President Donald Trump last year directed the Interior Department to make changes to parks, monuments and memorials to address any “false revision of history.”
I think I understand what he’s trying to get at. The US government is essentially a fun house mirror of the British one. The British had a house of lords and a house of commons, one represented the nobility and the other the commoners. The US mirrored that but instead of nobility our “house of lords” represents the state, that’s the Senate. The House of Representatives meanwhile represents the people (aka commoners, hence why representation there is proportional to population), while the Senate represents the wealthy that run each state.
If the goal is to become an actual democracy instead of just saying we are, then eliminating the Senate would seem to make sense. The downside is that that eliminates one of the checks since you’d only need to get a bill past one chamber of Congress instead of two. On the other hand with the way the two party system currently runs it’s essentially the exact same state when one party controls both chambers so it’s not really a huge leap.
I suppose if we kept the Senate and had the number of Senators properly apportioned, but maybe not as many as Reps, it’d be okay, if there is meant to be a more “prestigious” wing of Congress.
What I most hate about the Senate is that backwater deep red states get two senators to equal two senators from the likes of California.
If any state is going to lead this nation into the future it’s most likely California. And they grow so much of our food, to boot. I realize it’s wildly fashionable among the right since forever to have California Derangement Syndrome and want others to actually believe that something like Idaho is the equal of California (or even better, LOL). But it’s just the truth that California is not only an economic powerhouse, but a cultural one, too. And so many people live there to boot.
But they get held back by this ridiculous system where their representation in the Senate count the same as some flyover state. I’m sorry, plenty of people think it’s elitist to say this, but that’s just absurd and backwards.
Personally there’s a lot of things I’d change about our government, and a lot of things that I think need to be changed but I’m not entirely sure what would make a good replacement.
I think getting rid of the Senate makes some amount of sense, but only if paired with a number of other changes. I’d first make it clear that constitutional rights apply equally to everyone and can not be revoked, and just as importantly that corporations are not people and have no constitutional rights. Corporations can have rights but only by passing laws to explicitly grant those rights. I would make it so that congress requires a 3/4ths majority to pass a new law, but only a simple majority to repeal one. This ensures that it’s hard to restrict rights for people, but easy to remove restrictions, and conversely that it’s hard to grant rights to corporations and easy to repeal them.
I would outlaw first past the post voting for any partisan office. There are a number of other good options that could be used instead (star voting for instance seems to produce really good results), but just about anything besides FPTP is preferable.
I would remove the electoral college. It’s often justified as a bullwark against a populist leader, but that very clearly has not worked, and a better solution is to just better educate the public.
I would consider making voting mandatory, and make election days federal holidays.
I would extend the basic human rights to include access to food, water, shelter, and basic utilities such as electricity and Internet (this would not preclude having to pay necessarily, but fees should be commensurate with capability to pay them), as well as make most (all?) criminal fees and penalties be proportional to a persons wealth (thereby eliminating the current system where any crime that the penalty is a fee is only a crime for the poor).
I would severely tighten anti-monopoly laws, E.G. having an outright ban on acquisitions and mergers for any company that doesn’t have at least a dozen healthy competitors.
I would require laws to be periodically re-passed in order to stay on the books. There are far too many obscure laws that aren’t even enforced but still stick around for prosecutors to go fishing for when they decide they want to intimidate someone. The big laws, the things that violate a persons well being or rights like murder or assault could be baked into the constitution, but the small stuff like littering and jaywalking, or more controversial things should be forced to be periodically re-evaluated to decide if they still make sense today, or if they need to be rewritten or tweaked in some fashion.
There’s probably a load of other things that should and would need to be changed, but that’s just a few things off the top of my head.
The Senate was designed to be undemocratic from the start. Originally designed to represent a lower level of State against the people. Federal state versus local state. In a truly democratic system there is no reason to keep it around. It doesn’t serve a useful purpose. No amount of adding seats will fix it. It represents an unwarranted concentration of power.
As to age limits I am also generally against them however. The retirement home known as the Congress has a massive issue. We have one of the largest proportion of the oldest people serving in government. And that’s not good. We need younger people looking to secure a future for themselves. Not decaying corpses looking to secure what they’ve already got against the future.
But again this is all just dealing with symptoms of the state and not the problem that is the state.
Not sure what abolishing the senate would do. I’m 100% against age limits myself for a whole host of reasons.
I think I understand what he’s trying to get at. The US government is essentially a fun house mirror of the British one. The British had a house of lords and a house of commons, one represented the nobility and the other the commoners. The US mirrored that but instead of nobility our “house of lords” represents the state, that’s the Senate. The House of Representatives meanwhile represents the people (aka commoners, hence why representation there is proportional to population), while the Senate represents the wealthy that run each state.
If the goal is to become an actual democracy instead of just saying we are, then eliminating the Senate would seem to make sense. The downside is that that eliminates one of the checks since you’d only need to get a bill past one chamber of Congress instead of two. On the other hand with the way the two party system currently runs it’s essentially the exact same state when one party controls both chambers so it’s not really a huge leap.
I suppose if we kept the Senate and had the number of Senators properly apportioned, but maybe not as many as Reps, it’d be okay, if there is meant to be a more “prestigious” wing of Congress.
What I most hate about the Senate is that backwater deep red states get two senators to equal two senators from the likes of California.
If any state is going to lead this nation into the future it’s most likely California. And they grow so much of our food, to boot. I realize it’s wildly fashionable among the right since forever to have California Derangement Syndrome and want others to actually believe that something like Idaho is the equal of California (or even better, LOL). But it’s just the truth that California is not only an economic powerhouse, but a cultural one, too. And so many people live there to boot.
But they get held back by this ridiculous system where their representation in the Senate count the same as some flyover state. I’m sorry, plenty of people think it’s elitist to say this, but that’s just absurd and backwards.
Personally there’s a lot of things I’d change about our government, and a lot of things that I think need to be changed but I’m not entirely sure what would make a good replacement.
I think getting rid of the Senate makes some amount of sense, but only if paired with a number of other changes. I’d first make it clear that constitutional rights apply equally to everyone and can not be revoked, and just as importantly that corporations are not people and have no constitutional rights. Corporations can have rights but only by passing laws to explicitly grant those rights. I would make it so that congress requires a 3/4ths majority to pass a new law, but only a simple majority to repeal one. This ensures that it’s hard to restrict rights for people, but easy to remove restrictions, and conversely that it’s hard to grant rights to corporations and easy to repeal them.
I would outlaw first past the post voting for any partisan office. There are a number of other good options that could be used instead (star voting for instance seems to produce really good results), but just about anything besides FPTP is preferable.
I would remove the electoral college. It’s often justified as a bullwark against a populist leader, but that very clearly has not worked, and a better solution is to just better educate the public.
I would consider making voting mandatory, and make election days federal holidays.
I would extend the basic human rights to include access to food, water, shelter, and basic utilities such as electricity and Internet (this would not preclude having to pay necessarily, but fees should be commensurate with capability to pay them), as well as make most (all?) criminal fees and penalties be proportional to a persons wealth (thereby eliminating the current system where any crime that the penalty is a fee is only a crime for the poor).
I would severely tighten anti-monopoly laws, E.G. having an outright ban on acquisitions and mergers for any company that doesn’t have at least a dozen healthy competitors.
I would require laws to be periodically re-passed in order to stay on the books. There are far too many obscure laws that aren’t even enforced but still stick around for prosecutors to go fishing for when they decide they want to intimidate someone. The big laws, the things that violate a persons well being or rights like murder or assault could be baked into the constitution, but the small stuff like littering and jaywalking, or more controversial things should be forced to be periodically re-evaluated to decide if they still make sense today, or if they need to be rewritten or tweaked in some fashion.
There’s probably a load of other things that should and would need to be changed, but that’s just a few things off the top of my head.
If you don’t want a Senate, then you don’t want a federation of states. Which is fine. But it doesn’t fit how our society is currently structured.
But apportioning the Senate like they do in the House defeats the purpose entirely. Might as well just do away with it altogether.
The idea is that each state has a level of autonomy, and that doesn’t really work without a Senate.
The Senate was designed to be undemocratic from the start. Originally designed to represent a lower level of State against the people. Federal state versus local state. In a truly democratic system there is no reason to keep it around. It doesn’t serve a useful purpose. No amount of adding seats will fix it. It represents an unwarranted concentration of power.
As to age limits I am also generally against them however. The retirement home known as the Congress has a massive issue. We have one of the largest proportion of the oldest people serving in government. And that’s not good. We need younger people looking to secure a future for themselves. Not decaying corpses looking to secure what they’ve already got against the future.
But again this is all just dealing with symptoms of the state and not the problem that is the state.