Add no. 4: Overturn Baker v. Carr. The constitution guarantees a republican form of government. The court in Baker and related cases was to use the Equal Protection Clause to insist that the higher house in state legislatures be apportioned by population, rather then geographically (say, by County). This eviscerated the voice of rural counties, where the bulk of raw materials (read food) for the cities is produced. (They also by being smaller have the opportunity to actually know who the corrupt pol is. ) The result is Illinois (southern Illinois just ends all of their surplus income to Chicago and is pretty darned poor as a result) California, New York and sadly now Colorado.
This was one of the very few in the history of the SCOTUS in which it was argued twice because during deliberations the SCOTUS could not resolve its decision. There was a lot of last minute horse trading and bad faith.
Another such structural problem that we see in places like Fulton Cty Georgia is that the local electoral process is held in Dem hands and there is essentially one party with a direct interest in the election's outcome managing the election.
I was an Election Judge (glorified poll watcher for the Rs) for 30 years in Austin By God Texas in which Travis Couty was controlled completely by the Republicans and there was constant evidence of chicanery at the county level.
17 Amendment: The argument put forward to direct election was that states that were divided couldn't decide on who to send, and there were vacancies in the Senate. Would this in our current language be a feature, not a bug. If a legislature couldn't decide on an individual in the middle, to actually represent the State and not their party, well, maybe there should be a vacancy. Further, this makes passing any legislature harder (Affordable care, anyone?) This, particularly taken with the repeal of Baker v Car leads to a better representation (dare a say republican with a small "r") that the current system. Original was better, but progressives mucked it up for their own power.
Regarding Madison's quote regarding the states, I would say the same principle applies to counties within a State. Again, IL, CA. CO, NY would not be in the terrible shape they are in if Baker v Carr was overturned. A "... complicated check on legislation" within the state. In fact replace state with county in the quote.
The 17th Amendment is one of the many amendment's that cut away the Senate members from their home state and people they represented. The founders did not intend nor envision elected representatives living in the nation's capital year around only returning home to campaign and or raise money. That sort of disconnect is one of the many reasons we have what we have now. It also infects many who trap themselves inside the beltway with a sickness known as "week kneed Marxism" and all that this brings to the table for the way our government functions and sees itself.
Nailed it on Wickard v. Filburn. Very, very few Americans have ever heard of that case or it’s massively far-reaching effect on their daily lives. A farmer growing what on his own land for his own family was deemed interstate commerce. Therefore the government has the lawful authority to regulate everything you do under the commerce clause and the absurd premise that it is interstate commerce. It completely killed the 10th Amendment. Imagine a single case overturning a specific constitutional provision of the bill of rights. It was not only wrongly decided, it was obvious and utter bs on the day the Supreme Court deliberately nullified a major piece of the bill of rights.
Jeff, I'd add one to to your list of needed changes to head back to a sane republic. Expand the House of Representatives so that they have to be closer to the people they represent. Originally, the House was set at 1 representative per 30,000 individuals. That's obviously not workable today, but a significant expansion say to 1500 or 2000 from the current 454 would make it harder to enforce party line discipline and easier to build a range of coalitions on different issues. If we are going to have the Senate represent the states than the House needs to be more of the 'people's house' than it is today.
Maybe. Maybe not....I don't know what the right balance is. We might be able to do more with fewer if we overturn a lot of the bullcrap that's been passed since Woodrow Wilson.
I cannot reject that notion out of hand, but I wonder if having more fools in DC increases or decreases the probability of the House doing their basic work -- approving a budget by a date certain is an example.
The best work done in the House is done in committee.
The lobbyists are leading all Congressman except a few by the nose, so the number doesn’t matter. It just increases the complexity of an already broken system.
Since it’s always “follow the money” with the Congressman, time to remove the money influence of lobbyists. But I don’t know if it can be done.
Lobbyists are a dying power in DC as it relates to fundraising.
Marking and responsive fundraising is now the exclusive province of PACs, Super PACs, independent expenditure PACs, and combined fundraising agreements that allow this bunch to cooperate and then split the funds according to a waterfall agreement.
The lobbyists that are able to direct funds to the right PACs still wield power, but it is the PACs and what is important to them that is now the mother's milk of corrupt money politics.
You are correct, the money corruption needs a draconian overhaul. But we can’t even get the Congressman to stop with their insider trading! How shameful. I just remember all the financial disclosures and FINRA docs I had to fill out when I worked for a brokerage firm, and yet Congress gets away with everything. Even when they get caught, they only get a slap on the hands. PJ O’Rourke had the best description of Congress ever when he called it a “Parliament of Whores”.
One way to diminish that without eliminating an entirely is to require a 5-year buffer period before one can leave politics and become a registered lobbyist. Eventually they'll find a loophole around it but it will help for a few years
I still like my original idea of disallowing anyone with a law degree to run for elected office in alternate elections. They are great at negotiating contracts and drawing up paperwork and they are historically inept, inefficient and otherwise horrific at handling money, including other people's. Despite a reputation that may be contrary to this my experience has been that many are lacking in people skills and certainly in managerial skills... Okay, present company on this thread excluded. LOL
A key point to take into account is we need to be grateful for Donald Trump putting some conservatives on the Supreme Court and putting some sensibility to work at restoration of the concept of a Democratic Republic, instead of a pure "Democracy", which for some reason, many people seem to think was the way it was supposed to be and it's not.
The implementation of statewide government being more like a Democratic Republic as we were designed to be is a great idea and different states adhere to it with varying degrees of success. The results are pretty evident in respective States' budgets and where people move into and out of over any period of time, at least it appears that way off the top of my head and I haven't done the research.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, the 600 lb elephant in the room is the necessity to clean house in the FBI and the CIA and other alphabet agencies and to be able to do so without being assassinated, or even undermined, is a monumental undertaking, the likes of which maybe nobody alive is capable of doing without a hell of a powerful team behind them. Is it better to do a clean sweep rapidly or is it better to gradually weed out some of them? When 51 so-called intelligence experts can commit the most egregious fraud to manipulate the outcome of a Presidential election two days before the last Presidential debate of the last election, resulting in what will be viewed down the road as the most heinous breach of trust in the history of our nation politically, and then a corrupt career DC beltway politician blatantly lies about those laptops knowing damn well what the truth is, with evidence on those laptops that he knows the truth, we are in deeper s*** than most of us want to admit, because admittedly it is frightening.
Thankfully, we have a Supreme Court that at least appears to be less biased and more fact-based than any institution in the United States government. We best hope and pray it stays that way and that others choose to emulate their example.
If Congress is going to take on the role of writing better legislation and regulations it needs more funding to expand its scope of knowledge and minimize the role of the expertise of lobbyists. I'd also at least double the salary of congress people. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
Congress only writes and passes original legislation -- subject to the POTUS signature -- and it is the departments/agencies that write the enabling rules and regulations.
The problem has been two fold:
1. departments/agencies have for a century been overstepping the authority granted in legislation (this really happens when a Congress passes legislation under one Congress and the rules/regulations are written under another) and
2. whilst we had the Chevron case, they had the last word on the interpretation of their own regulations/rules.
Chevron seems so incredibly stupid in hindsight.
There is a modestly simple way to deal with this -- "sunset" all legislation and rules every 10 years.
Texas has the Sunset Act (Ch 325 of the Tx Govt Code) that requires a review of the entire department or agency -- not just the rules, the entire agency and all of its rules -- to insure it's doing what it is authorized to do or that an agency was not formed without authorization.
Texas' track record on eliminating agencies and forcing consolidation is quite good.
Not only sunset all legislation, after 5 years any law passed should be analyzed to see if it did what it was intended to do. If “law X” was intended to solve “problem Y” and did not do so, “law X” should be repealed.
Also, there needs to be a cost benefit analysis for all departments such as the EPA. It frosts me when we basically take care of a problem to a reasonable degree, but a department keeps on endlessly throwing more money at the problem.
Take clean air for example. The problem has basically been solved compared to the polluted air of the 1960’s. If we spent $1 trillion to clean up 98% of the problem, why are we spending another $1 trillion on the remaining 2%? Madness.
I understand that these departments do it for self justification and preservation, however, the root of the problem with the true believers pushing endless schemes is utopian thinking, man looking for perfection on Earth, where it doesn’t exist. We need to stamp out all utopian thinking in government.
Congress has and always had the power to be as prescriptive as it wants within legislation. They used Chevron to pass the buck too much to the agencies. The decision now puts more onus on Congress to be clearer in its legislation. Will it meet the challenge? And remember that Chevron was originally an R initiative. There’s no perfect way to develop and implement technical regulations. How will the new institutional incentives play out? TBD https://x.com/randyebarnett/status/1806702392278179848
Whilst agreeing with you in theory, the practice is that rules/regulations lag lawmaking by so much time that Congress loses interest, changes, or has cashed the check by the time the agencies and departments are done writing.
There is no connection between the party affiliation of the Congress when it legislated and the Deep State's inclinations when the rules/regs are written.
Any new President is advised to clear out as deep as he can in the Deep State dominated agencies and departments.
In places like CIA, DOJ, DHS, the Deep State just waits out the new admin.
Wikard v Filburn: This is interesting in light of the overturning of Chevron. According to the lead paint regulations promulgated by none other than Andrew Cuomo, if you hire a kid next door to sand more than 4 square feet of paint in your house without testing for lead, you are violating the commerce clause. And, due to Chevron was done with the clause "the Secretary shall decide..."
Of course lead was in all paint of a certain age -- banned in 1978 -- and there is really no evidence of occupational workers - painters - having any greater incidence of lead poisoning or other illness.
Sanded paint is a huge particle and is capable of being captured with the most basic clean up procedures and HVAC filtration.
You can buy a test kit at a big box store and know in 10 minutes whether you have lead paint. If you are buying a home from before 1978 odds are you have it.
Jeff, I 100% agree with your restorative remedies. Also, the Supreme Court’s not done yet. They have another conference tomorrow and cleanup orders to be released Tuesday. Among the cases distributed for conference are the Illinois “assault” weapon ban challenges. This act is doomed, but getting there takes a painfully long time. Perhaps they grant cert or GVR them Tuesday. Keep hope alive!
*repealing 16 makes non-profits compete for REAL dollars from funders. They would have to make the case for their missions AND compete with for-profit entities that might be delivering the same goods and services.
*repealing direct election of senators presents a climate more conducive to the rise of a third party. Win a couple of seats in a state legislature and you might have a "swing" vote to send a senator to DC. Win a few more seats in the legislature and you might actually send a candidate to DC. Do that in a couple of states and you have a swing vote in the Senate. Imagine the D's and R's having to fund winning in 100 legislature races in all fifty states every two years vs funding 33 popular US senate races every 2/4 years. We might also see an improvement in the quality of candidate in state houses.
I don't know how 17 ever passed. The rural states relinquished so much power.
If a Chesterton Fence is a fence with an unknown/unseen origin of importance what does one call a fence in the middle of a field with a detailed explanation of its purpose (Federalist 62) nailed upon it which is then torn down anyway?
The 17th passed on a rage of generated outrage over multiple incidents of senate seats being bought by paying off state legislators. Now we have senate seats being bought by billionaires swamping opponents with out of state campaign funds. Probably not an improvement.
So we fix the problem of the electors of a state legislative district electing a corruptible state legislator with a process whereby the electors of a state elect a corruptible US Senator AND concentrates power in the elites of metropolitan areas.
Thomas Sowell is right about so many things - including the understanding that few people are capable of second stage thinking.
The repetitive echo in corrupt politics has always been money. Today, it has gotten worse with PACs, Super PACS, IE PACS (independent expenditure), and the ability to fund raise cooperatively amongst them.
Of course, the candidate is not supposed to be coordinating -- cough, cough -- with any of these PACs.
Healthcare finance would also be impacted by repeal of 16. We would no longer need employers to manage the spending of pre-tax dollars allocated to a specific industry. Healthcare service providers would have to compete (aside from Medicare/Medicaid) for people’s general income fund rather than pre-allocated income.
One wonders how many other markets have been distorted by attempts to shield income from taxability and flooded inefficient firms with cash cows.
There were a lot of big wins for freedom in the past week or so, but I’m still deeply disappointed and angry over the SC punting on the free speech case over “standing”. I mean, what it tells me is that they don’t really think the First Amendment applies to the idea of restraining the government from blocking basic public debates over government policy. It’s disgusting to me they refused to rule on the merits of that question. If Dr. Battacharya didn’t have standing to sue Fauci and Collins on this question then nobody ever has standing to sue the government for blocking their free speech. It will be interesting to see how Alex Berenson’s similar case ends up.
The government is fat, dumb and slow. A perfect example of this is, when is the last time NASA has designed and launched one of their own rockets into space as compared to Elon Musk for example? It's not that the federal government can't do it. It just that there is no incentive for doing it. The feds have lost their edge and are more concerned with process and bureaucracy than getting stuff done.
The results of Chevron will not be clear for a while. Congress has always had the power to regulate, including correcting any administrative agency mistakes. And they continue to shirk their duties. If Congress continues to shirk all it does is move the venue for adjudication. To actually fix things Congress needs to write better legislation. In today's congress imagine Marge Green writing regulatory legislation. The USA is full of rent seeking NIMBYs. Hard to see that changing much no matter how things go.
Add no. 4: Overturn Baker v. Carr. The constitution guarantees a republican form of government. The court in Baker and related cases was to use the Equal Protection Clause to insist that the higher house in state legislatures be apportioned by population, rather then geographically (say, by County). This eviscerated the voice of rural counties, where the bulk of raw materials (read food) for the cities is produced. (They also by being smaller have the opportunity to actually know who the corrupt pol is. ) The result is Illinois (southern Illinois just ends all of their surplus income to Chicago and is pretty darned poor as a result) California, New York and sadly now Colorado.
A very wise lawyer educated me on Baker v Carr a few years ago. This is an excellent addition to the first three suggestions argued by Jeff.
thx! did not know that case. what year was it decided?
If you can trust: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Carr
It probably got us into the problem we’re in.
This was one of the very few in the history of the SCOTUS in which it was argued twice because during deliberations the SCOTUS could not resolve its decision. There was a lot of last minute horse trading and bad faith.
Another such structural problem that we see in places like Fulton Cty Georgia is that the local electoral process is held in Dem hands and there is essentially one party with a direct interest in the election's outcome managing the election.
I was an Election Judge (glorified poll watcher for the Rs) for 30 years in Austin By God Texas in which Travis Couty was controlled completely by the Republicans and there was constant evidence of chicanery at the county level.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
17 Amendment: The argument put forward to direct election was that states that were divided couldn't decide on who to send, and there were vacancies in the Senate. Would this in our current language be a feature, not a bug. If a legislature couldn't decide on an individual in the middle, to actually represent the State and not their party, well, maybe there should be a vacancy. Further, this makes passing any legislature harder (Affordable care, anyone?) This, particularly taken with the repeal of Baker v Car leads to a better representation (dare a say republican with a small "r") that the current system. Original was better, but progressives mucked it up for their own power.
Regarding Madison's quote regarding the states, I would say the same principle applies to counties within a State. Again, IL, CA. CO, NY would not be in the terrible shape they are in if Baker v Carr was overturned. A "... complicated check on legislation" within the state. In fact replace state with county in the quote.
The 17th Amendment is one of the many amendment's that cut away the Senate members from their home state and people they represented. The founders did not intend nor envision elected representatives living in the nation's capital year around only returning home to campaign and or raise money. That sort of disconnect is one of the many reasons we have what we have now. It also infects many who trap themselves inside the beltway with a sickness known as "week kneed Marxism" and all that this brings to the table for the way our government functions and sees itself.
Nailed it on Wickard v. Filburn. Very, very few Americans have ever heard of that case or it’s massively far-reaching effect on their daily lives. A farmer growing what on his own land for his own family was deemed interstate commerce. Therefore the government has the lawful authority to regulate everything you do under the commerce clause and the absurd premise that it is interstate commerce. It completely killed the 10th Amendment. Imagine a single case overturning a specific constitutional provision of the bill of rights. It was not only wrongly decided, it was obvious and utter bs on the day the Supreme Court deliberately nullified a major piece of the bill of rights.
I had not until Chevron was overturned and I read about it.
Jeff, I'd add one to to your list of needed changes to head back to a sane republic. Expand the House of Representatives so that they have to be closer to the people they represent. Originally, the House was set at 1 representative per 30,000 individuals. That's obviously not workable today, but a significant expansion say to 1500 or 2000 from the current 454 would make it harder to enforce party line discipline and easier to build a range of coalitions on different issues. If we are going to have the Senate represent the states than the House needs to be more of the 'people's house' than it is today.
Maybe. Maybe not....I don't know what the right balance is. We might be able to do more with fewer if we overturn a lot of the bullcrap that's been passed since Woodrow Wilson.
I cannot reject that notion out of hand, but I wonder if having more fools in DC increases or decreases the probability of the House doing their basic work -- approving a budget by a date certain is an example.
The best work done in the House is done in committee.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
The lobbyists are leading all Congressman except a few by the nose, so the number doesn’t matter. It just increases the complexity of an already broken system.
Since it’s always “follow the money” with the Congressman, time to remove the money influence of lobbyists. But I don’t know if it can be done.
Lobbyists are a dying power in DC as it relates to fundraising.
Marking and responsive fundraising is now the exclusive province of PACs, Super PACs, independent expenditure PACs, and combined fundraising agreements that allow this bunch to cooperate and then split the funds according to a waterfall agreement.
The lobbyists that are able to direct funds to the right PACs still wield power, but it is the PACs and what is important to them that is now the mother's milk of corrupt money politics.
I would welcome all money out of politics.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
I did not know that, thanks.
You are correct, the money corruption needs a draconian overhaul. But we can’t even get the Congressman to stop with their insider trading! How shameful. I just remember all the financial disclosures and FINRA docs I had to fill out when I worked for a brokerage firm, and yet Congress gets away with everything. Even when they get caught, they only get a slap on the hands. PJ O’Rourke had the best description of Congress ever when he called it a “Parliament of Whores”.
One way to diminish that without eliminating an entirely is to require a 5-year buffer period before one can leave politics and become a registered lobbyist. Eventually they'll find a loophole around it but it will help for a few years
I still like my original idea of disallowing anyone with a law degree to run for elected office in alternate elections. They are great at negotiating contracts and drawing up paperwork and they are historically inept, inefficient and otherwise horrific at handling money, including other people's. Despite a reputation that may be contrary to this my experience has been that many are lacking in people skills and certainly in managerial skills... Okay, present company on this thread excluded. LOL
A key point to take into account is we need to be grateful for Donald Trump putting some conservatives on the Supreme Court and putting some sensibility to work at restoration of the concept of a Democratic Republic, instead of a pure "Democracy", which for some reason, many people seem to think was the way it was supposed to be and it's not.
The implementation of statewide government being more like a Democratic Republic as we were designed to be is a great idea and different states adhere to it with varying degrees of success. The results are pretty evident in respective States' budgets and where people move into and out of over any period of time, at least it appears that way off the top of my head and I haven't done the research.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, the 600 lb elephant in the room is the necessity to clean house in the FBI and the CIA and other alphabet agencies and to be able to do so without being assassinated, or even undermined, is a monumental undertaking, the likes of which maybe nobody alive is capable of doing without a hell of a powerful team behind them. Is it better to do a clean sweep rapidly or is it better to gradually weed out some of them? When 51 so-called intelligence experts can commit the most egregious fraud to manipulate the outcome of a Presidential election two days before the last Presidential debate of the last election, resulting in what will be viewed down the road as the most heinous breach of trust in the history of our nation politically, and then a corrupt career DC beltway politician blatantly lies about those laptops knowing damn well what the truth is, with evidence on those laptops that he knows the truth, we are in deeper s*** than most of us want to admit, because admittedly it is frightening.
Thankfully, we have a Supreme Court that at least appears to be less biased and more fact-based than any institution in the United States government. We best hope and pray it stays that way and that others choose to emulate their example.
If Congress is going to take on the role of writing better legislation and regulations it needs more funding to expand its scope of knowledge and minimize the role of the expertise of lobbyists. I'd also at least double the salary of congress people. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
Congress only writes and passes original legislation -- subject to the POTUS signature -- and it is the departments/agencies that write the enabling rules and regulations.
The problem has been two fold:
1. departments/agencies have for a century been overstepping the authority granted in legislation (this really happens when a Congress passes legislation under one Congress and the rules/regulations are written under another) and
2. whilst we had the Chevron case, they had the last word on the interpretation of their own regulations/rules.
Chevron seems so incredibly stupid in hindsight.
There is a modestly simple way to deal with this -- "sunset" all legislation and rules every 10 years.
Texas has the Sunset Act (Ch 325 of the Tx Govt Code) that requires a review of the entire department or agency -- not just the rules, the entire agency and all of its rules -- to insure it's doing what it is authorized to do or that an agency was not formed without authorization.
Texas' track record on eliminating agencies and forcing consolidation is quite good.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Not only sunset all legislation, after 5 years any law passed should be analyzed to see if it did what it was intended to do. If “law X” was intended to solve “problem Y” and did not do so, “law X” should be repealed.
Also, there needs to be a cost benefit analysis for all departments such as the EPA. It frosts me when we basically take care of a problem to a reasonable degree, but a department keeps on endlessly throwing more money at the problem.
Take clean air for example. The problem has basically been solved compared to the polluted air of the 1960’s. If we spent $1 trillion to clean up 98% of the problem, why are we spending another $1 trillion on the remaining 2%? Madness.
I understand that these departments do it for self justification and preservation, however, the root of the problem with the true believers pushing endless schemes is utopian thinking, man looking for perfection on Earth, where it doesn’t exist. We need to stamp out all utopian thinking in government.
Another good thread https://x.com/senatorshoshana/status/1807378630672109803
Congress has and always had the power to be as prescriptive as it wants within legislation. They used Chevron to pass the buck too much to the agencies. The decision now puts more onus on Congress to be clearer in its legislation. Will it meet the challenge? And remember that Chevron was originally an R initiative. There’s no perfect way to develop and implement technical regulations. How will the new institutional incentives play out? TBD https://x.com/randyebarnett/status/1806702392278179848
Whilst agreeing with you in theory, the practice is that rules/regulations lag lawmaking by so much time that Congress loses interest, changes, or has cashed the check by the time the agencies and departments are done writing.
There is no connection between the party affiliation of the Congress when it legislated and the Deep State's inclinations when the rules/regs are written.
Any new President is advised to clear out as deep as he can in the Deep State dominated agencies and departments.
In places like CIA, DOJ, DHS, the Deep State just waits out the new admin.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Wikard v Filburn: This is interesting in light of the overturning of Chevron. According to the lead paint regulations promulgated by none other than Andrew Cuomo, if you hire a kid next door to sand more than 4 square feet of paint in your house without testing for lead, you are violating the commerce clause. And, due to Chevron was done with the clause "the Secretary shall decide..."
Of course lead was in all paint of a certain age -- banned in 1978 -- and there is really no evidence of occupational workers - painters - having any greater incidence of lead poisoning or other illness.
Sanded paint is a huge particle and is capable of being captured with the most basic clean up procedures and HVAC filtration.
You can buy a test kit at a big box store and know in 10 minutes whether you have lead paint. If you are buying a home from before 1978 odds are you have it.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Jeff, I 100% agree with your restorative remedies. Also, the Supreme Court’s not done yet. They have another conference tomorrow and cleanup orders to be released Tuesday. Among the cases distributed for conference are the Illinois “assault” weapon ban challenges. This act is doomed, but getting there takes a painfully long time. Perhaps they grant cert or GVR them Tuesday. Keep hope alive!
Some additional downstream benefits:
*repealing 16 makes non-profits compete for REAL dollars from funders. They would have to make the case for their missions AND compete with for-profit entities that might be delivering the same goods and services.
*repealing direct election of senators presents a climate more conducive to the rise of a third party. Win a couple of seats in a state legislature and you might have a "swing" vote to send a senator to DC. Win a few more seats in the legislature and you might actually send a candidate to DC. Do that in a couple of states and you have a swing vote in the Senate. Imagine the D's and R's having to fund winning in 100 legislature races in all fifty states every two years vs funding 33 popular US senate races every 2/4 years. We might also see an improvement in the quality of candidate in state houses.
I don't know how 17 ever passed. The rural states relinquished so much power.
If a Chesterton Fence is a fence with an unknown/unseen origin of importance what does one call a fence in the middle of a field with a detailed explanation of its purpose (Federalist 62) nailed upon it which is then torn down anyway?
The 17th passed on a rage of generated outrage over multiple incidents of senate seats being bought by paying off state legislators. Now we have senate seats being bought by billionaires swamping opponents with out of state campaign funds. Probably not an improvement.
So we fix the problem of the electors of a state legislative district electing a corruptible state legislator with a process whereby the electors of a state elect a corruptible US Senator AND concentrates power in the elites of metropolitan areas.
Thomas Sowell is right about so many things - including the understanding that few people are capable of second stage thinking.
It's frickin' golden.....Rod Blago....OR in the case of JB Pritzker wondering how much it was...
The repetitive echo in corrupt politics has always been money. Today, it has gotten worse with PACs, Super PACS, IE PACS (independent expenditure), and the ability to fund raise cooperatively amongst them.
Of course, the candidate is not supposed to be coordinating -- cough, cough -- with any of these PACs.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
great points I hadn't thought of.
Healthcare finance would also be impacted by repeal of 16. We would no longer need employers to manage the spending of pre-tax dollars allocated to a specific industry. Healthcare service providers would have to compete (aside from Medicare/Medicaid) for people’s general income fund rather than pre-allocated income.
One wonders how many other markets have been distorted by attempts to shield income from taxability and flooded inefficient firms with cash cows.
There were a lot of big wins for freedom in the past week or so, but I’m still deeply disappointed and angry over the SC punting on the free speech case over “standing”. I mean, what it tells me is that they don’t really think the First Amendment applies to the idea of restraining the government from blocking basic public debates over government policy. It’s disgusting to me they refused to rule on the merits of that question. If Dr. Battacharya didn’t have standing to sue Fauci and Collins on this question then nobody ever has standing to sue the government for blocking their free speech. It will be interesting to see how Alex Berenson’s similar case ends up.
There is the 9th and 10th Amendments which are clear and unambiguous and little used (not used) in any constitutional arguments. More's the pity.
The government is fat, dumb and slow. A perfect example of this is, when is the last time NASA has designed and launched one of their own rockets into space as compared to Elon Musk for example? It's not that the federal government can't do it. It just that there is no incentive for doing it. The feds have lost their edge and are more concerned with process and bureaucracy than getting stuff done.
The results of Chevron will not be clear for a while. Congress has always had the power to regulate, including correcting any administrative agency mistakes. And they continue to shirk their duties. If Congress continues to shirk all it does is move the venue for adjudication. To actually fix things Congress needs to write better legislation. In today's congress imagine Marge Green writing regulatory legislation. The USA is full of rent seeking NIMBYs. Hard to see that changing much no matter how things go.