For the first hundred-twenty years, this senate fulfilled its constitutional purpose. But a mysterious Amendment XVII found its way into the Constitution in 1913. It stated simply that senators are now to be elected by the people, totally ignoring that there is no constitutional mechanism for electing them by the people.
The people already had their representatives over in the U.S. House. If the senators no longer wanted to represent their state governments, there was no place for them in the Founders’ scheme of government. Senators had made themselves irrelevant and without purpose.
This amendment torpedoed all pretense that a Constitution had federated anything. Rather, it starkly revealed that we-the-people were now living in Washington, D.C.’s Empire of States, and that this empire would be setting its own course.
Since 1789, when the States demonstrated an inability to set up a working federation, the Constitution has been doomed. Its only purpose was to create the federation. Since no workable federation has ever been created, neither is the Constitution workable. It’s like passing a law without an enforcement clause. Their fates were inextricably intertwined. The only relevance either one now has is as idealistic goals.
The political climate prior to the election of 2014 appears to be contemptuous more of the Democrats than of the Republicans. The great political center that fringe groups love to hate, may be about to get another chance to show that they stand for something. If so, do Republicans have the gumption to lead the great political center through the reforms we must accomplish?
First. Every community of 40,000 needs its own home district rep. This means that the U.S. House of Representatives shall have 8,000 reps. Those reps will also sit in their respective State Assemblies. As electoral colleges, they will elect the officials of their respective states plus those in D.C. As members of their state governments, they will choose U.S. Senators. Their local county governments will be in charge of setting up their districts for them. Reps will probably cluster at work stations close to their homes and continue being good community citizens.
Second. State Senates should be composed of delegates from each county government.
Third. The registered voters will vote as usual in all local elections. What will be different, is that representative government puts local district reps in charge of state and national elections. They are our chosen elites and will administer the Constitution and the fifty-one federated governments in our behalf.
Do these three things, and all the grief and despair surrounding the failed Constitution and Federation will be over. After setting up the wonderful system, what shall the people do with it? There must be something better to do with it than to punish the achievers and reward the non-achievers. Why not offer to everybody the opportunity to work hard and be proud of one’s self? Why not try to create such an abundance of goods that we are forever grateful.
*****
In reality, all of the representative districts into which voters were registered had lost their local bases, and therefore their purposes. By 1913, the sizes of all representative districts had been expanded to the point that local communities were turning to Republicans and Democrats to take over the running of the representative system.
This was the opening the U.S. Senators were looking for as they quietly made their move to also dump their constitutional status. It did not matter that Amendment XVII provided no mechanism for their election by the people. Democrats and Republicans had become the new election mechanism and would improvise new balloting.
No true history has been written, of the successive blunders which have brought the electorate to its present demise. The Founders wanted us to have our own community representative. So why do we have five? They wanted us to select the rep from among our friends and neighbors. So why do our ballots list mostly strangers from far away as our choices? I am constantly making choices of who to deal with. Why can’t my voting choices be equally intelligent? If voting is no more than flipping a coin, why vote? That must be why national elections in equalized voting districts. We are as happy as a bunch of morons for all the meaningless voting opportunities. Meanwhile, we have allowed our nation to drift into the hands of gangsters, except that we would not know such a gangster if we saw one handing out candy.
State Governments are totally to blame for this mess. The opposing political gangs of the red states and blue states are in no mood for reorganizing their people into home districts. Nor are they interested in giving up their electoral power to any elite group of reps organized into electoral colleges. However, it may be possible to take another route to home districting and electoral college elections.
Suppose the Republican Party decided to do the right thing in behalf of all the freedom loving agricultural, mining, manufacturing, and commercial workers of America. Suppose they simply wrote off all the tax leeches such as teachers and postal workers who thrive on the income tax. Suppose they encouraged good people in every way to help with the local politics of direct democracy, thereby building a strong base of local reps from local home districts. Suppose they fully supported everybody’s right to work at free market wages. Suppose they promised every school age child his/her voucher share of all school tax moneys. Suppose they held every parent responsible for the welfare of every child. Suppose all public assistance were placed into the care of locally elected officials.
Just as soon as they decide the proper size of “a people’s home district,” then register their voters into one national grid of home districts, their people can thumb their noses at Democrats and Republicans. But will these opposing political gangs of the red states and blue states be willing to bury the hatchet and negotiate? One standard home districting system that replaces Republicans and Democrats with Electoral Colleges on a standard home district? with each other to create a people’s home district system? Two chicks were fighting over a worm, when a hawk spied them. That hawk is gangster government.
No comments:
Post a Comment