Friday, June 27, 2014

Americans Do Not Trust Their Congress

Ninety-three percent of those recently surveyed said that they do not trust the U.S. Congress.  Actually, it is a poorly designed instrument of government. To say that it represents the people is simply not true. Even as a poorly designed instrument of government, individual members of Congress should have held themselves to a higher standard of personal integrity. 

The Founders were openly doubtful that their brief little Constitution could work among non-Christians.  If today’s Congress were to pass a law against spitting on the sidewalk, it would necessarily have a hundred times more words than the entire Constitution. We live in a paradox having ten times the lawyers of any other society, yet in a nation of Christians claiming to have other means of settling disputes.

Now, to the higher ethical standards our lawmakers should have been observing. Number one is their unfaithfulness to a community size Congressional District of about 40,000 persons, to which they were originally assigned. In a district that size, people can “shop” among candidates just as they “shop” for all their other necessities of life. At each 10-year census, the crooked lawmakers have expanded their districts (and their power) until each district now has 700,000 persons.

These crooked reps have designed their own districts, each gobbling up sixteen other districts that should have their own reps. They horse trade and re-arrange constituencies among themselves, disregarding their duty to a particular constituency. The district may end up looking like a snake or horse shoe. The result of these shenanigans is that most local communities in these humungous districts are represented by foreigners.

The second problem with Congress is that it was never set up as the single law making body of a united people. The Constitution is brief.  It didn’t come with a 300-page manual about how the people shall run their new federation. If those who set up the system in 1789 could have had access to such a manual, it would have told them to first get their own houses in order. Adapt their own governments to the same district that was to rule the federation. Equalize all of their districts in all of their States to conform with the Congressional District idea.

Try to imagine what a smooth-running synchronized system we would have, if all the people were organized into one set of Home Districts (Congressional Districts). One rep from each district should be doing all the governing of the entire federation of fifty-one governments. The fifty Governors and the President would coordinate their calling up of the reps for duty at their respective capitols.

The much maligned Electoral College (fifty-one of them) should employ these Home District Reps as the “electors” who choose all the executive officers of the fifty-one governments. The Founders profoundly feared partisanship such as has deadlocked Congress, and is spreading hate and fear among us.  

We grassroots voters were never expected to run the governments of the federation. The Founders assigned that job to the Congressmen. These “congress people” have never been fully conceptualized.  To run a nation of over 300,000,000 persons, divided into districts of 40,000, requires 8,000 reps.

Would you rather blunder into another civil war, or reorganize the representative system into Home Districts? This November, as you choose your state rep for the next two years, you should be demanding that your rep comply with his superior Constitution which wants his/her people put into one set of home districts. Such a change will put the reps of the fifty states into the U.S. Congress, thereby eliminating the U.S. Congress that satisfies seven percent of the people.

The U.S. Senate is a disgrace since Amendment XVII was passed in 1913. It is easy to conclude that the senators themselves engineered that passage. When the amendment is rescinded, and home districting is accomplished, the people of the local districts will finally be in charge for the first time in the nation’s history.

One  more detail is apropos: Once the home district idea is established, each local county government, or its counterpart, should be put in complete charge of a district’s administration. The district and its boundaries should not be administered by a rep or any combination of reps.  

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