The US Senate is very scary

[Smedley VonBuren]

who votes for these people? No wonder their approval rating is in the teens. TERM LIMITS please!!!

 

[jwoodie]

MONEY elects these people. That is the only thing they listen to.

 

[mdk]

Ted Cruz introduced term limit legislation, but it has gone almost nowhere since. There is no way in Hell that Congress is going to willingly build their own gallows.

 

[Ernie S.]

repeal the 17th Amendment. Money gone and representation is returned to the states as the framers intended

 

[longknife]

The Senate - and the president - were never meant to be elected by the popular vote.

The Senate was to represent the various states and Congress was to nominate and elected the Chief Executive.

We've turned a brilliant process into a circus side show.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

repeal the 17th Amendment. Money gone and representation is returned to the states as the framers intended

Money Talks, and That's All You Speak Up For

Representation would then go back to the local 1% who rule each state. They can easily bribe a hundred or so state legislators, but even they don't have enough money to bribe millions of state voters, which they would have to do because of the 17th Amendment. We should see through this bootlickers' attempts to bring back the Robber Baron Era.

 

[g5000]

who votes for these people? No wonder their approval rating is in the teens. TERM LIMITS please!!!

McCain scared me. He was not lucid. The man is clearly suffering from senility. He needs to retire.

 

[g5000]

repeal the 17th Amendment. Money gone and representation is returned to the states as the framers intended

We have the 17th amendment precisely because our Senators were perceived to be more owned by special interests than they are now. See "The Bosses of The Senate" below.

The sign says, "This is the Senate of the Monopolists by the Monopolists and for the Monopolists!" The People's Entrance is bolted shut with a Closed sign on it.

The 17th was passed also because hack partisan politics on the local level resulted in Senate seats going unfilled for years.

 

[Snouter]

As you might recall, Senators were supposed to be elected by State Legislatures. Now they are simply Super Congressmen to do the bidding of the lobby groups/religious cults.

Indeed, McInsane calling Swamp Rat Comey President was distracting. BUT, McInsane did bring up a good point about Swamp Rat Comey's inconsistent behavior and helped show he was an Obama/Crooked Hillary stooge.

 

[sartre play]

Blame the other guy, while your guy is picking your pocket.

 

[g5000]

As you might recall, Senators were supposed to be elected by State Legislatures. Now they are simply Super Congressmen to do the bidding of the lobby groups/religious cults.

The legislative procedures in the Senate are designed to make the Senate more deliberative. A brake on the passions of an ill-informed democracy.

But as partisan hacks erode those procedures with nuclear options, the Senate becomes more and more like the mob mentality in the House.

 

[Thinker101]

As you might recall, Senators were supposed to be elected by State Legislatures. Now they are simply Super Congressmen to do the bidding of the lobby groups/religious cults.

The legislative procedures in the Senate are designed to make the Senate more deliberative. But as partisan hacks erode those procedures with nuclear options, the Senate becomes more and more like the mob mentality in the House.

Hey, are you talking about those hacks that implemented the nuclear option.

 

[g5000]

As you might recall, Senators were supposed to be elected by State Legislatures. Now they are simply Super Congressmen to do the bidding of the lobby groups/religious cults.

The legislative procedures in the Senate are designed to make the Senate more deliberative. But as partisan hacks erode those procedures with nuclear options, the Senate becomes more and more like the mob mentality in the House.

Hey, are you talking about those hacks that implemented that nuclear option.

There have been many nuclear options exercised over time. Our Republic comes closer and closer to peril with the exercising of each one.

 

[Thinker101]

As you might recall, Senators were supposed to be elected by State Legislatures. Now they are simply Super Congressmen to do the bidding of the lobby groups/religious cults.

The legislative procedures in the Senate are designed to make the Senate more deliberative. But as partisan hacks erode those procedures with nuclear options, the Senate becomes more and more like the mob mentality in the House.

Hey, are you talking about those hacks that implemented that nuclear option.

There have been many nuclear options exercised over time. Our Republic comes closer and closer to peril with the exercising of each one.

The nuclear option has only been used in practice twice—in 2013 and 2017, however the threat to use it dates back at least to 1917, in opinions related to reform of the Senate's filibuster rules. Subsequently, an opinion written by Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957 concluded that the U.S. Constitution grants the presiding officer the authority to override existing Senate rules. The option was used to make further rule changes in 1975. In November 2013, Senate Democrats used the nuclear option to eliminate filibusters on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments other than those to the Supreme Court. On April 6, 2017, Senate Republicans used the nuclear option to eliminate the exception for Supreme Court nominees, after the nomination of Neil Gorsuch failed to meet the requirement of 60 votes for ending the debate.

 

[g5000]

who votes for these people? No wonder their approval rating is in the teens. TERM LIMITS please!!!

The voting booth is supposed to enforce term limits.

However, as we centralize power over our lives more and more, it makes that power easier to capture. It is easier to capture a single federal body than to capture 50 state bodies.

The obvious solution is to decentralize power as much as possible.

If a federal politician has less power, then the incentive to bribe that official with campaign funds and junkets obviously goes away. This is the only way we will ever achieve real campaign finance reform.

Instead, the Left insists we keep concentrating more and more power at the top, even going so far as to hand over our very HEALTH to the federal government.

And they are shocked, just shocked, when that power over our lives is so easily and so quickly captured!

Their answer to this problem? MOAR FEDERAL POWER!

A snake swallowing its tail.

 

[Weatherman2020]

In a better day tar and feathers would be in use.

 

[g5000]

As you might recall, Senators were supposed to be elected by State Legislatures. Now they are simply Super Congressmen to do the bidding of the lobby groups/religious cults.

The legislative procedures in the Senate are designed to make the Senate more deliberative. But as partisan hacks erode those procedures with nuclear options, the Senate becomes more and more like the mob mentality in the House.

Hey, are you talking about those hacks that implemented that nuclear option.

There have been many nuclear options exercised over time. Our Republic comes closer and closer to peril with the exercising of each one.

The nuclear option has only been used in practice twice—in 2013 and 2017, however the threat to use it dates back at least to 1917, in opinions related to reform of the Senate's filibuster rules. Subsequently, an opinion written by Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957 concluded that the U.S. Constitution grants the presiding officer the authority to override existing Senate rules. The option was used to make further rule changes in 1975. In November 2013, Senate Democrats used the nuclear option to eliminate filibusters on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments other than those to the Supreme Court. On April 6, 2017, Senate Republicans used the nuclear option to eliminate the exception for Supreme Court nominees, after the nomination of Neil Gorsuch failed to meet the requirement of 60 votes for ending the debate.[3]

It is not only the exercising of the nuclear option which has watered down the deliberative nature of the Senate. I provided the nuclear option as one of the more glaring examples.

 

[Weatherman2020]

What we need is a bigger government.

 

[g5000]

Because power has been more and more centralized, the incentives to drop hundreds of millions of dollars on incumbent politicians each election cycle (and billions on Presidents) has increased in tandem, and has resulted in our US House of Representatives having a 98 percent re-election rate for those incumbents who choose to run again. The Senate has had a 90 percent re-election rate.

This rate has not changed despite multiple "campaign finance reforms" and Supreme Court decisions.

This rate was the same before and after Citizens United.

You would think these facts would scream very loudly that campaign financing is a SYMPTOM, not the DISEASE. If you just keep taking aspirin while never taking away the hammer from the guy hitting you in the head, you are pretty stupid. But that is just what we are doing by focusing on campaign contributions.

The special interests are spending all that money for a reason! Duh!

The disease is the ever increasing centralization of power, but this will never penetrate the skull of a liberal.

Ever.

 

[g5000]

I read the McCain-Feingold legislation from day one, and monitored it from its first iteration all the way through its amendments and final version.

In the very first draft was a provision to deny franking privileges to incumbents during an election year.

Guess what our elected officials removed first from the initial draft?

That's right. The franking ban.

And that, boys and girls, is why our incumbents will never enact legislation which will decrease an incumbent's advantage for re-election.