Poster child for repealing the 17th amendment.
Posted on 08/25/2010 7:07:09 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
I should start by acknowledging that repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment is hardly a mainstream issue and certainly not anything likely to come about (which is an understatement). However, the fact that there are people out there seeking its repeal is sufficient to garner comment, especially since said persons were significant enough within factions of the Tea Party movement to actually get some Senate candidates to state that they were in support of the repeal.
Further, every once in a while I will get a commenter who is favor a repeal, so it seems worth some discussion.
The proximate cause of this post is the following from TPMDC: Tea Party-Backed Repeal Of The 17th Amendment Gets Republicans Into Trouble
The “Repeal The 17th” movement is a vocal part of the overall tea party structure. Supporters of the plan say that ending the public vote for Senators would give the states more power to protect their own interests in Washington (and of course, give all of us “more liberty” in the process.) As their process of “vetting” candidates, some tea party groups have required candidates to weigh in on the idea of repeal in questionnaires. And that’s where the trouble starts.
To wit:
In Ohio, Steve Stivers — the Republican attempting to unseat Democratic Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy in the state’s 15th District — came under fire from Democrats when it was revealed he had checked the box saying he would repeal the 17th Amendment on a tea party survey (see question 11 here).
(Excerpt) Read more at outsidethebeltway.com ...
Absolutely!
That would be the very first step (framework wise) to begin restoring some semblence of the former Republic.
At least one immediate result would be the restoration of the true meaning of the 10th...
Why?
While people’s confusion on this issue is understandable and thats why i urge caution in efforts to get it done. We need to have a talk about the senate and the reason behind its existence as it is distinguished from the house before we move on to our discussion about the repeal of the 17th amendment.
It is absolutely vital for people to understand the function of the senate before they judge the merits of our proposal.
This is not about not trusting the people with the senate this is about the basic function of the senate in our Federal system, and the inehirt power-interest of our State legislators driving them to support only senators that look after their power.
To be frank it is what you might call the corruption of our State legislators that works in in our favor in terms of fulfilling the function of the senate which is to help keep the Federal Government from intruding upon the domain of the States.
The basic thing people need to understand about the function of the senate is that unlike the house and the presidency its not so much about politics as it is about the structure of our Federal system of government.
Poster child for repealing the 17th amendment.
Tell me why would the democrats in Massachusetts state legislator want Washington D.C. running their socialist health-care system, much less forcing a huge number of other mandates upon them.
There is one fact you need to accolade about politicians, they are greedy for power. and it is exactly that greed both democrat and republican that will make them resistant to giving up that power to anyone whether it be the people or in the cases of State politicians Washington D.C.
THAT is the function of the Senate. Its to keep power local.
1 Scott Brown in 60 years is hardly worth 9 Ted Kennedy’s.
“Given the fact that the federal government has discarded the constitution as their operating document, what difference does one amendment or another make?”
This is more true then you know, prior to the 17th amendment being radifyed in 1913 a number of state did effectively have a popularly elected senate Washington State was one of them if memory serves.
In that case the States simply had an election and then the state legislators was simply obliged to follow thou with that election.
No solution is perfect but repealing the 17th and restoring the Senate to its original electoral motivation of protection the power of the State legislators in Washington D.C. is better then what has happen to us sense.
Of course we have to figure out a better way to help people remember and understand:
1: The critical Structural function of the Senate in our Federal System.
2: The motivation of senators in fulfilling their function being more reliably established when they are elected by those who’s power they would be protecting.
The Founders were much wiser people then we are they set up the senate with this spesfic function for good reasons. Although it was not prefect it function a lot better then what we have had sense we broke their system.
And that one Mass. senator would be counteracted by the two VA senators who are now Dems with a Repub legislature and governor. I'll make that trade...
I am all for repealing that curse of an amendment. This article, though, lost me when the author stated....
“The notion that somehow having the state legislatures choose Senators is more representative of the state’s interest than having the voters of the state choose the Senator is odd on its face”
I hate to tell the “professor” but our founding fathers gave the people a voice already...it’s called the House of Representatives. Why on earth would you give the people of a state TWO houses? The House was designed to give the people a voice and the Senate was designed to give the states a voice. We have utterly obliterated any resemblance of a republic that every existed in this country.
I would like to see county governments appoint State Senators. That way, good ideas from citizens need have a far better chance of getting to the US Senator, as one need only convince the county supervisor of their validity, instead of being one among millions. For certain, Baker vs. Carr must be overturned.
You're either not familiar with how many state legislatures in this nation have lopsided RAT ruling them, or you're very bad at gambling.
Not necessarily so. In my own state, we have Democrats with a history of shamelessly purchasing votes from demographic groups, which has been enough to virtually guarantee re-election. Half of the State's population is in three cities, the rest throughout the State.
The result has been a Republican State Government with Democrats in DC.
Repealing the 17th would change that.
The more I've learned about the founding fathers (good and bad) as well as seeing the effects of where the federal government has overstepped the constitution gives me a new appreciation for the genius of what they put down in the constitution. It wasn't perfect, but it is far better than what our politicians have rendered it down to...and then discarded altogether. Now we have a speaker of the house like Pelosi, who when asked what provision of the constitution supported their laws laughed in the face of the questioner. Or you have congressman Pete Stark respond to a similar question asking what limits the federal government has from the constitution...he replied they could do pretty much anything they want to.
I encourage everyone to vote in November, but I have a feeling that it's just too little too late and more like window dressing and rearranging of chairs on the deck of the titanic. But until the ship goes down, by all means keep bailing...but it looks like the whole is too big and we're taking on too much water...and it also looks like some of the crew is attempting to sabotage the efforts of those trying to bail.
This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.
I encourage everyone to vote in November..........
I agree, use the ballot box to right abuses against this great nation
The founders were very astute, where as present politicians are not.
Our present pols forget that the purpose of the 2nd was to prevent Pelosi and Stark types from continuing their abuses.
At sometime in the near future I suspect that Pelosi and her ilk will find that not everyone will bend to their abuses of the constitution.
I hope and pray that the ballot box will correct the abuses, but I fear that the only correction will come with violent confrontation.
Therefore I prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Mods this is not meant to be a threat against a elected official just my interpretation of events playing out in todays society.
As I said, we need to keep bailing as long as the boat is afloat, we owe at least that to all those who died in obtaining and securing our freedoms from the first minutemen to every soldier who has died for this nation over it's history.
Whatever the case may be, repealing the 19th Amendment won’t change a danged thing, since no state would dare to revoke womens suffrage.
“I encourage everyone to vote in November, but I have a feeling that it’s just too little too late and more like window dressing and rearranging of chairs on the deck of the titanic. But until the ship goes down, by all means keep bailing...but it looks like the whole is too big and we’re taking on too much water...and it also looks like some of the crew is attempting to sabotage the efforts of those trying to bail.”
I must admit the ship has been sinking much faster then we have ever been able to bail her out. Our efforts at stopping this have mostly been focused upon changing the chairs in Washington D.C. and each and every time we have made at best only token progress in reversing or even slowing the progress of this evil.(The centralization and growth of power in the Government)
If we are going to win this fight we need a game changer.
We can’t keep taking theses kinds of losses forever, eventually there will come a time when the great cycle will have to repeat itself, how that happens is a matter which we can influence.
Will we walk thou the desert of despotism before we endure the fire of Revolution, or will we somehow end this madness while we still have some shreds of a republic left?
We know form a study of history that there are very few examples where civilizations have been able to “reset” or even hold the clock in freedom as to avoid the “painful part” of the great cycle.
I know that if we are to “cheat fate” we will need to learn from their failures and successes and uses modern technology to give us the advantage they never had.
There are a great many minds between us have faith that if we study and discuss theses issues more then a few of us will find more then a few possible ways in which we can “tempt fate”.
I don’t see how he don’t recognize the propensity of legislators(politicians) to protect and advance their own power, even when that protection may go against the current will of the people.
For example: The state may want money for various things from the Federal Government as that money inevitably comes form other States. Whereas the people might not care so much in exactly how that money is spent and thus their inclined to let the Senators indulge themselves and their political fancy dictating to the State how to spend the Federal Money. the State legislator on the other hand will care as they will want the money given to them with little or no strings attached so that they may choose how it spend that money.(Thus more practical autonomy for each region and less corrupting vote buying power for Washington D.C.).
By placing the senate in the hands of the State legislators as the Founding Fathers places it, we help to make it more likely that the Senate will be elected to preform its basic constitutional function of protecting the power and autonomy from Federal intrusion.
It won’t cure all our problems but it will help slow the bleeding.
The industrialization excuses for the centralization of power is largely a farce the state is just as capable of deciding how to regulate industries as the federal government and with only minor federal help in enforcing those rules to prevent flight, we can have something closer to the best of both worlds.
Instead what we have right now is a Federal government that cares little for the autonomy and self-determination of our states, as the people vote for them as if they were 1 big government rather then 50 smaller competing States.
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