Constitutional Amendment [proposed]

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ancona

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Proposed Constitutional Amendment



I was asked if I would go back in time [I borrowed Mr. Peabody's Way-Back Machine] so I found it. This is Just as relevant now, if not more so, than when I posted it several years ago, and agreed with the requestor that it deserved more discussion with so many newer members.


It occurs to me that there is always a pundit available to propound on some insignificant subject or another, yet there is never a voice that rises above the din when there are hard choices to be made. I continue to be amazed with the legislative decisions endorsed by our Congress that go counter to popular opinion on every front, but are paraded before the public as the only and just answer to a particular problem. Witness this ridiculous “stimulus” bill, derided by the People, yet shoved through the Congress on the fear that was mongered by our President. A government by the People, and for the People has lost its flavor for me. Our Legislators are in Congress for one reason; money, exposure and the post legislative perks that come with having been a Legislator. Congress is perpetually paralyzed by the plethora of special interest groups and highly paid lobbyists demanding that their position be recognized. Partisan politics has reduced our once proud Congress to a bunch of squabbling school children whining back and forth about he-said-she-said. It is time to reclaim the legislative process from the rich and return it to the People.


Witness the current financial Armageddon we are experiencing. The entire financial system has been turned into a casino for the mega wealthy, through the political machinations of our Congress. Who decided it would be a good idea to repeal Glass-Steagall, then lobbied actively for it to happen?? That’s right, our old bankster pal Alan Greenspan and Co. Then along came Graham-Leach-Bliley, another genius piece of legislation, whose purposes included eliminating the restrictions keeping banks from expanding into investment banking, stock brokerage and insurance. The reason behind limiting bank size and composition were very simple and sound. These limits insured the Federal Government that if a bank failed, the total liability to the taxpayer would be limited. These protections were put into place to eliminate the “too big to fail” potential that mega banks and financial institutions have become [Bear Stearns ring a bell?].


All of this because a couple of legislators were able to round up enough powerful lobbyists, on behalf of the wealthy elite, greedy banksters and financial institutions to convince a large enough of a majority of sitting legislators, that either this was a great idea, or that a vote in the negative would result in this being their last term in Congress. To say the very least, none of these legislative changes were done in the best interests of the People of the United States of America. These changes can and do benefit only a very elite and select few people in the top quintile of the top one percent of the income food chain. Remember the good old days? I sure do! Remember going into your neighborhood bank branch and depositing your pay-check, and the teller knew your name? Remember going into your employers bank, and having a live person cash your paycheck free of any charges? Remember when the only fees assessed at any bank, anywhere, was for having a checking account with less than 100 dollars in it?


What happens if we remove the primary [financial] motivations behind the run for Congress??
I Mark Ancona, have drafted an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which if enacted, would change the fundamentals of governance in this Nation. I have set forth in this amendment, ten articles to govern the activities of United States Legislators, that would remove the financial rewards currently associated with this office, and replace them with the originally intended reward; civic pride and a desire to ensure the enforcement of the Constitution by and for the People. With a return of the common man to the houses of Congress, perhaps we could return our government to something resembling that which the authors of our Constitution intended.


We the People of the United States of America, do now place before the Houses of the United States Congress for consideration, the following amendment to the United States Constitution:
That the spirit and intent of the United States Constitution has been debased and debauched for the personal gains of the privileged few and wealthy elite, and for the benefit of the American People for whom this Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has been drafted, and for the reform of the solemn office of United States Legislator, and for a return of self governance to the people, and after due deliberation and much intercourse, the People of the United States of America demand the following amendment be considered by the two venerable Houses for adoption and affirmative vote, and the signature of the President of the United States:


We the People of the United States of America have grown weary of continued abuse of our system of governance and therefore propose the following amendment for consideration and enactment:
Amendment 28 – Responsibilities and limitations for United States Legislators

1. Whereas, it is in the best interest of the People of the United States that State Legislators act exclusively in the interests of the People,
2. Whereas, Legislators have been elected to act in the exclusive interests of their constituencies, but have consistently usurped the voice of the People as a means to justify an end benefiting themselves,
3. Whereas, Legislators cannot function effectively when their legislative performance is prefaced upon the continuous solicitation of campaign contributions in anticipation, and far in advance of approaching elections, and the degradation those activities cause their general performance, and in light of the significant potential for said contributions to influence, skew and pervert the purity of said Legislators decisions,
4. Whereas, After six years of work, NO citizen has earned the right to perpetual health care and the receipt of a pension, equal to their previous salary for the balance of their natural lives,
5. Whereas, No Legislator should be compensated with an amount of monies exceeding that which is computed to be the median income of their particular constituency,
6. Whereas, It is the duty of United States Legislators to work toward the achievement of economic growth within their constituencies, said Legislator should only continue to receive aforementioned compensation at the same or higher level as a result of continued or increased prosperity within said constituency,
7. Whereas, Legislators should realize an equivalent loss of renumeration on and with the event of a decrease of the mean average salary of their constituents,
8. Whereas, No Legislator should be permitted to accept employment with any company, consultancy, financial entity or constituent, in whose interest they have acted, or who was affected in any way by or through legislation voted upon by said Legislator, irrespective of a vote in the affirmative or negative, during their legislative tenure for a period not to exceed 8 years after completion of their legislative term,
9. Whereas, The United States Congress has been hijacked by an elite group of wealthy and privileged country club socialites, governed by their mega-corporate masters, no Legislator should be permitted to raise or accept in money, deeds or services an amount greater than one hundred thousand dollars from any or all of their constituents, supporters or self , as a grand total of all monies received or used for purposes of initiating, perpetuating or completing a campaign for any political office or government position,
10. Whereas, The Federal Government shall as a result of this decree, make available in specific and rotating generic availability, time slots in 15 minute increments for use by the general candidacy, on a television channel for their exclusive use and for the express purposes of campaign activities,
Let It Therefore Be Resolved That
I
No Legislator may act or vote in any manner other than that so decreed by their constituencies and, failure to act in good faith on behalf of said legislators constituents behalf shall result in immediate removal from the office of Legislator and removal of said legislators right to vote or hold political office at any level for the balance of their natural life,
II
Any Legislator, having been found to have misrepresented their constituency, either through illegitimate fraud or other intercourse, shall be guilty of a felony of the first degree and shall be punishable by no less than ten years imprisonment and forfeiture of all tangible goods owned by said legislator,
III
No Legislator may benefit from legislative activities beyond that stipend guaranteed by their constituencies, and no Legislator may perform campaign duties, delegate campaign duties or solicit contributions while actively performing in the paid service of their constituents,
IV
Acceptance of more than one hundred thousand dollars during any one legislative term for purposes of campaign efforts, and if donation solicitation activities result in a missed vote on the floor of the House of Representatives or Senate, shall be considered a felony in the first degree and shall be punishable by no less than ten years imprisonment and forfeiture of all tangible goods owned by said Legislator.
V
Upon completion of said legislative duties, all Legislators will remain eligible for receipt of social security benefits, as guaranteed by the United States Government, in particular, the Social Security Administration, and no other health insurance nor retirement benefits other than those available to the Legislators constituents be the Federal Government forced to avail.
VI
No Legislator shall be permitted to retain as renumeration, an amount exceeding that average income, as computed by the state within which their constituency resides, in any calendar year during which said Legislator holds office. The level of compensation shall be determined to be the net average household salary for the head of the household, within said constituency, and that said measurements be undertaken on the first day of January each calendar year, utilizing a random household poll, entirely within the Legislators constituency, and shall encompass no less than 1 percent of verifiable constituents by count of voters registered within said legislators political party.
VII
Upon measured decrease of the average income of said Legislators constituency, The level of compensation shall be decreased to a level which is equal or less than the mean income of said constituency, and such determinations be undertaken on the first day of January each calendar year, utilizing a random household poll, entirely within the Legislators constituency, and shall encompass no less than 1 percent of verifiable and randomly chosen constituents by count of heads.
VIII
No Legislator may accept employment or consultancy, nor shall said Legislator act as advisor or confidant, renumerated or not, for and to any party involved with any legislation at any level throughout the tenure of said Legislator. Violations of this article shall be considered a felony in the first degree and punishable by no less than ten years imprisonment and forfeiture of all tangible goods owned by said Legislator.
IX
All Legislators will perform their perfunctory campaign duties utilizing the government established and maintained television broadcast channel, during a fifteen minute time slot to be chosen through random lottery.
X
Any legislator found to have accepted renumeration in any amount greater than one legal tender cent by any foreign government, agent of a foreign government, terrorist organization, corporate entity, financial institution, religious organization or private individual will be guilty of a felony in the first degree which shall be punishable by no less than ten years, and not more than fifty years imprisonment, and forfeiture of all tangible goods owned by the legislator.
And let it be further resolved that,
This amendment be decreed to be the prevailing law of the land, and shall be honored by all men without regard to race, creed, religion or personal ideals. Let it be known heretofore, that we make and hold these articles, in answer to many years of abuse and perversion of existing legislation for the benefit of the privileged few. We further expound that said abuses have been rampant and prevalent, such that renewed vigilance is hereby commanded of the responsible citizenry for this proud nation, to forestall and quash further obtuse and illegal actions by and from our Legislators. Let it be further known that the will of the People so dictate the furtherance of these measures whose design envelopes the protection of the very liberties and freedoms under attack from within this day.
 
What a nice post. For me I dont want congess to fix anything. Can you imagine a redo? Note how names of bills do the reverse.

But notice- the left wants more laws- and so does the right- but at the same time- people dont want laws. Cop killings going on. Some of this is over unfair laws.

Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple. Are we really any better then the folks alive during that time? No.


In terms of collapse- I love that I can flip a switch and have power/heat/water/internet.

Despite our problems- I still think the US is the best in the world.

A poor person here- still has a life better then kings did in early generations. It wasnt all that long ago- that people took a bath just once a week in this country. Old pics- note how many did not have shoes. I have more shoes then some tribes in the 3rd world, and I am a male.

My neighbor says I dont trust in god as much as I should


Gary Johnson said most legislation is to fix prior bad legislation.

Note tho how sloppy people are- every day I see typos on the web. This from our gate keepers.

..so mark- I dont want congress to fix anything. The best I hope for is they dont make things worse.
 
Ancona, you are asking the legislators to vote for their own death warrant. Not going to happen for sure, though this would definitely be a start in the right direction.
 
Sorry Ancona

I think we would actually be better off as fully free autonomous individuals that were bound only by universal law ( treat others as you would wish to be treated etc )

Theres some good thoughtful stuff on the Von Mises Institute site
http://mises.org/
that covers the concept of the true meaning of anarchy ( not the perversion we now get thrown at us ) and individual freedom. I will try and find the article that a rather left wing friend was impressed by.

Yes it would be messy trying to make it happen overnight but more legislation only supports the concept of rules and sanctions by some arbitrary force for not obeying the rules.

The original U.S. constitution was an attempt to recognise Natural Law.The Founding Fathers were aware of the risks and did their best.
 
Found it
Hope its ok to post as it did come to me as an email .........


Can Anarcho-Capitalism Work?

Submitted by Llewellyn Rockwell via The Ludwig von Mises Institute,

This talk was delivered at the Costa Mesa Mises Circle on Society Without the State, November 8, 2014.

The term “anarcho-capitalism” has, we might say, rather an arresting quality. But while the term itself may jolt the newcomer, the ideas it embodies are compelling and attractive, and represent the culmination of a long development of thought.

If I had to boil it down to a handful of insights, they would be these:

(1) each human being, to use John Locke’s formulation, “has a property in his own person”;

(2) there ought to be a single moral code binding all people, whether they are employed by the State or not;

(3) society can run itself without central direction.

From the original property one enjoys in his own person we can derive individual rights, including property rights. When taken to its proper Rothbardian conclusion, this insight actually invalidates the State, since the State functions and survives on the basis of systematic violation of individual rights. Were it not to do so, it would cease to be the State.

In violating individual rights, the State tries to claim exemption from the moral laws we take for granted in all other areas of life. What would be called theft if carried out by a private individual is taxation for the State. What would be called kidnapping is the military draft for the State. What would be called mass murder for anyone else is war for the State. In each case, the State gets away with moral enormities because the public has been conditioned to believe that the State is a law unto itself, and can’t be held to the same moral standards we apply to ourselves.

But it’s the third of these ideas I’d like to develop at greater length. In those passages of their moral treatises dealing with economics, the Late Scholastics, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had been groping toward the idea of laws that govern the social order. They discovered necessary cause-and-effect relationships. There was a clear connection, for example, between the flow of precious metals entering Spain from the New World on the one hand, and the phenomenon of price inflation on the other. They began to understand that these social regularities were brute facts that could not be defied by the political authority.

This insight developed into fuller maturity with the classical liberals of the eighteenth century, and the gradual emergence of economics as a full-fledged, independent discipline. This, said Ludwig von Mises, is why dictators hate the economists. True economists tell the ruler that there are limits to what he can accomplish by his sheer force of will, and that he cannot override economic law.

In the nineteenth century, Frédéric Bastiat placed great emphasis on this insight. If these laws exist, then we must study them and understand them, but certainly not be so foolish as to defy them. Conversely, he said, if there are no such laws, then men are merely inert matter upon which the State will be all too glad to impose its imprint. He wrote:

For if there are general laws that act independently of written laws, and whose action needs merely to be regularized by the latter, we must study these general laws; they can be the object of scientific investigation, and therefore there is such a thing as the science of political economy. If, on the contrary, society is a human invention, if men are only inert matter to which a great genius, as Rousseau says, must impart feeling and will, movement and life, then there is no such science as political economy: there is only an indefinite number of possible and contingent arrangements, and the fate of nations depends on the founding fatherto whom chance has entrusted their destiny.

The next step in the development of what would later become anarcho-capitalism was the radical one taken by Gustave de Molinari, in his essay “The Private Production of Security.” Molinari asked if the production of defense services, which even the classical liberals took for granted had to be carried out by the State, might be accomplished by private firms under market competition. Molinari made express reference to the insight we have been developing thus far, that society operates according to fixed, intelligible laws. If this is so, he said, then the provision of this service ought to be subject to the same laws of free competition that govern the production of all other goods. Wouldn’t the problems of monopoly exist with any monopoly, even the State’s that we have been conditioned to believe is unavoidable and benign?

It offends reason to believe that a well-established natural law can admit of exceptions. A natural law must hold everywhere and always, or be invalid. I cannot believe, for example, that the universal law of gravitation, which governs the physical world, is ever suspended in any instance or at any point of the universe. Now I consider economic laws comparable to natural laws, and I have just as much faith in the principle of the division of labor as I have in the universal law of gravitation. I believe that while these principles can be disturbed, they admit of no exceptions.



But, if this is the case, the production of security should not be removed from the jurisdiction of free competition; and if it is removed, society as a whole suffers a loss.

It was Murray N. Rothbard who developed the coherent, consistent, and rigorous system of thought — out of classical liberalism, American individualist anarchism, and Austrian economics — that he called anarcho-capitalism. In a career of dozens of books and thousands of articles, Rothbard subjected the State to an incisive, withering analysis, unlike anything seen before. I dedicated Against the State to this great pioneer, and dear friend.

But can it work? It is all very well to raise moral and philosophical objections to the State, but we are going to need a plausible scenario by which society regulates itself in the absence of the State, even in the areas of law and defense. These are serious and difficult questions, and glib answers will naturally be inadequate, but I want to propose at least a few suggestive ideas.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that without a monopoly provider of these services, we will revert to the Hobbesian state of nature, in which everyone is at war with everyone else and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” A ceaseless series of assaults of one person against another ensues, and society sinks ever deeper into barbarism.

For one thing, it’s not even clear that the logic behind Thomas Hobbes’s fears really makes any sense. As Michael Huemer points out, Hobbes posits a rough equality among human beings in that none of us is totally invulnerable. We are all potential murder victims at the hands of anyone else, he says. He likewise insists that human beings are motivated by, and indeed altogether obsessed with, self-interest.

Now suppose that were true: all we care about is our own self-interest, our own well-being, our own security. Would it make sense for us to rush out and attack other people, if we have a 50 percent chance of being killed ourselves? Even if we happen to be skilled in battle, there is still a significant chance that any attack we launch will end in our death. How does this advance our self-interest?

Hobbes likewise speaks of pre-emptive attacks, that people will attack others out of a fear that those others may first attack them. If this is true, then it’s even more irrational for people to go around attacking others: if their fellows are inclined to preemptively attack people they fear, whom would they fear more than people who go around indiscriminately attacking people? In other words, the more you attack people, the more you open yourself up to preemptive attacks by others. So here we see another reason that it makes no sense, from the point of view of the very self-interest Hobbes insists everyone is motivated by, for people to behave the way he insists they must.

As for law, history affords an abundance of examples of what we might call trickle-up law, in which legal norms develop through the course of normal human interaction and the accumulation of a body of general principles. We are inclined to think of law as by nature a top-down institution, because we confuse law with the modern phenomenon of legislation. Every year the world’s legislative bodies pour forth a staggering number of new rules, regulations, and prohibitions. We have come to accept this as normal, when in fact it is, historically speaking, an anomaly.

It was once common to conceive of law as something discovered rather than made. In other words, the principles that constitute justice and by which people live harmoniously together are derived from a combination of reflection on eternal principles and the practical application of those principles to particular cases. The idea that a legislative body could overturn the laws of contract and declare that, say, a landlord had to limit rents to amounts deemed acceptable by the State, would have seemed incredible.

The English common law, for example, was a bottom-up system. In the Middle Ages, merchant law developed without the State at all. And in the US today, private arbitration services have exploded as people and firms seek out alternatives to a government court system, staffed in many cases by political appointees, that everyone knows to be inefficient, time-consuming, and frequently unjust.

PayPal is an excellent example of how the private, entrepreneurial sector devises creative ways around the State’s incompetence in guaranteeing the inviolability of property and contract. For a long time, PayPal had to deal with anonymous perpetrators of fraud all over the world. The company would track down the wrongdoers and report them to the FBI. And nothing ever happened.

Despairing of any government solution, PayPal came up with an ingenious approach: it devised a system for preemptively determining whether a given transaction was likely to be fraudulent. This way, there would be no bad guys to be tracked down, since their criminal activity would be prevented before it could do any harm.

Small miracles like this take place all the time in the free sector of society, not that we’re encouraged to learn much about them. Recall that as the Centers for Disease Control issued false statements and inadequate protocols for dealing with Ebola, it was a Firestone company town in Liberia that did more than any public authority in Africa to provide safety and health for the local population.

There is a great deal more to be said about law and defense provision in a free society, and I discuss some of this literature at the end of Against the State. But the reason we focus on these issues in the first place is that we realize the State cannot be reformed. The State is a monopolist of aggressive violence and a massive wealth-transfer mechanism, and it is doing precisely what is in its nature to do. The utopian dream of “limited government” cannot be realized, since government has no interest in remaining limited. A smaller version of what we have now, while preferable, cannot be a stable, long-term solution. So we need to conceive of how we could live without the State or its parasitism at all.
 
...

ancona

I like the idea of restraining the pendejos* we have in Congress, but as mentioned above they would never go for it. Most of these in Congress are sociopathic, they will not agree to cut their benefits and power.

Perhaps the only way forward is a gradual process. Pick one of your amendments, perhaps whichever counters the most egregious of the misdeeds of our Legislators. It would need HUGE grassroots support as well as huge resources behind the effort -- the MainStream Media would be against this. Attacking (and that's what this would be: an attack on Congresscritters) would require, say, 5 - 10 times as much energy as the initial Tea Party efforts... Tough job!

Something needs to be done, but I have not given the thought int his that you have, Mark.

Rolling back corruption when the beneficiaries are so entrenched will be extremely difficult. It might take a world-class scandal that everyone could get outraged about...


* pendejos is a word in Spanish, to not annoy our Congenial Host, I will allow the curious to look that one up themselves...
 
Something needs to be done, but I have not given the thought int his that you have, Mark.

The Revolutionary War is the last time 'something was done' to mitigate an overbearing government. Today, I don't see anything short of war correcting this imbalance and the people of America today are so immersed in themselves that I don't see an internal (civil) war accomplishing that. So, in my view, the only way this will be done is by some external power conquering and enslaving us to give the surviving American people REASON to start over. Not the ideal way, but appears to be the only way.
 
Constitution didn't work, why the amendment should? Parchment is no shield for violence. When people realize, that the government is violence, and thus illegitimate, well, then we might have something approaching workable solution. Not in our lifetimes.
 
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