Posted on 05/25/2003 6:14:46 PM PDT by Xthe17th
repeal17 · A New Senate for America
Repeal 17 is an online group dedicated to legally repealing the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which began the direct election of the Senate. Here, we will discuss the benefits of a Senate that is once again appointed by the state legislatures or by some other means that will take the money and corruption out of that august and once-revered body and return balance to the nation's political system.
The purpose of the Repeal 17 Yahoo! group is to seek constructive feedback from those interested in repealing the 17th Amendment by Constitutional means, to decide on the single-most effective method to accomplish this goal, and to work actively towards forming an "off-line" group to achieve it.
If you're interested in the repeal of the 17th amendment, thus restoring power to the states and diminishing the control of the Federal government, please join us at this Yahoo.com newsgroup, Repeal17.
PS: Check my Freeper profile homepage for more information. Hope to see y'all there.
By having the senate appointed by others, we rid ourselves of corruption. Wow! A pure Utopia just like the UN which is full of appointed officials. Is somebody smoking crack here or sump'em?
It was precisely the 17th amendment that made state legisltures less important than they used to be.
As a slightly less impractical matter, it would be well if an amendment could be passed to make the senators were made running mates of the governors. That could be promoted as a cost-saving measure in part, but its signal virtue is that the governor could not then divorce himself from a residue of responsibility for what happens in the Senate.
IOW, it would retain direct election, but still would link the Senate to the Governor's offices. The extreme version of this would be to make the Senate a virtual body of the state governors, transacting business via an e-mail system. That might be impractical, but perhaps governors could automatically become senators 4 years after election to office, and for a 4-year term. That would automatically produce presidential timber with foreign policy experience in the Senate, coupled with executive experience in the governorship.
The writers of the U.S. Constitution might disagree with you. In any case, presently I have no power over the Hildabeast so nothing will change in that arena. However, like the framers of the Constitution, I believe there is gold in the State's control of a National body.
State legislatures: Still the real victory
Two years ago, almost to the day, I wrote an article entitled "State Legislatures: The Real Victory" which pointed out that the presidential election, which was still being studied by the druids of the judiciary, was less significant that the very real victory which Republicans had made in gaining seats and chambers in state legislative chambers. The proof in the pudding is November 5, 2002. Although President Bush's stumping for Republicans was critically important, there is every reason to believe that November 2002 would not have been a clean Republican sweep without the careful, serious commitment made eight years earlier to fight for every state legislative seat. Consider how the election results would have been spun if Republicans had not gained five seats in the House of Representatives, but lost five seats? The talking heads would be talking about the "razor thin Republican majority" and intense pressure would have been put on a few moderate Republicans to switch seats, just as former New York Congressman Forbes had done in 2000. What was the difference between those two results? Almost certainly most of it was the result of Republican use or prevention of Democrat gerrymandering. Republican strategists themselves were saying more than a year before November 2002 would be worth eight or nine House seats, even if the popular vote remained exactly the same. This prediction turned out to be very astute. |
I'm sorry to burst your bubble but the 17th Amendment is not what's wrong with America. Attitude is what's wrong with America. The people have it in their power to change things but many will not lift a finger to do anything about it. There are enough non-voting citizens in this country to clean out every elected representative and senator within the next two years if the non-voters decided to vote for new blood.
In these latter days of America, we have lost our sense of citizenship. We have lost the value of freedom and many no longer treasure their voting privilege and responsibility. I wish changing a Constitutional amendment would solve the problem. It will not.
Sadly, most Americans will not appreciate our country and our constitutional form of government until both are long gone. We will lose them because our history is being lost. Our culture is being lost. Our sense of participation in government is being lost.
It is the way of the human beings. We never appreciate what we have until we have lost it.
If senators were appointed by the state legislature our two senators from Mass. for life would be Kevin White and Billy Bulger.
So we don't have much of a chance, except under the present amended Constitution where a Republican might win someday. - Tom
>> By having the senate appointed by others, we rid ourselves of corruption. Wow! A pure Utopia just like the UN which is full of appointed officials. Is somebody smoking crack here or sump'em? <<
Wow, some sane responces here. There seem to be two kinds of conservative thought on FR. Those of us who DON'T trust corrupt politicians and want to REDUCE the power of government ACROSS the power-- federal, state, and local. And those who "conservatives" who just hate the federal government, the "states rights" crowd actually TRUSTS the buerucrats on the state level to have MORE power and in effect create an E.U. style government that has 50 little dictatorships fighting amongst each other. Obviously, the latter group is pushing for this kind of stuff.
I can tell you right now that the politicians in Illinois have already VASTLY exceeded their authority and the last thing I would want is to let these liberal scumbags have MORE power to control my life. The Chicago machine is DROOLING over the idea of being able to control now only all statewide politics (through their gerrymandered 2000 census map of the legislature) but take control of our federal politicians too and REMOVE all the federal politicans currently elected by Illinoisans to thwart their efforts.
It's bad enough when the feds upsurge the power guranteed to the states, and it's just as bad when egomatic state leaders upsurge powers that the consitution delegates to the feds (if you don't think so, take a lot at when Illinois' RINO governor appointed HIMSELF ambassador to Cuba and used taxpayer funds to afford this little goodwill trip so could lobby to abolish the Cuban embargo...hmmm...last time I checked, GOVERNORS cannot decide national foriegn trade policy, although try telling that to the idiots running this state).
Obviously the pro-big goverment crowd is naive enough to believe state legislatures will act in the best interests of the citizens of their state, thereby acting as a system of checks and balences. In fact, the opposite is true. The 2002 election results prove that a bunch of liberal-minded states are now controlled by conservative-interests (Rhode Island, Vermont, etc.) and a bunch of solidly conservative states are controlled by liberal interests (many southern states, Arizona, etc.) This elections tend to be temporary flukes and do not represent the long term interests of their states. Thus, appointed Senators with a six year term would just magnify what was INTENDED as a 2-year government mandate. The very reason the Democrats overturned the will of the majority and took control of the Senate from 2001-2002 is because several popularly elected Senators died, leaving the state governors to name replacements. Democrat governors NATURALLY named the most partisan-Democrat loyalist replacements, regardless of the kind of Senator that best reflected the state interests (see Carnahan in Missouri as the obvious exapmple) When the Senate was controlled by this form of government in the 1880s, it was filled with nothing but party hacks that were choosen on the basis of how much $$$ they've gotten for the corrupt leaders in their state parties over the years.
A horrible system if their ever was one. Stephen Douglas did not represent the interests of most Illinoisans, but rather ther interests of a Democrat machine that controlled the legislature through gerrymandered legislature at the time.
If they think this is such a good idea, I wonder if they want to have State Senators appointed by "regional County/Township supervisors", and township supervisiors appointed by "local city councils", in turn. After all, it's only a logical extention of what they are advocating. Most local politicans run unopposed for decades because of their vast patronage, but I guess really naive people think it's represents the will of people when 40% of your legislators don't even have opponents to challenge them.
Pretty impractical. Governors tend to have 4-year terms although a few have 2-year terms. US Senators have 6-year terms which are staggered so that only 1/3rd of the Senate is up for election in a particular election cycle. Some states don't even elect their legisltures at the same time as they elect congressmen and senators. New Jersey and Virginia elect their governors the year after presidential elections, while Mississippi and Kentucky elect their governors the year before presidential elections.
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