Posted on 12/12/2010 11:50:05 AM PST by neverdem
America is choking on laws of our own making.
Once a law is in place in the United States, it's almost impossible to dislodge. Our political class assumes that, after a law is forged in the crucible of democracy, it should be honored as if it's one of the Ten Commandments - except it's more like one of 10 million...
--snip--
Sunset laws have been proposed from time to time, and they were a domestic priority for President Jimmy Carter. "Too many Federal programs have been allowed to continue indefinitely," he wrote to Congress in 1979, "without examining whether they are accomplishing what they were meant to do."...
--snip--
Americans know that the government is broken. According to a recent Clarus Research Group poll, 80 percent agree with that conclusion. By the same overwhelming majority, Americans also agree that the government "needs a basic overhaul" and should undertake "an annual 'spring cleaning' to eliminate unnecessary regulations and red tape."
Our founders never intended democracy to be a one-way ratchet, making laws but almost never unmaking them. Thomas Jefferson famously advocated small revolutions from time to time, believing that they are "as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. . . . It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." This is the medicine that America very much needs today.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Unless, of course, they're immigration laws. Then it's just mean old Republicans that want to keep the poor minority "undocumented future citizens" from crossing the border to a better life that only America's Socialist party (DemonRats) can provide.
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
Congress shall meet for one session not to exceed one year total in any two year congress.
Members of congress shall remain within the boundaries of their respective congressional districts when not in session.
The members of congressmen’s staff shall be present within the confines of the congressional district when congress is not in session.
All measures passed into law by the congress shall apply equally to the members of congress and the other branches of federal government and to the people. Congress shall not exempt its members nor any other employee of federal government, whether elected or appointed, from laws passed.
The ESA expired. Did that do any good, or was it revised by an even more craven claque of fools?
This strikes me like "term limits," a systemic band-aid that supposedly fixes a more serious structural problem. Good representatives get rid of bad laws without need for sunset provisions while nothing in a sunset provision precludes bad representatives from making things worse when bad laws expire. So what is to prevent a legislature "too busy" to pass continuing legislation from crafting a statute that over-rides existing sunset provisions so that they can get to that "another day"? I just don't think it would do very much.
That should tell you all you need to know about whether this would work. There is no substitute for informed voters electing good people.
What was the ESA?
The LAST thing we need is an 'interstate' for looney liberal environmental 'laws' - thank God they're slowed down...
I received this through Email recently. It fits:
Received from Rev. Keith Plank of Nebraska:
A LAWYER WITH A BRIEFCASE CAN STEAL
MORE THAN A THOUSAND MEN WITH GUNS.
Vito Corleone
This is very interesting! I never thought about it this way.
The Lawyers’ Party by Bruce Walker *
The Democratic Party has become the Lawyers Party.
Barack Obama is a lawyer.
Michelle Obama is a lawyer.
Hillary Clinton is a lawyer.
Bill Clinton is a lawyer.
John Edwards is a lawyer.
Elizabeth Edwards is a lawyer(deceased).
Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate).
Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school.
Look at leaders of the Democrat Party in Congress:
Harry Reid is a lawyer.
Nancy Pelosi is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different.
President Bush is a businessman.
Vice President Cheney is a businessman.
The leaders of the Republican Revolution:
Newt Gingrich was a history professor.
Tom Delay was an exterminator.
Dick Armey was an economist.
House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer.
The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer?
Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976.
The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work, who are often the targets of lawyers.
The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.
The Lawyers Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America . And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers Party, grow.
Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail?
Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.
This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people.
Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.
Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation.
When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming.
Some Americans become adverse parties of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked.
When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big.
** When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
We cannot expect the Lawyers Party to provide real change, real reform or real hope in America Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789.
Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business.
Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work.
Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.
The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 66% of the world’s lawyers! Tort (Legal) reform legislation has been introduced in Congress several times in the last several years to limit punitive damages in ridiculous lawsuits such as spilling hot coffee on yourself and suing the establishment that sold it to you and also to limit punitive damages in huge medical malpractice lawsuits. This legislation has continually been blocked from even being voted on by the Democrat Party.
When you see that 97% of the political contributions from the American Trial Lawyers Association goes to the Democrat Party, then you realize who is responsible for our medical and product costs being so high!
FEEL FREE TO PASS THIS ON.
You go first. 0.5 / s
What about import tariffs?
Thanks for the ping!
Joke.
Thanks neverdem.
Interesting.
DOh! Was thinking 8 cents on the dollar. Should have been 8 %.
100K gross = $8,000 tax bill.
The authorization for spending on the Endangered Species Act expired in 1992 and the government went on like nothing happened.
Right. I suppose that we’re all going to find out what we’re made of. Or not, in some cases, eh?
I don’t plan on going to jail. How about you?
20%???
God only asks for 10%. Surely the government could live on 8%. Of course, they'd have to get rid of a lot of unconstitutional crap to get to that level. That would be fine by me.
My God, someone at the editorial desk was asleep at the switch!
It's for the GOVERNMENT!!! How could it possibly be too low? They're fortunate we don't require THEM to pay US 8% for the privilege.
I think he meant 8%, so it’d be $8,000 on a $100k income.
How about that in any standard election year, no new laws - outside of the annual budget and national emergencies - may be proposed, voted on, or enacted. The only measures that may be proposed, voted on, or enacted shall be the repeal of current laws and legislation.
That way, politicians can’t bribe the voter with goodies from the public till in exchange for votes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.