Home of Today's Common Sense

Published Brownsville Herald 8/6/2006

My favorite columnist, Ruben Navarrette, again focused his sights on an issue that I have been thinking about for some time but just had not gotten around to delving into.
In his column After immigration policy, lets reform Congress. He went on to assert that “Apparently the august institution is more broken than the U.S. –Mexican Border.”
If you just look at the Senate immigration bill and the spending mandated in it that seems only there to satisfy political friends. The House bill appears to be so unreasonable that it can only serve to keep the power of life and the future of immigrants in their hands, so they will continue to have a product/largess to exchange with labor and lawyer organizations in return for support, both political and financial.
I have written “ad-nauseum” regarding immigration reform and will attempt to focus a little “Common Sense” into Congressional reform, a place that seems devoid of such stuff.
I am guided by a pocket copy of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence given to me by Congressman Ron Paul, a Libertarian with a Republican label. One of the lights in a dark place.
The Congressman’s comments in the booklet are especially insightful.
The first paragraph says ”The U.S. Constitution is the most unique and best contract ever drawn up between a people and their government in history. Though flawed from the beginning, because all men are flawed, it nevertheless has served us well and set an example for the entire world. Yet no matter how hard the authors tried, the inevitable corrupting influence of power was not thwarted by the Constitution.”
That succinctly describes where our government is, at this juncture in history. Though there are exceptions, those that are supposed to represent us in the government, have determined that they know better what is good for us than we do ourselves and have chosen to rule rather than represent. They have come to believe that whatever it takes to retain power to keep on ruling and further expand their personal power is good for the country.
These solons have perverted the use of the Constitution for this purpose and created a system of public largess that can be increased, withdrawn, or restricted to extort compliance with their interests and expand the power they already have. This largess includes such things as: numbers of visas to enter the United States for a particular purpose, educational funding if this or that condition is met, facilities construction funding, if the all of the hoops are jumped through properly, health care funding if you meet today’s criteria but not necessarily tomorrow’s, and on and on. In fact the dependence of government benefits and intrusiveness involved in complying with the demands have, for all intents and purposes, made us serfs of these rulers.
The federal courts, not wanting to be left out of the power system have aggressively participated in creating law that affords them a powerful place in the ruling hierarchy. A glance through the recent book “Men in black” by Mark Levin will provide a number of examples of that.
Not all of the benefits that I have described are bad; many may have served to prevent or ameliorate social catastrophes. What is bad is that they are used to force a particular social outcome, encourage a particular thought process or benefit a particular segment of society at the expense of another, without the agreement of either. The focus is only on “How much will you get from the government?” “Who says they got it for you?” and “What do I have to say or do to get the benefit?” No consideration is given as to where the resources come from, whether those resources were secured by force, and what the consequences both intended and unintended are.
The beneficent government doesn’t tell you all of this; they only tell you how much you will get from them. It is government money not the sweat and blood of another worker that was extorted from him or her.
Can we change the situation? Yes, but it should not be changed all of a sudden. It really needs to be debated and steps taken gradually as intended by the founders. The process will also be part of the reform and the debate part of the national healing.
A first step in the process would certainly be to encourage the broadest access to the ballot for candidates for Congress. The intention of the founders that The House of Representatives would be made up of “Citizen Statesmen” and the short term of two years would allow these “Citizen Statesmen” to return to their farms or businesses without a serious loss at the end of their term of national service. Because it was envisioned that the members would have arrived recently from the real world, they would best know, the sentiments of their neighbors, the realities of day to day living and the real needs of “the folks” , they would know best how to spend the “peoples’ money. For that reason all spending must originate in the House of Representatives.
If you can subscribe to the above, there should be no need for a retirement plan for Representatives as they should not be there long enough to become government employees. Certainly, even if you don’t agree, the retirement should be the same “Social Security” and any personally funded program chosen, that is available to “the folks”. Perhaps then Social Security might even become better.
My understanding of the reason for the Senate in the bi-cameral legislature is to provide stability and consistency in goals and legislation to the “direct voice” and action of the “folks” in the House, but more than that, they were to represent the interest of each state in the determination of the direction of the government and essentially be the conscience in Congress. (Ensure there were few unfunded mandates)
This protection of the state was lost with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment which provided for the direct election by popular vote rather than the appointment by the states’ legislatures. Now there is no conscience in Congress. Senators are subject to the same requirements to secure election, gain power and supply constituents with largess to keep the post.
As evidence of this, consider that the government seems to work best when one party is the majority in the House and another in the Senate.
We can take a first step in the coming November elections by examining the records of your Congressman and any opponents, involve yourself in the political party or the campaign of the candidate you like (not the one that isn’t as bad as the other guys) then vote. Our freedom is too precious to lose over apathy. The Iraqi voters came out in enormous percentages with the real prospect of being killed for their participation. We should at least be able to have a showing better than 10 or 20 %. At the very lease a majority of the eligible voters should find their way to the polls, even 75% is better but until it is the exception that all voters don’t turn out our freedom is at risk.
For the longer term, efforts should be made to make running for Congress easier and less expensive so regular folks can participate. More candidates on the ballot could provide the opportunity to have the best elected not the “least worst”.

1. Jakob says:

   July 31, 2007 at 10:39 am

   This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title ess needs reform – Home of Today’s Common Sense – Common Sense in today’s world! the-drews.com – Comments Encouraged. Thanks for informative article

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