Congressional and legislative redistricting is here and a critical game of Three Card Monty in your state and a state near you has begun.  The outcome of the redistricting will set the political landscape for the next ten years.  If the progressive left has their way, they will with great skill and in less than subtle ways and behind the scenes manipulate and maneuver the mapping to creating a myriad of progressive districts and then turn around and use the mapping data to achieve victory not only in the progressive districts, but also in the remaining balanced districts.

Let's use Arizona as an example.  In Arizona the legislature does not do congressional or state legislative districts, rather it is left to an independent redistricting commission, established under a state constitutional amendment.  Sounds great, an independent group drawing "let the chips fall where they may" districts.  Well, if you had put money on this, then you would have hit "snake eyes" and lost.

The way it works, is in the five person commission, two of each Democrats and Republicans, are appointed by the leadership in the legislature.  Then the four commissioners agree on one independent, whether it be a lower case or upper case "I".  They choose from a pool of independent applicants who have completed a twenty plus questionnaire.  The problem is the vetting of these independents leaves something on the table.

Arizona's independent, who also chairs the commission, with the power of a chair to set an agenda, may not be an independent political thinker after all.  Just because someone has an "I" after their name does not make them independent.  Arizona's chair has repeatedly voted with the Democrats and has made choices that only a dyed in the wool progressive would make.  This should make one wonder, "is this person an independent?"  Did I tell you that this chair did not indicate to anyone on her application that the chair's spouse was a treasurer of a state office democratic candidate in the last election.  To qualify as an independent, one must only be a registered independent for three years.

Well this chair was the deciding vote to choose a mapping company, that is not a primarily mapping company.  The company, Strategic Telemetry, is a Washington, D.C. based company that was the target mapping company for President Obama's campaign in 2008.  It is currently working for the democrats in the use of technology to aid in the Wisconsin recall of Republicans.  The president of this company Ken Strasma, was quoted as getting involved in the Bloomberg mayoral campaign in New York specifically because Bloomberg is a progressive.  For those who have been living in a cave without benefit of newspapers, radio, or TV; progressives are another name for very left wing liberals.  They are big central government and anti-free market types, and actually a minority ion this country.  When you review the website for this company be sure to click on the "press" tab - it is eye opening.

It appears that the chair of the commission is decidedly left and not independent, or she would not have voted for the most expensive and progressive of all the mapping company candidates, despite being told what Strategic Telemetry was all about.

It is also clear that the current, independent, chair may have misled the selection committee that reviewed the pool of independent candidates.  Her answers to two and maybe three questions on her application are very suspect.  Has the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission been silently hijacked by progressives in disguise? If this company is allowed to map the districts, it will also possess the "inside baseball" material that will allow them to target each precinct to help progressives win where they would not ordinarily have won, thus disenfranchising a host of Arizona voters.  All from what may be a progressive wolf in sheep's clothing.  But there is more to this "Broken Government".

What can be done to fix this, without going to court and wait years for a solution  or not?  Well the Arizona Constitution in article 4 calls for the following:

After having been served written notice and provided with an opportunity for a response, a member of the independent redistricting commission may be removed by the governor, with the concurrence of two-thirds of the senate, for substantial neglect of duty, gross misconduct in office, or inability to discharge the duties of office.

Right now it is clear that two thirds of the Senate will support the Governor.  However, I have heard from multiple sources that the Governor sees no upside for her own interests in getting involved.  It seems that Governor Brewer, would just let this matter be taken up by the courts and at great expense to the state; wait four years, and read the results in the paper, rather than acting to protect her state from a progressive hijacking of her state legislature and her congressional districts.

This is not leadership, but rather abdication and uncaring about the people of Arizona.  I have been told by callers to the governor's office that they were advised that this is not a matter for the Governor, but rather a matter for the courts; the Arizona Constitution states differently.  Well, if this is true, the people of Arizona have either one feckless governor or one not very bright governor.  Only time and public pressure will tell.

Are our school districts/systems, run by educated education professionals, spending your money wisely?  Has the U.S. Department of Education had a positive impact on our kids?  Has too much money gone to support the teachers' unions' demands, and bigger government; has too little information gone into the area between the ears of our kids? You be the judge.







 

Many thanks to the brilliant folks at the Cato Institute for the work they have done on so many important issues.  This work was done by Andrew J. Coulson and the complete Cato article can be found at President to Call for Big New Ed. Spending Here’s a Look at How that’s Worked in the Past.  Charts republished with the permission of the Cato Institute.

Let's start with the U.S. Department of Education, elevated from the Office of Education in 1979.  The Department's website  states "The Department's mission is to serve America's students— to  by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access."  How is this working for you?

It has a $67 Billion budget, over 4,000 employees and distributes another $100 Billion in education support.  By the way, this $167 Billion is derived from tax revenue taken from tax payers in the fifty states and territories.  If this money is left in the states, the states can then collect and use this money as they see fit and not as directed by educators with a progressive bent on how our children should learn.  There are almost 60 million students enrolled in K-12 education in this country.  The elimination of the Department of Education's operating budget would ensure another $1,100 per student in education funding.  Would you contribute to a charity that had a 40% overhead rate as does the Department of Education?  How much of your district's budget is spent on U.S. Department of Education compliance?  Add these compliance expenses to the overhead and the amount freed up for students climbs even higher.

The states do not need the U.S. Department of Education; the states' PhD's are just as smart as the PhD's at the Department of Education.  The department has miserably failed its mission because we have an abysmal return on our Federal investment and a relatively zero increase in student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness, as is the mission since 1979.  There is no education excellence in our children.  We need to shut it down and despite numerous tweaks by Congress it is an abject failure and a gargantuan waste of money.

Is money the answer in itself - No!  Much of the money provided to the students has gone to support the teacher unions' contracts.  We cannot remove a bad teacher, we cannot improve work rules, and the unions even call the shots on how our children are prepared for the future.  Unless you consider socialist propaganda prepared, they are simply not prepared for the future.  We are not making widgets here; these children are the nation's greatest resource.  They are not a cog in the wheel of a union contract.  The unions have benefited financially from favorable union contracts; have the children benefited?  If you think so, look at the charts again.  Are there good teachers?  Yes of course.  Are these good teachers allowed to innovate, no!

Stop throwing money at the problem and change the paradigm.  We need to focus heavily on English, Math, Sciences, History, and Social Studies above all else.  Yes art and music and others have their place, but the Titanic is sinking, so let's not rearrange the deck chairs.  First we need a good hard look at the content of the books and then we need to actually teach our kids that passing or failing is important in life.  The real world requires critical thinking skills and believe it or not in non-government or non-academic careers success matters, so why not truly prepare our kids for the future.

Parents who care need to pressure their school boards to become totally transparent.  Put all budgets and salaries online.  Put the progress of each class online.  We need to measure our teachers by testing their classes at the start of the semester/school year and then again at the end of the semester/school year to judge whether the teacher has adequately promoted student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness. Since our children are important and our future lifeblood, we need to compensate our teachers based on quality control.  If they actually deliver student achievement  and prepare these kids for the global economy - pay them well.  General Electric became very successful after Jack Welch instituted a policy that each year the bottom 10% of managers were let go and replaced by new hires - remember this is the real world.  Why shouldn't this real world accountability be applied to those entrusted to prepare our to children succeed for themselves and for this country?

 

 

Over the last 100 years and more specifically throughout the last 50 years progressives have infiltrated our media, unions as progressive socialists, universities under the protection of tenure, K through 12 school systems via the socialist teachers' unions and tenure, judiciary, and a host of other key areas of society, especially the U.S. Congress.

Of little note was the infiltration of our state legislatures, with 49 separate houses (Nebraska has only one), by progressive candidates masquerading as moderate and liberal Democrats and Republicans, yes Republican in name only - RINO.  After the election of 2008 and the supreme take over of the U.S. Senate and the House, along with the White House, by the progressive socialists of America, now known as the Democratic party, these folks got pretty smug.  Nancy Pelosi truly thought she could ram unpopular legislation through the Congress and did just that.  President Barack Obama, stocked the executive branch with one communist or communist sympathizer after another to begin his quest for one branch rule of this nation,with the help of his union and other friends (by the way, who is on the other end of his Blackberry).  The new Congress promptly accommodated him by abdicating its role of law making to the executive branch.

These folks knew that in 2010, a limited number of Senate seats were up for election and that the way congressional districts have been defined by federal law a host of safe seats existed, insuring that the core progressive faithfull, many ranking members of committees, would be reelected, and they were.  Despite the historic turnover of Congress, Pelosi kept her role as the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Well surprise, the progressive playbook had a flaw.  It did not properly consider the role of the state legislatures.  2010 meant that nearly 700 democrat and democrat progressives were thrown out and replaced by Republicans, conservative Republicans to boot.  27 states currently have both houses controlled by Republicans.  Many more states have at least one branch and the executive branch controlled by Republicans with the other branch holding only a tiny majority for democrats.  Wisconsin replaced a progressive Democrat controlled Senate, Assembly, and Executive Branch with Republicans.

The movements bubbling up from the states offering a host of federal government push back are building steam.  These include efforts for state driven balanced budget, debt ceiling, nullification, and general states rights U.S. Constitutional Amendments.  A reassertion of the 10th Amendment, herculean efforts to stop Obama-care, reclaim land seized by the federal government, anti-public union give-aways, and a host of other anti-federal government legislation and lawsuits.

The war between traditional individual liberty, free market, limited government believers - the Tea Party types, and the progressive socialists who despise our Constitution and equal justice system - everyone has an opportunity not a promise to succeed way of life - is not over, but of late the progressives have been seriously outflanked.

The following is an excerpt from the book-blog "U.S. Constitution: "Sine Die".  It sets up what is now actually happening.  The list of executive branch regulations is growing exponentially and is heaping great cost on the fragile U.S. economy at a time when we need less regulation and lower cost to survive.

"Congress Abdicates Its Lawmaking Power"

In 1913, the progressive socialists destroyed the vertical checks and balance between the States and the federal government, with the seventeenth amendment.  Just as in 1913 with the action against the States, today, a critical milestone on the path to a socialist government and economy for the progressives was to destroy the horizontal checks and balance and the separation of powers among the branches of the federal government.  This has clearly picked up pace in the last eighteen months, with the progressive socialists chairing just about every committee in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.  With the extreme progressive socialist leadership of Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reed in the Senate, the progressives enabled the passage of two major bills with no one given time to read the bills – yet like lemmings fellow progressives and liberals voted for; a health care bill; and a financial regulation bill.  Neither bill was truly about health care or financial regulation.  These bills were all about progressives taking over the economy and collapsing the separation of powers in the federal government.

These bills, combined, create numerous new federal agencies and thousands of rules to be written by executive branch and independent agency bureaucrats appointed by the Executive Branch – not by Congress.  Bureaucrat written rules will now carry the force of law.  These new and existing executive branch and independent agencies are empowered to write unchecked regulations – they have been empowered to write a massive amount of invasive law.  Essentially the progressives in Congress just transferred, by law, their Constitutional legislative authority to the Executive Branch and to independent agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, also known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  The Executive Branch and independent agencies now have the capability of writing law unchecked by your elected representatives and to selectively enforce existing law to control the future of this nation.

The horizontal balance brought about by the separation of powers and the checks and balances among the branches of the federal government are gone.  The vertical check on the federal government by the States is gone.  The executive branch and the CFPB are now able to control all aspects of our financial transactions, capital markets, and our health.  They will grow more powerful in 2012 as they write more new law.  The President and his appointee at the CFPB can now actually penalize one or more businesses or industries and even seize companies it considers a threat to our economy, without due process.  Where is the freedom from seizure found in the Bill of Rights?  As the new central government grows, our individual liberty will continue to shrivel until it is gone.

The progressives will now pick up the pace on their march to move us to failed socialism for the sake of power and world wealth redistribution.  The executive branch can and will engineer events that will continue to move our economy to total collapse and thus with a groundswell of despair from suffering citizens, the public will readily accept a totalitarian government’s help and an abandonment of what remains of the Constitution.  This will be the end game of the progressives and it is around the corner.  History repeats itself and if you look at how totalitarian government comes into power, you will find that it is by promising suffering citizens a bright future - “if you will just follow us”.  First, however, the progressives need to create the suffering and this is well underway.  Our economy is at a crossroads – continue the Obama and friends progressive socialist prescription, and they will have achieved this goal of extreme suffering.   Shall we rename this once great nation “The National Socialists of America” or “The EBCG of America” – “The Executive Branch Central Government of America”?-

It the last few months the Obama administration has enacted regulations:

• severely limiting oil drilling in this country,


• knocking on the door to impose a version of "Card Check",


• allowing an expansion of the use and volume of ethanol in a gallon of gas, despite its disruption of the food supply, increasing food prices, and being deterious to the engines it powers,


• using the EPA to further regulate the biomass industry and requiring expensive controls on power company and industry emissions, raising energy costs when this country needs to seek cheaper energy to restart our manufacturing base,


• adding to consumer product safety, and ear safety regulation and cost,


• reinterpreting the laws on illegal immigration to minimize deportation on non-criminal illegal immigrants,


• implementing "Net Neutrality" is the first step of taking over the internet,


• opening up the opportunities for trial lawyers to sue the meat and the poultry industries, again adding to prices,


• providing tax breaks for trial attorneys,


• and instituting onerous and costly heavy truck fuel economy standards.

(Source: The American Spectator, December 2011/January 2011, pages 23 through 25)

So many of these federal regulations have been enacted over the overt objections of Congress, it is safe to say that we have lost our federal republic form of government.  We have gone from limited power with the states still in charge to unlimited power centered in the executive branch with a feckless Congress and powerless states.  This must change or we are doomed to a new form of government, with central planning at the executive branch, a continued weak economy, people dependent on the state, and loss of individual freedom in the free market: Socialism.

Updated: November 11, 2010

It is clear that our country is in serious trouble due to debt and our economy.  It is also clear that this trouble did not occur overnight.  It took years of sick misguided nurturing to get us where we are today;  at a fork in the national path.  We must decide which direction to take.

Do we head down the pike of progressivism with a European like socialism as our government?  Or do we slam on the brakes and make a hard direction change to take the right fork?  Before we discuss that choice, we should analyze what brought us to this juncture.  Yes, we can blame the current or the previous administrations – both have had a hand in our potential demise.  I prefer to start by analyzing Congress and the root cause that has slowly but steadily taken this nation to this precipice.

Did you know that since there are no term limits in Congress that it has become a club for some members?  Those members who quickly learn how to play the special interest game and how to amass money and power have longevity.  The more you learn how to manipulate the system and the perks of seniority, the more you can protect yourself against challengers and be reelected again and again.  The lack of term limits has permitted twenty five percent of our Senate to be in office more than three terms – more than eighteen years.

It gets better.  We have senators serving for as much as fifty-one years.  Robert Byrd, before he died, was in his ninth term and at ninety two years of age is in his fifty-first year – he was also third in line to be President of the United States after Nancy Pelosi.  This makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

Robert Byrd is not alone.  Arlen Specter, not voted out, is eighty and was seeking his fifth term.  He is in his 29th year – isn’t that enough?  Other career politicians deeply planted in the Senate, who by the end of this year will have served more than any one person should, are:

Richard Shelby-AL – 23 (years)

John McCain-AZ – 23

Chris Dodd-CT (at least he is retiring) – 29

Joe Lieberman-CT – 21

Daniel Inouye-HI – 47

Daniel Akaka-HI – 19

Richard Lugar-IN – 33

Chuck Grassley-IA – 29

Tom Harkin-IA – 25

Mitch McConnell-KY – 25

Barbara Mikulski-MD - 23

John Kerry-MA – 25

Carl Levin-MI – 31

Thad Cochran-MS – 31

Kit Bond-MO - 23

Max Baucus=MT – 31

Harry Reid-NV – 23

Jeff Bingaman-NM – 27

Kent Conrad-ND – 23

Orrin Hatch-UT – 33

Patrick Leahy-VT – 35

Jay Rockefeller-WV – 25

Herbert Kohl-WI – 21

Do these people have a stake in the derailing of this nation?  Are they partially responsible for the catastrophic mess we are in?  How many votes have they cast that have put us right where we are?

In the House of Representatives where the term is two years (the Senate is six years), we have just as much carnage.  Prior to the election, there were forty-one members serving 25 or more years.  This includes members with thirty, forty, and yes, even fifty years of service.

When you consider that Senators, for the most part, had service in the House of Representatives before joining the Senate, we have an absolute power corrupts situation in our Congress.  These career politicians of the Senate serving upwards of forty years in the Congress, when you combine service in both houses, and the career two year term politicians of the House of Representatives are responsible for the economic failure and the disregard of our Constitution with years of seemingly unconstitutional and government intrusion legislation.

We need fresh representation in both houses of Congress, because our current representatives in the Senate and the House have an abysmal track record, often only serving themselves and not the nation.  They have been there too long to be in touch with the electorate.  This, to any sane person, is the root cause of our demise.

Now, back to that fork in the road.  I choose the path of new leadership in both houses of Congress, a new administration, and substantially less government intrusion into our markets and our lives. How about you?

The election of 2010 was a start, but we still have too many entrenched career House and Senate politicians, brought about by gerry mandering safe districts.

At the founding of our country, we had thirteen sovereign states come together and create a new federal government.  These sovereign states were desirous of building a common defense, improving trade amongs themselves and with foreign nations.  The states held that a representative form of government was needed and that a House of Representatives, similar to the lower or “people's” house of England, the House of Commons, was needed to ensure that the peoples wishes were heard at the new federal level.

However, these states wished to only cede limited power to this federal government.  They knew that a local form of government was best for local issues and that the federal government was only necessary to handle the larger defense and international issues.   These states knew that they would be sharing power with the people under this new federal arrangement.  The intent was for both the people and the states to remain masters of the new federal government.

To accomplish this new limited power arrangement, the founders, representing the states, created a senate.  Under this arrangement the senators would be elected to their federal senate position by the legislatures of the “states united” for a six year period.  The founders placed some key controls in the new constitution to insure that the federal government could not usurp the states and take on un-ceded power, which could and would make the states subordinate to the federal government.

The new senate was given the sole right to try all impeachments, approve treaties, and approve the appointment of ambassadors, public ministers, and consuls (counselors to the president), Supreme Court and inferior court appointments, and officers of the federal government, all with a two thirds approval.

This new senate was specifically provided these controls over the federal government to ensure that the power ceded to the federal government remained limited.  Beyond these specific controls over the president and the federal government, the founders knew that having senators appointed by and representing the respective states would insure that the federal government answered to the states and would remain subservient to these states.

For added measure the founders, more correctly the early Congress and the States, added an amendment in the Bill of Rights.  Number ten states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This power sharing arrangement worked very well from 1787 through 1912 – 126 years.  It was not until a populist progressive movement got a headwind from the Hearst newspapers around the country that a push for the people to directly elect their senators became a seemingly correct thing to do in a democracy.  Remember, we are a republic and that Randolph Hearst and the progressives stirred up public opinion to believe that there was no reason why in a democracy the people should not directly elect the senate.

The real motive was to have the Hearst publications, at that time found in most states, drive public opinion to select Senators suitable to Randolph Hearst and the progressives – the goal was to enlarge the federal government and to remove the necessary control of the states.

The seventeenth amendment was ratified in 1913, thus ending the careful plans of the founders to ensure balance between the states and the federal government through power sharing.  Today, Senators are subject to the will and money of lobbyists, rather than the will of their state.  Some Senators have created a power base so strong that they have been in office for more than forty years.

If you really want to take back your government, then you must repeal this ill advised amendment, stampeded through ratification by, Big Government Progressives (read “What The Progressives Want”) holding public office at that time and most importantly by the highly influential Randolph Hearst and his powerful national dailies.

Of the people, by the people, and for the people – apparently not!  When you look at the polls and look behind them you see an electorate (democrat, republican, libertarian, etc.) that is in such discontent, even spitting angry, over the politics and governance of this country.  Neither major party is held in high regard as both parties have placed party and special interests above country.

Look inside the Democratic Party, and you will find two very distinct parties.  The party has old line democrats who have not yet realized that their party has been taken over by left wing radicals – well there are so many “radicals” that perhaps we cannot call them radicals any longer.  Radical thinking is no longer radical when the number of proponents reaches a critical mass, and it has.  It is a movement of such strength that it can topple our Republic.

These radicals are the socialist, wealth, and health care re-distribution advocates.  Their climate change philosophy is centered on America literally paying monetary tribute to the less developed nations of the world. They claim we owe these underdeveloped nations our wealth since we have been successful and have destroyed the atmosphere with carbon dioxide –stuff plants and trees love.  This is the core driver of this crisis of climate change or global warming.

If we were to institute all the changes the climate change supporters want, we would see worldwide abject poverty grow and widespread food shortages.  The result will be that we will only affect man made climate change by about 1% in the next 100 years.  (This statement can be supported by many prominent scientists and economists, but this writing is not the place for this debate.  If you must digress into this argument then view John Stossel's information on the topic or do your own research.) As we have recently seen with the exposed emails of leading climate change scientists, Jones (the UN's key scientist for the IPCC) and Mann, among others, climate change is certainly not settled science and their manipulation of the data findings, destruction of the raw data, and their overt attempt to squelch professional, educated dissent makes this a political wealth distribution gambit and not science.

Climate change is a well disguised and well planned assault on our Republic and the free market system.  The current populist movement is fermented by those who seek national wealth redistribution and to expunge capitalism, because capitalism is supposedly a detriment to the people of the world.  This is also driven by these former radicals, now just far left believers.  Our President and many in Congress are drivers of this movement.

Capitalism is not the problem. The problem facing our Republic is the marriage of government and big business that enhances the corporate profit motive – largess for the elites at all cost is the result of this unholy alliance.  The relationship between our federal government and Goldman Sachs is almost incestuous.  The number of government officials in and around the White House and Treasury, who were Goldman Sachs executives, is staggering   - true under both the Obama and Bush administrations.  Why has our government become wed to these corporations?

For the government, mostly made up of democrats, this means that small business enterprise can be squeezed out and unions supporting the democrats will prosper.  Unions do not do well when small business creates 70 plus percent of the jobs in this country.  When the government eliminates small business as a major jobs grower, the government will grow, foster more pro democrat union memberships, and the democrats will have a built in support system to simply stay in power.  Take a look at the government payrolls.  The salaries of government workers average nearly double those of the private sector.  Remember this is tax payer money being paid in large grants to those who economically produce nothing for the country.  The nature of government work is to manage government and not to produce goods and services.

For corporations this means government capital availability and big profits.  This also means special interests rule Congress and no longer is “What is good for the nation” the top agenda item.   “What is good for the small echelon of corporate elites” moves to the top of the Congressional legislative calendar.  This means that Congress no longer represents the people – can we say it is official now?– that the goal of Congress is to make more than half the nation beholden to the Democratic Party and to raise money from the corporate elites.  We are seeing a government coup occur center stage as we look on.  The Congress through the last stimulus bill, omnibus bill, and now the health care bills has written enough empowerment to bureaucratic regulators and entitlements for the tax takers of America that what has been done, might never be undone.  Government bureaucrats continue to be given the ability to make law, without Congress’ approval and the requisite signature of the President.  Entitlements are targeted to those who pay little or no taxes, but have a vote.  Current decisions by our government, mostly against the growth of small business, are focused on keeping the number of tax takers at a voting majority level and yes, keeping them beholden to the Democrats.

By now you are thinking this writer is just bashing the Democrats.  Well, it is the Republican’s turn.  Two Congresses ago, the Republicans attempted the same un-American plan that the Democrats are carrying out with perfection, they just did not know how to do it well.  Look through the ranks of the Republican Party leadership and you will find a host of Congressman and Senators who also regularly put party ahead of country.  The problem is that too many Republicans are dependent on democrat voters and special interest money – they may wear different uniforms in the Congress, but they sell their souls to the same devil.  No longer is it “Damn Yankee!” – it’s now “Damn American!”  The powerful moneyed special interests are Lola and “What Lola wants Lola gets.”  Climate change just serves to make them richer.

How did we get here?  Well the Constitution has and had a number of protections against this coup that is taking place, but sadly some powers are lost and new ones need to be enacted.  First, the states, you know, those sovereign powers that created the United States Government in 1787 and actually super cede the Federal Government under the Constitution in Article 1, Section 8 and the Tenth Amendment, need to push for a repeal of the 17^th amendment.

The Founders looking for a way for the states to control a centralized Federal Government created a control rod for the states, called the Senate.  Senators were appointed by the states' legislatures and not directly elected by the people.  This made the Senators accountable only to the states’ legislatures and governors.  The states, via the Senate, were given the power to provide advice and consent on appointees, including judicial, and to ratify treaties with two thirds of the Senate voting in the affirmative.  Most importantly, the states through the Senate were given the power to keep the House of Representatives in check and continue the rights which their sovereignty brought them.

The 17^th amendment removed the Senate as an arm of the states in 1913.  This was a crucial mistake by the Congress and the states ratifying the amendment.  Senators were now subject to the money and power of specials interests, instead of the one special interest they represented – their state.

What if this “angry electorate” votes out the incumbents?  Will this change the special interests’ impact?  Will the elite corporate echelon disappear? No! They will just have new meat to work with, new people to make rich.  Members of Congress have learned that entry into the club of representative government means that they can retire rich, give us our own money to buy votes, and provide for a cushy retirement and a wonderful lifetime medical plan.

Unless and until we successfully remove the money and largess of riches bestowed on our lawmakers nothing will change.  We are told that term limits already exist – called voting for the other guy.  Well, sitting Representatives have the decked stacked in campaign contributions and in name recognition, so that they are returned to Congress over 90% of the time.  Does this sound like to you what the Founders intended for the “People’s House”?

Our Republic founded in 1787 , with its “People’s House” and its upper house, the Senate, formerly representing the states, is in serious danger of morphing into what it was never intended to be, an inefficient socialist  economy and an oligarchy government with no real representation of the people.  It was intended to be the best form of government possible – not perfect, but better than all the rest.

Ill conceived changes to our Constitution and 21^st century forces from corporate greed and special interest money, never anticipated by the Founders, are seriously threatening this grand and successful form of republican government.

If you want to vote out the incumbents go ahead, but then unceasingly demand of your candidate a constitutional amendment that will:

• prohibit any campaign money received by a congressional candidate from any source other than a source predominantly domiciled in the candidate’s district;


• prohibit all earmarks, limiting all appropriations to openly debated expenditures;


• prohibit a congressional representative from accepting gift funds or in-kind services  from any person or organization, until five years after leaving office;


• repeal the 17^th amendment;


• establish Congressional term limits at three terms;


• prohibit retirement from the House; and


• prohibit Congressional medical benefits one year after leaving office.

If your candidate commits to this amendment, then vote him or her in, otherwise find and support a candidate who will.