Yeah, I know it's just a dream but the system isn't working as it should. If only those dumb rural people in red states would wake up and realize how they're getting screwed by voting against their own best interests, something might change but I'm not holding my breath.
4U2, Att. arizona1 - No amendment allowed: A constitutional problem we’re stuck with
"A reasoned essay, but I think confiscation of all guns in the USA would probably be more likely to happen, in other words, impossible."
By Eric Black | 12/03/2012
[...]
In a New York Times op-ed undiplomatically headlined “Our Imbecilic Constitution .. http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/our-imbecilic-constitution/ ,” constitutional scholar Sanford Levinson suggested other means of Senate reform that, while crazy on first hearing, would at least be within the range of something that could amended into the Constitution without first having to amend out the bit in Article V.
For example, if you really want to elect a new president who can implement the ideas on which he was elected, you could allow each newly elected president to appoint 50 members of the House and 10 members of the Senate, all to serve four-year terms coterminous with his or her own. While that would alter absurd equality of states in the Senate, it would be a serious blow against gridlock.
That in case any here are not aware of the unamendable bit. This one just another proposal from another place. All fitting the "impossible" classification, i guess. At least for a long time.
What Australia needs is a genuine house of review
The Drum By Joff Lelliott Updated 3 Jan 2014, 1:46pm
The Senate either rubber stamps or blocks legislation along party lines, or compromises it when there is a balance of power. A British proposal for a reformed House of Lords might provide the inspiration we need for a better system, writes Joff Lelliott.
[...]
House of Lords reform has been a semi-permanent feature of British political and constitutional debate for over a century now. In the later years of the last Labour government, the political parties began working on a complete overhaul of the House of Lords, not least to make it democratic. By the time the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government released a White Paper in 2011, the major parties all backed a truly radical proposal. The model eschewed the normal democratic conventions of politicians facing regular elections and serving several terms at the will of electors.
Instead, most members would be elected for gargantuan 15-year terms and would not be allowed to stand for second terms. They also would not be allowed to stand for the House of Commons for at least four years after leaving the Lords.
The proposal aimed to create a chamber free of the grip of tight party control. Members of the Lords would be free intellectually and politically because they would be unlikely to ever face another election. If they were party members, their parties would struggle to control them because many of the threats normally wielded by parties were removed.
In addition to the elected members, 20 per cent of the Lords would be crossbenchers appointed by an independent commission. Not only would this help ensure a wide range of talent in the Lords, it would also make it harder for any party to have a majority.
As with the present relationship between the Lords and the Commons, the reformed Lords would have had limits on its ability to frustrate the will of the Commons, especially on manifesto commitments of governments. Combined with the lack of firm party control, this would help ensure the House of Lords remained a genuine house of review. In a feature almost designed for Australia's federal system, members would have been elected on a regional basis, with one third of places elected at each general election.
In the end, the proposal was killed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. Having continued with Labour's project, the two parties slowly fell-out over a range of constitutional reform issues, and having already shelved a referendum on Lords reform, an internal Conservative revolt finally killed the legislation in mid-2012.
The Australian public overwhelmingly wants a Senate which attracts the best and brightest, is not in the iron grip of party control, and which genuinely reviews legislation rather than simply rubber stamping or rejecting it based on the political make-up of the other house.
Australia should not blindly adopt a (rejected) British proposal, but the model for the reformed House of Lords might provide a useful starting point for debate on a second chamber that better meets the wishes of voters.
Dr Joff Lelliott is state director of the political think tank The Australian Fabians (QLD). View his full profile here.
Edit: Late thought. This one to remind of yet another Trump lie. Another carrot to the 'you are unhappy, so i will fix it for you' of his 'trust me I will' people.
Term limits amendment would face uphill battle
January 5, 2017 by Scott Bomboy
[...]
And one person who has publicly supported term limits for Congress is Donald Trump.
“We’re going to put on term limits, which a lot of people aren’t happy about, but we’re putting on term limits,” Trump said in an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired right after his election in November. “We’re doing a lot of things to clean up the system.” https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/term-limits-amendment-would-face-uphill-battle/
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