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Posted on 10/07/2009 1:00:14 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
IMHO 1913 was not a good year for the “People”, or their government. Too much happened that was not in “our” interest.
I don’t understand what all the commotion is about since the text in the constitution is pretty clear about how the vacancies are supposed to be filled.
“and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies”
The Senate was intended to be “the states’ house” in order to balance competing interests between the people at large and those of the states. I agree that the 17th amendment should be repealed in order to restore the balance and give states the voice in the government that they were intended to have. By taking that away and making the Senate a people’s house on steriods, we don’t really have that built in check between the will of the majority and rights of the minority and are wide open to legislative arbitrage and tyranny.
If we did repeal it, we would immediately have the 17th x 50. Prior to 1913 many states (perhaps as many as half) had curtailed the state legislature's power in this area. Senate candidates were chosen by some type of referendum among the people. The legislature then appointed the winner. The legislatures were simply brokers or a de facto electoral college.
I see your point, and have never looked at it quite that way.
There has to be some way to dilute the power concentration that has amassed in DC at the expense of state soverignty. States were intended to be a buffer zone against a Federal government that could become out of control. Now, we find ourselves in a position where the state governments are scarcely more than Federal program administrators, and rather redundant. We have Washinton dominated by ideologues who care nothing about what the constitution says and have little respect for individual freedom with nothing in between to stop them.
It still gives the states the right to choose the methodology of appointing/electing senators. Sooner or later some legislatures will figure out its in their best interest to start appointing them the angrier the people get at centralized Washington government.
I firmly believe repeal of the 17th is the best course out of this nightmare, with repeal of the 16th a close second.
Which states want to reestablish sovereignty and what form would it take? Who is it that wants more individual freedom?
The answer is counterintuative.
I think we should repeal the 16th, too. It will get those fatassed Southerners up off their lazy butts and make them contribute for a change.
Not discussed in this article is Campaign Finance Reform. Repealing the 16th and 17th amendments would be real campaign finance reform instead of the John McCain unconstitutional fiasco. The amount of money spent on senate campaigns is astronomical; in most state legislatures the districts are small enough that the representative is known to a large percentage of the voters. It is much harder to corrupt the many than the one.
“The answer is counterintuative.”
I don’t believe that it ultimately is counterintuitive. States naturally compete among themselves for people and economic resources and the Federal government has very little competitve pressure. As an example, if one state decided to become socialist and sap its economic resources for programs and the large amount of policing it would take to be successful, people could move to another and take their wealth with them. Even now we see this kind of thing happening because the economic affects of such choices are much more immediate rather than being obscured behind a governemnt that can just print money at will. Thus in many respects they are far more accountible for their actions and such a state would not last long before going bankrupt.
In addition to Martial Monks comments above, there is another problem. In the 19th century many Senate seats were vacant for years when split legislatures could not agree on a candidate. That’s a lot worse than having the seat vacant for a few months.
The 17th amendment is not perfect, but it is better than what it replaced, and the people will never agree to it’s repeal.
In Montana William Clark bribed the legislature for a Senate seat. It came to light and the Senate refused to seat him. He later ran in the referendum and won. The Senate accepted him the second time.
It is the BLUE states that are being drained of $200 billion a year to support red states.
“The states are already competing to a degree. So far it has been a matter of pointing out pre-existing advantages such as low taxes (Nevada and Arizona vs. California) or specific tax breaks to attract specific industries but that may heat up in the future. Movement has been based more on the general fortunes of an industry than governmental policy. Textiles moved south and then overseas. Policy would not have changed that.
It is the BLUE states that are being drained of $200 billion a year to support red states. “
These facts are predicated on how things stand as far as combined state and federal policy in the current environment where the states have very little voice regarding what the Federal government does. A progressive Federal income tax, capital gains taxes, payroll taxes, etc.. and social programs do nothing to keep jobs here in the country and there is nothing any individual state can do about it. The economic affects upon the country as a whole have been obscured behind the ability to print money and other such monetary policy in order to kick the can of ultimate economic consequences down the road a little farther, all the while we become slaves to monolithic tyranny.
My argument suggests a rollback of Federal power to where it has little influence on the political economy of each state, which was the original intent. It does not mean that states would not be able to do evil, but they have a far more difficult time of hiding it.
But there is no point at which that will happen. Even with government at the 1913 level, the 16th amendment was a cannon aimed directly at the industrialized North. The South had lost its 3/5th exemption with the Civil War and apportioned taxes were killing them because of the differences in income in comparison to the North. If we reinstitute apportionment and cut Federal expenditures by 2/3 we still kill the South in two ways. First there is no longer the $200 billion a year rolling south. Then, we would force them to pay a higher percentage of their income toward the Federal Government. It is much harder to pay 5,000 out of a $30,000 income in Arkansas than it is to pay $5,000 out of a $60,000 income in New Jersey. We would depopulate the mid-west and impoverish the South.
Even if we could agree upon the assumption that wealth creation would remain concentrated in regional areas and the econmic pie would never become larger, which I’d have trouble accepting that mid-western and southern states would not be able to compete with the rest and the industrial and technical revolutions have changed nothing since 1913, especially in the near abscence of Federal window-breaking, it would become entirely moot should we be over taken by communists or become embrioled in another civil war in an effort to resist such. It is much harder to win 50 versions of the same argument than it is to win it once at the top where the only recourse for the people is to vote them out of office after the damage has been done, assuming that elections are still allowed.
But an even closer look at red vs blue state discussion, New York has been bleeding enterprenuers and investment capital due to socialistic policies for years and it has only accelerated since the recession started. As a consequence our taxes and cost of living are much higher and an argument could be made that is relatively equal to pay $5k out of $60k income in NY as it is to pay $5k out of $30k income in AR.
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