Keynes is so passé, but that is another discussion. A balanced budget amendment is not that bad an idea if coupled with a limitation on tax rate increases. There are advantages and disadvantages. A recession would require the government to spend less, but would that be so bad? Monetary policy could make up for it if you are really a believer in government control.
Suppose the economy was a super-tanker crossing the ocean and you wanted to cross most efficiently. Do you keep the accelerator in the same position and leave it alone or do you jerk it back and forth to compensate for waves and current? When the government is constantly pumping up the economy or hitting the brakes it is making he economy less stable than if it just left it on autopilot. Economists (except those few who still worship Keynes) do not universally condemn taking away discretionary fiscal policy.
I would not jump to a conclusion that Nemo doesn’t understand economics. Since Gex knows so much about economics, I am sure he or she would support an amendment prohibiting minimum wage legislation, something almost all economists do agree on.
The capitol city of the United States - Washington D.C. - was not put into any state. This was to make sure that no state would feel they were superior to any other state, because they had the nation’s capitol inside their state. The capitol was made into the District of Columbia - a separate part of the country. D.C. houses Representatives from each state and, also, Senators from each state. It would not be right to have these government officials represent their state in another state; they should represent their state in a capitol that is separate from any state.
All of you are, of course, missing the point. The single greatest current threat to democratic ideals is the federal judiciary. It’s jurisdiction must be limited.
I would have made it impossible for Congress to give themselves raises. This almost became an amendment, but it didn’t and now they do this all the time.
Article II of proposed Amendments to the lately adopted Constitution, presented before the First Congress by James Madison on September 25, 1789, duly ratified and adopted as Amendment XVII, May 12, 1992:
I saw this in another thread a while ago, but I don’t recall who proposed it…
Amendment A: Every law passed by Congress and every executive order signed by the President shall explain its purpose and include objectively measurable 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year goals (e.g.: drunk driving reduced 5% by 2002, 20% by 2007, 30% by 2011). The law or order shall be re-examined by the Supreme Court at those intervals, and if it hasn’t met the goals, it shall be automatically repealed.
Amendment B: For any law passed prior to Amendment A, or any law passed after Amendment A that has been in effect for over 15 years, the public shall be able to petition the government to hold the law up to a vote. Any law challenged in this way (by a sufficient number of registered voters) shall be added as a referendum during the next federal election; if 2/3 of voters disapprove of the law, it shall be repealed.
This seemed to slip by a lot of people, but I think the elimination of US Senate is the most dangerous of ideas I’ve seen presented here. The Senate was created alongside the House specifically to keep larger population areas from overrunning the country and smaller population states from “filibustering the country to a standstill”. I dread to think what would happen to the agricultural centers such as my home state of North Dakota were we essentially eliminated from the process due to the elimination. And I’m interested to here if there has EVER been ANY instance of that theoretical 6% filibustering the country to a standstill.
So you’re saying the USA and all of what we regard as the European democracies are actually Fascist states? Whatever.
I’ll add that such an amendment would outlaw protection of the environment from any waste products involved in production and trade. Can either fight pollution or Fascism; can’t do both!
I’d amend the Constitution to restrict the right of free speech to flesh-and-blood human beings, specifically excluding for-profit corporations from the protection of the First Amendment. Nonprofit corporations would have the protection of the First Amendment to the extent that their funding came from flesh-and-blood human beings.
I’ve gone into more detail here about how for-profit corporations are the ultimate single-interest group, how speech, for them, is an investment, and the fundamental and powerful advantages that gives them over real people when it comes to influencing legislation in particular, and the public dialog in general.
Such an amendment would do much to minimize this sort of politics, where corporations are regarded as the necessary participants, and we, the people, are treated as a nuisance to be excluded.
I’d also amend the Constitution to provide for the direct funding of elections for Federal office. (Maine has a very good system of public funding of state elections that could be used as a model.)
And, third, I’d amend the Constitution to require Congressional redistricting to be done according to some mathematical metric, minimizing the average distance between voters in the districts. This redistricting system where, in the words of the RNC’s redistricting coordinator, “politicians get to choose the voters” is a travesty of democracy, and has apparently been a major factor in reducing the extent to which the political middle ground is represented in Congress. See article here.
Sorry to come late to this discussion; just registered today. I wanted to address the issue of federal jurisdiction. The federal courts are, in my experience, more efficient and presided over by better judges. IMHO, federal practice is much better than state pratice on the burden of proof, discovery, expert testimony and summary judgment, at least here in Texas. Certainly federal jurisdiction should not be reduced in the areas of admiralty and issues of federal law. Whether the scope of federal law itself, particularly the reach of the Commerce Clause, should be reduced is another issue entirely.
I would like to know what the members think about changing the Constitution to eliminate the jury trial for civil cases. My own opinion is that it should be eliminated, for the reason that the perceived benefits do not outweigh the burdens. The costs of running juries, the time lost by the jurors and other panelists, and the dreadful uncertainty of the result are a drain on the system that I do not believe are outweighed by the advantage of having 12 (or 6) people reach the decision instead of one, or of the reassurance to jurors that they are participating in the process.
I’m not ready to go to a system of direct popular vote yet; if problems should arise in a close election, I think there are advantages to being able to confine them to one or more discrete locales that can be resolved by themselves without having to recount the entire country. But I’d like to see the present system changed to as nearly as possible reflect the contours of the popular vote. How I would do this is:
i) Do away with the electors themselves.
ii) Give each state as many electoral votes as Representatives (not Representatives and Senators combined).
iii) Allocate each state’s electoral votes proportionately. For instance, a state with 10 Representatives would break 6-4 if the winner got between 55% and 65% of the votes in a 2-candidate race.
iv) Allow one candidate or party to give his/its popular votes to another candidate/party, overall or on a state-by-state basis, for purposes of apportioning states’ electoral votes, by noon of the day following the election. (This is to allow an alternative to situations where the votes for a third-party candidate on one side of the spectrum effectively aid the major candidate on the other side. The noon deadline is to minimize the time and opportunity for horse-trading.)
