My Comments on this memorable day:
I praise God that Trump won the election; my hope and prayer is that this nation can develop a sensible coherence to what government is about and how we can restore our nation to a federalist system under the Constitution—one that limits federal power to its Constitutional authority as enumerated under Article 1, Section 8.
I believe that for most people—the vast vast
majority—their comprehension, their understanding of government policy and
operation is at best: incoherent.
Trump is an anomaly, not something we should expect from the rigged political
system we live under. Before this rebellion against the status quo is crushed, We the People need to get our act together…because no hero,
such as Donald Trump, is going to save us.
I am of the opinion that if we can turn California around, we can turn the
nation around.
California has a population of close to 40 million people, about 25 million are eligible to vote, and about 18 million are registered. Yet, between all candidates in the Presidential election, just under 9 million voted. Amazing. That’s 50% of registered voters actually voted and 36% of eligible voters voted.
The Republican Party in California didn’t even have the ability to generate a
candidate for U.S. Senate to compete on the ballot.
It has been a state law for several years that positive role models for
Homosexual-Transgender people be taught in K-12 classrooms. Use of Marijuana
for age 21 and above adults has just been voted legal.
Numerous laws were recently passed in Sacramento to hinder our 2nd Amendment
rights. With the passage of Proposition 63 by a 2:1 margin, Californian’s 2nd Amendment rights were
further eroded with background checks being required for the mere purchase of
ammunition and the mere possession of a rifle magazine with a capacity beyond
10 rounds becoming a crime.
Politically, California is truly a confused and has become a
Repressive/Regressively controlled state.
Don’t get me wrong, I am SO RELIEVED that the Repressive/Regressive candidate lost in the election and that we have a President Elect that is not a politician, but someone who has seen the corruption in our political system and wants to shake it up and hopefully fix what he can of the problems he sees.
Of his policies: seating court justices that will uphold the Constitution
rather than legislate from the bench, controlling our borders, dealing with
illegal aliens and immigration, developing a policy to deal with radical Islam,
developing a coherent foreign policy, strengthening our military, cutting back
on regulations crippling small business, and SCHOOL CHOICE—but not just for the
poor, school choice should be for all Americans—these are all critical issues
to be dealt with. HOWEVER:
However, none of the issues address the fundamental problems of how our
Constitution has been corrupted or why WE THE PEOPLE are not at the reins of
government control. Donald Trump is an anomaly—hopefully a gift from God to
stop the national decline at this critical moment in history—but not something
we can routinely count on as a method of selecting our representatives for
government office.
Much needs to be done, and at this point, I see it as a virtually impossible
task—barring God opening the doors to methods, such a films and videos—to
educate and enlighten We the People. For, we are currently living under a
system that is not just incoherent to most, but it is also a RIGGED SYSTEM.
Unfortunately, Trump has not indicated he is seeing the rigged system that I am
seeing.
I doubt if one in a thousand (or even 1 in 10,000) in this nation has given any
serious consideration to the importance of district size in a representative
system. Our nation’s founders did, because they had representative systems that
worked, and they knew the importance of District Size in selecting a
representative to serve on their behalf in their state legislatures and in
Congress.
Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution stipulates that the number of
representatives shall not exceed one per 30,000 population. As a safeguard to
protect the people from runaway government, a bill of rights was demanded and
after due consideration of the ideas and requests of the various states, twelve
articles were formulated and submitted to the first Congress as a Bill of
Rights. Article the First (as it was called, and the first of the 12 proposed
amendments) was to place a upper cap on the district
population for a representative to Congress.
Two versions of Article the First were approved. The version approved by the
House of Representatives set an ultimate cap of 50,000 for a house district,
and the version approved by the Senate set an ultimate cap of 60,000 for a
house district. The two versions went into committee to reconcile the two and
what went out was a corrupted version that actually made no sense (by the
substitution of the word “more” for “less” in the final clause) and rendered
the amendment impotent to limit district size as originally intended.
In 1789, Article the First along with 11 other amendments were approved by
Congress and sent to the various states for ratification.
As it was, Article the First was the only article of the 12 that was not
officially ratified. 10 were quickly ratified and are known as the Bill of
Rights and the 11th was
ratified recently as our 27th Amendment.
With all the other concerns of the fledgling new nation, the issue of placing
an upper cap on district size apparently got lost in the shuffle, especially as
congressional districts were kept small. And though gradually growing in size
due to reapportionments following each 10-year census, population of districts
did not exceed the size recommended by our founders until 1843—and by then, few
if anyone was still alive that understood the importance of keeping the size of
the district a manageable size…if we were to preserve We the People being the
ones who were to select the candidates for political office.
With a loss of understanding of how a representative system works, we have gradually allowed those who want to rule over us to change the rules of the game. Our staunchest enemies have been the Repressive/Regressives (a.k.a. progressives, or more recently: liberals) who see the Constitution as a hindrance to their goal of expanding national government control, in order to implement their half-baked and historically failed ideas of governance.
At the beginning of the Repressive/Regressive era, the 17th Amendment was passed, which changed
the method of selecting Senators from that of the state legislatures to a
popular statewide vote of the electorate. While the naïve were sold this as a
step forward for democracy, the political’s knew this
to be an open door to their being able to select the candidates from which the
electorate could select (what a choice!). These Senators, rather than being
accountable to the state legislatures and accordingly to the people, were now
predominately accountable to the big money and special interests that brought
them to power.
By the time of the 1903 reapportionment, the size of the population for the
average house district had grown to 203,811 and the political manipulators in
Congress saw the growing size of the House of Representatives as an obstacle to
their passage of legislation to promote their ideological goals. Thus, the
Reapportionment Act of 1911, which froze the size of the House of
Representatives at 435 members. Currently, the average district size for a
congress person is around 700,000 and growing…hardly a size that accommodates
your average citizen being involved in the selection of a candidate or the
representative being any more accountable to the local district than necessary
to get re-elected. Instead, by and large big money and special interests present
the candidates from which we select (vote) and what we know about the candidate
is based on mostly advertisements in the media—much of which simply propaganda
to persuade the public to vote a certain way.
During the New Deal under Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), the power of the
Supreme Court and the original intent of the Commerce Clause was corrupted…and
largely has been since.
The original intent of the Commerce Clause was to permit the federal government to keep states from doing things which would hinder interstate commerce (as had been done under the previous Articles of Confederation). It was not to give the federal government power to regulate industry or the free enterprise system…merely to help keep interstate commerce functioning in a healthy manner.
Under the New Deal, that concept for the Commerce Clause was distorted to give
the federal government virtual carte blanche control over all aspects of the
previously free enterprise system.
When the courts objected, FDR threatened to pack the court. As it was, he did
not have to pack the court, because due to his longevity in office he was able
to fill the court with his appointees to rubber stamp his programs. FDRs
policies, much of which would previously have been judged unconstitutional, suddenly
met with the approval of the court. Most of our regulations and government
bureaus have grown from this…of which in my opinion are destroying this nation
and counter to the general welfare.
We still have a U.S. Congress comprised of a House and Senate. Senators are
still two (2) per state, meaning that each state (regardless of population or
size) has an equal vote in the Senate. A similar method prevailed in a number
of states, which had two houses of legislature. In California, we had the Assembly,
which was based on population. And, we had the Senate, for which each County
had one senator. However, this was not acceptable to Earl Warren, whose court
ruled in the 1964 court case Reynolds v Sims that state senate seats,
which had previously been one per county had to be based on population. Hence,
in California, the power of the senate, which was distributed evenly among the
various counties, was forced to change and came under control of the few
intensely populated areas of the state—and hence the politics of the state
shifted radically to support the Repressive/Regressive agenda that dominates in
large urban areas.
I am not going to turn this email into a book, so I will try to be brief. Somehow, through public education and use of the media…certain ideas that currently do not prevail need to be promoted:
· If we want representative government, we need small districts, so we can select candidates that represent us.
· We need to change the concept of making laws...that is not the job of an elected officeholder to dream up new legislation or propose legislation provided by a special interest...but only to propose legislation or vote in support of legislation that has been vetted and is promoted by ones home district.
· The current system of Lobbyists should be rendered as
a criminal activity. Government representatives work for the people. If anyone
wants to lobby for some issue, it must be done in a public setting with full
accountability and disclosure—or not at all.
· We need to repeal the 17th Amendment
· We need
to repeal the 14th Amendment—besides being somewhat
redundant to the 5th Amendment in regard to due process,
it has created a legal misconception which has permitted the practice of
“anchor babies.” The rest is too subjective and pretty irrelevant since we are
long past the issues of the civil war—it gives activist judges too much room to
come up with spurious arguments to legislate from the bench.
· We need an amendment similar to
Article the First that places an upper limit on the population for a house
district, preferably in the range of 50 to 60 thousand population. Yes,
we would end up with a lot of representatives (about 6,000 for now), but that
could be managed quite easily and suddenly you would have representatives known
and accountable to the local people.
· We need to reign in the Commerce Clause to its
original intent, which would render much of the federal bureaucracy
unconstitutional and to be phased out in preference to legislation that is
needful.
· There are enumerated powers under Article 1, Section 8. The issues the Supreme Court hears should be limited to those and as specified in Article 3, Section 2...which in my opinion would mean that the Supreme Court has no business ruling on such issues as marriage, abortion, or many other issues...such as state legislatures (Reynolds v Sims)...all of which should not be federal issues and such past judgments should be rescinded.
· Other than promoting school choice, we need to get the federal government and hopefully state governments out of the education business—while promoting healthy competition in education.
· We need to stop the federal government from being a promoter of racism. Its current policy is archaic, unscientific, and promotes and perpetuates strife between ethnic groups. Science through DNA, has determined that we are all descended from a common ancestor, that there is no real distinctive “race” but that we are all a blend of various genetic distinctions. The federal government should promote the teaching of this nationwide— that we are all ancestors—all relatives (distant cousins)—of a single human race.
· Federal (and state) social welfare
programs that do not serve the purpose of the general welfare should be phased
out as unconstitutional. Doors of opportunity closed off by local, state, and
federal regulations need to be re-opened so that the free enterprise system can
work for the poor as well as the rich. Churches and charities should once again
assume responsibility to help the unskilled and addicted to become productive
citizens. Government assistance, if truly needed beyond what churches and
charities can provide should be limited to those the tax-payers determine need
further assistance.
Anyway, enough for this email.
Thank God that Trump won the election…however, a lot must be done if we are to
restore this nation to one of freedom, liberty, and opportunity for all.