In The US Rich Minority Rules Through The Senate and Needs To be Abolished as in Wyyoming 1/2 Mil Same Power As New York 20 Mil
One question answers it all: What does the Senate do with its two senators per state and 6 years minimum power that the House with its 435 members in two years minimum power not able to do? Nothing but obstruct..please think about this. I know the senators are not going to vote themselves out of a job but americans could, And the senators could always be mix in with the house with the same power.
Usually what ever the house passes no matter how good, the senate can just not even bring it to a vote even if it had enough votes in the senate itself to pass the legislation.
The house can't impechor pass legislation the senate dissaproves. The health benefits and the salary of these guys will save us enough to make every hungry family in america have a meal.
For now, A bill that passes the house should get a vote in the senate. Adam🦊
These are not just the beliefs of this blog but the belief of the longest living member of Congress:
{{An Atlantic excerpt from his new memoir}}
The end of minority rule in our legislative and executive branches. The Great Compromise, as it was called when it was adopted by the Constitution’s Framers, required that all states, big and small, have two senators. The idea that Rhode Island needed two U.S. senators to protect itself from being bullied by Massachusetts emerged under a system that governed only 4 million Americans.
Today, in a nation of more than 325 million and 37 additional states, not only is that structure antiquated, it’s downright dangerous. California has almost 40 million people, while the 20 smallest states have a combined population totaling less than that. Yet because of an 18th-century political deal, those 20 states have 40 senators, while California has just two. These sparsely populated, usually conservative states can block legislation supported by a majority of the American people. That’s just plain crazy.
The math is even starker when you look at places like Wyoming and Vermont, each of which has fewer people in the entire state (575,000 and 625,000, respectively) than does the Twelfth Congressional District of Michigan, which I last represented and whose more than 700,000 residents are now in the hands of my wife, Debbie. She fights her heart out for them every single day. Yet her efforts are often stymied simply because it is understood that even should a good bill make it through the hyper-partisan House, it will die a quiet death in the Senate because of the disproportionate influence of small states.
With my own eyes, I’ve watched in horror and increasing anger as that imbalance in power has become the primary cause of our national legislative paralysis. In primaries, the vocal rump of a minority of obnoxious asses can hold the entire country hostage to extremist views. This insanity has sent true public servants fleeing for the exits. The Electoral College has the same structural flaw. Along with 337 of my colleagues, I voted in 1969 to amend the Constitution to abolish it. Twice in the past 18 years, we’ve seen the loser of the popular vote become president through the Electoral College formula, which gives that same disproportionate weight to small states, each of which gets two automatic votes for its two senators.
My friend Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, sees a demographic shift coming that will effectively transform us into two countries. He tells me that “in 2050, 70 percent of Americans will be living in just 15 states. That 70 percent will then have 30 senators, and the remaining 30 percent of the people, mainly those living in the smallest and poorest states, will have 70 senators.”
How do we fix this? Practically speaking, it will be very difficult, given the specific constitutional protection granted these small states to veto any threat to their outsize influence.
There is a solution, however, that could gain immediate popular support: Abolish the Senate. At a minimum, combine the two chambers into one, and the problem will be solved. It will take a national movement, starting at the grassroots level, and will require massive organizing, strategic voting, and strong leadership over the course of a generation. But it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? “Abolish the Senate.” I’m having blue caps printed up with that slogan right now. They will be made in America.
The protection of an independent press. This is where the Founding Fathers got it exactly right. Jefferson said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Trump has said of reporters, “I would never kill them, but I do hate them. And some of them are such lying, disgusting people.”
My father started out life as a cub reporter for the Detroit Free Press. He always believed that journalism was a tremendously honorable profession. We cannot restore respect to our institutions of government until we put an end to the systematic attacks on journalism that have become prevalent. The playbook is simple: Lie. Repeat the lie. Then attack the journalists who expose those lies as being liars themselves—or, in modern parlance, “promoters of fake news.” The Nazis’ propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, replaced journalism with state-run propaganda and created a political climate based on fear and falsehoods.
The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Fourth Estate is not a branch of government, but none of the branches of government can be trusted to function honestly without an unfettered free press vigilantly holding it accountable.
Thomas Jefferson had the first word and he should have the last word: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
As a young man, I served in the Army during World War II. My father was a member of Congress. I learned from him and, later, from my own experience that history always repeats itself unless we remember it with clarity and conscience.
Now I am an old man. My age bears with it a responsibility to share what I’ve witnessed so that future generations avoid making the same mistakes. My advice always begins with the truth, which is why would-be despots and demagogues try so hard to discredit it. They hate it like the devil hates holy water.
The conduct and outcome of the 2016 presidential election have put the future of our country in mortal peril. After a lifetime spent in public service, I never believed that day would come. Yet it has. And we now find ourselves on the precipice of a great cliff. Our next step is either into the abyss or toward a higher moral ground. Since before the Civil War, we’ve been told that “Providence watches over fools, drunkards, and the United States.” Yet the good Lord also granted us free will. The direction we choose to follow is ours alone to make. We ask only that he guide our choice with his wisdom and his grace.
It’s up to you, my dear friends.
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