one’ if no one is chosen. That could result in some convoluted shadow oligarchy.
Our nation would be better off to risk occasional lapses even if no CSE is at the helm until the majority of states agree on someone.
I recommend that tainted judges also be banned from being lobbyists, from entering Washington DC [to prevent underground lobbying], from educating college students, from entering college property [to prevent underground education], from accepting money from speeches, from book advances, from being involved in the writing of college text books [like Woodrow Wilson], and from even being a small claims court judge let alone any other kind of judge. They may be lawyers, but not in federal courts.
The Chief State Executive could write lists of federal and state court opinion that should be tainted.
[I add ‘state’ because voters in some states are frustrated with their own courts and might ask for some help in overcoming brazen judicial-activism even at the state level. Remember those notorious words in New Jersey? “The law is silent,” Lousy-berg’s illegal campaign against Doug Forrester. And court meddling of state budgets and prisons. Just an option for state legislators to ponder.]
‘Tainted’ would mean that the court opinion is arguably unconstitutional and is currently not a worthy ‘precedent’ in a court of law. The majority of legislators [in each state] have three options. They might support the entire list as ‘tainted’, agree to a partial list as ‘tainted’, or reject the list outright.
Each tainted opinion counts as a mark against the judge who either wrote the opinion or concurred with it.
But the judge can appeal to the state attorneys general if the tainted opinion had sited precedents that were not themselves tainted at the time of that opinion. If the state attorneys general agree, then they must make a speech with the video archived online.
The Chief State Executive may also decide in advance to pardon the judge for any particular ‘taint’ [since it is arguably due to a flawed precedent]. Then needless angst is avoided, and that taint would not ever count as a mark against the judge.
If a judge accumulates three marks, he or she is suspended without pay for three months and then personally tainted, impeached, and removed by default. The three months is an opportunity to have marks removed if possible and avert personal tainting.
So ultimately the marks will stack up against the ‘pioneers’ of unconstitutional interpretation.
There is the matter of federal court vacancies, especially early-on. Just imagine it. President Ebola could parade a thousand radicals that are all rejected by the Chief State Executive.
One solution would be to allow the House to nominate supreme Court justices competitively. Then the President's nominee could debate the House nominee until the CSE chooses one.
As for the Senate, that body has lost a lot of respect lately. So what role it might play, I don't suggest any at the moment. When there is national debate, critics could verbally punch so many holes in the senate that it looks like Swiss cheese when you think about the creepy nominees the Senate so eagerly approved in both the executive and the judicial branch.
I think there's a high probability that the Republicans in DC are going to let us down. And they are likely to be stubborn about doing little more than ‘dole out’ feeble gestures. That has been their pattern of behavior since 2011. So here is how we can gear up to “hold them by the nose and kick them in the pants”.
Imagine if five governors, four senators, thirty House members, hundreds of state legislators, and countless other mayors, state attorneys general, county sheriffs, etc. all united behind a single challenge to a battery of debates about state empowerment.
Such a challenge would be impossible to ignore. And why negotiate a watering down of these debates? Five debates, equal time, no-holds-barred, no moderator, each gets 10 three minute turns during each debate — what's unreasonable about that?
Once over a hundred conservative state legislators, governors [etc.] unite they should reach out to whatever sanity-loving congress members they find to first appeal to and then confront McConnell and Bone-head with this plan [which would require targeted suspension of congress's constitutional amendment rules — and that's the easy part compared to super-majority congressional support].
So long as they set the legislation in motion in the next two years we know they are serious. But we should plan that they will not.
When one of those two leaders snubs this this united conservative front they can build momentum by getting behind a single skilled debater who casts the gauntlet — the five-debate challenge. Then we have a public leader who people can rally behind.
The supporters should belittle the cowardly McConnell or Bone-head [or both] who is so scared of fair debates. Whether or not the challenge is accepted, this simple focus will continue to build momentum.
Other supported debate challenges could put spotlights on other key congressional leaders too until there's a congressional leadership overthrow that paves the way. Either that or the biggest primary fight in US history — or worse.
Rush, Hannity, and Beck would have tremendous combined clout. They can unite for leverage because if they ever agree that conservatives should abandon the Republican Party and form a ‘Ronald Reagan Party’ that would be strong enough support to topple the GOP. If even two of those ‘Big Three’ talk radio hosts simply agree to make a ‘new party’ threat, then the GOP might get cooperative.
The other option is more difficult, but it's overdue anyway. Regardless of whatever else is happening, state-level legislators need to get on the stick and reform their primary systems BEFORE the next primary if they really care about our nation. It's the primary process that can strengthen the GOP and thereby solve problems.
Here are the necessary reforms:
1. Perhaps along the lines of Louisiana to ensure that only majority support within the party wins. More importantly they should ban crossover votes. Democrats and Republicans should be required to stick to their own parties.
2. The ‘qualification’ standards [to be on the ballot] are a joke in some states. Here in the Virginia 2012 primary, our only choices were Romney, President Ebola, and Ron Paul. Remember all the other nominees? Their paperwork was nitpicked to oblivion. That kind of dirty politics MUST come to an end.
One last thing — states could also threaten the federal government with the ‘Utah Option’ [a ‘nuclear option’ that dissolves the entire federal government along with the judicial branch]. But the DNC would most certainly call their bluff. To democrats, this plan we have here is completely unacceptable. But still, it's an ‘unknown’ which certainly does increase state leverage.
Re #6, are you on crack? sniffing glue?
Legislators should probably give themselves leeway to ‘fine tune’ mandatory debates over time.
— When should debates be live or prerecorded?
— Should ‘libel suits’ be allowed when someone is outraged over the IRS targeting scandal? [As an example, and I think that slander is the real crime, not venting in public at some creep. Which is why a professor's debate probably should be prerecorded. Are all professors ‘public figures’ for example? Will libel laws change again?]
I would recommend that the invited guest should accommodate the mandated debater’s schedule — so long as it's within seven days of the mandate. For example if some wacko Chief State Executive revered Coast to Coast [unlikely, I know], it wouldn't be right for Art Bell to wake up Senator Cruz at 3 AM for a surprise debate about ‘global warming’.
And if one of our favorite professors [such as Walter Williams] is on a cruise or whatever, he should be allowed a lengthy break two or three times each year and make up for it with more debates later on. But as I said, states will work it all out and consider this with hundreds of fresh viewpoints before any final draft is agreed on.
o o o o
That's ‘it’ for now. FRegards ....
Is trusting the states more than the federal government being on crack?
A “Chief State Executive” is a crackpot idea.
I also support the Liberty Amendments. Amen to that!
But I’m thinking that something more exciting might generate more interest.
And people might not want to surrender their right to vote for senators. This is an option that empowers states anyway.
— FRegards ....
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