Posted on 01/26/2010 4:11:17 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
hmmmm, reminds me of some discussions we had.
Who pi$$ed in your cornflakes sparky?
LLS
You’re not going to bring back the 19th century with this. There were just as many incompetent party hacks (if not more so) than statesmen then. Calhoun (Dem/Nullifier), Clay & Webster (Whig). I know what parties they were without looking them up. They also were elected during a time that only certain people were even participating in elections (that meant no women, no non-Whites, mostly people that weren’t social parasites). You also grandstanding charlatans (Sumner-MA Republican) and outright psychotic racists (Tillman-SC Democrat) elected under that system.
Snowe wouldn’t have been elected under the system you espouse, Chellie Pingree would, who makes Snowe look like Jesse Helms. Dingy Harry Reid would be Senator for like in NV (the last time the GOP had a numerical majority in the legislature was 1995-96), and so would Dick Durbin in IL. Those two would be precisely the kinds of turds and parasites the repeal of the 17th would bring. Ted Kennedy, too. In fact, the Northeast would lock in Senators-for-life once parties established absolute control after the Civil War. If you were a Vermont Democrat for a century-and-a-half, you were as $hit out of luck as a Louisiana Republican at the end of Reconstruction clear up until today, which would STILL be blissfully “free” of Republican Senators.
It’s accountability I’m after, and as with Impy, who is also stuck in a complete Democrat-controlled city as I am, you’d remove one of the last offices I could vote for, as my votes for the legislature (and for the U.S. House) are thoroughly worthless. Those three offices in my city have been Democrat without interruption since Ulysses Grant was President, a lot longer than the folks in Chicago.
I don't.
Just look at what happened when Obama left the senate seat in Illinois. That type of corrupt behavior was common before the 17th Amendment came into effect; perhaps even worse, often legislatures could not even agree on anyone to seat.
It's the only one of that period's Amendments to the Constitution that I regard as successful.
Want to know who’d be your two MS Senators if the 17th were repealed ?
Hold on to your hat...
Dickie Scruggs and Mike Moore (or maybe Bennie Thompson).
Trial lawyers would control who gets elected there. MS is still probably a decade (hopefully less) away from having the Republicans consolidate control there in the legislature and having the opportunity to send, say, Haley Barbour, to Washington (and by then, Haley would be too old to go).
Funny thing about Zero. Because he was a “pet” of one of the legislative leaders, Emil Jones, Zero would’ve gotten the Senate seat even if the 17th had been repealed. Food for thought.
A constitutional amendment would be required to repeal the 17th.
The language of that amendment would need to include
the methodology which would replace the current system.
I would favor some kind of a system that encouraged the citizens of a state
to focus their efforts on issues within their own state.
Maybe something like providing authority for the governor’s
of the states to directly appointment U. S. Senators;
paired with them having full recall authority of their Senators.
And when you look at the quality of actually existing U.S. Senators, Democrat and Republican, including The Most Revered and Holy Savior, moderate Scott Brown, you would NEVER agree to give them more powers, either. And yet, in 1913, we did just that with the 16th and 17th Amendments. They now have the power to hoodwink millions of people into re-electing them again and again, as well as appropriate endless amounts of money taken out of our paychecks.
And as far as direct elections goes, the U.S. House has passed both Cap and Tax and Health Care Deform in some form, so as far as elections vs. appointments goes, let's just say, the jury may still be out on that one. And if the legislators are really this horrible and corrupt, guess what, that means the PEOPLE have failed to keep THEM in check.
I found it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2191696/posts?page=44#44
And also your list of Foreign Born Governors
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/2149930/posts#12
You would need the threat of a ConCon by 2/3 of the states to actually propel the Senate and House to action.
In many places, that's exactly the case.
I wouldn't say "wise," but more responsive to people, who would find it easier to travel to the state capital, rather than to DC, if political intransigence demands it. The legislators tend to cover smaller groups of people than U.S. Congresspeople, too, as I understand it, (an exception of note is California state senators -- each one covers about 800,000 people, compare to about 700,000 for each U.S. Congressman) which, at least in theory, would enhance their responsiveness to people.
Heh, thanks, dude. I don’t know how you manage to find my old posts so quickly.
Here’s the Senate breakdown (as of 2/2009) you were asking for, sergeantdave, that shows how the Senate would differ if the 17th were repealed:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2191696/posts?page=44#44
I've seen a couple of ideas that are intended to help resolve deadlock in the state legislatures.
One idea would be to have the state Senate and House meet as one body to cast a vote, in case the two houses deadlocked on picking somebody.
The other idea would simply be to have one Senator picked by each legislative house, thus sidestepping the issue of deadlock entirely, provided one house doesn't deadlock internally.
It’s not a popular vote. The States can make this happen, which means state legislatures.
Multiple state legislatures are already pushing their 10th amendment rights. And remember, it’s 75% of the states, not 75% of the population. So while California might object, they get no more say than Wyoming, which would probably really like to have the feds not dumping on them anymore.
Still, I understand it won’t happen. But it isn’t an impossibility. Unfortunately, because it is clear the 17th amendment was one of the biggest mistakes ever made in this country, along with the wording of the 16th amendment which broke the covenant of “all taxes must be equally applied”.
The republicans had the governership for years during that time, and also controlled the state senate for part of that time.
LLS
Who held the Governorship is only relevant to a potential vacancy, otherwise if you add up the total number of members in the Assembly and Senate since 1975 onwards, it is overwhelmingly Democrat (the Senate fell in 2009 to the Dems after being in continuous GOP control since 1966, but that wouldn’t have mattered because of the huge Dem majorities in the Assembly since after 1975).
I will take that as a mea culpa for your clueless and arrogant post.
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