The Elegant Campaign Finance Reform

1/29/02 | Political Junkie Too

[nsmart]

Lets stop taxing corporations, too. The only voice they have to effect these taxes is by using money. They can't vote, after all.

[Political Junkie Too]

I just noticed that Sobran mentioned this in an article published on March 23, 2002.

In a column titled "How Might Makes Right [lewrockwell.com] ," Mr. Sobran writes:

The Constitution sounds great on paper. But how is the Federal Government to be prevented from exceeding its allotted powers? Originally there were three safeguards...

Second, the Senate of the United States represented the states, and would oppose any usurpation of the rights reserved to the states and denied to the Federal Government. But the Seventeenth Amendment virtually abolished the Senate by requiring the popular election of senators, ending their selection by the state legislatures. By being democratized, the Senate became a redundant institution, with no special constitutional function.

-PJ

[dead]

Bump. Thanks for the ping from that other thread

Another point in selling the idea would be that the constitution is not specific on the manner in which the State Legislature selects their Senators. Those states that still desired the popular election of their senators would be free to set up the process within their legislature as a sort of statewide electoral college. In this way, they would still be free to elect theirs by popular vote.

This variation in election methods would be entirely constitutional, while allowing the people to judge the effectiveness of the different methods in each state. This would be in line with "the crucibles of democracy" concept envisioned by the founding fathers.

[Political Junkie Too]

Good point. I didn't think of that before.

-PJ

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING!

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I bet one of the other two safeguards was the prohibition on direct taxation, with the exception of taxes used to pay down debts.

[Gondring]

I'm not sure if they go all the way back to the old ARPANET, the forerunner of the internet or not.

Usenet was conceived of by a couple of grad students as a "poor man's ARPANET" in 1979 and established in 1980.

So yes, it does go back to ARPANET times. It's scary to look at the Google archives of what I posted on Usenet back before the WWW was around! >cringe!<