A Belly Full of Laws. Will We Ever Get Enough? Who Knows All of Them?

There is a law of diminishing returns, like how much chicken can a person eat? So government by the people has seen lawmakers grinding out laws for two and a quarter centuries.  Are laws like fried chicken?  Must we keep them coming? 

What is the purpose of representative government?  Better yet, what is the purpose of a representative?  Suppose there is another way of looking at a representative.  Suppose he/she just hangs out in the home district, and hardly goes anywhere else.  What would that job be like?

The Constitution says (suggests?) that a district’s population should be no less than 30,000.  Congressmen have corruptly expanded it from hardly more than 30,000 to 700,000, and have made it literally useless to the people.  Suppose we go back to 30,000, thereby creating reps who can honestly say what every community is thinking. For a nation of over 300,000,000, that’s over 10,000 reps.

Provide each of those 10,000 reps with modern communications devices, and they can “assemble” in whatever groupings they wish within a matter of minutes. They can transport themselves electronically to their State’s or Nation’s House of Representatives while sitting at their home office.

We have become a nation operated by poll takers.  These 10,000 reps are the most reliably informed political body that could be found for poll takers.

Poll takers ask the reps.  The reps ask the poll takers. Twitter and Facebook get involved.  They can discover the sense of 10,000 communities in a matter of hours. It is a most sensitive system for discovering the will of the people.  Every two years, a refreshed base of reps keeps the system accurate.

Imagine a John Boehner lording over his House in contrast to the above!  Or magine a Harry Reid lording over his Senate in contrast to the above! The above would replace their system with qualified State reps who could sit at both places, as well as elect the U.S. Senators. Today’s electorate is bewildered. There is no way for it to participate as a single body politic until it gets its Home Districts.  

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.  

The More Perfect Union of Home Districts, Term Limits, and Nonpartisanship

This union of states was clobbered together.  Even In this 21^st Century, it is still just clobbered together. The union that was expedient in 1789 has drifted along with little self-analysis. Its scant three million people have become over three hundred million people.  We are a nation whose collective conscience is full of contradictions.  Although all voices should be equal, religious organizations cower in fear at all the intimidations thrown at them by political organizations.

All voters are cruelly placed in multiple state and federal districts, all of which are far too large.  Such a complicated system drives the voter into partisanship and despair.  We have always governed ourselves quite well within our local communities. But our attempts to organize local communities into a nation state deserve a grade of D-.  

A local community can easily elect one of its reputable leaders to represent it in the legislative halls of a nation state.  But no, states cannot understand what their U.S. Constitution means by ordering one set of equalized districts. That one set of reps can handle the entire representative system of the people.

What are political parties, really, but self-organized gangs which have embedded themselves into our system.  They are the natural enemies of Electoral Colleges. Political parties will lose their influence just as soon as every local community has its own rep, and that rep collegiately nominates and elects all the officers associated with the federation of states.  It works like this:

A local community of 40,000 people chooses one of its leaders to represent it for a two year term.  Constitutionally, that rep is the community’s only contact with the federal system. That rep joins with fellow reps to nominate and elect all elective state officials.  That rep joins with fellow reps to nominate and elect all elective federal officials. That rep joins with fellow reps to run the state’s legislative assembly.  That rep joins with fellow reps to run the house of congress. After two years, the local community evaluates that rep at the polls. A county government chooses its state senator, and thereby creates a state senate. A state government chooses its federal senator, and thereby creates a federal senate. The local community chooses a rep, and thereby creates two electoral colleges plus two houses of representatives.  The people sit back and relax, confident that they can make adjustments every two years. It is their civil right to do this but their states will not allow it. The Founders created a civil right to a home district.

Instead, states force every household of every local community to have five reps, two of which are statewide. The other three are from humungous districts, all having different ranks and pecking orders. The local congressional district, for example, has 700,000 people, up from its original 40,000 people.

If States continue refusing to equalize and standardize their people into one set of home districts, some force is going to set up its own system.  That force will be beyond any orderly control.  State governments and their people have everything to gain, and nothing to lose by acting before such a force takes over.    

This orderly change makes the term limit problems go away. Dependency on Democrats and Republicans goes away. Big money and big press also lose their influence. The home district is the congressional district but with a different name.  If everybody were assigned to a home district of 40,000 (the original size of the Founders’ district), their eight thousand reps would rule everything above the county government level. 

This collection of personal consciences would become the nation’s conscience. The poll takers would be constantly probing that conscience.  Together, they would become a mutual education society, enabling both the reps and their poll takers to act more intelligently.  The nation’s pulse would be on constant display.

The federal constitution is superior to state constitutions.  Where a state’s constitution conflicts with it, the federal one should prevail. The goal of having a more perfect union calls for one uniform set of districts, not fifty one odd ball sets of districts into which our states have put us.   We-the-people are psychologically tortured over voting decisions we should not have to make. All because the States do not know how to set up and run the federation of their dreams.

Direct democracy by the people manages local communities very well.  The federal system should be using representative democracy. The voters step aside and allow their reps to run the system.  But States have never agreed on the common grid of local districts that can run the entire federation. Where there is no vision, the people suffer. Our federation has remained inert. The fifty states are strangely allied with their nation state, all being too stupid to federate.

When States structured their double system of representation in 1789, they created a districting mess. We are not two bodies politic.  We are one body politic being forced by our states to act as if we were two bodies politic.  It would be so simple to set up a grid of equal local districts and allocate them among the states. The reps produced by that one grid are the sum total of all the reps needed to run the federal system from the county level up the pyramid. 

Gigantic egos, putting themselves first, stand in the way of doing it. Only submissive egos allow gigantic egos to stand in the way.

Let’s get our ducks all in a row and synchronize this system into the federation it should be.  Even with home districting the reps should not set or adjust boundaries. That job belongs to the counties in which the districts are located.  Counties know their fractional share of the total population and can work with adjoining counties in setting up and managing these home districts.

Let’s get our double lawmaking out of its constant stream of jurisdictional disputes in the courts.  The delegates who signed the Constitution went back home unaware that they had agreed to home districting.  They were all thinking inside their own little boxes.  That has not changed.  

Ask any State Rep about this.  The answer you will get goes something like this: ”I took an oath to abide by my constitution which has its own districting system.” These state reps see no need to abide by a superior constitution.  They are caught up in the same schizophrenia that forces one body politic to act as if it were two.

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.

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.