Posted on 10/12/2013 12:54:01 PM PDT by Usagi_yo
Another clause to add to a 17th amendment change.
1. Government employees (not military), federal and state are prohibited from all campaign donations.
2. Government employees (not military), federal and state do not get to vote in elections.
Seems to me with 8% of the current workforce being a government employee (verify the 8% somebody?), that creates an inside coalition that will always support higher pay, more job security, more agency regulatory responsibility -- which is a progressive agenda.
Why exempt the military?
Absurd.
Just repeal the 17th amendment, it’s a product of the progressives.
Because the Military is predominantly temporary and people that march off to war and the potential to be maimed and killed deserve the vote.
That and most military votes conservative would be the side benefit.
Don’t start what you can’t stop. You’d also have to prohibit government contractors from contributing because they have a special interest in more government spending.
2. Government employees (not military), federal and state do not get to vote in elections.
Saw this suggested here on FR six or eight years ago. It went nowhere.
Why not just ban anyone who has received any money from the government for any reason in the last five years from voting?
It’s not either.
At 8% of the workforce working for the government. Don’t you see a conflict of interest. These are ready made liberal voting blocks, and that is the intentions of the liberals. It’s why you don’t see too many conservatives in government jobs.
If you have no problem with this, than you have no problem with illegal immigrants being given amnesty and voter id cards. It’s the same thing. Progressives developing and nurturing locked in constituents.
“I guess that means anyone who’s received a tax return or a Social Security check are out of luck?”
No, those are just the people that are stupid enough to give the feral gubmint an interest free loan for a year. I wouldn’t count that as “receiving money” from the gubmint.
Pfft.
IT can be referenced in the construct of wanting to modify by convention, the 17th amendment. So that’s a non-issue. And hey.
And no, it’s not good to bar those receiving assistance from the government. I say keep it at the federal level and let each state decide on public assistance issues that the state pays for, but on the federal level, federal assistance (not grants or loans nor social security and medicare). Disability perhaps.
Notwithstanding certain amendments regarding age, gender, and race, in 1788 the states were given the power to set voting requirements in congressional elections.
Article I § 2. "The House of Representatives shall be composed of members . . . and the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature."
The 17th Amendment applied identical elector quals to senators.
Get Congress, 1/3rd of the states to change your desires. Good luck!
Tax refunds? That's just returning an overpayment of your own money. I would exclude Social Security recipients from voting however. SS ought be strictly a welfare program as far as I am concerned. We shouldn't even be in the pension business.
It’s 2/3’s of the states, not 1/3.
Right?
Rather than try to impose identical qualifications across thirteen very different states in our constitution, he saw no reason not to allow universal white male suffrage, because a senate of the states would stymie the expected wild democratic ideas to emerge from the House of Representatives.
We still have a wild House of Reps, but because of the 17th, the senate has unfortunately joined in the democratic buggering of our republic.
I used to beat the drums for the repeal of the 17th Amendment and would still report its repeal.
However ...
The problem with the 17th Amendment is actually not the 17th Amendment imo. After all, the 17th Amendment did not delegate any new powers to Congress.
The issue with the 17th Amendment is that it showed that many generations of parents have not been making sure that their children are being taught the Constitution as the Founding States had intended for it to be understood, particularly the federal government’s limited powers. And the consequence of voters not understanding the federal governments limited powers is that they think that everything that the federal government does is constitutional.
Another way to look at the 17th Amendment is this. Educating low-information voters about the federal government’s constitutionally limited powers would arguably be the equivalent of repealing the 17th Amendment.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.