Six Georgia legislators have introduced HR 273, which asks Congress to repeal the 17th Amendment. The 17th Amendment, which went into effect in 1914, created popular elections for U.S. Senators. Before the 17th Amendment, state legislators chose U.S. Senators.
The six sponsors are Representatives Buzz Brockaway, Kevin Cooke, Mike Dudgeon, Delvis Dutton, Josh Clark, and Dustin Hightower.
TOTAL corruption in the State legislatures from the Civil War to the 17th Amdt about appointing Senators.
ABOLISH the minority rule gerrymander U.S.A. Senate.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
Wasn’t former Senator Zell Miller from Georgia an advocate of this? Anyway, hope these guy aren’t holding their breath. A better approach which CAN BE accomplished completely at the state level is to enact a state legislative district-based election for U.S. Senate. Sort of an electoral college at the state level. This would almost mimic the General Assembly appointment votes for U.S. Senators as follows:
U.S. Senate candidates would be awarded one point for each of the 180 Georgia state House of Representatives districts won, and one point for each of the 56 Georgia state Senate district won. Whichever candidate wins them most total districts (119 or more for a majority) gets the federal nomination. Ties either broken by statewide popular vote or the governor.
In West Virginia, the number needed would be 68 points for the majority. The advantage of such a system is that it would require candidates to campaign all over the state, not just in urban areas. YOUR THOUGHTS?
Some conservatives think that if we have Senators elected by state legislatures, this will create a check on federal power.
In 1909, the Senate, composed of members elected by state legislatures, voted 77 to 0 in favor of the 16th Amendment, to allow the federal government to tax incomes. In 1913, the Senate, composed of members elected by legislatures, passed the income tax into law, and created the Federal Reserve System.
In 1914, the Senate, composed of members elected by state legislatures, passed the Harrison Federal Narcotics Act.
So much for that illustion!
What next? Repeal the 13th and 14th Ammendments? Then we can have only property owners vote and bring back slavery.
The idea of repealing the 17th amendment is of course a disingenous non-starter. Abolishing states themselves has more merit. The notion that state legislators have the welfare of the state in mind when they have exclusively the votes to elect federal senators is hardcore stupid. They’re pols who’ll trade their vote. Been there, done that. Regular citizens, with the austrailin ballot, get to decide what is at stake. Many of them are transient between state borders thankfully. Some of them abhor provincialism.
These legacy party duds are predictably looking in the wrong direction. They should instead be be`proposing that one house of the state legislature be elected by PR with a low threshold-kind of like what they do in what is probably those legislators’ favorite country-Israel.
States seem pretty powerless now, but the ongoing unraveling of the US economy-do you really think it can saved by natural gas and fracking?-may cause a devolution of power away from DC. Assuming that happens the states will need a better talent pool than the corrupt legacy party hacks they have now.
Economic decline doesn’t tend to lead to decentralization of power – rather the reverse I think
“Economic decline doesn’t tend to lead to decentralization of power – rather the reverse I think”
Examples? I was thinking of political power in the British Empire/Commonwealth moving away from London after WWI ended with a bankrupt UK. Also, DC will certainly have less clout when the renminbi becomes the world’s reserve currency.
Recall that USA is an empire kept together by the glue of consumer capitalism:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-poison-is-antidote.html
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What is going to happen instead is some sort of civil war following the next major stage in the ongoing economic meltdown. How big it will be and how it will turn out, I don’t pretend to know. But it is as easily predictable as the wars in the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and the former British empire in India, because war is how diverse groups of people usually negotiate imperial divorce. The USA has not truly been a single nation since imperial rule was forcibly imposed upon the southern states in 1865, but the difference is that it is no longer possible to plausibly pretend that it is still one any longer.
It’s not a question of hate, race, or religion. It is the simple historical observation that the Kuomintang will not voluntarily live under the same governance as the Chinese communists. Pakistanis will not voluntarily live under the same governance as the Indians. Americans will not voluntarily live under the same governance as Mexicans, Chinese, Indians, or Arabs. They just will not do it, and to pretend otherwise isn’t so much foolish as insane.
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Whatever. At any rate, the American Empire can’t last much longer.
“after WWI ended with a bankrupt UK”
should have been WWII
The economic crisis in Spain has led to separatist rule
in Catalonia:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/world/europe/divisive-election-in-spains-catalonia-gives-win-to-separatist-parties.html?_r=0