Utah Senate Votes to Repeal 17th Amendment......

Electing the president was an act of war? Or refusing to surrender federal property to the Confederacy? The only ones who committed an act of war was the Confederacy when they fired on Fort Sumter that fateful day.

 

Why would they be beholding to special interest groups?

 

So you are saying that state senators would have no contact with special interest groups in their state? Or that special interest groups only operate in Washington DC?

 

Beholding =/ contact with

They would be beholding to their state legislature and governor, the STATE.

 

You think special interest groups wouldn't buy them like they do now with congress?

 

How would they buy them? They "buy congress" with campaign donations, since there would be no campaigning there would be no campaign solicitations and no time having to be spent running for office.

 

Actually the Senate was extremely corrupt prior to the 17th. Large corporations would purchase the election of Senators from the State Legislators and the Senators represented those interests rather than the states. In my opinion repeal of the 17th is one of the absolute worst ideas anybody has come up with, it is pure idiocy.

 

Sending in reinforcement was

 

Thats why they passed those amendments so quickly. No way they pass with all states voting. Can you show me where they were declared territories ?

 

Technically they were called Military Districts. While they retained their original names and most of the same borders, the Confederate states re-admitted to the union were not the same legal entities that left the union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Acts

 

They would buy the folks who vote for the representatives.

 

Compared to now with the Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosi's and Hillary Clinton's. Your state can regulate their own Senators and you regulate the regulators with your vote.

It's the left that screams about he money and the campaigning required and the political partisan politics. This gets it back to the House represents the people, and we can term limit them, and the Senate represents the States. That critical balance and then we insure we police for the corruption.

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Is yours up for sale? Why do you elect him/her then?

 

I didn't elect them.

 

If they are in contact with lobbyists, then they are beholden to them as well. State legislators and state senators are not beholden to their governor. You can have a D governor, a R house and a R state senate. Even in Texas, state senators and state representatives have disagreed with both the governor and Lt. Governor here. And the Governor and Lt Governor is not asking for their resignation or anything else.

 

It is called those back room deals, friends of the senator meeting with their friends of Corporation X who happened to donate a large sum of money to their state senate campaign. When the nomination comes up, the senators would be remembering who put them there, who gave them money to run for the office, and whose relatives and other friends working for their office.

 

It's always the same nonsense with these people. State governments are generally more corrupt than federal governments because there is less oversight and more opportunity to engage in corrupt activities between politicians and their cronies.

 

You live in Alabama. Here is something from Ballotpedia that might interest you:

The top 10 contributors were:[1]

Donor Amount

Alabama Republican Party $1,501,385
Tennessee Valley Citizens for Economic Development $1,397,160
Alabama Education Association $868,675
Business Council of Alabama $814,500
Senate Majority PAC $636,985
Alabama Farmers Federation $591,293
Alabama Power Co $375,250
Home Builders Association of Alabama $343,500
Alabama Association of Realtors $339,133
Alabama Trial Lawyers Association $338,930

Notice that these are large sums of cash being donated to state senators of Alabama in 2010, the last data available. The special interest groups would have a significant say on who would be nominated to a vacant board, a vacant judgeship, and now a US senator. Some on the list are GOP donors and some are Dem donors. The point is that this proves that simply allowing the states to choose the senators would allow these groups to have more say so than a US senatorial race with multiple entries.

 

yes, there is. the only reason why they are advocating for this is that the GOP controls a majority of the state senates in the country. Yet in those same states, it is about 50/50 generally, for the US senator to not be in the same party as the majority in the state senate. It is essentially an end around to try to keep control of the US senate through corruption and dark money. Most call this nepotism and others call it greed.

 

Why would any voter want one corrupt politician to get to pick another corrupt politician to be a senator? It's much easier to vote out bad politicians directly than to have to vote out a majority of corrupt state legislators just to be able to get rid of a corrupt senator somewhere down the line.
The notion is completely asinine and flies in the face of their so-called ideals of individual freedom and limited government.
They reveal themselves to be nothing more than corrupt weasels when they try something that lame.

 

In one word, greed with a slice of advocating their political agendas. The problem is that they are not being truly honest why they want the change. They attempt to use the argument of "well, that is how it used to work" or similar statements. They believe as long as they can get their way, they are willing to look the other way as long as it will benefit them.

 

Yes let's stop it by not having Senators be political offices who have to run for reelections requiring huge sums of money and campaign promises. You know as it was before we turned the Senate into the corrupt body at the beckoning of the lobbyist, you know the reason the left wants public funding of campaigns.

So who is your representative who allows himself to be bought off?

And BTW the corruption angle is just one of the issue with changing back to how the forefathers designed the system.

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If your state representative is corrupt and sells his vote why don't you vote him out of office?

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And now you have to lie about it. It's been advocated for as long as I can remember through both Democrat majority and Republican majority. Don't project your political shallowness on others.

 

You are still not understanding that by "changing back to how the forefathers designed the system" that you are actually enabling more corruption to be done that is a lot less costly and a lot less scrutinized.

Because too many people like you will vote to keep that person in office even though I don't vote for him. That's why.

Lying about what? We all know that the false pretense of "changing back to how the forefathers designed the system" is not the real reason. You would not be proposing this if a majority of state senates were Democratic Party held, would you? No you would not. You would use a different argument than the one you are using now. BTW, the ones who have been arguing this have been the ones who are of one political persuasion and have run those numbers of just how many more senators they would have if it was done the other way. Been there, seen that, have the t shirt.

Note: reform is not the same as repeal. Those on the Dem side and some on the GOP side have advocated reform, namely the appointment by the governor when the seat is vacated. However, repealing the amendment altogether means that it goes back to the way it was. And with the amount of dark money that is not invested into politics, it would make that process even more corrupt than it already is. All for the glory of continuing GOP control at any and all costs.

 

You don't get it that it's not necessarily true. There can be corruption no matter which system it is up to us voters to vote them out. So who is your state representative who is selling his influence?

Speak for yourself.

I was quite clear and don't need to repeat myself. This is not a new movement and not based on the current make up of state legislatures.

When you want to debate MY positions let me know.

And of course you have totally ignored the prime reason for doing this. To give representation back to the states in the Federal government to prevent the federal government from staying on this road of more dominance over the states and being able to dictate mandates onto the states.

 

No, I do get it. the problem is that you either do not understand what it means to repeal the 17th amendment or you are being extremely ignorant of the whole affair. If the 17th is repealed, it is not just the situation when a sitting US senator retires from their position during the term, it is also for electing senators to begin their terms as well. I do understand that some have called for reform that when a senator retires in that a governor does not appoint a person to serve out the time in the Senate. However, if repealing the 17th amendment, it would also mean that those state legislators will elect the person to be senator when the term begins. And that is where the real corruption will begin and that is what you are completely ignoring.

so says the person who wants to enable corruption and be like an ostrich at the same time.

Oh good god man. Stop being like Marco Rubio repeating the same talking points that is memorized.

The whole point about "getting back to the way it was" and that means not electing US senators by popular vote, is to make sure those state senates in GOP control to guarantee 2 US senators who are GOP instead of letting the people decide. On the side issue is the occasional occurrence where a sitting US senator resigns, such as taking up a position in the executive branch, and having the governor appoint a person to take their place. At some later day, an election may be held, which usually means that the sitting temporary person has the advantage than anyone else, generally.

What is being ignored is that the amount of influence in a federal senate election would be whitewashed in state senate elections. Not all states have state campaign finance laws to allow complete or near complete transparency. And that is what the tea party wants, that dark money to buy politics for their own greed. Nothing more, nothing less.

And if you really want to get rid of the corruption, or make it easier to spot, then campaign finance reform should be on the top of the list. But we all know that it isn't, for obvious reasons.

 

That is mere conjecture on your part. It it was changed to get the corruption out, well it has certainly failed hasn't it because there is more money than ever in it and more lobbying than ever in it. So at the least it would be a wash. But then we get the other aspects as in mandates on the states and the states interest being represented.

Unless he's is corrupt and being bought off, but then people like you would vote to keep them in office from what I can gather by your statements here.

That.

But then you do tend to create words for others and then argue those words.

I have proposed it for decades through various congressional make ups, stop lying.

You can't "reform" an Amendment.

That is up to the state legislature and cannot be changed by a "reform".