Comment on Tom Blumer, Pajamas Media » Two Bad Presidential Election Ideas Require Rejection

Pajamas Media » Two Bad Presidential Election Ideas Require Rejection

While under the original Constitution the States could set property rules to vote and were only expected to offer a broad mandate for voters to the most numerous branch of their legislature the Courts have used the murky penumbras of the XIVth Amendment to enforce both universal sufferage under "one man, one vote" and to ensure the domination of urban politics by rendering state senates redundant and forbidding their apportionment on a geographical basis.

As part of a general plan of reform I support the repeal of the XVIIth Amendment. In addition voter ID verification is essential. Only citizens who do not derive the majority of their income from the federal public treasury, excepting enlisted members of the Armed Forces and officers called to extended active duty in time of conflict, should vote in any federal election. A similar bar should apply to any person who gets the majority of their income from the state treasury voting in any state or municipal election. Apportionment should be on the basis of the number of qualified and registered citizen voters as determined in each census.

The original Electoral College was a good idea. We should return to it. The idea was to have the leading citizens of each state meet and select their candidates. Either a national consensus would emerge or the business of politics would follow in Congress to select the winner. Right now the members of the EC are cyphers that no one would trust with a burnt out match. My suggestion is to empower and reinvigorate the Electoral College.

First make it a standing body with two classes of members. Ex officio members from each state would include the heads of each state's three branches of gov't, that is the Governor, the Chief Justice or senior judge of the highest Appeals Court, and the Speaker or equivalent of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature. For states granted more than 3 Electors others should be appointed for six year terms by the state legislature in staggering classes that mirror the method used by the US Senate. No appointed Elector could hold a position of profit or trust in the service of the United States or the state that appoints them, except for enlisted service in either the state or federal Armed Forces or service as an officer in the state militia.

The Electoral College as so constituted would convene quadrennially to select a candidate for POTUS, and would also serve to fill any vacancies that occur more than 120 days before the next scheduled regular election by meeting within 30 days of such a vacancy happening. The popular vote would be properly restored to its position as an opinion poll for the consideration of the state legislators. The focus of politics would return to the state level. The federal government would remain busy rooting out corruption in the states but the current system of ignoring state level venality and then transferring all politic and corruption to the federal level would end. The revived states would jealously investigate and expose corruption at the federal level.

Second I would use the EC as a national Court of Judicial Review to determine the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. As a creature of the states the determination of the fidelity of the Congress to the Constitution should better be determined by the EC than the SCOTUS. I would propose that a law could be flagged for review by a petition of 20% or more of the states, or by the President or by the Supreme Court reviewing submissions from inferior courts that could hold disputed laws in abeyance for up to one year while under review.

Comments on: Stanley Kurtz, NRO - The Corner "Ill-Fated Solyndra Conference Call"

Ill-Fated Solyndra Conference Call - By Stanley Kurtz - The Corner - National Review Online

We'll Make It Up On Volume

It is an old fallacy of the economically illiterate and the Democrats are rich in that tainted fertilizer. They really believed that a bad idea becomes better if it becomes bigger. Solyndra might have found a niche if it stayed in it's smaller factory and only attempted to expand after proving itself in the market. But no the Donks had to throw money at it so they could build a big factory, believing that would attract private capital the same way the Field of Dreams attracted dead baseball players. They honestly thought that "We'll Make It Up On Volume" could work. They never asked how many solar arrays people wanted to buy or if anyone else was supplying the market cheaper. People need to go to jail.

-----
Now we hear that what was really going on was an unprecedented and illegal scheme to shunt taxpayer money to favored Democratic Party operatives, including the California Democratic Party, by making their investments in Solyndra take precedence over the government loan in the predictable event of bankruptcy. For these people there are no rules. Remember impeached judge and Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings "We make them up as we go along"? There is a bright line running from the theft of GM, through Nancy Pelosi's ramming through of Obamacare, to this latest deconstruction of the law that sustains a capitalist economy.

On the Repeal of DADT

Donald Douglas said, "Well, we'll see how this works out."
H/T Theo Spark

The answer as to how it will work out is badly. Every homosexual already in the service has broken their oath and the law. Every officer, like the Navy LT who gleefully got married today, is known to his chain of command, including the enlisted members who are expected to follow orders even unto their own deaths, as being a liar.

This is not like the racial integration under President Truman. There was nothing in law preventing any citizen from serving because of their race and no one had to lie to get into uniform. When a black, back then they'd have said negro, officer gave an order there was no excuse that any southern white boy could use to justify disobedience. With these homosexuals who practiced subterfuge to get into their positions of authority it is very different.

Finally the people who shoved this thing onto the military have no idea as to the conditions that 18 and 19 year olds live under in the military. Placing an open homosexual in such a position will mean one of two things. First they can be the junior with no privacy displaying their sexuality as inappropriately as would a man placed in a woman's berthing area or a girl in the men's. Second they could be in a position of authority while displaying a sexual interest. For anyone already in the service that raises the credibility issues mentioned above.