KEEP THE 17TH AMENDMENT

Vladimir Putin is center stage in the world, which is just where he wants to be. Today, Angela Merkel is carrying a European plan to deal with him for President Obama’s approval. I find this to be proper and orderly. He has been negotiating with Putin counter to European interests for a long time. It will be fascinating to hear what the warmongers in Congress, those driven by the industrial military complex, come up with to criticize the process and the carefully formulated plan, whatever that plan might be. All within the beltway understand it is not the Republican plan; therefore, it will be all wrong and subjected to ridicule—not analyzed and modified, or corrected, but only criticized. As ridiculous as it sounds, I know this will happen because it has been the pattern for the last 6 years. What scares me is that with this irresponsible congress might rush to judgment, it just might happen regardless of what we the people want.

We can only shake our heads in disbelief at Republican childlike behavior. I know that there will be an outcry because I said ‘Republican’ and not all politicians. I said Republicans because that is precisely what I mean; Of course, Democrats vote in block just as Republican do; take any given issue as an example and it is predictable the number of votes each side will have plus or minus a few votes one-way or the other. In addition, Congress invariably disconnects public opinion from the actual vote tally as if the congressional representatives do not represent the people. Some might say our founders built this into the system, which they did, but this protects the people from themselves; more like a trial by jury and not like a lynch mob rushing to judgment. A carefully considered decision should be better than a hastily arrived at emotionally driven decision; however, Congress does not function that way. They are not there to come to correct decisions with all the people in mind, but more and more politicians are there to make a decision that benefit a minority.

There is a movement to repeal the 17^th amendment. The constitution specifies that state legislatures elect senators. Apparently, the author of the constitution felt doing that gave states more representation in the context of a federation of states. However, the framers of our government more effectively achieved equality of states by having two senators from each state regardless of population or size of that state. What having state legislatures appoint senators did is to introduce another level of bureaucracy in the federal government. Ideas evolve, and the idea of political party control of voters’ right has evolved into a real thing but so has big money control of one political party, the Republican Party. As the big money control of political parties set aside the “one man one vote” ideal so has pluralism been set aside. Citizens’ United decision has corrupted or Supreme Court, which was a product of big money in the hands of Karl Rove, allowed big money to buy five justices who have undermined the entire system of government. It was a devastating but not fatal blow. By overturning the 17^th amendment, we would show that we forgot why “we the people” passes the 17^th amendment in the first place. The people passed it because after careful deliberation they realized that by taking the control of the selection of senators out of the hands of the people, it allowed special interests to corrupt the system; those who were corrupting the system are the same ones that Teddy Roosevelt fought against, which were the rich and the powerful. It was bad then but it is worse now. 

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