The United States Senate Is an Imposter of Questionable Origin

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.

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.

The Forward March of the Nationalists

The Constitution, Section 3. “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislatures thereof, for six years; ...”

A hundred-twenty-years later, the following time bomb was inserted by the nationalists, performing a coup of the entire federal government, and reducing State Governments to symbolic figure-heads of the union.

The Constitution, Amendment 17 (1913).  “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the people thereof, for six years; ...”

The mere suggestion of such an amendment should have triggered outrage among all State Legislators, as well as other State Officials. It was a thumb-of-the-nose to the Founders and all their federalist ilk.  The nationalists had, overnight, built a wall around Washington, D.C. The nationalists had sent the States back home with their tails between their legs.  The U.S. Congress was now completely under the control of the nationalists.  The situation was a no-brainer that should have caused an immediate realignment of the two major political parties.

Twenty years later, President FDR consolidated disparate political factions into one partisan group which began looking to the national government to solve all their problems.  Since that time, the nation’s electorate has been waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Their question: “What is the other major party going to do to counter the trend toward nationalism?”  “Who will come to the aid of those cherishing the right to vote with their feet?”  Who will carry the message that fifty states are better than a single government in D.C. for those pursuing “a life of freedom and opportunity.  Fifty laboratories of democracy competing with each other for the best talent to come live in their State, should be the ideal of a free people. Eighty years after FDR, the nation still waits for the formation of a political party that is dedicated to federalism and will go all out in the fight to limit nationalism to its proper role: the pursuit of a common foreign policy.

Boiled down to one issue, that new party should go all out for the adoption of one grid of local community districts for the entire federation.  That is the key that unlocks the secret to successful federalism. It qualifies a single set of legislators to rule the entire nation.  And it empowers the people to change them every two years if they wish.

Term Limits

SOLVED  BY  THE  PLAN  THAT  MODIFIES  FEDERALISM

A preponderance of astute political observers look at the term-limit problem and think there must be a way to solve it.  The modified federalism plan solves it by reducing the district to community-size.  A community habitually elects its sheriff and changes sheriffs without the term-limit problem.  They have no need for partisan haranguing of voters over their political belief systems in order to choose a sheriff.

Political scientists should be critically studying the interactive process between voters and their local candidates. Voters should not be expected to make wise choices from among candidates who do not live in their community.  The representatives that run the federation of states should be from those local community districts.

Suppose it were determined scientifically that a grid of districts with 40,000 people each was smooth running and successful.  And that a grid of districts of the 700,000 size created confusion and conflict.      Common sense would dictate that we choose the system of 40,000.  Please note that today’s U.S. Congress is totally made up of officials coming from either the 700,000 size districts or from state-wide districts many times larger.  Their 98% reelection rate is due to campaign garbage that does not impress local voters who have neighborhood relationships with the candidates.

There is a dirty little secret that politicians discovered very early: Expand the size of one’s district to increase one’s legislative clout.  The Constitution’s Article 1, Section 2 contains an obscure statement that a district should not be formed with less than 30,000 persons.  The actual size the Constitution started with was closer to 40,000 persons.  After each ten-year census, the reps from these districts have assumed authority to consolidate districts until districts are now 700,000 pop each.  That is seventeen times their original size.

Ask any legislator about “district reform,” and the response is, “I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and cannot do anything about it.”  Then, how did you guys manage to increase its size seventeen fold?  But the problem is five times worse than that because every voter is saddled with five districts and their reps, producing all manner of pecking orders---all supposedly in a federalism of equals.  We live in a representative fairyland of make believe.

The electorate needs only one standardized grid of districts to operate the entire federation of State Governments and the one in Washington, D.C.  That is what the modified federalism plan does.