-omb

Glenn Beck’s documentary on the impact of progressivism on America airs today at 3pm. I’ll be interested to see if he mentions the scourge of the 17th Amendment and how it has led to the control of the Congress by special interests and lobbyists, and to the out of control spending that is prevalent today. This is why our ‘system is broken’, per John McCain. Senator Zel Miller, upon his retirement from the Senate, stated in his last address to the Senate that the 17th Amendment was the instrument by which lobbyists gained control in Washington D.C., and should be repealed. I’ll be writing more on this soon, but watch Beck to see if he mentions it. If he doesn’t, he’s missing the boat.

-OMB

Some Libyan goat f*cker decide to hack this site and leaving a “Happy New Year” banner with a link to his all arabic bullshit site which I’m guessing described, aside from how best to kill the infidel, what time of day goats are most receptive to romantic advances. I’m not sure of the extent of the intrusion yet and I’ve removed all code that I’ve found, but will be doing a full restore with some extra security measures.
Please steer clear of the site for the next week while I clear out the manure left by this faggot. Sorry for the interuption, but I’ll post an ‘All Clear’ banner after I’ve reloaded everything and cleared out all of the .php files. The site may have a different look, as I may just go ahead and move to a new theme at this point.

A sincere Happy New Year and belated Merry Christmas to all!

-OMB

-OMB

Just  a PSA for our local Tea Party folks who have worked hard to put this together, please visit the Tea Party Boise site for details.

I left some comments on tax policy over on their blog so I thought I might as well post them here as well.   I kind of went on another 17th amendment diatribe…

You know, I’ve heard a lot of debate over what the appropriate method of taxation, as a replacement to our current system, would be. Whether it be the ‘fair’ or ‘flat’ variety really doesn’t matter. The problem with these approaches is that they both legitimize current level of taxation! There is no justification for the Federal government to taking in excess of 20% of GDP in federal taxes and any replacement system that continues this level of taxation, i.e. is ‘revenue neutral’ as the proponents claim, will be just as egregious and will have the same negative consequences that the current system has for the economy. More importantly, the discussion of how the government takes our money distracts from the real problem we face and really doesn’t do anything to address it – out of control federal spending.  Why does the federal government pursue these spending policies? The answer is simple – because they can, and it is in their interests to do so. So, was the system the Framers set up flawed? No, it wasn’t. Unfortunately, we haven’t lived under that system since final ratification of the 17th Amendment, which put the composition of the Senate into the hands of the general population instead of in the hands of the State houses.

The Framers realized that each house of Congress needed to serve a separate agenda. The House of Representatives would be selected by the people and represent the populist agenda, the Senate would be elected by each State’s legislature which bind the State houses directly into the Federal system and ensured that the practicalities of running the States was represented within the national legislative process. Ever heard of the ‘unfunded mandates’ resulting from our federal budget process? These would never occur with the Senators responsible to the State legislatures for reelection.
As it stands, we basically have two bodies in congress with the same agenda – getting re-elected. We may as well close the Senate and have one big house of representatives. This is what has made the lobbyists so powerful in Washington D.C.. It would be very difficult for lobbyists to influence members of all state houses to elect a particular Senator to serve their agenda.
So, when John McCain was running around prior to McCain-Feingold saying ‘the system is broken’ he was right – but he didn’t have a clue as to why. The system was broken during the particularly shortsighted administration of Woodrow Wilson, who also saddled us with the 16th Amendment, authorizing the federal income tax system, and the Federal Reserve Act. You may disagree, but Federal spending as a percentage of GDP was a constant 3-4% as far back as 1875, after reconstruction up to 1917. The government lived within its means because it had to do so. You can look at the charts, the 17th amendment was finally ratified in ~1916 and federal spending has been heading up in a linear fashion ever since. And yes, the income tax was passed at this time, but spending and tax policy have been disconnected since the inception of these two Amendments. One has little to do with the other. The spending side can’t be fixed until the 17th amendment is repealed and the system is restored to it’s original structure.
I have some links and a couple of articles on the impact of the 17th amendment on my website, libertybunker.com.
Having said all of that, I do plan on attending the Tea Party in Boise, but people need to do the root cause analysis here and work to fix the system, not just replace it with another that is destined to fail because it doesn’t address the underlying structural issues that have caused the great majority of our deficit spending problems.

A couple of comments on the Tea Parties in general.  I see this as a movement grown out of a growing sense of frustration and disenfranchisement on the part of many taxpaying Americans who’ve just had enough and can’t make sense of the path of reckless spending and bailouts.  I share that sentiment.  I’m just a little alarmed when I see Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich, in my opinion, co-opting the movement to their own ends.  My take on Newt was he had his chance, he did some good – but not enough!  And I honestly believe the last thing that this truly populist movement needs is an national media spokesman/cheerleader like Glenn Beck.  (I can take him in small doses, but on the whole, I don’t have a favorable opinion of him, believe it or not).

Newt has habit of riding whichever horse is winning to push his big tent, centrist Republicanism.  It’s not that I don’t agree with him on some things, but he always seems to be offering his own type of big government as an alternative to the Communists – er, I mean Democrats.  Beck is a shameless, constantly self-promoting, pseudo-conservative that, in my opinion is somehow trying to make himself out as the defacto tea party movement leader, issuing statements like ‘Please, don’t make this about Obama or I can’t  support it’, or ‘its not a Democrat( Communist) or Republican thing’.  Whatever Glenn – just so long as you don’t get a picture snapped of you attending the tea party in San Antonio with anti-Obama sign in the background.  Worried about those ratings, huh?

I say who gives a rat’s ass if he ‘can support the tea party movement’?  He didn’t create it, and in many ways, Obama did create this movement!  Why shouldn’t people express discontent over the path Obama has taken?  Obama is an extremely polarizing individual.  He should know that people are upset with his actions if that’s their motivation to attend the tea parties.

Anyway, I’m going to go check it out and maybe snap a few pictures.

-OMB

If you are new to the 17th amendment issue, please take a few minutes to read this earlier post, “The System Is Broken”.

I also happened across this chart of government spending as a percent of GDP since 1870.  The purpose for which this chart was created was to illuminate whether incumbents were re-elected in up or down spending years, that’s what the white and black dots mean.  You can ignore the title.  Percentage of spending is on the y axis and years x-axis.  Note the 17th amendment was introduced in 1913 and was ratified a year or so after that, as was the 16th amendment which initiated the Federal income tax.

 Now one can argue that this was the impact of the income tax as established with the 16th amendment and I think that they are in part, correct.  However, that actually assumes that it matters to Congress whether or not the Government can raist the money that it intends to spend.  The spending, as we have seen, is the problem.  And that side of the equation is more impacted by the effects of 17th amendment than by the 16th amendment.

In any case, I will draft a letter to my Senators this week and I’ll post a generic verion of it on here if any of you are interested in putting it to use.

-OMB

"I needs me spinach", or "Whar's me piratin' outfit?"

“The system is broken” and, paraphrasing, ‘it corrupts the people we send to Washington D.C.’.   Sen. John McCain has said this, or something to this effect, literally hundreds of times in the media over the last ten years – sometimes followed by “We need meaningful campaign finance reform.”  From this rhetoric spawned the ‘McCain-Feingold Act’ or, as Rush Limbaugh aptly termed it, “The Incumbent Protection Act”, which put various limits on campaign financing which prove to be more detrimental to incumbent challengers.

McCain was right, the system is broken, but he doesn’t have clue as to why.  Otherwise, why would he assume that more legislation, derived from a broken system, would somehow fix the underlying system?

The system was broken in 1913 with the passage of the 17th Amendment.  Most people, these days, have no idea of what the 17th Amendment did, or what its impact on our well designed system of checks and balances has yielded.  Most are not aware that Senators used to be elected by their respective State’s legislatures, and not by popular vote, as is the case now.

In researching this topic, I came across a concise and understandable article by Mr. John MacMullin.  He is a lawyer who has published a number of articles on the subject which have been mentioned in the National Law Journal.  (See below for links to his website.)  John has graciously given permission to me to reprint one of his articles here in The Liberty Bunker.  If you want to understand one of the key reasons why the Federal Government is spiraling out of control, please read on.

Repeal Seventeenth Amendment

By John MacMullin

With respect to states’ rights, it should be readily apparent to all that state governments cannot exert any meaningful influence or control over the federal government, judiciary, or any other federal institution.  Let us state the problem precisely.  At the present time, there are no checks and balances available to the states over federal power or over Congress itself in any area.  However, in the history of our country, it was not always this way.

In the original design by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, there was an effective check on Congress through the state legislatures’ power to appoint (and remove) U.S. Senators. As such, the core of the problem with state’s rights issues lies in the passage of the 17th Amendment which abrogated the state legislatures’ right to appoint U.S. Senators in favor of popular election of those officials. This amendment created a fundamental structural problem which, irrespective of the political party in office, or the laws in effect at any one time, will result in excessive federal control in every area. It also results in a failure in the federalist structure, federal deficit spending, inappropriate federal mandates, and the evaporation of state influence over national policy.

The reason for the passage of the 17th Amendment should be stated.  The 17th Amendment was passed because of a procedural problem in the original concept and not because of a need to alter the balance of power.  The procedural problem consisted of frequent deadlocks when the state legislatures were trying to select a senator.  When deadlocked, a state would go without representation in the Senate.  For instance, in the very first Congress, the State of New York went without representation in the Senate for three months.  Additionally, numerous other problems resulted from the efforts to resolve individual deadlocks.

The problem of deadlocked legislatures continued unabated from 1787 until 1913.  The seventeenth amendment, calling for popular election of senators, fixed the procedural problems, but also inappropriately and unintentionally altered the balance of power.  Instead, the 17th Amendment should have fixed the procedural problems and left the balance of power between the states and the federal government intact. 

For more information, I respectfully refer you to a law review article that I wrote, Amplifying the Tenth Amendment, 31 ARIZ. L. REV. 915 (1989). This article was cited as “worth reading” by the National Law Journal, in its March 5, 1990, publication. Additionally, I direct you to two books written by George Haynes titled “The Senate of the United States” published in 1938, and “The Election of Senators” published in 1906.  I believe that you will find that these references are well worth reading.

In my opinion, the 17th Amendment should be repealed. This would reinstate the states’ linkage to the federal political process and would, thereby, have the effect of elevating the present status of the state legislatures from that of lobbyists, to that of a partner in the federal political process.  The state legislatures would then have the ability to decentralize power when appropriate.  It would give state legislatures direct influence over the selection of federal judges and the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary and much greater ability to modify federal court orders.  This structure would allow the flow of power between the states and the federal government to ebb and flow as the needs of our federal republic change.  The existing relationship, combined with the effect of the Supremacy Clause, is guaranteed to concentrate power into the hands of the federal government with little or no hope of return.

With that, the state governments should be focusing an effort to repeal the 17th Amendment, not on passing legislation or engaging in irrelevant activities, that are more than likely useless over the long term and probably also over the short.

Illustrations

Fig. A - Existing relationship

The constitutional amendment proposed would reinstate the states’ linkage to the federal political process and would, thereby, have the effect of elevating the status of the state governments from that of lobbyists, to that of a partner in the federal political process.  Figure A above portrays the existing relationship between the states and the federal government.  This relationship, combined with the effect of the Supremacy Clause, is guaranteed to concentrate power into the hands of the federal government with little hope of return. 

Fig. B After Proposed Changes

With the passage of the amendment, the state legislatures would have the ability to decentralize power when appropriate.  After passage, it would primarily be the state legislatures interacting with their appointed senators, and not with the other branches of the federal government, that would establish the “line” between the federal and state governments.  Figure B shows the effect of the passage of the proposed amendment on the relationship between the governments.  This structure allows the flow of power between the states and the federal government to ebb and flow as the needs of our federal republic change.  This structure also exemplifies the original concept of the Framers of the Constitution.

(Illustrations by John MacMullin)

Here is a link to Article V, where you can find more articles and text of a proposed amendment by John MacMullin.

Here the link to where I initially found the article. 

The fact is, the founders had it right.  To have two bodies, both of which currently function as a House Of Representatives makes no sense.  There is no differing agenda between the two, so the results are the same.  Sure, the Senate still has cloture, but it really doesn’t matter if the agendas of the bodies are the same – you’ll get the same self serving legislation from both bodies, and from the committees where legislative differences between the two bodies are resolved.  This where we get these huge spending bills and exactly why lobbyists have so much influence in Washington D.C..  

Further, if Senators were elected by the State Legislatures, what are the odds that the following would have ever been heard in the Minnesota State Legislature, when offering candidates for the Senate?  ”Al Franken is our man, by God!  He’s the best man for the job!”.  This needs to be fixed and it can be fixed – by you and me.  I encourage all to visit the  Article V page and educate yourselves.  Contact your state and congressional representatives and let’s get the ball moving!

-OMB