Posted on 04/21/2011 12:21:41 PM PDT by A Navy Vet
Tried to find my original action plan, but too far back. So here is my revised plan to restore our Constitutional heritage. Some are within acts of Congress, others would need Amendments to our Constitution, which is remote, to say the least.
However, I believe with the right message with the right pundits, we could also make the Amendments happen.
Think what the individual States are doing right now regarding fiscal responsibility, gun freedom, et al. They are starting to re-assert their 9th and 10th Amendment rights! There has not been a better time in some 40 years.
It would take major focus, determination and big money, but I believe some of the below is doable. And yes, it would be a distraction from the election process, and yes, it would take money away from our favored candidates. But with the right out-spoken person like a Palin, or other, I think the the time is ripe for true Conservatives to restore our heritage. The joe-six-pak-soccor-moms are starting to wake up.
2. Reduced Congressional sessions to 4 months a year, absent a true national emergency: The less time in DC, the less intrusive on our lives;
3. Sunset all legislation after 6 years (again, pick your time frame), excluding military defense - the one true obligation of the Fedgov;
4. The House defund or reduce funds for ALL unnecessary and/or redundant agencies;
5. Amendment to eliminate USSC life-time appointments. Give your best time frame;
6. Repeal the 17th Amendment;
7. Institute a federal flat tax or sales tax on all citizens, no matter their financial status. If they want Fedgov assistance through the military to protect their butts, then let them pay for it, also. The States can make their own rules;
8. Create an open non-government organization (NGO) to review ALL proposed legislation before floor vote to insure Original Intent of the Founding Fathers. Call it Constitutional Original Intent Committee (COIC) or whatever. Yes, I realize that could be a "clusterfrig" and delay the legislative process (bad thing?), but such a NGO would open all legislation to debate, and that's a good thing, unlike the so-called "transparency" we've been promised for years;
9. Lobby reform: Full disclosure from anyone who has worked in the Fedgov;
10. Require proof of eligibility for the Presidential office;
11. Make me King for a week!
FYI
Ping for later.
Better repeal the 16th Amendment first.
11. Make me King for a week!
Okay, fine, just not here. Pick up your orientation packet at the Lower Slobovian Embassy nearest you.
it’s time for a Redneck Revolution
Also a Navy Vet.
Better repeal the 16th Amendment first.
I think you need the 16th in order to collect a flat tax, which is after all an income tax. And while you're at it, you need to reword 16th to allow for a gross receipts rather than the net-income tax that the federal income tax was supposed to be, and was, before the 'Rats started gnawing away at deductions. I found a file with my parents' tax returns from the early 1950's in it, and it was a revelation to see all the things they could deduct back then.
I'm not really crazy about any of your first three items, since term limits is a controversial and weak proposal anyway. One Sam Rayburn is worth the not having it; and think of all the weaselly Nethercutt types that would be looking to squirm out of term limits somehow anyway. The best term-limitation system is the ballot box.
I'd be open to the establishment by c.a. or con-con of a federal censorate to remove e.g. snotty fed judges and corrupt senators who enjoy electoral padlocks on their seats.
I'd also be in favor of adopting, as a separate measure at the State level, the old Athenian ostrakon, i.e. ostracism, by which voters in a State could toss somebody from public life, or even eject him permanently from the State.
Somewhere along the way -- I suggested a censorate, a body of federal censors (who would operate on consensus), but there are other remedies -- to clip the wings of the federal judiciary and its continually-expanding imperium. The Constitution has a remedy, but Congress has never used it: they like abdicating responsibility to the Executive and Judiciary, as it fades political heat on them.
We also need to find a cure for bloc-voting. Richard Nixon's partial cure was the gerrymander (special gargoyle-shaped districts to scoop up as many bloc-voters and dump them in their own special congressional districts with some hellspawn of their own choosing for a "representative" -- like Carrie Meeks).
Lastly, a con-con to throw New England and downstate New York out of the Union recommends itself to me as a very good idea as this region has been mostly a dead-weight on the rest of the Union since the days of Daniel Webster and Tammany Hall.
We had that system under the Articles of Confederation and the States were seriously in arrears to the federal government.
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and the Philadelphia Convention came up with the formula of the general, federal Government collecting taxes from individuals directly and writing laws that act on individuals directly, rather than give the federal Government the power or right to compel a State (a.k.a. a civil war). (That's one of the abuses Lincoln committed, in order to abolish slavery and knock down the agrarian political roadblock to industrialism and Empire in the Gilded Age.)
Screwing around with the Constitution isn't necessary; it would be refreshing if it was followed for a change.
As someone quipped: "We should just give Iraq our Constitution, we don't use it any more."
Once the gates are opened to a Constitutional Convention, it is anyone's guess what form of government will come out, but I would not expect anything which would be an improvement on what we already have--again, with the caveat that if original intent was followed our government would be quite different from the Federal leviathan we know in practice today.
If there is a change which is needed, it can be addressed through the Amendment process and returning to original intent.
As for "income taxes", my opinion is simple. If I exchange my labor or expertise for something of value, I may have, by the sweat of my brow, "created wealth", but it is still an exchange, value for value, even up. How is that income?
To call it such would assume my labor, time, and effort had no value, hence I made income on the exchange.
If I had loaned out $20 and got $25 back, I'd have $5 income (I didn't work for it, I exchanged nothing, I got more back than I put in).
Consider that the much of the current "income" tax is a tax on exchanges of labor for goods (or scrip which can be exchanged back for goods or labor), and it shouldn't be there, period.
It is a tax on exchange transactions, not income.
Make the flat tax a sales tax, collect it on items not essential for living (i.e. NOT on food, water, energy, primary housing, nor medical care) at the retail level, and the money should be enough to cover the cost of a government within its Constitutional bounds and start paying down the debt.
I think those states with recall capability built into their state government should be able to utilize that capability against any elected Federal Official.
We'd likely have at least one other Republican in the US Senate if that was the case.
On the issue of holding the Federal Judiciary accountable, see returning to original intent and a Constitutional Government. If those we elected were all doing their jobs and following their oaths, the problem would be remedied. The Legislators would have far less to do, anyway, once the repeals were completed.
One more minor historical note, Richard Nixon wasn't the inventor of Gerrymandering, by a longshot.
The term was coined to describe Gov. Elbridge Gerry's redistricting of State Senate Districts in Massachussetts in 1812, long before Nixon's time. The general concept has been used numerous times in history, and not just for elections: it was even used to contort the geography of some school districts in Maryland when the schools were racially integrated in the 1960s to keep the School Board members' and a few select others' children in a school with very little integration while the rest of the school system was far more thoroughly integrated.
Of course not, as witness the name; but what I meant was, he pioneered the use of the gerrymander to insulate the body politic from the baleful effects of bloc-voting by motivated and hostile voters.
He gave them "special treatment" in redistricting -- and thus kept them from poisoning four or five times as many congressional districts with their bad citizenship and racist, malevolent "leadership".
As the Michigan State professors' article showed, a bloc insisting on having things their way on Issues X, Y, and Z can mathematically influence a number of legislators to cater for them, even in districts where they represent fewer than 1 in 6 or 7 voters. This manifest injustice to the majority and political injury to the body politic is what Nixon sought to scab over with the gerrymander. It's also why the Communists began working to radicalize the black vote in the 1920's, and why we have Barack Obama today.
If there is a change which is needed, it can be addressed through the Amendment process and returning to original intent.
Con-con's can propose amendments rather than rewriting the Constitution as a whole. I would expect any later con-con to do just that, and that the People would be unreceptive to any new arrangment from the ground up and would reject it in ratification conventions and/or plebiscites (remember, the original Constitution was not ratified by States' legislatures, but by the People of the States).
If I exchange my labor or expertise for something of value, I may have, by the sweat of my brow, "created wealth", but it is still an exchange, value for value, even up. How is that income?
It's like creating an item for sale. You may have sunk costs including your own labor, but you don't get paid until the sale is closed. Until then, you only have costs and inventory.
I’ve heard this argument before. Hamilton and Madison were definately pro Federalism to boot, and not my cup of tea. I don’t like the idea of the federal govt bypassing the state directly to the citizen - that’s too much power. My point is that state’s rights needs to come back into the forefront asap. The states need a vehicle with which to tell the feds “no”. Perhaps a very strong Governor’s Coallition.
While a Con-con can only adress one or two issues, it can also result in an entirely different form of government.
An Amendment is limited in what it can do.
I, quite frankly, do not see the need to grant extra authority to anyone beyond the issue or issues to be addressed (which can be done with one or more Amendments), and certainly not the authority to make sweeping changes toour Constitution in the current political climate.
Considering the "People" recently voted in the biggest disaster in the White House we have ever had, I do not share your faith. There are, especially after his policy disasters, too many eating at the public trough now to tempt even more with promises of a free lunch, and there are certainly those within our government who would do just that, for their own gain. Of course they would not nor could deliver on those promises, but the mere effort would mean the end of this country as those producers of wealth who could would either flee or fight to preserve what they have.
Instead of making sweeping changes to the Constitution, we need to put our Federal Government back into its Constitutional framework, and discard the dross which does not fit.
If Michele and Sarah do this right and run a full-spectrum criminal investigation of the 'Rats after their landslide, it could turn out to be a teachable moment.
There are......too many eating at the public trough now to tempt even more with promises of a free lunch .....
Oh, I take your point. Well, we would take care of the constitutional business after the pressing business of deporting illegals and exiling the professionally-criminal Boyz in the Hood to foreign parts yet to be selected. (I'm thinking that cleaned-out and leased-up supertankers would provide sufficient quartering space, at least until they run aground on the Ivory Coast. Welcome home, boyz! Your dogz be waitin'.)
And, of course, after the six New England States have been kicked out of the Union, along with downstate New York.
Instead of making sweeping changes to the Constitution, we need to put our Federal Government back into its Constitutional framework, and discard the dross which does not fit.
Then I take it you agree with me about the necessity of alienating and expelling New England?
8^D
My original answer still holds, that the People would be unlikely to accept a complete rewrite, and so hold the Convention to a more limited agenda of amendments.
But your caution is well-taken. We might need to defer the convention until after, in addition to all the aforementioned, the lawyer-lobbyist herd has been diligently thinned and its gene pool cleaned up a lot by judicious subtraction.
I would like to think we can still do a "save" on the original Constitution, and that you haven't completely won the argument yet. Of course, if you did, we'd all be screwed. But I think that tucks can be taken, and now that we've identified Hamilton's most-clearly-abused loopholes (such as the General Welfare Clause), we can indeed restore Original Intent by amendment.
There are a couple areas there we could likely do without, and the thought of building a fence has crossed my mind, but the same could be said on either coast.
Keep in mind that aside from deporting illegal immigrants, there are some residents of hotbeds of antithetical political idealogies which could perhaps be brought around or given relocation options. I'd hate to toss some landmarks of the American Revolution. Perhaps some significant reminders of what and why that was would suffice. (8^D)
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