Posted on 02/22/2009 7:11:41 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
A simple apology would have sufficed. Instead, Sen. Russ Feingold has decided to follow his McCain-Feingold evisceration of the First Amendment with Feingold-McCain, more vandalism against the Constitution.
The Wisconsin Democrat, who is steeped in his state's progressive tradition, says, as would-be amenders of the Constitution often do, that he is reluctant to tamper with the document but tamper he must because the threat to the public weal is immense: Some governors have recently behaved badly in appointing people to fill U.S. Senate vacancies. Feingold's solution, of which John McCain is a co-sponsor, is to amend the 17th Amendment. It would be better to repeal it.
The Framers established election of senators by state legislators, under which system the nation got the Great Triumvirate (Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John Calhoun) and thrived. In 1913, progressives, believing that more, and more direct, democracy is always wonderful, got the 17th Amendment ratified. It stipulates popular election of senators, under which system Wisconsin has elected, among others, Joe McCarthy, as well as Feingold.
The 17th Amendment says that when Senate vacancies occur, "the executive authority" of the affected state "shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct."
Feingold's amendment says:
"No person shall be a Senator from a State unless such person has been elected by the people thereof. When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such state shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Why the hell do you want corrupt state legislators to appoint Senators? I’d rather vote on it myself thanks.
I don’t know if we should go to all the trouble of an amendment but I agree with Slimgold on this one. Punk ass governors shouldn’t get to hand out 2-year terms anymore.
Blago auctioned off a seat.
Frank Murkowsi appointed his baby girl to make up for not buying her that pony.
Roy Barnes put popular Zell Miller in a Republican seat creating the circumstances for the Jeffords switch.
Burris, Bennett and G(j)illibrand get 2 years in the Senate without having to be elected. All were chosen by a single man.
Take a step back from your idealism and take at look at who runs the state legislatures. In a majority of states it’s corrupt rats. Senators chosen by them wouldn’t “rein in” a damn thing people. You have an even shiftier group of asses ready to funnel money to their masters in the state capitals.
And if the 17th hadn’t been ratified, many Southern states would STILL have Democrat Senators. My state of TN wouldn’t have been able to elect a Republican for the first time until this past election... close to 140 years after the Reconstruction Republican Senator. AL, MS, AR, NC... they’d all still be Democrat (so Jesse Helms, Jeff Sessions, et al, would never have been elected). Yes, the upside is we’d have a solid block of Republicans from the Plains States (4 from the Dakotas, 2 from Nebraska), but many states where the GOP held on after they lost the legislatures would never have been able to have won (such as Al D’Amato in NY). What I found interesting, though, is that the numbers of members in the Senate wouldn’t be changed by all that much, just from different locales.
Without the 17th (with numbers reflecting that of the legislative majorities that would elect Senators at the election of the current Senators) and in (parenthesis), the actual current membership:
AL-2D (2R)
AK-2R (1D/1R)
AZ-2R (no change)
AR-2D (n/c)
CA-2D (n/c)
CO-2D (n/c)
CT-2D (1D/1ID)
DE-2D (n/c)
FL-2R (1D/1R)
GA-2R (n/c)
HI-2D (n/c)
ID-2R (n/c)
IL-2D (n/c)
IN-2R (1D/1R)
IA-1D/1R (n/c)
KS-2R (n/c)
KY-2D (2R)
LA-2D (1D/1R)
ME-2D (2R)
MD-2D (n/c)
MA-2D (n/c)
MI-2D (n/c)
MN-2D (1D/1 undecided)
MS-2D (2R)
MO-2R (1D/1R)
MT-1D/1R (2D)
NE-2R (1D/1R)
NV-2D (1D/1R)
NH-1D/1R (n/c)
NJ-2D (n/c)
NM-2D (n/c)
NY-2D (n/c)
NC-2D (1D/1R)
ND-2R (2D)
OH-2R (1D/1R)
OK-2R (n/c)
OR-1D/?* (2D)
PA-2R (1D/1R)
RI-2D (n/c)
SC-2R (n/c)
SD-2R (1D/1R)
TN-1D/1R (2R)
TX-2R (n/c)
UT-2R (n/c)
VT-2D (1D/1 Prog)
VA-2R (2D)
WA-2D (n/c)
WV-2D (n/c)
WI-2R (2D)
WY-2R (n/c)
*Oregon had an even number of total members of both parties in 2005 in the legislature, so the winner would be indeterminate.
So without the 17th, we’d only have 2 more members than we do now, not much of a gain (44R/55D/1 Unknown), and the issue would be that of ideology. I frankly think many of the Republicans would be more liberal and the Democrats from more Dem-leaning states would be just as liberal as they currently are, with perhaps only some of the Southern Dems slightly more moderate, but that’s not even a guarantee. Ultimately, I think had it not been ratified, it would be a net loss for Conservatives.
The constitution mentions one representative for every 30,000 citizens. That would give us around 10,000 in the house.
We need this because:
- you can't lobby 5,000 people. No need for campaign finance reform
- They would only agreee on important things. it would limit government
Get to the root cause of the problem
“in the long run you’d end up with a much more conservative senate (meaning they’d want a difused governemtn where more power in the hands of the states, than the federal central government)”
What makes you think that? Democrats in state legislatures love federal power.
The GOP majority in the Ohio Senate is greater than the rat edge in the House so the legislature would elect a Republican.
Such a system may actually help Republicans in say Alabama and Mississippi (I can’t believe the rats took back the state Senate in MS) in winning the state legislatures. I’m still against it though cause I like democracy.
Senate seats were regularly bought and sold prior to direct elections. Montana’s William Clark got caught and still managed to come back and buy a seat.
Given that so many counties of the USA, even today, are red, the states would be more conservative except for the one-man, one vote rule that the Supreme Court imposed on the states in the 1960s. That prevented the states from properly recognizing any political interests except population in drawing state senatorial districts. Given the inherent difficulty of getting an accurate census count in urban areas, and the dishonest activities of political machines and demagogic organizations like Acorn, this has taken away the ability of the states to prevent electiuns from being dominated by population blocs.
IMO the best thing to do is not put the dollar on a gold standard, but rather get rid of legal tender laws. Most “dollars” in the economy exist as debt. In order to keep that amount the same, we’d have to issue debt as fast as it matured, no faster, no slower. I suppose in theory it would be possible to tie gold to the dollar, but the very idea of issuing money as debt and being on a gold standard is contradictory.
There would have to be a massive deflation of the money supply (I believe less than 5% of money is not “debt” money) in order to back the dollar with gold. This scenario is almost impossible to imagine though and would most certainly cause massive panic throughout the economy, since prices would be spiraling downward until they stabilized at the new level of the money supply (which would be drastically lower).
The actual dollar to gold exchange ratio would simply be the amount of dollars divided by the amount of gold. It wouldn’t have to necessarily be $20.67 per ounce. It could be anything really.
The reason I favor getting rid of legal tender laws is because then the market would determine what would be used as money. Most likely gold and silver (perhaps copper, platinum, or some other metals) would be used. Almost certainly, paper currencies, or receipts, would emerge (100%) backed by the metal they represented and circulate instead of the metal (e.g. a certificate that says redeemable in 1/10 of an ounce of gold, or 2 ounces of silver, etc., which is exactly what the dollar used to be).
The dollar would have no tie to any of these metals except a fluctuating exchange rate, since the dollar would also be its own currency. However IMO demand for the dollar (being unbacked paper continually inflated and thus gradually losing purchasing power) would decline as people moved into harder currencies (since those can’t be inflated). There would be no government decree, it would just happen (in all likelihood IMO). If this were to play out, the dollar would eventually die since at the end of the day it’s just paper.
The market would always use the currency most suited for the needs of buyers and sellers, i.e. whatever people wanted to use. There would not have to be any rate at which gold (or whatever currency was most dominate) entered the market. If gold becomes to scarce, then it would likely only be used in large transactions with silver being used for day to day use, and perhaps copper for small transactions.
If suddenly we found a huge gold mine that made gold so readily available that it became useless, the market would move into another form of currency. If silver became much too scarce, then it would likely not be used at all in favor of something the market found more preferable. The great thing about this system is that it requires no government (or centralized) tinkering. There is no optimal rate of money expansion. There is only what is most useful to the market and thus only what the market wants as currency will serve as currency.
Just my thoughts.
What makes you think Democrats in STATE legislatures would want to GIVE UP power that belongs to them to the Feds..? Yeah they’re the party of treason, but THEIR OWN SELF INTEREST would rule in most cases that they would like their state to keep power, not give it away (smaller government WAS built into the system).
They support huge throbbing government at all levels.
I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter never get through the ratification process.
It wouldn’t get even that far.
It’s a terrible idea supported by only a handful of cranks.
It is a terrible idea and thankfully it will never happen.
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