Dec 4, 2011 AD
Plan for
American Revival
Term limits are suggested to fix problems, but that then presents its own set of problems. If you are term limited, then you are a lame duck, and lame duck politicians are the point where we get our WORST abuse. Think Obama is bad now, wait until he doesn't have to worry about re-election. Remember Bush's second term?
The Political Parties are supposed to be created to present someone to us whom they have vetted and so whom we can trust. The logic is that they want to preserve their good name and so will not select someone who makes them look bad. But alas, reality strikes -- we cannot trust the political parties anymore either and they know we will not abandon them, least the "other side" will get into office.
Think about the two least corrupted parts of the feds and it's a contradictory tale.
House Representatives
needed: more members, more elections
The House is argumentatively less corrupt than either the Senate or the Presidency even though we hardly pay attention to House races.
Logic dictates that evil can slip in unnoticed in the House, where the MSM is not being a watchdog.
So why less corruption?
It may very well be for the threat of having to run for reelection every two years and wanting to keep their jobs and power more than allowing themselves to be bribed. Being in larger numbers, the amount of money available to bribe has to be spread around too much to make it worthwhile for either party.
For the House then, we need more frequent elections and more House members.
First, if we had elections every year for our representative, then cost of elections come down by 1/2, because campaign contributions would no longer collect over a 2 year time frame. I know, total cost is the same and could even increase, but the cost to overthrow an incumbent in any particular year is greatly reduced.
Second, each House representative used to represent far fewer citizens. This needs to be reversed so we can have a much better chance of knowing our representative. Again, making it easier to overthrow a non-performing incumbent.
SCOTUS
On the other hand, we may not like Supreme Court cases, but we rarely see corruption in the SCOTUS justices and they have the office for the rest of their lives. Perhaps they want a historic legacy and have a longer term view.
Many of the problems in getting the wrong justices on the bench would be fixed by simply fixing the Senate who confirms them into office.
Senate
A real snake pit
We have to admit that the 17th Amendment has been a complete disaster.
But it did come into being for a reason. Those fundamental problems also need to be fixed.
1) Repeal the 17th so the States again have a checks and balance on the power of the Federal government
2) Prohibit State legislators from delegating their US Senate appointment powers to anyone else, such as some States were doing when they allowed regular citizens to vote for the Senator, leading to the 17th where all States were forced to delegate their powers.
3) Increase each State's allotment of US Senators to 3.
4) Have the majority vote of the State become the State's one vote. i.e. best 2 out of 3 is the vote of the State. This way if a bad apple made it to the US Senate, his vote is always nullified by the votes of the other two. Should the State appoint a bad Senator, warning is raised to correct the situation in time for the next appointment.
5) Reduce the time in office by 1/2, or to only 3 years per term from the current 6 years. As with the House, the Senators become more answerable to the State who appointed them which reduces the tendency to take bribes.
6) Each year the State legislator appoints one new Senator, all 3 re-appointed over 3 years. This allows more input from current State legislators as well as distributing the appointments out across more legislators.
The President
Finally for the Presidency, the nation comes to a stop every 4 years for 2 years of campaigning and we still cannot figure out the guy we selected.
Even when it is time for him to be re-elected, four years after he has been running the country, we still find we don't know the guy.
Perhaps we need to make the term of President unlimited as we do our SCOTUS justices, with the caveat that responsibility for impeachment proceedings are given over to the 50 States on mere disapproval of the way he runs the country, and if impeached, then a general election is held to select a new President from a list of candidates our State legislators give us. Each State selects one individual and from the 50 candidates, 10 are selected by the States to run in the general election. Some States will select Democrats, some will select Republicans. We will select the final man. Perhaps the current President would be automatically on the voting list to give the people the opportunity to override the States.
This becomes a power sharing between the States and the people in the executive branch of government, as we used to have in the legislative branch with the House and the Senate before 1913. This is a system of "a vote of no confidence" as England has today.
Article located at:
http://www.thechristiansolution.com/doc2011/500_AmericanRevival.html
