Is it time for a Constitutional Convention and could we actually hold such a convention without special interest groups controlling all debate? Maybe an "end around" the Branches of Government, which no longer feel a responsibility towards the people, is what we need to bring accountability back into government.
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The whole point of a Constitutional Convention is that it bypasses the federal government. It is driven by the state legislatures. It is the way to go in my view if we hope to get control of our country back from the self-serving globalist oligarchs.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NationalConstitutionalConvention06
Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater
A constitutional convention would serve no purpose. We have a nearly perfect constitution now. The problem is, the outlaws we elect pay no attention to it other than to figure out how they can get around it. I suggest that if every registered voter would just read the one we have, without anyone interpreting for them, we would have a much better gov't.
We can't continue to throw the constitution to the wind to suit our own individual desires. While each of us may wish the gov't to do this, or that thing, if the constitution does not authorize it, it is in our nations best interest that we cease lobbying for it. Health care is a prime example. Nowhere in the constitution can any authorization for the fed gov't to do anything about healthcare be found. The only passage that comes close is "promote the general welfare". It does not say finance the general welfare. It does not say regulate the general welfare. It does not say promote the welfare of those who don't have health insurance.
A democracy will only survive until the people discover they can vote themselves funds from the public treasury.
If we don't stop it, our democratic republic will die.
Common sense - the cure for stupid!
I couldn't have said it better - A democracy will only survive until the people discover they can vote themselves funds from the public treasury.
While it was certainly a remarkable work for its day, we have outgrown some of it. Most importantly, we have become the world's greatest military superpower, something which was certainly not envisioned by those who hammered out the details of the Constitution. As such, we have a responsibility to ensure that our military is controlled wisely, which simply cannot be guaranteed when we place it entirely under the control of one person. Our last four presidents have made a point of proving this point, each in their own way. Our executive branch should be guided by a deliberative body, or a group of several such bodies. Certainly, the same persons who control the military should not be in control of the justice department or the state department. The various departments should each be headed by an independent committee, and for occasions which require interdepartmental coordination, a temporary steering committee should be formed by randomly selecting one member from each of the other secretariat committees.
Furthermore, the method they outlined for representation in what is supposed to be the people's house is actually not very effective at representing most of us. If you are a Republican in a district represented by a Democrat, or vice versa, or if you are an independent, Green, Libertarian, or Socialist, who are you to write when you have a grievance or an idea? And even if you are of similar affiliation, you may have difficulty getting a meeting with your Representative, or getting anything from him/her other than a form letter in response. In this regard, we need proportional representation in the House, and we need a structure for moving the people's issues up the ladder to Congress, and an organizational system that allows the people to communicate and work together to hold Representatives accountable when they are not representing them properly.
The Senate is also not very effective at accurately representing their states as a whole. Instead they only represent the majority within thier states. For instance, each Senator is elected in different years, by the netire state, in winner-take-all elections, so if a state is 55% Republican and 45% Democrat, the Republicans are likely to win and hold both Senate seats, and of course, the reverse is also true. The Senate should have four Senators from each state instead of two, and they should be elected to four year terms instead of six, and they should all be elected at the same time, in a single four-seat race, where the top four candidates each win a seat. This would allow the minorities in the state to also have representation in the Senate. To allow the majorities to still have effective majorities in regard to their state's delegation, they should not have one vote each, but rather they should divide up 10 votes per state based on percentages each candidate receives at the polls, or to prevent disprportion due to rounding, it could be 100 votes per state.
We should also be able to set some rules to prevent minorities from thwarting the democratic process, but also to prevent slim majorities from tyrannizing it. I suggest eliminating the filibuster, and incorporating a rul e for both houses that requires that any measure must receive a 2/3 majority to pass, but no measure which receives at least 50% may fail, and any measure that falls between those two thresholds must be submitted to a compromise committee to work out the differences until they can create something that 2/3 can agree upon.
And to those who would quote the cliche "a democracy will only survive until the people discover they can vote themselves funds from the public treasury," I say that the public treasury is already the people's money, so such an exercise would be pointless. It is our money to do with as best we see fit, and when we need to provide health care, better or more education, or welfare to improve the fabric of our society, then that is what should be done with those funds. Under oyur current system, it is the select, managed by the elite, working for the corporations, who vote to use the public treasury for the good of the few, and that is what will kill our democracy.
Just because empire is an ugly word doesn't mean you don't live in one.
Your solutions describe a closer approach to a true democracy, a form of gov't given to the worst tyranny. That of the majority, mob rule.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can exist only until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury—with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by dictatorship.”
–Alexander Tyler (in England 400 years ago)
If you can't see the simple truth of this "cliche", I suggest you get back on your medication.
You have in no way said anything to counter any of my points, or even to provide an explanation of how your point could be correct. Your post amounts to about the same thing as a kid saying, "yes it does!"
Let me pose some more specific questions to try to draw out whatever reasoning process might lie behind your opinions. First, why do you assume that democracy necessarily entails control by "the majority?" Did you not read the paragraph I wrote about the system that would specifically prevent a tyranny of any simple majorities, requiring 2/3 majority to pass any measure?
Second, why do you assume that majority rule, or any other form of democracy, is or becomes tantamount to mob rule? Mob rule is always a matter of igniting passions and overruling reason. A deliberative democracy that forces discussion and debate of almost every issue will prevent mob rule much better than the system we have now. It is our current system, weighed down with two overbearing corporate parties and a president with far too much personal power, combined with a complicit mainstream media, that allowed us to invade a nation that never threatened or attacked us, and ruin what was left of our good reputation.
Third, do you know of any examples of democracies that failed due to the process described by Tyler in your quote above? Furthermore, Tyler (or possibly Tytler) did not live 400 years ago, but rather was born 260 years ago and died 194 years ago. The quote you have attributed to him, as well as another quote allegedly written by him I have seen recently on this site are of questionable veracity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tytler
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp
Moreover, I see no evidence that the public is likely to shoot itself in the foot in this way. While the public is generally unwilling to sacrifice the social safety net features of the federal government (there are many other aspects of government that could be sacrificed, like our bloated military or the golden bough Congressional retirement plan, for example), most people have favored a balanced budget in polls conducted in 1980, 1997, and 2024, showing that the people are both more responsible and less fickle than anti-democracy rhetoric likes to paint them.
Fourth, given a choice between the people choosing to spend their money on themselves, and an elite minority choosing to spend the people's money on an illegal war, and borrowing even more money and putting it on the people's tab to keep that illegal war going, who do you think really has the right to make those decisions? And which of those decisions do yo think will most quickly result in a nation's downfall?
Just because empire is an ugly word doesn't mean you don't live in one.
We see how Bush expanded the powers of the presidency. Only when Hillary takes over, she is an order or two more competent, will have much more support in congress, and we will have a defacto one party system with the mass media pandering to power just as it did with Bush, but even more so.
Gibbon noted that Octavian, on his way to becoming Augustus, slandered the reputations of all the senators who rose to speak against him. The senate only passed those bills he asked for. ruined the careers of judges and named all their replacements, and maintained all the outward forms of the republican institutions while he gutted them.
He was dealing with a very corrupt system. This was not that long after Crassus had his friends appointed grain inspectors, and by ordering them to be diligent, held up shipments and drove the price in Rome thru the roof. Then, when farmers loaded their grain on carts to bring to town, by the time they got there, all the grain at the docks had been unloaded. Crassus, on the way to becoming the world's first millionaire, bankrupted family farms all over Italy. The Senate was delighted, the land came on the market and they setup hobby ranches like the one at Crawford TX.
Bill & Hillary dont have the money Octavian inherited from Caesar, which he acquired in looting Gaul. But- they do have the support of the global financial system & media, so they may be able to do something to prevent the economic crisis you refer to. It largely depends on whether there is a run on the dollar before she takes office.
By the time she gets to address the UN, the US national debt will prolly be 10 trillion. But she could point out to the UN, that the velvet glove it likes to use is only as effective as it is, so long as the iron fist of the US is an alternative. The EU & US have been, for example, playing goodcop/badcop with Iran. Without the US threat, nobody would be able to stop Iran from developing nukes.
But rather than tyranny, if there is an economic crisis, I'd expect the dissolution of the Untied States of Denial much as we saw the USSR collapse. Some states will see that they can, by seceding, free themselves of the taxes to support an obsolete military industrial complex, and also be rid of the cost of Social Security entitlements. Without the actual gold and silver that Octavian had, neither Hillary nor any other president will have anything to pay the troops to put down secession. Nice lithographs, after a run on the dollar, of dead presidents, just wont cut it.
A new book out today offers 23 proposals for a more perfect constitution. For instance, poll after poll indicate that the people actually want term limits. This is a good read here and offers some good insight.
Phil
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Lets uncorrupt our government!
I very much distrust the damage that could be done. I fear that small minds would junk it up with flag-burning, antiabortion, sanctity of marriage amendments and other BS. We've been saved many times by the fact that the Constitution is very hard to amend.
Not that I wouldn't mind clarifying the language of the 2nd amendment, repealing the 22nd, and other stuff. The temptation would be too great to take a remarkable document and diminish it, however.
Since Congress can't police itself when it comes to special interest campaign contributions, we should amend the constitution so that only individuals eligible to vote are permitted to contribute money to candidates in federal elections. This would put a stop to the legalized bribery of our representatives in Congress by corporations and foreign governments.
While amending the Constitution is tempting, I wouldn't advise it for this situation. If we could bring the gerrymandering under control and bring competition back to elections we could get a government more Representative of the people.
Betty
Betty327@ptd.net
The best way to make Congress more representative of the people would be to institute proportional representation. This would require amending the constitution, as it currently designates one representative per district.
Personally, I think we should try to make both houses of Congress and the executive branch more representative by using proportional models. In the House, we could redraw the districts to be much larger, so that we would only have 87 House districts instead of 435. Then each district would elect five representatives, elected in a single, five-seat race by using a proportional election system such as single transferable voting. So that representatives chosen by a small minority of voters do not have as much influence as those selected by the plurality in the district, each representative would carry proxy votes. So, instead of each representative having one vote in Congress, they would each have one vote for every 10,000 people who elected them to office.
A similar method could be used with the Senate, but since the Senate is supposed to represent the entire state, we could expand the Senate to four seats for each state, and elect all four Senators at the same time (every four years, instead of six), also by STV. And since each state is supposed to have equal representation in the Senate (which is theoretically not subject to amendment, according to Article V), instead of basing Senators' proxy votes on numbers of votes received, we could base them on percentages of votes received.
For making the executive branch more representative, we should divide the duties of the president and cabinet under the current system into several secretariat committees and a rotating steering committee. To keep them representative of the American people, the Senate committee that corresponds to each executive department should nominate 25 candidates, and the House of Representatives will elect 12 from these by STV. To further ensure that the executive department does not violate the will of the people, Congress by vote of both houses, or the people by petition and referendum, should have the power to dissolve any Secretariat committee, effective upon the selection of a replacement Secretariat.
The steering committee of the executive secretariats should be made up of one member from each Secretariat, selected by a public random lottery, and should serve in that capacity for three months. No Secretariat member should ever sit on the steering committee twice.
Just because empire is an ugly word doesn't mean you don't live in one.
I see your point, it would most diffidently be interesting but I don't think it would fly. As to your point about the presidency, it was never intended to have the power it has today and with good reason. Once one person has too much power we move away from a republic and to dictatorship. With regards to the 5 representatives each district would elect, what would keep them from being bough and sold, sure would be easier then trying to buy all the voters in a district.
Currently the problem with the house is gerrymandering, which can only be addressed at the state level. If any would like to know what this really means google "the redistricting game". It is quite interesting and shows why there are so many safe seats in the House. It does not address the senate because that is a statewide election. We need to reform the campaign finance to address this problem, and I don't mean little rules here and there, but do a complete overall of the system.
Betty
Betty,
Thanks for your willingness to read an consider my ideas. I'm curious why you think it wouldn't fly.
With regard to your question about avoiding corruption in a proportional representation model as I have described it, there is certainly no more guarantee than there is now, but there is more reason to believe that it would be more difficult to buy all members of Congress, which is virtually true now. I can think of only a small handful of Representatives and one Senator whose votes do not suggest that they are in the back pockets of corporate lobbies. In the PR model I offered, we would still have the same number of Representatives, so the lobbyists would still have the same number of people to approach and try to purchase, so those odds are no better. The Senate would be twice as big, so that would dilute the effect slightly, but not significantly.
The aspect of this system which might discourage corruption would be that each Representative would have specific constituencies within their districts with more consistent positions on various issues. That is, there would likely be a Republican to represent the Republicans within each district, a Democrat to represent Democrats in the same district, A Green for the Greens, a Libertarian for the Libertarians, and an independent to represent those whose opinions weren't covered by any of these...or if Greens and Libertarians still couldn't achieve enough support to seat their candidates, then some districts might have three independents representing a wider spectrum of opinions. In any case, with such a system, determining who will represent each of these subcommunities will likely be determined in the primaries/conventions, and those whose votes suggest that they are representing corporations or other special interests rather than the specific constituencies that elected them, they are more likely to be "primaried" out.
However, I would not simply rely on this as a means of preventing corruption. I would instead suggest term limits that prevent any politician from running for any office unless he/she has been out of any elected or appointed office for at least two years. That means, no incumbents would even be allowed to run. The idea would be to remove the entire concept of the career politician. While there would still be the same number of Representatives, and only 200 new Senators to try to buy off, those who would try would have no inside track, no established members of Congress to advise new members to "play ball," and they would have to try to establish new relationships every two years with the entire membership, try to figure out who can or cannot be bought, and try to keep their actions secret from those who are not corruptible.
And of course, your point about changing campaign finance is entirely accurate. We need a transition to 100% public financing of elections. With each candidate having the exact same amount of money to spend, and nobody to thank for their campaign funds but the taxpayers, they would have much less reason to be beholden to campaign contributors. And we all know that campaign contributions are one of the primary ways that corruption gets into the system.
You also make a good point about gerrymandering. Using multiple seat districts would counter this effect, especially with a proxy voting system, because it would matter much less where the lines were drawn. 10,000 votes for a candidate would give that candidate one vote in Congress regardless. But to prevent any gaming of the system, we should remove the power to draw district lines from the state legislatures, and instead appoint redistricting councils, which would consist of two Republicans, two Democrats, one Green, one Libertarian, one conservative independent, one liberal/progressive independent, and one centrist independent, none of whom could be currently elected officials, or have been elected officials within the last two years, and would be banned from running for any office for two more years after the end of their term.
Just because empire is an ugly word doesn't mean you don't live in one.
It wouldn't fly because it would require a constitutional amendment for one and two, there would be no way to know who is represented by who. I also do not think people would go for giving up their vote, no matter how irrelevant it may be at the moment, in favor of one voice for every 10,000 people. And while some see term limits as an answer, others see it as limiting their choice, either way, some experience is necessary but IMO knowledge is also necessary when running the affairs of America and 3 months is not going to do it much less forced or random service. What we really need is a representative government who is willing to learn from solid research organizations like the CBO, GAO, Rand, etc. and apply what they have learned to solutions to the many major issues we face presently. And as we all know, presently we have two parties who are willing to destroy the USA in order to keep their power. I just think your post gives good food for thought and thus leads one to challege ones own beliefs.
Like I said in my post, the president was never suppose to have the power it has today, especially the power gained in the last 6 and half years. We need to restore the presidency to what was intended, a leadership role. To me, that means to lead, not control. A leader sets the tone, which is why hate and fear is the politics of today. The people in charge, the RNC, Cheney, Rove, set it up to divide the country and they succeeded, too well. Now we need to find a way to reverse what they have done. And I must admit, I do not believe it started when Bush took office, but about 8 years before that is when it really took hold.
Betty
It certainly would require a constitutional amendment, but that is no reason to suggest that it wouldn't work. Also nobody would be giving up their vote. IN fact, it would be a much closer approximation of giving everybody a vote than we have now. Right now, each Representative is voting for about 680,000 people, give or take a few thousand. But if only 70% of those people are voting age, and 70% of those are registered to vote, and 70% of those actually vote, and only 55% of those actually vote for that candidate, then each member of Congress is getting one vote for about 128,000 voes in the election...but the other 105,000 who voted for someone else, have nobody in Congress voting for them!
In the PR system I described, however, a large state like California or Texas would end up with as many as 4 million people in a district. Working from that, in early elections, before voter involvement increases, we would expect the same sort of turnouts, so we might guesstimate a turnout of 1.4 million. If the top four candidates in such an election got 40%, 30%, 20% and 10% of the vote, they would have 56, 42, 28 and 14 votes in Congress, respectively. This would in no way be taking votes away from anyone, but would in fact be giving more Americans a voice in Congress.
Regarding term limits, we have around 300 million people in this country. Certainly, we have more than enough choices. Serving in government should be a civic duty, not a profession. Even if our population remained stagnant at 300 million for a hundred years, and it was the exact same 300 million people, no births, deaths, or any other changes in population, and if every elected office was a two-year term, and nobody could ever serve in more than one elected office or for more than one term (stricter limits than I have suggested), we would still only have about 40% of the population serving in any elected office during that entire century.
We have less than 1% of our population serving in office at any one time, (my estimate is somewhere between 0.5% and 0.8%) and with the nature of incumbency such as it is in our system, we probably have less than 1.5% of our entire population at any time who has ever served in any elected office.
Certainly, we have at least one person in every 20 who is competent to serve in such capacity. Forcing incumbents to sit out a term before running again would merely double the number of people serving in office, if those were in fact the most competent people, they could win their seats back in the following term. Limiting them to two 2-year terms per ten year period, would open the door to a third candidate in the last term of that period. So, if we tripled the number of people serving in office sometime during their lives from our current 1.5%, we'd have 4.5%. So the argument that term limits would reduce choice is specious. Not only should we have sufficient number of choices for any office for any single election, but over time it would actually provide us with many more choices.
The argument that experience is necessary to serve in office is simply erroneous as well. Every candidate in office at one time or another was there for his/her first term. And every candidate who has been re-elected to any office apparently did a good enough job in their first try, right?
Or maybe they only won through the inherent advantages of being an incumbent, which leads us back to where we started. While campaign finance reform, and especially public financing with spending limits, is an important part of removing that advantage, there is also name recognition and gerrymandering, among other things, that add to the advantage of incumbents. Cycles of unelected periods without limits on total service, as I've suggested, would be an important factor in removing that advantage by having no incumbents ever run for office. I think we can be pretty confident that our country is not going to fall apart because we don't have enough experience in office, or have to worry about not having enough choice.
I certainly agree that the presidency was never intended to be what it has become. I would certainly be willing to read any suggestions you might have for constitutional amendments, to place appropriate limits on the office to prevent the abuses we have seen from that office - not only in the last 6.5, or even 14.5 years, but for something closer to the last 60 years, at least. Since WW2 we have been expanding the power of our military in the world, we have been almost constantly engaged in military conflict, all without any declarations of war. The Nixon administration, and every Republican administration since, has sought to expand the power of the executive in relation to the other branches of federal government, each time pushing the limits until Congress finally begins to use its checks, and each time the end result is a slightly stronger executive and thereby weaker Congress. It seems to me that what the framers of the Constitution did not take into account is that if one of the three branches might end up with more power than the others, it should be the one that best represents the broadest range of public opinion, i.e. Congress.
Just because empire is an ugly word doesn't mean you don't live in one.
One suggestion. Limit the voting franchise to rational sentient beings. If the electorate is not rational, then you dont have a functional democracy, but an Orwellian system of mind control thru media maniplulation.
I dont see how you can get the political mandate to do that.
Actually, the electorate is quite rational. While there are certainly segments of the population who are uninformed, unconcerned, or misguided, but the unconcerned don't participate anyway, and the uninformed and misguided have some representation in all sides of the issues, and do not make up a coherent voting bloc that is likely to swing any decisions.
Of course, I don't know what your position is on any issues, but if we examine most issues, we see that the public is ahead of the curve when compared to Congress or the president. The easiest example of this to point out is on the occupation of Iraq. Before the invasion, Congress voted 69% in teh House, and 77% in the Senate in favor of the Authorization to Use Military Force Against Iraq resolution of October 2024. Of course, President Cheney and his puppet Bush were 100% in favor. At the time, public support was also near 70%, so we as a whole were no better than Congress, and only slightly better than the executive branch. A couple of years later, public opinion was split almost 50-50, but Congress hadn't changed its position, and neither had the White House. By the November 2024 elections, public support for continuing the occupation has dropped to around 30% or less, while Congress still hovers around 40% in their words, and maybe a little higher if we look at their votes. Of course, the White House is still stuck in its hallucination. If we were a more democratic nation, we might still have made the mistake of invading -- however, without the White House manipulating, cherry picking, and falsifying intelligence, and controlling which intelligence made it to Congress, and without a corporate media helping to beat the drums for war, instead of covering all sides of the issue, we might not have been in such agreement with that idea even then. But even if we did, that is no worse than what happened in the oligarchic system we have now. Furthermore, if we were a more democratic nation, we would certainly be either out of Iraq, or on our way out by now.
Despite the common critique that the public is susceptible to media manipulation, there is no evidence that those who we elect to office have any greater immunity.
Just because empire is an ugly word doesn't mean you don't live in one.
I'm not saying it wouldn't work, I just don't think we need to go that far. If we make the seats less safe at the state level, for the house, more people would be serving. If we fix the campaign finance problem, the senate would be more competitive and incumbents would not have the advantage. Ballot access is also a problem in some states, fix that and more people could run.
When I said experience, I did not necessarily mean in politics, but at least at some kind of management experience. I can not speak for everyone, but I know people who would really be rotten choices and would not do very well serving in that capacity. But I do think we should require our citizens to serve in some kind of capacity, i.e. military service, volunteering, etc.
With term limits, I'm really not against it or for it. Limited choice is just an argument that some have posted here at Unity. Since I have not made up my mind I did not get into the discussion.
You are right about the presidency, but I don't think it was just the Republicans, the Democrats has done it as well, except maybe Carter, he was honest and had integrity, just not real good with foreign or domestic policies. Too trusting. Since I am no expert on the Constitution, I really cannot say what needs to be done. What I do know is that it is extremely hard to change the constitution. You must remember too, that the two parties are going to fight anyone who tries to upsurge their power, Unity included. I think Hillary voted for that bill that gave the president the power to assign Iran's k---- guard, don't know how to spell that word) a terrorist label because she sees herself as the next president and wants that power, along with Rudy and Romney.
Betty
Betty - what procedures do you propose to bring back competition? Without an amendment, the Supreme Court would probably strike down most finance laws as violating free speech. Also, how do we persuade the very people accepting this money to put limits on it?
Jmcg, what I am talking about is really a state issue with national consequences. Google the redistricting game and play the games, I think there are two out there. It will give you a completely different look at how our representative in the house are elected and why most of those seats are no longer competitive. You may ever be able to find a group in your state trying to address this problem.
Betty
I would suggest to all that one corrective system for legislators and another for the presidency be considered. The Supreme Court will not interfer if the legislative campaigning problem is resolved at the state level without federal dictates. See http://unity-usa.org/wiki/?title=Toejam_-_Intra-jurisdictional_Contribution_Limitation_System for an essay on how that might be done. The presidency is the only national office where campaign funding by the 'public funding' system is a managable consideration. As long as 'issue campaigning' , finanically independent of candidates, is not challeged the Supreme Court is not likely to be interested as a "free speech" issue.
Bill"for what we are together"
bill713.unity08@sbcglobal.net
At this point in the game, I agree with the naysayers...
We've got a functional Constitution at this point, and if we handed the responsibility of creating a new one to the current powers that be, they'd write in even more loopholes to play their little games, and we'd be screwed for good.
HOWEVER... when the proper ducks can be lined up, it would be good to do a little tweaking.
History buffs may recall the Napoleonic code was a vast improvement in the French legal system, which had a ripple effect legitimizing our own "experiment" in a government of laws, not of men. There are other examples where it has been shown that intelligent people can figure out problems, and then solve those problems at the roots... creating change and reorganization for the better, in a way which improves the course of world history.
One very relevant example... our Constitution was created as a solution to a problem. And our current problems are at the same level as those we faced in the 1770's. Hey, we've done this before!
BUT... before we just jump in... we need to get a consensus of what the problems are, and how we're going to fix them. That's kind of what this whole website is about.
We need to re-create something like the Randolph plan, which became the blueprint for our Constitution. And it seems like a no-brainer that we should stick to almost all of the "intent" of the founding fathers. In almost every way I can think of, the founders of our government had the right goals. Okay, so they left a few things unsaid which turned into loopholes which create the mess we have today... but overall, if we stick to their vision, with updated means and methods... we get the best of both worlds. I propose that what makes America great is the vision our government was founded on. And if we can compare that vision with how it played out, we can see where it went astray, and then tweak it specifically to keep to the original intent.
If we just opened the door to a new Constitutional Convention without a new Randolph plan, it would be a disaster. But if we GET a new Randolph plan together which outlines a system which WORKS... like the original one... and then we passionately pursue it as relentlessly as Madison, Hamilton, Washington, and Franklin, et. al. did... then we can do it. If we can do that, we should do it.
But there are a lot of ways we could screw this up a lot worse than it is right now... so let's do a little homework first.
Constitutional Convention is not an "end around" the branches of government. It is part of government. This tool has never been used before and I say the founders put it in the constitution for precisely this reason. Once the government becomes unresponsive to the people, this is the tool of genius at our disposal.
Use of this tool must be very narrow in focus. The best way to use this tool is to use it to outlaw special interest lobbying. Once we eliminate the corruptive environment, legislators will be more inclined to listen to constituents.
Do you realize how many IRS tax codes would become unconstitutional? This would close a lot of loopholes.
Phil
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Lets uncorrupt our government!
The Constitution and Bill of Rights Provide THe Grounds we need - An AGENDA That Can Use It To GAIN FOR THE PEOPLE : TRANSPARENCY, PERFORMANCE & ACCOUNBTABIlITY ... USING CANDIDATES WILLING TO ADOPT AND FIGHT FOR THE AGENDA .. AND A COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION THAT DEMANDS IT .. YOU WIN THE WHITE HOUSE AND TAME THE CONGRESS ..
pete(popo)evans
It doesn't matter how you change the constitution, except for areas of procedure. The City of Thieves will twist, contort, and outright defy it. The only one of the Bill of Rights intact is the 3rd, we don't quarter troops in our homes. A simple clause like the power to regulate interstate commerce, has evolved into regulating anything that as any effect on interstate commerce, and since everything has an effect, everything is regulated. Promote the general welfare has evolved into give the people whatever goodies they want, as long as it secures re-election.
If we had a supreme court that held the other 2 branches tightly to the Constitution we have, we would need no change. The supreme court is the bugaboo, with life appointment essentially granting nobility to the justices. The other 2 branches are set up to monitor each other, but the judiciary, once empaneled, has no oversight. There is no veto, no impeachment, no election, no restraint or repercussion of any kind short of murder. There have been courts throughout our history that have morphed the constitution to suit their political desires, but the practice has accelerated geometrically in the last 100 years. Now, the actions of gov't are unconsciously approved, with an occasional rejection to remind us they are in control.
All it would take is 5 literate justices with the will and the ethical, moral fiber to put a bit in the gov't's mouth. In other words, impossible.
I have no idea how best to hold the court accountable. Perhaps a review like many states have. Every 2,4,6,8 years, 3 of the justice's names put on the ballot for retention or rejection. But since the courts could simply reject such an amendment, much like they approved the 16th without proper ratification, Im afraid we're stuck.
If the people are not rational enuf to have the states call a new constitutional convention, the republic is history anyway.