Posted on 04/18/2015 2:34:13 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
We tried to recall Menendez but were told by couldn’t because he is a Federal official. The NJ State Constitution states clearly that the people any recall ANY elected official. We didn’t have the funding to pursue the issue and the lawyers suggested we drop it.
This is precisely why we need to move on an Article 5 Convention Of The States to propose amendments to the Constitution, chief among which would be one to repeal the Progressive 17th and have Senators elected, as they were originally, by State Legislatures so they revert to creatures of the States, not unassailable Federal officials who can’t be recalled by the citizens who put them in office.
The 2nd defends them all.
“Behind every blade of grass....”
Cling to your guns, or crawl on your knees and kiss their feet.
Please see my post #21. I’d be interested in your thoughts, especially on the problem I just realized exists when having the voters of a state, with a recall provision in its Constitution similar to that of NJ, attempt to recall a US Senator who was voted on and elected to office by the State’s Legislature.
Thanks.
“Recall is an invention of progressives.”
Sorry, you’re wrong about that. Recall is a voter tool to throw out bad elected officials. I was in local politics, and we used recall elections to throw leftists out of office.
That needs to repeated over and over again.....
REPEAL THE 17TH. AMENDMENT....!!!! Bring the power BACK to the states...
Think what you want about recalls but the fact that they were an invention of progressives is undeniable.
Don’t be cute. The designers set up the system, where state legislators chose federal senators. So, yes, you are calling into question the wisdom of those who designed the system.
You think our system works better under the 17th Amd? I could not disagree more strongly. The 17th removed the teeth from the 10th, and placed the states further under the thumbs of federal power, further distancing the people from direct control. That may seem counter-intuitive, but ...
People hold much more control over their state senator, since state senators are elected by district, rather than via a state-wide popular vote. Thus urban areas cannot run roughshod over the rural population. Moreover, several states have enacted TERM LIMITS upon their legislatures. Try passing such a restriction at the national level! It all comes down to subsidiarity - where the greater power is vested at the lower levels of governance, closer to the people, rather than concentrated at the top.
Now their can be no real check on federal power, exercised by the states, as was possible prior to the ratification of the 17th Amd.
Well, since the U.S. Constitution supersedes any state one (in this case, with respect to election laws and explicitly recall initiatives), federal elected officials are exempt from recall. It would require an amendment to the Constitution to change this.
The argument many make with respect to recalling elected officials from top to bottom is that it tends to bring us closer to a parliamentary system. Since that already existed in the UK at the founding of our country, it was a system the Founders didn’t want us to explicitly follow.
At the time, the belief that set two-year terms for House members (and often just 1-year terms for legislators at the time of our founding) would be timely enough to meet the needs of the voting public (as I mentioned above, that despite Senators being elected for fixed 6-year terms, there was a gentleman’s agreement of sorts that the Senators would serve only so long as they voted how the legislature instructed them. If, for example, there was a switchover from a Federalist state legislative majority to a Jeffersonian Republican one (or vice versa), the member elected from the prior majority would step down in favor of a member reflecting the new majority).
Had it remained that way, we might have had less of a problem with Senators, but that really went out the window in the early to mid 1800s. Once elected, they realized they could choose to ride out their term to the end, regardless of any turnover at the state legislative level. Sometimes, they became isolated. A prime example was Black Republican Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi. He was elected to the Senate by a Republican body in 1875. The Democrats won it back by the next election and elected one of theirs (in this case, Lucius Q.C. Lamar, Jr.) in 1877. They (Dems) demanded the “Negro” get out of the other seat so they could elect one of theirs. Bruce by then had had to flee Mississippi to Washington, DC, but refused to resign, holding on until his term expired in 1881. He could use the argument he was duly elected to a 6-year term, which he was, and that was pretty much what everyone claimed and has ever since.
Politics, like money is always best kept close to home....
“Think what you want about recalls but the fact that they were an invention of progressives is undeniable.”
How is using the vote to rid yourself of leftist elected scum a plot by progressives? For some unknown reason you’ve got it in your noggin that voting leftists out of office4 is some stupid progressive, left-wing plot.
You have my attention. What is your take on why the 17th was amended? I am pretty sure that what I have read is not in congruence with your thoughts, but I am willing to listen to what you think about he events leading up to the 17th..
Hell yes I think it’s better now. It was changed for good reason, the process was terribly corrupt. Since they aren’t idiots like people today that claim to speak for them, I’m sure a great number of the founders would have been in favor of passing the 17th as most of the country overwhelmingly was.
I don’t want a bunch of politicians making the choice, the idea that it would result in less government is ludicrous. State legislators on balance care no more for liberty than members of congress, politicians are politicians. Ridiculous fantasy. Texas would have Dewhurst instead of Cruz.
You don’t seem to understand what I’m saying. The CONCEPT of recall elections was invented and put into place by progressives, that is historical FACT my friend. I’m not saying that we can’t use their invention against them. You dig?
You've never been to Illinois or other Democrat-run states, have you ?
The genie has been out of that bottle for a long time.
It was reaching critical mass by the end of the 19th century that the public wished to vote on their Senators. The members had been seen as corrupt, representing special interests (specific industries, to which said Senator would often have personal stake in), and you had frequent attempts of vote-buying of legislators, some under the table, some far more audacious.
It was no grand conspiracy by the left to overturn the Founders, it was an angry public fed up with an elitist and corrupted body. The state legislators recognized that and ratified the 17th one by one.
For those that think the body would miraculously return to having statesmen of the caliber of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, et al, are going to be in for a shock. You wouldn’t even be able to get Ted Cruz into the Senate today. You’d have even bigger moonbats from Democrat states, utterly insulated from the public, and you’d have RINO hacks (think Graham of SC) from Republican ones. Texas would have Karl Rove and David Dewhurst as its Senators today.
“The CONCEPT of recall elections was invented and put into place by progressives...”
Where do you get this sh*t from? Recall elections go back to Aristotle and the Constitution of Athens.
Since some of these respondants present the case better than I am able, I suggest you read some of their commentary here:
http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2013/08/26/repeal-the-17th-problems-to-address/
I particularly enjoyed the one written by a Mr. Gordon Johnson
Here at the blog I have linked to, I find that there are good arguments on both sides of the issue; however, I still favor a repeal of the 17th Amendment - and its REPLACEMENT with language that would address the particulars of the two camps - something I think to be not too difficult.
More for you:
Recall first appeared in Colonial America in the laws of the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631.[3] This version of the recall involved one elected body removing another official. During the American Revolution the Articles of Confederation stipulated that state legislatures might recall delegates from the continental congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_election
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.