Create Home Districting for the Federation

The partisan quagmire that is about to crash the system stems from a failure of the States to properly organize their people.  What the people most need is a sensibly sized “home district” and their one rep who takes over all governing duties in their behalf.  This nation has never known the tranquility that such as system could bring to it.

Only the State Governments are able to reorganize their people into sensibly sized home districts.  Inexplicably, States have never seen fit to do so.  Their myopic legislatures feel bound by their State Constitutions, while at the same time they fail to see that they are contradicting their Federal Constitution’s call for Congressional Districts.  The two constitutions should be reconciled in favor of the more dominant Federal Constitution.

The Federal System requires a common set of districting.  Otherwise, it simply will not work.  It is not working now and never has worked.  What is working now are two clashing systems of States vs. the Federal Government.  The people are caught in the middle and are being driven insane as they try to satisfy the voting demands made upon them by the two clashing systems.

Whenever the State Legislatures see fit to abandon their districting system in favor of a “commonly agreed upon size of Congressional District” to also run their State Governments, the people can have their sanity back.  One set of “home districts” of 40,000 each creates 8,000 reps.  With those 8,000 reps, let’s return to the original plans laid out in the Constitution.  Let them elect the executives of the federal system, Governors, President, et al.  And, tranquilly, make all of our laws.

The People’s Ruling Class

The Founders expected that their more perfect union would be ruled from a set of equalized local districts set up by State Governments.  State Governments seem not to have the foresight to abandon their archaic districting systems in favor of the same system by which the national government is ruled.  One set of representatives should be ruling the entire federation from bottom to top.

The ruling class by which we are now being ruled is a mysterious lot of mostly self-appointed persons in powerful positions, some of which can be identified and some not.  In order for the people to participate in this ad hoc mysterious system, each must register as a member of one of its political parties.  This is precisely the system that the Founders saw as divisive and to be avoided if at all possible.

Thirteen state governments which set up the system are the culpable ones.  Now fifty state governments share that culpability and should be getting us out of the messed-up system.  It would be embarrassingly easy to do, once they visualize what needs to be done.  It would create an entirely new ruling class operated from every local district in the nation.  Each of those districts would create its own political flavor, and that flavor would undergo possible modification at each 2-year rep election cycle.

States need to drop every aspect of their old districting that runs their state governments.  They need to reach a common agreement on what the population of a proper local district should be.  (Why not, until studies show otherwise, adopt the 40,000 of the original Congressional District?)  In a nation of 320,000,000 persons, that would create a grid of exactly 8,000 “elite rulers” who would form the foundation of all governing---from the smallest chartered entities of each state to the top governing officials anywhere in the nation.  Those districts would thumb their noses at partisan ideologies as they choose their favorite local leader. That leader may be a dyed-in-the-wool partisan, but will “dance with the ones who brought him.”

Phase two focuses on the vanities of we-the-people, ourselves.  After we have elected that elite body of representatives, we need to step out of their way and let them do the governing, for good or ill.  It is their responsibility and we will deal with them at the next election.  The Founders created a 3-tier electorate: those qualified to elect persons to 2-year terms, those qualified to elect the 4-year term executives, and those qualified to elect the 6-year term senators.  The longer the term, the more sophisticated the voter. We have thoughtlessly trashed that system, both as it applies to electoral colleges and as it applies to election of senators.  Both are fundamentally sound ideas that have become propagandized beyond belief.

No matter what the system of government in any nation, the elite class of people always manages to find its way to the top of it.  We have been given the opportunity to elect our elite class in an orderly manner. Our system is in peril because its grassroots has been manipulated by skilled, deceptive partisan charlatans.  The charlatans are soon weeded out in their small districts.  The truly elites are not charlatans.  If we do not elect them, they will be imposed upon us by other tactics.

Why not resurrect the Founders’ idea which would create 8,000 reps? We have never tried it.  It would synchronize all governing into one interconnected system. The propaganda driven national frenzy the partisans put on every four years is a disgrace that a proper ruling class renders obsolete. 

Did The U.S. Senate Perform A Coup On The Body Politic A Century Ago?

Simple Logic Points That Way. 

Amendment XVII to the United States Constitution is most puzzling. It quietly, and without any fanfare, removes the remaining vestige of State Government influence from Washington, D.C., and effectively dissolves any further pretense of federating the States. 

Or, to phrase the action more dramatically, the amendment blew up the federation and firmly installed popular government throughout Washington, D.C.   State Governments were sent packing, with their tails between their legs.  From now on, we-the-people will run our own national government and you state governments can sit there on the sidelines and wither away as we incrementally diminish your importance.

One hundred more years have passed since that time.  Those conspirators knew exactly what they were doing, and achieved it beyond their wildest dreams.  Not only have we-the-people been misled out of the single districting system the Founders thought they were putting us in, but we have been misled out of our states, also.

We have been led into a totally partisan system of statewide elections where meaningless districts are piled on top of each other.  Our so-called reps are chosen for us by partisan conventions, as we dutifully go to the polls every two years to rubberstamp what the partisans did for us.  We are all being “schooled” in the new lockstep that is destined to drive out whatever remaining free spirits who are still among us.   Our lives are becoming more somber, more desperate, as a cacophony of exhortations presses us from all sides.

The Founders thought they were setting us up in districts of about 40,000 people each.  We should be living as communities of 40,000 people live.  Let the neighboring communities do what they want.  We will do what we want.  We are a nation of 8,000 such communities.

We each have our unique governing systems: County, Township, Town, City, or whatever.  Whether 400, 4,000, 40,000, or 400,000 people per community, “equality of governing voices” is the rule for operating the federation of states.  We need to adapt whatever size community we are in, to that rule.  But our local communities, of whatever size, should continue to function as integral communities.

The Founders designed an elections system of equalized voices, all coming from what would today be 8,000 local districts.  All political actions of whatever nature were to originate from those local districts via their local reps.  But the States have consistently refused to organize their citizens into such a set of districts.

Meanwhile, the saboteurs find ways to throw monkey wrenches into the system (Amendment XVII).  Pure logic says the amendment was a conspiracy by the senators themselves to escape the districting system of elections and become blatant politicians. If so, their terms should be shortened to 4 years, one being elected each two years.  Or, really, does the nation need a U.S. Senate?  Eight thousand reps totally committed to their districts’ welfare, should be quite stable.

An Open letter to Jim DeMint

To: President Jim DeMint at the Heritage Foundation

From: Cloyce K. Avey, member of Heritatge Foundation

Jim, you and Heritage Foundation have produced an excellent book that everybody should read.

But, in all seriousness I must ask you, “What’s the point?” You are laying a guilt trip on the electorate, a guilt trip that the electorate does not deserve and should not be laid on them.

Everything in your book points to local communities (their districts) as the ones who should be choosing their fates in the federal system. You literally hold out a dish of wonderful food for them to see and smell and drool over. But it is just beyond their grasp---and there is absolutely nothing they are able to do about it. Until the States put their people in charge, there is absolutely nothing the people can do but bitterly throw up their hands in frustration.

For two and a quarter centuries, they have been forced into a Jekyl/Hyde schizophrenia by their States’ double districting with all their plethora of pecking orders. The people instinctively know that if they were properly organized, they could do much better. Their States are utterly clueless about districting inferences from their Founders. Those who wrote and signed the Constitution had brilliant instincts. Those who implemented the Constitution were just plain stupid in that they did not properly organize their people into the more perfect union. Nor did they have the vision to plan for it at a more suitable time. Equally disgusting, is today’s constitutional scholarship which is as bad as that of the original implementers.

The brilliant instincts of the Founders continue to shout to state governments, “District your people into locally managed, equal-sized districts; then allow the resulting single set of reps to operate the entire federal governing system of states and their national government.” We must dig ourselves out of the existing districting mess, and go back to the original district of 40,000 persons, distributed nationwide.

The Founders were elitists who trusted the grassroots only to elect reps to rule over them---not to participate further except via their reps. They cleverly devised a sophisticated voting system of three levels: (1) Those who elect persons to two-year terms; (2) Those who elect persons to four-year terms (the executives); and (3 Those who elect persons to six-year terms (the senators).

By implication, the states should have mirrored that system. The people’s reps would serve at both places in their designated “houses of reps.” And county and/or city governments would choose their state senators. The reps would collegiately elect all executives.

Instead of state and national conventions to elevate party members into offices, why not turn that job over to the individual districts and allow their reps to gather together and finish the elections?

Your “Falling In Love With America All Over Again” refuses to follow through with the above decisive action to implement its ideas.

If you cannot see the people’s desperate need for reorganization. If you are not in sympathy with that need. What is the purpose of the book? Please see my letter in the April issue of The American Spectator (p.6) on this subject.  

An open letter to the courts

An important reason that childhood education is now a monopoly of government is that Protestantism in the nation’s earlier years had a huge advantage over Catholicism in local school district taxing units (legislative bodies). Public school funding (taxing) promoted the Protestant faith over the Catholic faith.

Now, both faiths have acquiesced to heathen indoctrination by the public school system, and perhaps three quarters of the nation’s children are being systematically brainwashed of their faiths.

The courts must honestly re-address this issue of religious persecution via taxation. Taxation requires legislation. But the First Amendment’s “Congress shall pass no law. . . .” clause that interferes with the free exercise of religion, clearly rules out public financing because such taxation seizes parental resources that would support other schools.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman, insisted that the only justifiable “school tax” is one which purchases a voucher for every child.  Then, that child can use the voucher at any accredited school of choice.  All schools thereby become competitive, and persons are more able to escape religious persecution.

Where is the intellectual honesty in the legislative and judicial branches? CYA among government entities is pervasive and most corrupting. It is leading the way to the nation’s complete moral breakdown. Has the Constitution become a barrier to “progress?” Or should the word “progress” (and all its derivatives) be tabooed for lack of meaning?     

Those Who Sneer At Electoral Colleges Misinterpret The Constitution

An elementary school class wishes to choose its leader, or an adult organization wishes to choose its leader.  On a plain piece of paper, each voter writes the name of a favored person, and all such pieces of paper are collected and tabulated.  There may or may have been preliminary campaigning.  But eventually some leader emerges from all the voting.  This is pure democracy in action.  It was a popular method in early American history.

The Founders put their greatest confidence in district representatives to become the foundations of all government. Contrast that with the degenerate partisan system that has superimposed itself upon us as our districts became too large and unmanageable.  The Founders saw these reps as second level voters who would take over all governing as soon as elected, and collegiately choose all of the four-year-term Constitutional officers of the federation. We-the-people elect reps to govern the system, after which we should bow out and allow the reps to govern the system.  We will evaluate their performances every two years.  Otherwise, how can responsibility be delineated if we continue to meddle in what they should be doing?     

Poll Sampling Made Easier And More Reliable

With the nation divided into small, equal sized districts, the total number of reps would approach 8,000.  Each of those reps would reflect a certain persona of his/her district.  Poll samplers would find a bonanza of opinion among those 8,000 reps.

From the reps’ standpoint, they would be able to regularly poll among themselves to measure popular sentiment.  Their clout might clean out some of the bias among poll takers.  Silly legislative attempts would be thereby averted.

Freelance poll sampling itself might diminish if its results were proven to be less reliable.  In any event, the overall reliability of polling should be enhanced by the larger poll samples obtainable.

The Useless, Nest-feathering U.S. Senate (since 1913)

The U.S. Senator of 1789 through 1913 represented the wishes of three successive bodies of his state legislators.  He could defy his back-home political base through maybe one term or two terms because they couldn’t do anything about it.  But if he was still being uncooperative as the third wave of back-home legislators came into office, he would be replaced.

The Founders had designed the U.S. Senate to act with a wider perspective than that of the U.S. House.  Legislation had to pass through both perspectives. Then the disaster of 1913 came, when a most misrepresented Amendment XVII was slipped into place.  It completely disrupted the system.  The U.S. Senators became loose cannons on the deck, shooting wildly with no real purpose.

The Constitution had provided for an elections system that divided the electorate into three levels of sophistication.  The grassroots would elect their two-year term representatives.  Those representatives, in turn, would collegiately elect all of the Constitution’s four-year term executives. After which the reps would organize themselves as a legislative body and choose the six-year term senators.  This carefully crafted system was blown apart when Amendment XVII blandly announced that the grassroots will now elect the senators.

Today, the U.S. Senators stubbornly say “No” to whatever the House proposes.  They are doing it to what would have been the third wave of their bosses prior to 1913.  Today, they get away with it with impunity. Not only that, but they have blackmail powers over all their state officials.  The States should militantly nullify Amendment XVII.

A Bitter Historical Note.  Amendment XVII should have focused on the U.S. House, and should have qualified all state legislators to sit in both places.  That would have brought the States fully into their Federation, and would have made whole, the entire dysfunctional system.

It might be interesting to search the archives for some very damning evidence of a possible conspiracy among the ninety-six U.S. Senators themselves to convince the electorate that Amendment XVII was a good idea.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats committed their party to a position on the amendment---which is reason enough to raise one’s suspicion that the “world’s most deliberative body” was deeply involved in gaining its passage.     

Barnacles

The Founders system has collected many barnacles (distortions and lies).  Did they, or did they not create a tiered system of voting as they created two-year officials, four-year officials, and six-year officials, all according to the political sophistication of the voters involved?  They trusted the grassroots voter to choose a 2-year rep.  They trusted that rep to choose all the 4-year executives with whom he would be working.  They trusted only legislative bodies of reps to choose the 6-year Senators.  Or should that word “trust” be changed to “they constitutionally designated” that elections shall be done in this way?

What has happened to these concepts?  Amendment XVII, the direct election of Senators, comes to mind.  Partisans sneer at Electoral Colleges simply because the two are opposing systems.   States refuse to allow their counties and/or cities to have seats in their Senates. And the ultimate snub to the Founders is the garbage-laden five-representative system that States have imposed upon their citizens instead of the single districting system proposed by the Founders.

HOW INEPT DISTRICTING LEADS VOTERS INTO PARTISAN DEPENDENCY

The Founders’ experiment with representative government was supposed to keep partisan ideologues from gaining control of the system.  Their first districting system placed 40,000 persons in each district. Today, 700,000 people live in each district, and the U.S. Congress is in political deadlock  State Governments, as usual, shrug powerlessly over any prospect of doing anything about the situation.

In fact, State Governments are the only entities with the sovereign power to completely empty out Washington, D.C. and replace the personnel with their own.   Their problem is that they must agree among themselves on whatever plans they want to pursue.

The two-year representative system still has partisan flexibility.  But, since the six-year senatorial system was sidetracked into an election vacuum in 1913, the Founders’ purpose for the U.S. Senate has been absolutely negated.  Its members have become loose cannons who follow only their own personal whims. There is no Constitutional process to effectively control their tenure once they achieve name recognition on their state-wide ballots.  State officials must govern in the shadows of these whimsical beings.   When Amendment XVII is cancelled, they will go away and State Legislatures will again be able to send their reps to the U.S; Senate.  And the people and their State Governments can prepare their districting for a different set of reps who should be sitting in the U.S. House of Representatives.