HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES
Liberal Rednecks: A Salute
By Kelly OConnell (Bio and Archives) Monday, May 13, 2013
Mindless, Progressive Automatons Have Filled America With Righteous Indignation
The term Liberal Redneck will strike progressives as an absurd contradiction. Yet, Conservatives will have an immediate, wearying familiarity with the angry, judgmental, uninformed and doctrinaire viewpoint of this group. In fact, the Liberal Redneck is every bit as small-minded, bigoted, dismissive, self-righteous, judgmental, uneducated and intolerant as the worst fundamentalist.
The problem in America today is that there is never a level playing field offered for the discussion of ideas. Therefore, most important topics are only mentioned in a predetermined format. In other words, one can mention, for example—gay marriage, but only with the proviso that the topic for debate and conclusion—is closed. But the Liberal Redneck is a special kind of smug, progressive partisan, who—while refusing to admit any bias, is more angry, close-minded, accusatory and bombastic than an ayatollah at a radical feminist convention. You undoubtedly know the type.
I. What is a Liberal Redneck?
The definition of Liberal Redneck is obvious. A large class of persons exists across America who see themselves as open-minded, enlightened, non-judgmental, unbiased, educated, non-superstitious and elite. Of course, this is the group of persons who claim the mantle of “modern liberal.” In fact, this group is anything but fair-minded and tolerant. Dictionary.com offers the following definition:
redneck
1. an uneducated white farm laborer, especially from the South.
2. a bigot or reactionary, especially from the rural working class.
A Liberal Redneck, like any other bigot, assumes beliefs without bothering to investigate whether any credible evidence exists to disprove them. They assert such a lofty intellectual position that they claim no reasonable person could disagree with their ideas. Such persons only up the ante by increasing their vehemence when positing their beliefs viz a-viz religion. Consider Harvard dropout thespian Matt Damon’s pathetic, ad-hominem laced critique of Sarah Palin: (video)
“It’s like a really bad Disney movie, “The Hockey Mom.’ Oh, I’m just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she’s the president,” the actor said. “She’s facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It’s absurd.
“I don’t understand why more people aren’t talking about how absurd it is. It’s a really terrifying possibility. The fact that we have gotten that close to this being a reality is crazy.”
Damon expressed concern about Mrs Palin’s political experience - “mayor of a really small town and governor of Alaska for less than two years”, saying he did not understand why she had been chosen.
“I think the pick was made for political purposes. But in terms of governance, it’s a disaster.”
He added that he wanted to know more about Mrs Palin’s views on evolution versus creationism “because she’s going to have the nuclear codes” and whether, according to some reports, “she banned books or tried to ban books. We can’t have that.”
II. Liberal Redneck Information Sources
The pièce de résistance of Liberal Redneck information is the New York Times. But the most typical source of leftist beliefs are progressive news organizations, such as MSNBC and others. And some have taken note that the progressive mainstream media has relentlessly slanted news in favor of Liberal Redneck bias, such as in the recent gun control debate:
Even by the standards of today’s partisan media environment, the response has been noteworthy. TV hosts, editorial boards, and even some reporters have aggressively criticized and shamed the 46 Senators who opposed the plan, while some have even taken to actively soliciting the public to contact them directly.
The decision by some members of the media to come down so firmly on one side of a policy debate has only served to reinforce conservatives’ longstanding suspicions that the mainstream media has a deep-seated liberal bias.
Such anti-gun advocacy is notable when many studies show gun control laws simply do not work to stem violence, as seen today in Chicago (Gun Control is Why Chicago Murder Rates Are Skyrocketing). Scholar Thomas Sowell has written extensively on this failure: “The Fact-Free Gun-Control Crusade—Stricter gun-control laws don’t reduce murder rates, but who’s counting?”
Pulitzer-Prize winning American playwright David Mamet staged his political coming-out party in the Village Voice in an article titled, David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’. Mamet rejects his former cynical attitude, saying: “This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.”
Mamet then wrote a book titled, The Secret Knowledge, On the Dismantling of American Culture (video). Here he delivers a gem: “Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated.” Mamet claims that Liberal Rednecks don’t understand their opposition because they never take the time to absorb any information they don’t already believe. An article about Mamet from the Wall Street Journal said this:
Before he moved to California, Mr. Mamet had never met a self-described conservative or read one’s writings. He’d never heard of Messrs. Sowell or Steele. “No one on the left has,” he tells me. “I realized I lived in this bubble.”
When it popped, it was rough. “I did what I thought was, if not a legitimate, then at least a usual, thing‚ I took it out on those around me,” Mr. Mamet says wryly. It took “a long, long, long time and a lot of difficult thinking first to analyze, then change, some of my ideas.”
Interestingly, after a number of botched stories, the mainstream media is beginning to count the losses. CBS correspondent Scott Pelley recently stated: We’re Getting Big Stories Wrong, Over & Over Again’
Our house is on fire. These have been a bad few months for journalism,” he added. “We’re getting the big stories wrong, over and over again.
Perhaps if the mainstream media were not suffering from a terminal case of confirmation bias, these Liberal Rednecks would not be drowning in error? (Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.)
III. Liberal Redneck Science
A classic example of Liberal Redneck Science is Global Warming. This “science” is the classic example of anecdotal mythology, placed into pseudo-scientific explanations, with no more real explanatory power than phrenology (explaining personality and character via skull shape). Despite the perpetual faked research regularly propping up Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW), Liberal Rednecks never consider this could be evidence of a falsified movement. (list of AGW hoaxed stories)
The UK Daily Mail published an article March 16, 2013 titled: The Great Green Con no. 1: The hard proof that finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along:
...irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed. This blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added ¬£100 a year to household energy bills. Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation.
This information comes after a recent study found there has been no discernible increase in temperature for the last two decades: Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled. Yet this news has not stopped Liberal Rednecks from attacking “climate-deniers.” Eugene Robinson wrote this article in January, 2013: Is it hot enough for you?, stating:
The climate change denialists—especially those who manipulate the data in transparently bogus ways to claim that warming has halted or even reversed course—have been silent, as one might expect. Sensible people accept the fact of warming, but many doubt that our dysfunctional political system can respond in any meaningful way.
In fact, some research shows the earth is cooling (Sorry Global Warming Alarmists, The Earth Is Cooling), which makes this year’s coldest Spring ever (After coldest Easter ever, spring is set to be chillier than winter) even more suprising.
Or consider this extraordinary religious conclusion, when atheist physicist Stephen Hawking curiously explained the Big Bang needed no Big Banger, “...caricaturing the religious position with the myth of an African tribe whose god vomited the Sun, Moon and stars.” He then added: “‘What was God doing before He made the world? Was He preparing Hell for people who asked such questions?”
Unsurprisingly, after visiting Iran he now has decided to boycott Israel for Palestine.
The issue here is not whether a person can take a position upon a controversial topic, and then claim their belief is supported by science. The real issue is whether these same people are willing to look at the data which seems to disagree with their views, or if they would ever change their minds on the subject. If not, they might be a Liberal Redneck!
IV. Liberal Redneck Reaction to Unbelievers
Liberal Rednecks have absolutely no tolerance for those who disagree with their opinions. This is because Liberal Rednecks think their own beliefs define reality. Here is world-class Liberal Redneck Bill Maher commenting upon the Tea Party:
Now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud, the tea baggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I’m talking of course about the founding fathers. I think it’s pretty clear that the founding fathers would have hated your guts and what’s more, you would have hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly BS.
In an even more bizarre tirade, the world’s richest capitalist, Bill Gates, lays waste to the goose that delivered his ($67 billion) golden eggs, saying:
Capitalism means that there is much more research into male baldness than there is into diseases such as malaria, which mostly affect poor people. Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives. The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need. But it gets virtually no funding…it’s a flaw in the pure capitalistic approach.
What makes Gates’ comments even more interesting is that, according to Tracy Kidder in Soul of a New Machine, Gates made his company the world’s largest by predatory business practices. And who could forget Obama’s comments about Conservatives?
And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
V. Liberal Redneck Komedy—Janeane Garofalo
Actress, comedienne, and Liberal Redneck Janeane Garofalo recently discovered she needed a divorce, since her drunken, gag wedding in Las Vegas 20 years ago was determined to be a real wedding. This fits in with her obsession with explaining Conservative views by claiming they emanate from the limbic “lizard” brain center. She also insulted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a black man too stupid to know he’s being prostituted by his white masters.
Explain that one to me now, you have an African American gentlemen married to a white woman who is in cahoots with a group that has a lot of racists in it. Is that Stockholm Syndrome on his part or what’s going on?
Doubling down on her obsession with Black Conservatives, Garofalo claimed Herman Cain was a paid stooge:
Herman Cain is in this presidential race because he deflects the racism that is inherent in the Republican party, the conservative movement, the Tea Party certainly. In the last 30 years the Republican party has been moving more and more to the right, but also race-baiting more. Gay-baiting more. Religion-baiting more. But, Herman Cain, I feel like, is being paid by somebody to be involved and to run for president so that you go like ‘I love that, that can’t be racist. He’s a black guy, a black guy asking for Obama being impeached.’ Or ‘it’s a black guy whose anti-Muslim. It’s a black guy who is a Tea Party guy.’
Garofalo then comments upon “pathological” limbic brain dysfunction of Conservatives:
And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they’ll believe it, except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become—it’s like showing Frankenstein’s monster fire. They become confused, and angry and highly volatile. That guy, causing them feelings they don’t know, because their limbic brain, we’ve discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring.
Conclusion
Liberal Rednecks are a growing segment of a society run by mindless elites, who—in lacking any substantive education or training in logic or debate, feel as if they were born under politically correct star, effortlessly purifying all their beliefs. The question is—Can we survive this holier-than-Mao, brain-addled class? God save us from the deranged Janeane Garofalos of this world, and their limbic brained analysis.
Kelly O’Connell hosts American Anthem on CFP Radio Sundays at 4 pm (EST).
Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico. Kelly is now host of a daily, Monday to Friday talk show at AM KOBE called AM Las Cruces w/Kelly O’Connell
Mindless, Progressive Automatons Have Filled America With Righteous Indignation
The term Liberal Redneck will strike progressives as an absurd contradiction. Yet, Conservatives will have an immediate, wearying familiarity with the angry, judgmental, uninformed and doctrinaire viewpoint of this group. In fact, the Liberal Redneck is every bit as small-minded, bigoted, dismissive, self-righteous, judgmental, uneducated and intolerant as the worst fundamentalist.
The problem in America today is that there is never a level playing field offered for the discussion of ideas. Therefore, most important topics are only mentioned in a predetermined format. In other words, one can mention, for example—gay marriage, but only with the proviso that the topic for debate and conclusion—is closed. But the Liberal Redneck is a special kind of smug, progressive partisan, who—while refusing to admit any bias, is more angry, close-minded, accusatory and bombastic than an ayatollah at a radical feminist convention. You undoubtedly know the type.
I. What is a Liberal Redneck?
The definition of Liberal Redneck is obvious. A large class of persons exists across America who see themselves as open-minded, enlightened, non-judgmental, unbiased, educated, non-superstitious and elite. Of course, this is the group of persons who claim the mantle of “modern liberal.” In fact, this group is anything but fair-minded and tolerant. Dictionary.com offers the following definition:
redneck
1. an uneducated white farm laborer, especially from the South.
2. a bigot or reactionary, especially from the rural working class.
A Liberal Redneck, like any other bigot, assumes beliefs without bothering to investigate whether any credible evidence exists to disprove them. They assert such a lofty intellectual position that they claim no reasonable person could disagree with their ideas. Such persons only up the ante by increasing their vehemence when positing their beliefs viz a-viz religion. Consider Harvard dropout thespian Matt Damon’s pathetic, ad-hominem laced critique of Sarah Palin: (video)
“It’s like a really bad Disney movie, “The Hockey Mom.’ Oh, I’m just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she’s the president,” the actor said. “She’s facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It’s absurd.
“I don’t understand why more people aren’t talking about how absurd it is. It’s a really terrifying possibility. The fact that we have gotten that close to this being a reality is crazy.”
Damon expressed concern about Mrs Palin’s political experience - “mayor of a really small town and governor of Alaska for less than two years”, saying he did not understand why she had been chosen.
“I think the pick was made for political purposes. But in terms of governance, it’s a disaster.”
He added that he wanted to know more about Mrs Palin’s views on evolution versus creationism “because she’s going to have the nuclear codes” and whether, according to some reports, “she banned books or tried to ban books. We can’t have that.”
II. Liberal Redneck Information Sources
The pièce de résistance of Liberal Redneck information is the New York Times. But the most typical source of leftist beliefs are progressive news organizations, such as MSNBC and others. And some have taken note that the progressive mainstream media has relentlessly slanted news in favor of Liberal Redneck bias, such as in the recent gun control debate:
Even by the standards of today’s partisan media environment, the response has been noteworthy. TV hosts, editorial boards, and even some reporters have aggressively criticized and shamed the 46 Senators who opposed the plan, while some have even taken to actively soliciting the public to contact them directly.
The decision by some members of the media to come down so firmly on one side of a policy debate has only served to reinforce conservatives’ longstanding suspicions that the mainstream media has a deep-seated liberal bias.
Such anti-gun advocacy is notable when many studies show gun control laws simply do not work to stem violence, as seen today in Chicago (Gun Control is Why Chicago Murder Rates Are Skyrocketing). Scholar Thomas Sowell has written extensively on this failure: “The Fact-Free Gun-Control Crusade—Stricter gun-control laws don’t reduce murder rates, but who’s counting?”
Pulitzer-Prize winning American playwright David Mamet staged his political coming-out party in the Village Voice in an article titled, David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’. Mamet rejects his former cynical attitude, saying: “This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.”
Mamet then wrote a book titled, The Secret Knowledge, On the Dismantling of American Culture (video). Here he delivers a gem: “Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated.” Mamet claims that Liberal Rednecks don’t understand their opposition because they never take the time to absorb any information they don’t already believe. An article about Mamet from the Wall Street Journal said this:
Before he moved to California, Mr. Mamet had never met a self-described conservative or read one’s writings. He’d never heard of Messrs. Sowell or Steele. “No one on the left has,” he tells me. “I realized I lived in this bubble.”
When it popped, it was rough. “I did what I thought was, if not a legitimate, then at least a usual, thing‚ I took it out on those around me,” Mr. Mamet says wryly. It took “a long, long, long time and a lot of difficult thinking first to analyze, then change, some of my ideas.”
Interestingly, after a number of botched stories, the mainstream media is beginning to count the losses. CBS correspondent Scott Pelley recently stated: We’re Getting Big Stories Wrong, Over & Over Again’
Our house is on fire. These have been a bad few months for journalism,” he added. “We’re getting the big stories wrong, over and over again.
Perhaps if the mainstream media were not suffering from a terminal case of confirmation bias, these Liberal Rednecks would not be drowning in error? (Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.)
III. Liberal Redneck Science
A classic example of Liberal Redneck Science is Global Warming. This “science” is the classic example of anecdotal mythology, placed into pseudo-scientific explanations, with no more real explanatory power than phrenology (explaining personality and character via skull shape). Despite the perpetual faked research regularly propping up Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW), Liberal Rednecks never consider this could be evidence of a falsified movement. (list of AGW hoaxed stories)
The UK Daily Mail published an article March 16, 2013 titled: The Great Green Con no. 1: The hard proof that finally shows global warming forecasts that are costing you billions were WRONG all along:
...irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed. This blows apart the ‘scientific basis’ for Britain reshaping its entire economy and spending billions in taxes and subsidies in order to cut emissions of greenhouse gases. These moves have already added ¬£100 a year to household energy bills. Academics are revising their views after acknowledging the miscalculation.
This information comes after a recent study found there has been no discernible increase in temperature for the last two decades: Twenty-year hiatus in rising temperatures has climate scientists puzzled. Yet this news has not stopped Liberal Rednecks from attacking “climate-deniers.” Eugene Robinson wrote this article in January, 2013: Is it hot enough for you?, stating:
The climate change denialists—especially those who manipulate the data in transparently bogus ways to claim that warming has halted or even reversed course—have been silent, as one might expect. Sensible people accept the fact of warming, but many doubt that our dysfunctional political system can respond in any meaningful way.
In fact, some research shows the earth is cooling (Sorry Global Warming Alarmists, The Earth Is Cooling), which makes this year’s coldest Spring ever (After coldest Easter ever, spring is set to be chillier than winter) even more suprising.
Or consider this extraordinary religious conclusion, when atheist physicist Stephen Hawking curiously explained the Big Bang needed no Big Banger, “...caricaturing the religious position with the myth of an African tribe whose god vomited the Sun, Moon and stars.” He then added: “‘What was God doing before He made the world? Was He preparing Hell for people who asked such questions?”
Unsurprisingly, after visiting Iran he now has decided to boycott Israel for Palestine.
The issue here is not whether a person can take a position upon a controversial topic, and then claim their belief is supported by science. The real issue is whether these same people are willing to look at the data which seems to disagree with their views, or if they would ever change their minds on the subject. If not, they might be a Liberal Redneck!
IV. Liberal Redneck Reaction to Unbelievers
Liberal Rednecks have absolutely no tolerance for those who disagree with their opinions. This is because Liberal Rednecks think their own beliefs define reality. Here is world-class Liberal Redneck Bill Maher commenting upon the Tea Party:
Now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud, the tea baggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I’m talking of course about the founding fathers. I think it’s pretty clear that the founding fathers would have hated your guts and what’s more, you would have hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly BS.
In an even more bizarre tirade, the world’s richest capitalist, Bill Gates, lays waste to the goose that delivered his ($67 billion) golden eggs, saying:
Capitalism means that there is much more research into male baldness than there is into diseases such as malaria, which mostly affect poor people. Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives. The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need. But it gets virtually no funding…it’s a flaw in the pure capitalistic approach.
What makes Gates’ comments even more interesting is that, according to Tracy Kidder in Soul of a New Machine, Gates made his company the world’s largest by predatory business practices. And who could forget Obama’s comments about Conservatives?
And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
V. Liberal Redneck Komedy—Janeane Garofalo
Actress, comedienne, and Liberal Redneck Janeane Garofalo recently discovered she needed a divorce, since her drunken, gag wedding in Las Vegas 20 years ago was determined to be a real wedding. This fits in with her obsession with explaining Conservative views by claiming they emanate from the limbic “lizard” brain center. She also insulted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a black man too stupid to know he’s being prostituted by his white masters.
Explain that one to me now, you have an African American gentlemen married to a white woman who is in cahoots with a group that has a lot of racists in it. Is that Stockholm Syndrome on his part or what’s going on?
Doubling down on her obsession with Black Conservatives, Garofalo claimed Herman Cain was a paid stooge:
Herman Cain is in this presidential race because he deflects the racism that is inherent in the Republican party, the conservative movement, the Tea Party certainly. In the last 30 years the Republican party has been moving more and more to the right, but also race-baiting more. Gay-baiting more. Religion-baiting more. But, Herman Cain, I feel like, is being paid by somebody to be involved and to run for president so that you go like ‘I love that, that can’t be racist. He’s a black guy, a black guy asking for Obama being impeached.’ Or ‘it’s a black guy whose anti-Muslim. It’s a black guy who is a Tea Party guy.’
Garofalo then comments upon “pathological” limbic brain dysfunction of Conservatives:
And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they’ll believe it, except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become—it’s like showing Frankenstein’s monster fire. They become confused, and angry and highly volatile. That guy, causing them feelings they don’t know, because their limbic brain, we’ve discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring.
Conclusion
Liberal Rednecks are a growing segment of a society run by mindless elites, who—in lacking any substantive education or training in logic or debate, feel as if they were born under politically correct star, effortlessly purifying all their beliefs. The question is—Can we survive this holier-than-Mao, brain-addled class? God save us from the deranged Janeane Garofalos of this world, and their limbic brained analysis.
Kelly O’Connell hosts American Anthem on CFP Radio Sundays at 4 pm (EST).
Kelly O’Connell is an author and attorney. He was born on the West Coast, raised in Las Vegas, and matriculated from the University of Oregon. After laboring for the Reformed Church in Galway, Ireland, he returned to America and attended law school in Virginia, where he earned a JD and a Master’s degree in Government. He spent a stint working as a researcher and writer of academic articles at a Miami law school, focusing on ancient law and society. He has also been employed as a university Speech & Debate professor. He then returned West and worked as an assistant district attorney. Kelly is now is a private practitioner with a small law practice in New Mexico. Kelly is now host of a daily, Monday to Friday talk show at AM KOBE called AM Las Cruces w/Kelly O’Connell
An excellent PDF document regarding We The People and the Progressives!
http://wethepeoplehq.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/WTP_Vol1_Episode3.pdf
THE ESTABLISHMENT
First, we will discuss the "Establishment", as many of us so commonly hear.
Other articles of importance to this subject will be coming later.
THE ESTABLISHMENT
By Mangus Colorado
The entire political world and all the citizens have believed that this mystical power
called the ESTABLISHMENT runs the world of Governments from behind the Wizards
curtain. Let us look and try to identify what people and groups make up this
“establishment” thing.
It starts in the cities and counties around the nation and is then broken into many
groups called parties but it is just two major parties that control the power of selecting
those that will be elected to local offices like - school boards, city councils, county
commissions, Sheriffs, and Judges. This works its ways by forming candidate selection
groups which meet with citizens to recruit them to run for office. Many times there
might be numerous people seeking that office so a primary election is required to select
one for the general election. The process now gets nasty and biased as it is necessary to
reunite the various groups that backed other candidates - losers are often very angry
and it is difficult to gain their support.
When this happens many accuse the winner to have been selected by the
"ESTABLISHMENT PARTY LEADERS." Clearly the selection process was an open and
fair primary election and voting by people that know the candidates in most cases so
how could the BACKROOM people be picking the candidate? Next, we now go the State
elections and again in the Legislature elections, most will come from lower office or
from civic leaders. Yes, the parties recruit the candidates that they feel can be elected
and that represents their values. There is more than one person seeking each office so
again, there is a primary election. This election covers more area and therefore requires
considerable monies to promote the candidate; this in itself can limit the selection as
those that cannot raise the required money will fail.
In State Legislature races it is possible for the candidate to literally go door to door
meeting every voter in the district. This candidate can win and defeat the money
candidate. Now we go to the next level which is the Constitutional offices - Governor,
Secretary of State, Treasurer Attorney General and other offices as some States might
elect. Again many would say incorrectly that these candidates are picked by the
establishment, as most come from lower offices or are a person that is very active in
civic projects on a local and State level.
These offices require a very organized professional managed campaign which means
that the candidate must be capable of raising significant money to pay salaries, ad
costs, printing, mailing, polling, tracking, and building a grassroots group in each
district. They must have the support in the general election of the County Central
committees and the State Central committee. Each of the major parties have this
structure and it is a very powerful support network but it is not some tight group in a
back room [establishment]. All of the positions in the Central committee are filled by
local elections so anyone that is active and works hard can become a member.
A large percentage of the population do not understand the political structure so they
attempt to create complicated scary backroom super powerful deal makers picking out
the winners and the losers. Nothing could be further from the truth than that. Many
candidates have been active members of the County and State central committees for
years so they are well known and can secure a wide range of support from people that
have seen them perform for years.
It becomes apparent that our Constitutions at the State and Federal levels direct our
election processes. In the past many people were called “king makers” as they controlled
the Media and Newspapers - there was no electronic media or WWW to get
information to the masses [millions of voters]. These were the days of a real
ESTABLISHMENT for very few could win a State wide or National office without the
entire party machine being placed behind that candidate.
What has replaced this backroom power in the political world? It is the Lobbyist, the
Unions, the Associations, the Main Stream Media and the Churches. Look at the
amount of money being spent in the current Presidential election - several billion by
most estimates. This means that each candidate is dependent on special interest groups
and the financial support of the millions of individuals. Money is the mother’s milk of
politics and surely it makes the world go around. Is it then fair to say that moneyed
interests have an unfair advantage?
No, each candidate has the ability to build coalitions to provide financial assistance and
the money does not flow to only one party. Many associations and even some Unions
give to both sides as they want to insure that they can speak to which ever person is
elected. Again, we see that there is no set system and no set ESTABLISHMENT that
controls the flow of donations to candidates. All of the general election candidates have
had significant money available if they can prove to be even close in the polls. If one
looks at the campaign accounts of many elected officials like Senator Reid, Senator
McCain, and many members in the House have multi-millions in their reelection funds
- they commonly use these monies to buy power from those they help.
Yes - the ESTABLISHMENT IS DEAD, but the influence of money and prestige is not.
Those that have acquired seniority hold special positions in the system. They are the
chairmen of powerful committees that control where money is spent. They set the rules
and regulations for businesses and Unions. Budgets are made by one committee. So,
yes there is a power structure in place and it many times works behind closed doors. If
one want to fault the system it would be the seniority system that is the ESTABLISHMENT
as it makes the Senators and House members unequal - the longer you are there, the
more power you possess.
The most likely way to end these abuses of power is for 38 State Legislatures to hold an
Article V State convention to amend the Constitution. To return the powers and rights
to the States and to the people; the 14th, 16th and 17th amendments must be revoked
while forcing the Courts back to the limits of Article III and no powers not expressly
stated in the words and meanings of the day. The Executive has the Sword, the
Legislature has the Purse and the courts hold sway over neither. The courts were
designed to be weak and not capable of creating Law from the bench - they could only
say yea or nay and on only limited items as stated in the Constitution. All other powers
are reserved for the States and the people.
To summarize the above, there is no functioning Establishment anymore but power is
now just usurped by all levels of government. That means that they have stolen the
powers guaranteed to the PEOPLE and used them to limit freedoms and liberties. In
effect, the various governments have become the ESTABLISHMENT which is run by
BUREAUCRATS not Republicans or Democrats. Just look at the excess of the EPA and
other agencies that have applied to the PEOPLE and our businesses.
Other articles of importance to this subject will be coming later.
THE ESTABLISHMENT
By Mangus Colorado
The entire political world and all the citizens have believed that this mystical power
called the ESTABLISHMENT runs the world of Governments from behind the Wizards
curtain. Let us look and try to identify what people and groups make up this
“establishment” thing.
It starts in the cities and counties around the nation and is then broken into many
groups called parties but it is just two major parties that control the power of selecting
those that will be elected to local offices like - school boards, city councils, county
commissions, Sheriffs, and Judges. This works its ways by forming candidate selection
groups which meet with citizens to recruit them to run for office. Many times there
might be numerous people seeking that office so a primary election is required to select
one for the general election. The process now gets nasty and biased as it is necessary to
reunite the various groups that backed other candidates - losers are often very angry
and it is difficult to gain their support.
When this happens many accuse the winner to have been selected by the
"ESTABLISHMENT PARTY LEADERS." Clearly the selection process was an open and
fair primary election and voting by people that know the candidates in most cases so
how could the BACKROOM people be picking the candidate? Next, we now go the State
elections and again in the Legislature elections, most will come from lower office or
from civic leaders. Yes, the parties recruit the candidates that they feel can be elected
and that represents their values. There is more than one person seeking each office so
again, there is a primary election. This election covers more area and therefore requires
considerable monies to promote the candidate; this in itself can limit the selection as
those that cannot raise the required money will fail.
In State Legislature races it is possible for the candidate to literally go door to door
meeting every voter in the district. This candidate can win and defeat the money
candidate. Now we go to the next level which is the Constitutional offices - Governor,
Secretary of State, Treasurer Attorney General and other offices as some States might
elect. Again many would say incorrectly that these candidates are picked by the
establishment, as most come from lower offices or are a person that is very active in
civic projects on a local and State level.
These offices require a very organized professional managed campaign which means
that the candidate must be capable of raising significant money to pay salaries, ad
costs, printing, mailing, polling, tracking, and building a grassroots group in each
district. They must have the support in the general election of the County Central
committees and the State Central committee. Each of the major parties have this
structure and it is a very powerful support network but it is not some tight group in a
back room [establishment]. All of the positions in the Central committee are filled by
local elections so anyone that is active and works hard can become a member.
A large percentage of the population do not understand the political structure so they
attempt to create complicated scary backroom super powerful deal makers picking out
the winners and the losers. Nothing could be further from the truth than that. Many
candidates have been active members of the County and State central committees for
years so they are well known and can secure a wide range of support from people that
have seen them perform for years.
It becomes apparent that our Constitutions at the State and Federal levels direct our
election processes. In the past many people were called “king makers” as they controlled
the Media and Newspapers - there was no electronic media or WWW to get
information to the masses [millions of voters]. These were the days of a real
ESTABLISHMENT for very few could win a State wide or National office without the
entire party machine being placed behind that candidate.
What has replaced this backroom power in the political world? It is the Lobbyist, the
Unions, the Associations, the Main Stream Media and the Churches. Look at the
amount of money being spent in the current Presidential election - several billion by
most estimates. This means that each candidate is dependent on special interest groups
and the financial support of the millions of individuals. Money is the mother’s milk of
politics and surely it makes the world go around. Is it then fair to say that moneyed
interests have an unfair advantage?
No, each candidate has the ability to build coalitions to provide financial assistance and
the money does not flow to only one party. Many associations and even some Unions
give to both sides as they want to insure that they can speak to which ever person is
elected. Again, we see that there is no set system and no set ESTABLISHMENT that
controls the flow of donations to candidates. All of the general election candidates have
had significant money available if they can prove to be even close in the polls. If one
looks at the campaign accounts of many elected officials like Senator Reid, Senator
McCain, and many members in the House have multi-millions in their reelection funds
- they commonly use these monies to buy power from those they help.
Yes - the ESTABLISHMENT IS DEAD, but the influence of money and prestige is not.
Those that have acquired seniority hold special positions in the system. They are the
chairmen of powerful committees that control where money is spent. They set the rules
and regulations for businesses and Unions. Budgets are made by one committee. So,
yes there is a power structure in place and it many times works behind closed doors. If
one want to fault the system it would be the seniority system that is the ESTABLISHMENT
as it makes the Senators and House members unequal - the longer you are there, the
more power you possess.
The most likely way to end these abuses of power is for 38 State Legislatures to hold an
Article V State convention to amend the Constitution. To return the powers and rights
to the States and to the people; the 14th, 16th and 17th amendments must be revoked
while forcing the Courts back to the limits of Article III and no powers not expressly
stated in the words and meanings of the day. The Executive has the Sword, the
Legislature has the Purse and the courts hold sway over neither. The courts were
designed to be weak and not capable of creating Law from the bench - they could only
say yea or nay and on only limited items as stated in the Constitution. All other powers
are reserved for the States and the people.
To summarize the above, there is no functioning Establishment anymore but power is
now just usurped by all levels of government. That means that they have stolen the
powers guaranteed to the PEOPLE and used them to limit freedoms and liberties. In
effect, the various governments have become the ESTABLISHMENT which is run by
BUREAUCRATS not Republicans or Democrats. Just look at the excess of the EPA and
other agencies that have applied to the PEOPLE and our businesses.
MODERN PROGRESSIVES
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We are living in the twilight of democracy. We have begun the decent into darkness -where the sunlight will struggle to even penetrate.
In the west there is a plant called 'leafy spurge'. It has a pleasant enough stem and an attractive flower. To view it from a distance, many find it attractive and quite pretty. It consumes the soil where it roots. It chokes out all of the other living plants and takes over where it resides. It soaks up all the nutrient and the sunshine. It thirstily drinks all of the water. It spreads like a disease.
Its seeds fly and disperse in the wind and it thrives near the waterways so that it can fall into the flow and travel far past its original plot.
The Progressives began their first planting of thought and theology in the early 1900's in our Country. They have patiently nurtured, quietly spread, hid when necessary and have now found the environment for complete abandon after 100 years of establishment and deeply rooted branching out.
Please read and study the following. They sincerely hope that you won't. How can we resist what we cannot/will not see. How can you identify the flowering plant among the entire flower garden that is the Judas in the bloom.
By showing, knowing, looking and identifying the noxious weed.
Look at the Constitution that we love. The first 10 amendments are under open attack. The 2nd, and the 4th which completely involves the 1st in a House vote just tis week. The 10th is already neutered. If we loose the first 10 amendments what is left? We have 13-15-19-21 and 26 that address any individual rights. Even in Socialist countries elections are had-the choices on what to vote for are defined. Socialist and communists enjoy their drink and their young persons can certainly fight in their wars, slavery is practiced only in the most hidden methods or phycological and insidious socio-economic forms. What is left is the spurge of the 14-16 and 17 amendments and the lesser that grow-feed and sustain the growth and expansion of centralized federal government. The lesser would again serve as limits if 14-16-and 17 were removed.
Un -attended and un-challenged 'The spurge' has nearly won the garden. Passers by looking at Liberty's garden see the bright and beautiful ' other colors of a flowering republic scattered with increasing sparsity among the tall yellow growth. From afar they may think our garden beautiful, the small offerings of other color seem to somehow define and set apart the yellow. Once the other colors are choked out...the beautiful part will be truly gone. We will have a country of bland where only one color will be allowed to grow and that single flower will be all that exists in the garden. Where is the beauty of color-if only one color is all that there is? A garden is only,truly a garden, when the plants of honest purpose and fruitfulness which offer sustenance or succor are allowed to grow...and the weeds are pulled and left for their entire plant and vital roots to dry and shrivel in the sunlight.
Friends allow me to introduce you to and help you to identify the 'leafy spurge' of our Nation.
Please read the full report. There are tremendous leads in the following information that you can continue to follow and research for yourself.
**WHAT DO “PROGRESSIVES” Believe- Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org/cw/files/Trounstine_What_Do... · PDF file
A report for the Commonweal Institute prepared by Trounstine Research Associates.” WHAT DO “PROGRESSIVES” BELIEVE?
JESSICA T. ROUNSTINE, PH.D. (28 pg. report)
**NEW PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE
Platform
http://newprogs.org/platform
**http://www.progressiveleaders.org/aboutus/goalsvalues.htm
Center For Progressive Leadership - About Us
Our vision......
**list of liberal think tanks
http://think-tanks.findthedata.org
Liberal Think Tanks
Find and compare Liberal Think Tanks based on political affiliation, contributions, revenue, year founded, revenue, expenses, and directors.
The intended 2020 Constitution appears in this thread. This is just a highlight of the research available to all. As we Continually ask...please, please, please ALWAYS think-study-and research FOR YOURSELF. USE YOUR MIND...
They are in full bloom the Progressive Spurge, their deep roots and spreading plants operate fully in the sunlight of America. They have thrived and sustained to nearly the full of their potential, in the environment that they seek to destroy.
Thank you for taking the time to study and read. Where we go from here depends entirely on who will make the effort to do so.
From afar what may deceptively look to a casual observer 'beautiful'...upon closer inspection, is a garden over-run by a destructive growth; desperately in need of strong backs, determined and gloved hands, and an exacting hoe. The spurge can be removed-the 28th amendment is the 'tool' to effectively free us from the flowering spread of socialism and communist theory. It restores the soil and the garden where liberty once bloomed in all its bright ad shining color.
We are living in the twilight of democracy. We have begun the decent into darkness -where the sunlight will struggle to even penetrate.
In the west there is a plant called 'leafy spurge'. It has a pleasant enough stem and an attractive flower. To view it from a distance, many find it attractive and quite pretty. It consumes the soil where it roots. It chokes out all of the other living plants and takes over where it resides. It soaks up all the nutrient and the sunshine. It thirstily drinks all of the water. It spreads like a disease.
Its seeds fly and disperse in the wind and it thrives near the waterways so that it can fall into the flow and travel far past its original plot.
The Progressives began their first planting of thought and theology in the early 1900's in our Country. They have patiently nurtured, quietly spread, hid when necessary and have now found the environment for complete abandon after 100 years of establishment and deeply rooted branching out.
Please read and study the following. They sincerely hope that you won't. How can we resist what we cannot/will not see. How can you identify the flowering plant among the entire flower garden that is the Judas in the bloom.
By showing, knowing, looking and identifying the noxious weed.
Look at the Constitution that we love. The first 10 amendments are under open attack. The 2nd, and the 4th which completely involves the 1st in a House vote just tis week. The 10th is already neutered. If we loose the first 10 amendments what is left? We have 13-15-19-21 and 26 that address any individual rights. Even in Socialist countries elections are had-the choices on what to vote for are defined. Socialist and communists enjoy their drink and their young persons can certainly fight in their wars, slavery is practiced only in the most hidden methods or phycological and insidious socio-economic forms. What is left is the spurge of the 14-16 and 17 amendments and the lesser that grow-feed and sustain the growth and expansion of centralized federal government. The lesser would again serve as limits if 14-16-and 17 were removed.
Un -attended and un-challenged 'The spurge' has nearly won the garden. Passers by looking at Liberty's garden see the bright and beautiful ' other colors of a flowering republic scattered with increasing sparsity among the tall yellow growth. From afar they may think our garden beautiful, the small offerings of other color seem to somehow define and set apart the yellow. Once the other colors are choked out...the beautiful part will be truly gone. We will have a country of bland where only one color will be allowed to grow and that single flower will be all that exists in the garden. Where is the beauty of color-if only one color is all that there is? A garden is only,truly a garden, when the plants of honest purpose and fruitfulness which offer sustenance or succor are allowed to grow...and the weeds are pulled and left for their entire plant and vital roots to dry and shrivel in the sunlight.
Friends allow me to introduce you to and help you to identify the 'leafy spurge' of our Nation.
Please read the full report. There are tremendous leads in the following information that you can continue to follow and research for yourself.
**WHAT DO “PROGRESSIVES” Believe- Commonweal Institute
www.commonwealinstitute.org/cw/files/Trounstine_What_Do... · PDF file
A report for the Commonweal Institute prepared by Trounstine Research Associates.” WHAT DO “PROGRESSIVES” BELIEVE?
JESSICA T. ROUNSTINE, PH.D. (28 pg. report)
**NEW PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE
Platform
http://newprogs.org/platform
**http://www.progressiveleaders.org/aboutus/goalsvalues.htm
Center For Progressive Leadership - About Us
Our vision......
**list of liberal think tanks
http://think-tanks.findthedata.org
Liberal Think Tanks
Find and compare Liberal Think Tanks based on political affiliation, contributions, revenue, year founded, revenue, expenses, and directors.
The intended 2020 Constitution appears in this thread. This is just a highlight of the research available to all. As we Continually ask...please, please, please ALWAYS think-study-and research FOR YOURSELF. USE YOUR MIND...
They are in full bloom the Progressive Spurge, their deep roots and spreading plants operate fully in the sunlight of America. They have thrived and sustained to nearly the full of their potential, in the environment that they seek to destroy.
Thank you for taking the time to study and read. Where we go from here depends entirely on who will make the effort to do so.
From afar what may deceptively look to a casual observer 'beautiful'...upon closer inspection, is a garden over-run by a destructive growth; desperately in need of strong backs, determined and gloved hands, and an exacting hoe. The spurge can be removed-the 28th amendment is the 'tool' to effectively free us from the flowering spread of socialism and communist theory. It restores the soil and the garden where liberty once bloomed in all its bright ad shining color.
Progressive Plans for Our Constitution!
In researching for our site we seek to find information and conversation pertinent to the current political views expressed in our society today, as they reflect the opinions and the standing of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Our project: http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com
and the proposed 28th Amendment-20 words-that call for repeal of the 14th-16th and 17th Amendments, sole purpose is to restore the original intent of the Framers of Constitutional representative government- our Republic.
Our research came upon the following. We are well aware of the critics of the Article V process and the fear tactics that they employ to seek to dissuade persons from investigation or knowledgable pursuit of Article V. We call it simply the con/con theory.
I would offer this thought concerning those criticisms. If you love and respect the document, let it stand on it's own truth and exercise it's own power. Article V is the process left to us by the Founders to address the governmental crisis we face today. The con/con fear is that the document would/could face danger to it's entirety. Read the following and then tell us that that danger is not already being realized, by our doing nothing. Look at the intention of the persons of progressive theology and their plans for the document in the future.
Presentation-Sanford Levinson
Why Political Progressives Need to Think About the Entire Constitution
By Sanford Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School, and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.
I am immensely grateful to be invited to discuss my new book, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance, to the readers of ACSblog.
I have crafted these comments in a way that highlights what may be an important difference between my take on the Constitution and that of many of my friends in the ACS. Although many, perhaps most of us, share the perception that the contemporary United States is increasingly caught in a “crisis of governance,” attention tends to be addressed at the defects of particular leaders, including, of course, the present majority of the United States Supreme Court.
There is much with which I agree in the vision of The Constitution in 2020 set out in the book co-edited by my friends and casebook co-editors Jack Balkin and Reva Siegel.
However, I believe that we cannot begin to diagnose the causes of our crisis by focusing only on what I call the Constitution of Conversation. It can also be described as the litigatedConstitution, and it is litigated precisely because
clever lawyers are highly skilled in demonstrating that the indeterminate language of, say, the Commerce or Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, can be used to support a constitutional vision congruent with the collective goals of the lawyers’ clients or perhaps the lawyers themselves (if they are “cause lawyers”).
In any event, these conversations are known to all of us, and we see them being spelled out particularly passionately with regard to the Affordable Care Act.
But the most important political realities of the Affordable Care Act are first that it took literally more than a half century to pass after initial proposals by Harry Truman and, secondly, that it is a defective bill in many respects with regard genuinely to getting a handle on the costs of a modern medical system.
To explain these realities requires no conversation about the “meaning” of the Constitution. Rather, it requires addressing too-often-ignored “civics class” features of the United States Constitution. How does a bill become a law (or, more practically, why do most legislative proposals have only a snowballs chance in hell of being passed)?
The answer lies in the almost insurmountable hurdles set up by the particular American system of bicameralism and the opportunity of presidents to veto any legislation they do not like on policy grounds, with the near impossibility of overrides.
I will rejoice when the Supreme Court upholds the Affordable Care Act, as I still think is likely. But it should also be recognized that what the Court will be doing, at best, is saying that a mediocre, albeit necessary, piece of legislation is constitutional if it can run the minefield against progressive legislation established in 1787 and left remarkably unchanged since then.
That is the importance of looking at the basic “framing” of the Constitution and the assumptions underlying it. It was designed by people who were basically mistrustful of popular democracy and, more particularly, redistributive legislation. They succeeded quite well in creating a political system that stifles both.
Moreover, the book looks at the constitutions of the 50 states, almost all of which differ in extremely interesting ways from the national constitution. All but Delaware’s, for example, include at least some element of direct democracy, whereas the national Constitution is committed exclusively to representative democracy.
All of the state constitutions include some elements of “positive rights,” the most important example being education. Each and every state constitution is easier to amend than the national constitution. Fourteen state constitutions allow the electorate at regular intervals to vote whether to have a new state constitutional convention.
Each and every state follows the rule of “one-person/one vote” established by the Supreme Court in 1964 instead of tolerating the sheer absurdity of an institution like the national Senate and its grant of equal representation to Wyoming and California, Vermont and Texas.
Most state judges in the United States are elected—and have limited tenure in office—as distinguished from the national practice of appointed judges (with Senate confirmation) and tenure until death.
A century ago, political progressives were well aware of the deficiencies of the national Constitution and put great effort into such amendments as the 16th, 17th, and 19thamendments.
Today, that kind of “constitutional imagination,” which requires that one attend to the seemingly dull and boring “structural Constitution”— what I call the Constitution of Settlement — is almost completely absent as we devote almost literally all of our time and attention to the Constitution of Conversation.
My deepest hope is that members of the ACS will realized that serious discussion of The Constitution in 2020 should include how it might be necessary to transform basic constitutional structures if we are ever going to achieve the progressive changes in national policy that most of us support. [end comments of Mr. Levinson]
Conclusion:
Yes, they have done the Constitutional Republic in already - the legislature does as it pleases, the executive does as he pleases and the Courts take away individual and States rights - so in effect the entire Constitution is gone they are just connecting the dots. Did you note the part on the 14th amendment ?
With all of the multiple Constitutions in play...once they have their 2020 version...the original will no longer exist...the nea-sayers need to wake up and smell the coffee...doing nothing will re-write the original more surely than any fear of any 'convention' of any imagination would be able to do! A dear friend to our project has said to us ....not to decide...is to decide. Friends we can no longer afford the time we spend to debate or not to act. Not to act will surely mean the death of the Constitution as we know and love it. The enemies of the document have surely chosen to decide that, they speak openly, publically, and proudly of their intention.
footnote:
In his widely acclaimed volume Our Undemocratic Constitution, Sanford Levinson boldly argued that our Constitution should not be treated with "sanctimonious reverence," but as a badly flawed document deserving revision. Now Levinson takes us deeper, asking what were the original assumptions underlying our institutions, and whether we accept those assumptions 225 years later.
Overview of Framed.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/framed-sanford-levinson/1110771922?...
In Framed, Levinson challenges our belief that the most important features of our constitutions concern what rights they protect. Instead, he focuses on the fundamental procedures of governance such as congressional bicameralism; the selection of the President by the electoral college, or the dimensions of the President's veto power—not to mention the near impossibility of amending the United States Constitution. These seemingly "settled" and "hardwired" structures contribute to the now almost universally recognized "dysfunctionality" of American politics.
Levinson argues that we should stop treating the United States Constitution as uniquely exemplifying the American constitutional tradition. We should be aware of the 50 state constitutions, often interestingly different—and perhaps better—than the national model. Many states have updated their constitutions by frequent amendment or by complete replacement via state constitutional conventions. California's ungovernable condition has prompted serious calls for a constitutional convention. This constant churn indicates that basic law often reaches the point where it fails and becomes obsolete. Given the experience of so many states, he writes, surely it is reasonable to believe that the U.S. Constitution merits its own updating.
Whether we are concerned about making America more genuinely democratic or only about creating a system of government that can more effectively respond to contemporary challenges, we must confront the ways our constitutions, especially the United States Constitution, must be changed in fundamental ways. and its grant of equal representation to Wyoming and California, Vermont and Texas.
Most state judges in the United States are elected—and have limited tenure in office—as distinguished from the national practice of appointed judges (with Senate confirmation) and tenure until death.
A century ago, political progressives were well aware of the deficiencies of the national Constitution and put great effort into such amendments as the 16th, 17th, and 19thamendments.
Today, that kind of “constitutional imagination,” which requires that one attend to the seemingly dull and boring “structural Constitution”— what I call the Constitution of Settlement — is almost completely absent as we devote almost literally all of our time and attention to the Constitution of Conversation.
My deepest hope is that members of the ACS will realized that serious discussion of The Constitution in 2020 should include how it might be necessary to transform basic constitutional structures if we are ever going to achieve the progressive changes in national policy that most of us support.
Our project: http://articlevprojecttorestoreliberty.com
and the proposed 28th Amendment-20 words-that call for repeal of the 14th-16th and 17th Amendments, sole purpose is to restore the original intent of the Framers of Constitutional representative government- our Republic.
Our research came upon the following. We are well aware of the critics of the Article V process and the fear tactics that they employ to seek to dissuade persons from investigation or knowledgable pursuit of Article V. We call it simply the con/con theory.
I would offer this thought concerning those criticisms. If you love and respect the document, let it stand on it's own truth and exercise it's own power. Article V is the process left to us by the Founders to address the governmental crisis we face today. The con/con fear is that the document would/could face danger to it's entirety. Read the following and then tell us that that danger is not already being realized, by our doing nothing. Look at the intention of the persons of progressive theology and their plans for the document in the future.
Presentation-Sanford Levinson
Why Political Progressives Need to Think About the Entire Constitution
By Sanford Levinson, W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood, Jr. Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas Law School, and Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.
I am immensely grateful to be invited to discuss my new book, Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance, to the readers of ACSblog.
I have crafted these comments in a way that highlights what may be an important difference between my take on the Constitution and that of many of my friends in the ACS. Although many, perhaps most of us, share the perception that the contemporary United States is increasingly caught in a “crisis of governance,” attention tends to be addressed at the defects of particular leaders, including, of course, the present majority of the United States Supreme Court.
There is much with which I agree in the vision of The Constitution in 2020 set out in the book co-edited by my friends and casebook co-editors Jack Balkin and Reva Siegel.
However, I believe that we cannot begin to diagnose the causes of our crisis by focusing only on what I call the Constitution of Conversation. It can also be described as the litigatedConstitution, and it is litigated precisely because
clever lawyers are highly skilled in demonstrating that the indeterminate language of, say, the Commerce or Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, can be used to support a constitutional vision congruent with the collective goals of the lawyers’ clients or perhaps the lawyers themselves (if they are “cause lawyers”).
In any event, these conversations are known to all of us, and we see them being spelled out particularly passionately with regard to the Affordable Care Act.
But the most important political realities of the Affordable Care Act are first that it took literally more than a half century to pass after initial proposals by Harry Truman and, secondly, that it is a defective bill in many respects with regard genuinely to getting a handle on the costs of a modern medical system.
To explain these realities requires no conversation about the “meaning” of the Constitution. Rather, it requires addressing too-often-ignored “civics class” features of the United States Constitution. How does a bill become a law (or, more practically, why do most legislative proposals have only a snowballs chance in hell of being passed)?
The answer lies in the almost insurmountable hurdles set up by the particular American system of bicameralism and the opportunity of presidents to veto any legislation they do not like on policy grounds, with the near impossibility of overrides.
I will rejoice when the Supreme Court upholds the Affordable Care Act, as I still think is likely. But it should also be recognized that what the Court will be doing, at best, is saying that a mediocre, albeit necessary, piece of legislation is constitutional if it can run the minefield against progressive legislation established in 1787 and left remarkably unchanged since then.
That is the importance of looking at the basic “framing” of the Constitution and the assumptions underlying it. It was designed by people who were basically mistrustful of popular democracy and, more particularly, redistributive legislation. They succeeded quite well in creating a political system that stifles both.
Moreover, the book looks at the constitutions of the 50 states, almost all of which differ in extremely interesting ways from the national constitution. All but Delaware’s, for example, include at least some element of direct democracy, whereas the national Constitution is committed exclusively to representative democracy.
All of the state constitutions include some elements of “positive rights,” the most important example being education. Each and every state constitution is easier to amend than the national constitution. Fourteen state constitutions allow the electorate at regular intervals to vote whether to have a new state constitutional convention.
Each and every state follows the rule of “one-person/one vote” established by the Supreme Court in 1964 instead of tolerating the sheer absurdity of an institution like the national Senate and its grant of equal representation to Wyoming and California, Vermont and Texas.
Most state judges in the United States are elected—and have limited tenure in office—as distinguished from the national practice of appointed judges (with Senate confirmation) and tenure until death.
A century ago, political progressives were well aware of the deficiencies of the national Constitution and put great effort into such amendments as the 16th, 17th, and 19thamendments.
Today, that kind of “constitutional imagination,” which requires that one attend to the seemingly dull and boring “structural Constitution”— what I call the Constitution of Settlement — is almost completely absent as we devote almost literally all of our time and attention to the Constitution of Conversation.
My deepest hope is that members of the ACS will realized that serious discussion of The Constitution in 2020 should include how it might be necessary to transform basic constitutional structures if we are ever going to achieve the progressive changes in national policy that most of us support. [end comments of Mr. Levinson]
Conclusion:
Yes, they have done the Constitutional Republic in already - the legislature does as it pleases, the executive does as he pleases and the Courts take away individual and States rights - so in effect the entire Constitution is gone they are just connecting the dots. Did you note the part on the 14th amendment ?
With all of the multiple Constitutions in play...once they have their 2020 version...the original will no longer exist...the nea-sayers need to wake up and smell the coffee...doing nothing will re-write the original more surely than any fear of any 'convention' of any imagination would be able to do! A dear friend to our project has said to us ....not to decide...is to decide. Friends we can no longer afford the time we spend to debate or not to act. Not to act will surely mean the death of the Constitution as we know and love it. The enemies of the document have surely chosen to decide that, they speak openly, publically, and proudly of their intention.
footnote:
In his widely acclaimed volume Our Undemocratic Constitution, Sanford Levinson boldly argued that our Constitution should not be treated with "sanctimonious reverence," but as a badly flawed document deserving revision. Now Levinson takes us deeper, asking what were the original assumptions underlying our institutions, and whether we accept those assumptions 225 years later.
Overview of Framed.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/framed-sanford-levinson/1110771922?...
In Framed, Levinson challenges our belief that the most important features of our constitutions concern what rights they protect. Instead, he focuses on the fundamental procedures of governance such as congressional bicameralism; the selection of the President by the electoral college, or the dimensions of the President's veto power—not to mention the near impossibility of amending the United States Constitution. These seemingly "settled" and "hardwired" structures contribute to the now almost universally recognized "dysfunctionality" of American politics.
Levinson argues that we should stop treating the United States Constitution as uniquely exemplifying the American constitutional tradition. We should be aware of the 50 state constitutions, often interestingly different—and perhaps better—than the national model. Many states have updated their constitutions by frequent amendment or by complete replacement via state constitutional conventions. California's ungovernable condition has prompted serious calls for a constitutional convention. This constant churn indicates that basic law often reaches the point where it fails and becomes obsolete. Given the experience of so many states, he writes, surely it is reasonable to believe that the U.S. Constitution merits its own updating.
Whether we are concerned about making America more genuinely democratic or only about creating a system of government that can more effectively respond to contemporary challenges, we must confront the ways our constitutions, especially the United States Constitution, must be changed in fundamental ways. and its grant of equal representation to Wyoming and California, Vermont and Texas.
Most state judges in the United States are elected—and have limited tenure in office—as distinguished from the national practice of appointed judges (with Senate confirmation) and tenure until death.
A century ago, political progressives were well aware of the deficiencies of the national Constitution and put great effort into such amendments as the 16th, 17th, and 19thamendments.
Today, that kind of “constitutional imagination,” which requires that one attend to the seemingly dull and boring “structural Constitution”— what I call the Constitution of Settlement — is almost completely absent as we devote almost literally all of our time and attention to the Constitution of Conversation.
My deepest hope is that members of the ACS will realized that serious discussion of The Constitution in 2020 should include how it might be necessary to transform basic constitutional structures if we are ever going to achieve the progressive changes in national policy that most of us support.
PROGRESSIVES
Most of the down hill slide on American Freedoms, States rights, and Liberty Started with Teddy Roosevelt - a Republican PROGRESSIVE - then was furthered with Wilson and increased by FDR. The final blows to our Freedoms and Liberties came from LBJ and the War on Poverty - the GREAT SOCIETY . . every Congress and every President since then has added Liberty destroying laws - the EPA, IRS, DOE, FDA, Clean Air and water Act, limits on land use, locking up natural resources. Regulating foods, paint, farming, driving, flying, shipping [Jones act = must be UNION ship], Davis Bacon Act [Requires Union pay on all government construction sites].
It is not the parties it is the desire for more and more power from all of the POLITICAL CLASS - stop passing new laws that can not and will not be enforced. Gun controls are silly it a nut case wants to kill nothing but a well placed piece of lead will stop them. The problem can not be stopped a new law against criminals - they are already criminals so what is going to keep guns out of their hands - answer - NOTHING.
It is not the parties it is the desire for more and more power from all of the POLITICAL CLASS - stop passing new laws that can not and will not be enforced. Gun controls are silly it a nut case wants to kill nothing but a well placed piece of lead will stop them. The problem can not be stopped a new law against criminals - they are already criminals so what is going to keep guns out of their hands - answer - NOTHING.
1912 PROGRESSIVE PLATFORM - WHAT THE MODERN PROGRESSIVE IS ABOUT?
This will show all what Progressive really have in mind for America and our way of life. They accomplished a lot of their goals; they are still fighting for some items. Pay attention to the fact that they want to make it easier for the Constitution to be changed {by general vote as in a true Democracy?]
Progressive Platform of 1912
The conscience of the people, in a time of grave national problems, has called into being a new party, born of the nation’s sense of justice. We of the Progressive party here dedicate ourselves to the fulfillment of the duty laid upon us by our fathers to maintain the government of the people, by the people and for the people whose foundations they laid.
We hold with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln that the people are the masters of their Constitution, to fulfill its purposes and to safeguard it from those who, by perversion of its intent, would convert it into an instrument of injustice. In accordance with the needs of each generation the people must use their sovereign powers to establish and maintain equal opportunity and industrial justice, to secure which this Government was founded and without which no republic can endure.
This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. Its resources, its business, its institutions and its laws should be utilized, maintained or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest.
It is time to set the public welfare in the first place.
Progressive Platform of 1912
The conscience of the people, in a time of grave national problems, has called into being a new party, born of the nation’s sense of justice. We of the Progressive party here dedicate ourselves to the fulfillment of the duty laid upon us by our fathers to maintain the government of the people, by the people and for the people whose foundations they laid.
We hold with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln that the people are the masters of their Constitution, to fulfill its purposes and to safeguard it from those who, by perversion of its intent, would convert it into an instrument of injustice. In accordance with the needs of each generation the people must use their sovereign powers to establish and maintain equal opportunity and industrial justice, to secure which this Government was founded and without which no republic can endure.
This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. Its resources, its business, its institutions and its laws should be utilized, maintained or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest.
It is time to set the public welfare in the first place.
THE OLD PARTIES
Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.
From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
The deliberate betrayal of its trust by the Republican party, the fatal incapacity of the Democratic party to deal with the new issues of the new time, have compelled the people to forge a new instrument of government through which to give effect to their will in laws and institutions.
Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the task, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler commonwealth.
A COVENANT WITH THE PEOPLE
This declaration is our covenant with the people, and we hereby bind the party and its candidates in State and Nation to the pledges made herein.
THE RULE OF THE PEOPLE
The National Progressive party, committed to the principles of government by a self-controlled democracy expressing its will through representatives of the people, pledges itself to secure such alterations in the fundamental law of the several States and of the United States as shall insure the representative character of the government.
In particular, the party declares for direct primaries for the nomination of State and National officers, for nation-wide preferential primaries for candidates for the presidency; for the direct election of United States Senators by the people; and we urge on the States the policy of the short ballot, with responsibility to the people secured by the initiative, referendum and recall.
AMENDMENT OF CONSTITUTION
The Progressive party, believing that a free people should have the power from time to time to amend their fundamental law so as to adapt it progressively to the changing needs of the people, pledges itself to provide a more easy and expeditious method of amending the Federal Constitution.
Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people.
From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
The deliberate betrayal of its trust by the Republican party, the fatal incapacity of the Democratic party to deal with the new issues of the new time, have compelled the people to forge a new instrument of government through which to give effect to their will in laws and institutions.
Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the task, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler commonwealth.
A COVENANT WITH THE PEOPLE
This declaration is our covenant with the people, and we hereby bind the party and its candidates in State and Nation to the pledges made herein.
THE RULE OF THE PEOPLE
The National Progressive party, committed to the principles of government by a self-controlled democracy expressing its will through representatives of the people, pledges itself to secure such alterations in the fundamental law of the several States and of the United States as shall insure the representative character of the government.
In particular, the party declares for direct primaries for the nomination of State and National officers, for nation-wide preferential primaries for candidates for the presidency; for the direct election of United States Senators by the people; and we urge on the States the policy of the short ballot, with responsibility to the people secured by the initiative, referendum and recall.
AMENDMENT OF CONSTITUTION
The Progressive party, believing that a free people should have the power from time to time to amend their fundamental law so as to adapt it progressively to the changing needs of the people, pledges itself to provide a more easy and expeditious method of amending the Federal Constitution.
NATION AND STATE
Up to the limit of the Constitution, and later by amendment of the Constitution, it found necessary, we advocate bringing under effective national jurisdiction those problems which have expanded beyond reach of the individual States.
It is as grotesque as it is intolerable that the several States should by unequal laws in matter of common concern become competing commercial agencies, barter the lives of their children, the health of their women and the safety and well-being of their working people for the benefit of their financial interests.
The extreme insistence on States’ rights by the Democratic party in the Baltimore platform demonstrates anew its inability to understand the world into which it has survived or to administer the affairs of a union of States which have in all essential respects become one people.
EQUAL SUFFRAGE
The Progressive party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike.
CORRUPT PRACTICES
We pledge our party to legislation that will compel strict limitation of all campaign contributions and expenditures, and detailed publicity of both before as well as after primaries and elections.
PUBLICITY AND PUBLIC SERVICE
We pledge our party to legislation compelling the registration of lobbyists; publicity of committee hearings except on foreign affairs, and recording of all votes in committee; and forbidding federal appointees from holding office in State or National political organizations, or taking part as officers or delegates in political conventions for the nomination of elective State or National officials.
THE COURTS
The Progressive party demands such restriction of the power of the courts as shall leave to the people the ultimate authority to determine fundamental questions of social welfare and public policy. To secure this end, it pledges itself to provide:
1. That when an Act, passed under the police power of the State is held unconstitutional under the State Constitution, by the courts, the people, after an ample interval for deliberation, shall have an opportunity to vote on the question whether they desire the Act to become law, notwithstanding such decision.
2. That every decision of the highest appellate court of a State declaring an Act of the Legislature unconstitutional on the ground of its violation of the Federal Constitution shall be subject to the same review by the Supreme Court of the United States as is now accorded to decisions sustaining such legislation.
Up to the limit of the Constitution, and later by amendment of the Constitution, it found necessary, we advocate bringing under effective national jurisdiction those problems which have expanded beyond reach of the individual States.
It is as grotesque as it is intolerable that the several States should by unequal laws in matter of common concern become competing commercial agencies, barter the lives of their children, the health of their women and the safety and well-being of their working people for the benefit of their financial interests.
The extreme insistence on States’ rights by the Democratic party in the Baltimore platform demonstrates anew its inability to understand the world into which it has survived or to administer the affairs of a union of States which have in all essential respects become one people.
EQUAL SUFFRAGE
The Progressive party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike.
CORRUPT PRACTICES
We pledge our party to legislation that will compel strict limitation of all campaign contributions and expenditures, and detailed publicity of both before as well as after primaries and elections.
PUBLICITY AND PUBLIC SERVICE
We pledge our party to legislation compelling the registration of lobbyists; publicity of committee hearings except on foreign affairs, and recording of all votes in committee; and forbidding federal appointees from holding office in State or National political organizations, or taking part as officers or delegates in political conventions for the nomination of elective State or National officials.
THE COURTS
The Progressive party demands such restriction of the power of the courts as shall leave to the people the ultimate authority to determine fundamental questions of social welfare and public policy. To secure this end, it pledges itself to provide:
1. That when an Act, passed under the police power of the State is held unconstitutional under the State Constitution, by the courts, the people, after an ample interval for deliberation, shall have an opportunity to vote on the question whether they desire the Act to become law, notwithstanding such decision.
2. That every decision of the highest appellate court of a State declaring an Act of the Legislature unconstitutional on the ground of its violation of the Federal Constitution shall be subject to the same review by the Supreme Court of the United States as is now accorded to decisions sustaining such legislation.
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
The Progressive party, in order to secure to the people a better administration of justice and by that means to bring about a more general respect for the law and the courts, pledges itself to work unceasingly for the reform of legal procedure and judicial methods.
We believe that the issuance of injunctions in cases arising out of labor disputes should be prohibited when such injunctions would not apply when no labor disputes existed.
We also believe that a person cited for contempt in labor disputes, except when such contempt was committed in the actual presence of the court or so near thereto as to interfere with the proper administration of justice, should have a right to trial by jury.
SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE
The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for:
Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern industry;
The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various occupations, and the exercise of the public authority of State and Nation, including the Federal Control over interstate commerce, and the taxing power, to maintain such standards;
The prohibition of child labor; Minimum wage standards for working women, to provide a "living wage" in all industrial occupations; The general prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of an eight hour day for women and young persons; One day’s rest in seven for all wage workers; The eight hour day in continuous twenty-four hour industries; The abolition of the convict contract labor system; substituting a system of prison production for governmental consumption only; and the application of prisoners’ earnings to the support of their dependent families; Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions of labor; full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases, and the opening to public inspection of all tallies, weights, measures and check systems on labor products; Standards of compensation for death by industrial accident and injury and trade disease which will transfer the burden of lost earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and thus to the community; The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use; The development of the creative labor power of America by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American youth and establishing continuation schools for industrial education under public control and encouraging agricultural education and demonstration in rural schools; The establishment of industrial research laboratories to put the methods and discoveries of science at the service of American producers; We favor the organization of the workers, men and women, as a means of protecting their interests and of promoting their progress.
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
We pledge our party to establish a department of labor with a seat in the cabinet, and with wide jurisdiction over matters affecting the conditions of labor and living.
COUNTRY LIFE
The development and prosperity of country life are as important to the people who live in the cities as they are to the farmers. Increase of prosperity on the farm will favorably affect the cost of living, and promote the interests of all who dwell in the country, and all who depend upon its products for clothing, shelter and food.
We pledge our party to foster the development of agricultural credit and co-operation, the teaching of agriculture in schools, agricultural college extension, the use of mechanical power on the farm, and to re-establish the Country Life Commission, thus directly promoting the welfare of the farmers, and bringing the benefits of better farming, better business and better living within their reach.
The Progressive party, in order to secure to the people a better administration of justice and by that means to bring about a more general respect for the law and the courts, pledges itself to work unceasingly for the reform of legal procedure and judicial methods.
We believe that the issuance of injunctions in cases arising out of labor disputes should be prohibited when such injunctions would not apply when no labor disputes existed.
We also believe that a person cited for contempt in labor disputes, except when such contempt was committed in the actual presence of the court or so near thereto as to interfere with the proper administration of justice, should have a right to trial by jury.
SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE
The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for:
Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern industry;
The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various occupations, and the exercise of the public authority of State and Nation, including the Federal Control over interstate commerce, and the taxing power, to maintain such standards;
The prohibition of child labor; Minimum wage standards for working women, to provide a "living wage" in all industrial occupations; The general prohibition of night work for women and the establishment of an eight hour day for women and young persons; One day’s rest in seven for all wage workers; The eight hour day in continuous twenty-four hour industries; The abolition of the convict contract labor system; substituting a system of prison production for governmental consumption only; and the application of prisoners’ earnings to the support of their dependent families; Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions of labor; full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases, and the opening to public inspection of all tallies, weights, measures and check systems on labor products; Standards of compensation for death by industrial accident and injury and trade disease which will transfer the burden of lost earnings from the families of working people to the industry, and thus to the community; The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use; The development of the creative labor power of America by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American youth and establishing continuation schools for industrial education under public control and encouraging agricultural education and demonstration in rural schools; The establishment of industrial research laboratories to put the methods and discoveries of science at the service of American producers; We favor the organization of the workers, men and women, as a means of protecting their interests and of promoting their progress.
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
We pledge our party to establish a department of labor with a seat in the cabinet, and with wide jurisdiction over matters affecting the conditions of labor and living.
COUNTRY LIFE
The development and prosperity of country life are as important to the people who live in the cities as they are to the farmers. Increase of prosperity on the farm will favorably affect the cost of living, and promote the interests of all who dwell in the country, and all who depend upon its products for clothing, shelter and food.
We pledge our party to foster the development of agricultural credit and co-operation, the teaching of agriculture in schools, agricultural college extension, the use of mechanical power on the farm, and to re-establish the Country Life Commission, thus directly promoting the welfare of the farmers, and bringing the benefits of better farming, better business and better living within their reach.
HIGH COST OF LIVING
The high cost of living is due partly to worldwide and partly to local causes; partly to natural and partly to artificial causes. The measures proposed in this platform on various subjects such as the tariff, the trusts and conservation, will of themselves remove the artificial causes.
There will remain other elements such as the tendency to leave the country for the city, waste, extravagance, bad system of taxation, poor methods of raising crops and bad business methods in marketing crops.
To remedy these conditions requires the fullest information and based on this information, effective government supervision and control to remove all the artificial causes. We pledge ourselves to such full and immediate inquiry and to immediate action to deal with every need such inquiry discloses.
HEALTH
We favor the union of all the existing agencies of the Federal Government dealing with the public health into a single national health service without discrimination against or for any one set of therapeutic methods, school of medicine, or school of healing with such additional powers as may be necessary to enable it to perform efficiently such duties in the protection of the public from preventable diseases as may be properly undertaken by the Federal authorities, including the executing of existing laws regarding pure food, quarantine and cognate subjects, the promotion of vital statistics and the extension of the registration area of such statistics, and co-operation with the health activities of the various States and cities of the Nation.
BUSINESS
We believe that true popular government, justice and prosperity go hand in hand, and, so believing, it is our purpose to secure that large measure of general prosperity which is the fruit of legitimate and honest business, fostered by equal justice and by sound progressive laws.
We demand that the test of true prosperity shall be the benefits conferred thereby on all the citizens, not confined to individuals or classes, and that the test of corporate efficiency shall be the ability better to serve the public; that those who profit by control of business affairs shall justify that profit and that control by sharing with the public the fruits thereof.
We therefore demand a strong National regulation of inter-State corporations. The corporation is an essential part of modern business. The concentration of modem business, in some degree, is both inevitable and necessary for national and international business efficiency. But the existing concentration of vast wealth under a corporate system, unguarded and uncontrolled by the Nation, has placed in the hands of a few men enormous, secret, irresponsible power over the daily life of the citizen; a power insufferable in a free Government and certain of abuse.
This power has been abused, in monopoly of National resources, in stock watering, in unfair competition and unfair privileges, and finally in sinister influences on the public agencies of State and Nation. We do not fear commercial power, but we insist that it shall be exercised openly, under publicity, supervision and regulation of the most efficient sort, which will preserve its good while eradicating and preventing its ill.
To that end we urge the establishment of a strong Federal administrative commission of high standing, which shall maintain permanent active supervision over industrial corporations engaged in inter-State commerce, or such of them as are of public importance, doing for them what the Government now does for the National banks, and what is now done for the railroads by the Inter-State Commerce Commission.
Such a commission must enforce the complete publicity of those corporation transactions which are of public interest; must attack unfair competition, false capitalization and special privilege, and by continuous trained watchfulness guard and keep open equally all the highways of American commerce.
Thus the business man will have certain knowledge of the law, and will be able to conduct his business easily in conformity therewith; the investor will find security for his capital; dividends will be rendered more certain, and the savings of the people will be drawn naturally and safely into the channels of trade.
Under such a system of constructive regulation, legitimate business, freed from confusion, uncertainty and fruitless litigation will develop normally in response to the energy and enterprise of the American business man.
We favor strengthening the Sherman Law by prohibiting agreement to divide territory or limit output; refusing to sell to customers who buy from business rivals; to sell below cost in certain areas while maintaining higher prices in other places; using the power of transportation to aid or injure special business concerns; and other unfair trade practices.
The high cost of living is due partly to worldwide and partly to local causes; partly to natural and partly to artificial causes. The measures proposed in this platform on various subjects such as the tariff, the trusts and conservation, will of themselves remove the artificial causes.
There will remain other elements such as the tendency to leave the country for the city, waste, extravagance, bad system of taxation, poor methods of raising crops and bad business methods in marketing crops.
To remedy these conditions requires the fullest information and based on this information, effective government supervision and control to remove all the artificial causes. We pledge ourselves to such full and immediate inquiry and to immediate action to deal with every need such inquiry discloses.
HEALTH
We favor the union of all the existing agencies of the Federal Government dealing with the public health into a single national health service without discrimination against or for any one set of therapeutic methods, school of medicine, or school of healing with such additional powers as may be necessary to enable it to perform efficiently such duties in the protection of the public from preventable diseases as may be properly undertaken by the Federal authorities, including the executing of existing laws regarding pure food, quarantine and cognate subjects, the promotion of vital statistics and the extension of the registration area of such statistics, and co-operation with the health activities of the various States and cities of the Nation.
BUSINESS
We believe that true popular government, justice and prosperity go hand in hand, and, so believing, it is our purpose to secure that large measure of general prosperity which is the fruit of legitimate and honest business, fostered by equal justice and by sound progressive laws.
We demand that the test of true prosperity shall be the benefits conferred thereby on all the citizens, not confined to individuals or classes, and that the test of corporate efficiency shall be the ability better to serve the public; that those who profit by control of business affairs shall justify that profit and that control by sharing with the public the fruits thereof.
We therefore demand a strong National regulation of inter-State corporations. The corporation is an essential part of modern business. The concentration of modem business, in some degree, is both inevitable and necessary for national and international business efficiency. But the existing concentration of vast wealth under a corporate system, unguarded and uncontrolled by the Nation, has placed in the hands of a few men enormous, secret, irresponsible power over the daily life of the citizen; a power insufferable in a free Government and certain of abuse.
This power has been abused, in monopoly of National resources, in stock watering, in unfair competition and unfair privileges, and finally in sinister influences on the public agencies of State and Nation. We do not fear commercial power, but we insist that it shall be exercised openly, under publicity, supervision and regulation of the most efficient sort, which will preserve its good while eradicating and preventing its ill.
To that end we urge the establishment of a strong Federal administrative commission of high standing, which shall maintain permanent active supervision over industrial corporations engaged in inter-State commerce, or such of them as are of public importance, doing for them what the Government now does for the National banks, and what is now done for the railroads by the Inter-State Commerce Commission.
Such a commission must enforce the complete publicity of those corporation transactions which are of public interest; must attack unfair competition, false capitalization and special privilege, and by continuous trained watchfulness guard and keep open equally all the highways of American commerce.
Thus the business man will have certain knowledge of the law, and will be able to conduct his business easily in conformity therewith; the investor will find security for his capital; dividends will be rendered more certain, and the savings of the people will be drawn naturally and safely into the channels of trade.
Under such a system of constructive regulation, legitimate business, freed from confusion, uncertainty and fruitless litigation will develop normally in response to the energy and enterprise of the American business man.
We favor strengthening the Sherman Law by prohibiting agreement to divide territory or limit output; refusing to sell to customers who buy from business rivals; to sell below cost in certain areas while maintaining higher prices in other places; using the power of transportation to aid or injure special business concerns; and other unfair trade practices.
PATENTS
We pledge ourselves to the enactment of a patent law which will make it impossible for patents to be suppressed or used against the public welfare in the interests of injurious monopolies.
INTER-STATE COMMERCE COMMISSION
We pledge our party to secure to the Inter-State Commerce Commission the power to value the physical property of railroads. In order that the power of the commission to protect the people may not be impaired or destroyed, we demand the abolition of the Commerce Court.
CURRENCY
We believe there exists imperative need for prompt legislation for the improvement of our National currency system. We believe the present method of issuing notes through private agencies is harmful and unscientific.
The issue of currency is fundamentally a Government function and the system should have as basic principles soundness and elasticity. The control should be lodged with the Government and should be protected from domination or manipulation by Wall Street or any special interests.
We are opposed to the so-called Aldrich currency bill, because its provisions would place our currency and credit system in private hands, not subject to effective public control.
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
The time has come when the Federal Government should co-operate with manufacturers and producers in extending our foreign commerce. To this end we demand adequate appropriations by Congress, and the appointment of diplomatic and consular officers solely with a view to their special fitness and worth, and not in consideration of political expediency.
It is imperative to the welfare of our people that we enlarge and extend our foreign commerce.
In every way possible our Federal Government should co-operate in this important matter. Germany’s policy of co-operation between government and business has, in comparatively few years, made that nation a leading competitor for the commerce of the world.
CONSERVATION
The natural resources of the Nation must be promptly developed and generously used to supply the people’s needs, but we cannot safely allow them to be wasted, exploited, monopolized or controlled against the general good. We heartily favor the policy of conservation, and we pledge our party to protect the National forests without hindering their legitimate use for the benefit of all the people.
Agricultural lands in the National forests are, and should remain, open to the genuine settler. Conservation will not retard legitimate development. The honest settler must receive his patent promptly, without hindrance, rules or delays.
We believe that the remaining forests, coal and oil lands, water powers and other natural resources still in State or National control (except agricultural lands) are more likely to be wisely conserved and utilized for the general welfare if held in the public hands.
In order that consumers and producers, managers and workmen, now and hereafter, need not pay toll to private monopolies of power and raw material, we demand that such resources shall be retained by the State or Nation, and opened to immediate use under laws which will encourage development and make to the people a moderate return for benefits conferred.
In particular we pledge our party to require reasonable compensation to the public for water power rights hereafter granted by the public.
We pledge legislation to lease the public grazing lands under equitable provisions now pending which will increase the production of food for the people and thoroughly safeguard the rights of the actual homemaker. Natural resources, whose conservation is necessary for the National welfare, should be owned or controlled by the Nation.
GOOD ROADS
We recognize the vital importance of good roads and we pledge our party to foster their extension in every proper way, and we favor the early construction of National highways. We also favor the extension of the rural free delivery service.
ALASKA
The coal and other natural resources of Alaska should be opened to development at once. They are owned by the people of the United States, and are safe from monopoly, waste or destruction only while so owned.
We demand that they shall neither be sold nor given away, except under the Homestead Law, but while held in Government ownership shall be opened to use promptly upon liberal terms requiring immediate development.
Thus the benefit of cheap fuel will accrue to the Government of the United States and to the people of Alaska and the Pacific Coast; the settlement of extensive agricultural lands will be hastened; the extermination of the salmon will be prevented and the just and wise development of Alaskan resources will take the place of private extortion or monopoly.
We demand also that extortion or monopoly in transportation shall be prevented by the prompt acquisition, construction or improvement by the Government of such railroads, harbor and other facilities for transportation as the welfare of the people may demand.
We promise the people of the Territory of Alaska the same measure of legal self-government that was given to other American territories, and that Federal officials appointed there shall be qualified by previous bona-fide residence in the Territory.
WATERWAYS
The rivers of the United States are the natural arteries of this continent. We demand that they shall be opened to traffic as indispensable parts of a great Nation-wide system of transportation, in which the Panama Canal will be the central link, thus enabling the whole interior of the United States to share with the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards in the benefit derived from the canal.
It is a National obligation to develop our rivers, and especially the Mississippi and its tributaries, without delay, under a comprehensive general plan covering each river system from its source to its mouth, designed to secure its highest usefulness for navigation, irrigation, domestic supply, water power and the prevention of floods.
We pledge our party to the immediate preparation of such a plan, which should be made and carried out in close and friendly co-operation between the Nation, the States and the cities affected.
Under such a plan, the destructive floods of the Mississippi and other streams, which represent a vast and needless loss to the Nation, would be controlled by forest conservation and water storage at the headwaters, and by levees below; land sufficient to support millions of people would be reclaimed from the deserts and the swamps, water power enough to transform the industrial standings of whole States would be developed, adequate water terminals would be provided, transportation by river would revive, and the railroads would be compelled to co-operate as freely with the boat lines as with each other.
The equipment, organization and experience acquired in constructing the Panama Canal soon will be available for the Lakes-to-the-Gulf deep waterway and other portions of this great work, and should be utilized by the Nation in co-operation with the various States, at the lowest net cost to the people.
PANAMA CANAL
The Panama Canal, built and paid for by the American people, must be used primarily for their benefit.
We demand that the canal shall be so operated as to break the transportation monopoly now held and misused by the transcontinental railroads by maintaining sea competition with them; that ships directly or indirectly owned or controlled by American railroad corporations shall not be permitted to use the canal, and that American ships engaged in coastwise trade shall pay no tolls.
The Progressive party will favor legislation having for its aim the development of friendship and commerce between the United States and Latin-American nations.
TARIFF
We believe in a protective tariff which shall equalize conditions of competition between the United States and foreign countries, both for the farmer and the manufacturer, and which shall maintain for labor an adequate standard of living.
Primarily the benefit of any tariff should be disclosed in the pay envelope of the laborer. We declare that no industry deserves protection which is unfair to labor or which is operating in violation of Federal law. We believe that the presumption is always in favor of the consuming public.
We demand tariff revision because the present tariff is unjust to the people of the United States. Fair dealing toward the people requires an immediate downward revision of those schedules wherein duties are shown to be unjust or excessive.
We pledge ourselves to the establishment of a non-partisan scientific tariff commission, reporting both to the President and to either branch of Congress, which shall report, first, as to the costs of production, efficiency of labor, capitalization, industrial organization and efficiency and the general competitive position in this country and abroad of industries seeking protection from Congress; second, as to the revenue producing power of the tariff and its relation to the resources of Government; and, third, as to the effect of the tariff on prices, operations of middlemen, and on the purchasing power of the consumer.
We believe that this commission should have plenary power to elicit information, and for this purpose to prescribe a uniform system of accounting for the great protected industries. The work of the commission should not prevent the immediate adoption of acts reducing these schedules generally recognized as excessive.
We condemn the Payne-Aldrich bill as unjust to the people. The Republican organization is in the hands of those who have broken, and cannot again be trusted to keep, the promise of necessary downward revision.
The Democratic party is committed to the destruction of the protective system through a tariff for revenue only a policy which would inevitably produce widespread industrial and commercial disaster.
We demand the immediate repeal of the Canadian Reciprocity Act.
INHERITANCE AND INCOME TAX
We believe in a graduated inheritance tax as a National means of equalizing the obligations of holders of property to Government, and we hereby pledge our party to enact such a Federal law as will tax large inheritances, returning to the States an equitable percentage of all amounts collected.
We favor the ratification of the pending amendment to the Constitution giving the Government power to levy an income tax.
PEACE AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
The Progressive party deplores the survival in our civilization of the barbaric system of warfare among nations with its enormous waste of resources even in time of peace, and the consequent impoverishment of the life of the toiling masses. We pledge the party to use its best endeavors to substitute judicial and other peaceful means of settling international differences.
We favor an international agreement for the limitation of naval forces. Pending such an agreement, and as the best means of preserving peace, we pledge ourselves to maintain for the present the policy of building two battleships a year.
TREATY RIGHTS
We pledge our party to protect the rights of American citizenship at home and abroad. No treaty should receive the sanction of our Government which discriminates between American citizens because of birthplace, race, or religion, or that does not recognize the absolute right of expatriation.
THE IMMIGRANT
Through the establishment of industrial standards we propose to secure to the able-bodied immigrant and to his native fellow workers a larger share of American opportunity.
We denounce the fatal policy of indifference and neglect which has left our enormous immigrant population to become the prey of chance and cupidity.
We favor Governmental action to encourage the distribution of immigrants away from the congested cities, to rigidly supervise all private agencies dealing with them and to promote their assimilation, education and advancement.
PENSIONS
We pledge ourselves to a wise and just policy of pensioning American soldiers and sailors and their widows and children by the Federal Government. And we approve the policy of the southern States in granting pensions to the ex-Confederate soldiers and sailors and their widows and children.
PARCEL POST
We pledge our party to the immediate creation of a parcel post, with rates proportionate to distance and service.
CIVIL SERVICE
We condemn the violations of the Civil Service Law under the present administration, including the coercion and assessment of subordinate employees, and the President’s refusal to punish such violation after a finding of guilty by his own commission; his distribution of patronage among subservient congressmen, while withholding it from those who refuse support of administration measures; his withdrawal of nominations from the Senate until political support for himself was secured, and his open use of the offices to reward those who voted for his re-nomination.
To eradicate these abuses, we demand not only the enforcement of the civil service act in letter and spirit, but also legislation which will bring under the competitive system postmasters, collectors, marshals, and all other non-political officers, as well as the enactment of an equitable retirement law, and we also insist upon continuous service during good behavior and efficiency.
GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ORGANIZATION
We pledge our party to readjustment of the business methods of the National Government and a proper co-ordination of the Federal bureaus, which will increase the economy and efficiency of the Government service, prevent duplications, and secure better results to the taxpayers for every dollar expended.
We pledge ourselves to the enactment of a patent law which will make it impossible for patents to be suppressed or used against the public welfare in the interests of injurious monopolies.
INTER-STATE COMMERCE COMMISSION
We pledge our party to secure to the Inter-State Commerce Commission the power to value the physical property of railroads. In order that the power of the commission to protect the people may not be impaired or destroyed, we demand the abolition of the Commerce Court.
CURRENCY
We believe there exists imperative need for prompt legislation for the improvement of our National currency system. We believe the present method of issuing notes through private agencies is harmful and unscientific.
The issue of currency is fundamentally a Government function and the system should have as basic principles soundness and elasticity. The control should be lodged with the Government and should be protected from domination or manipulation by Wall Street or any special interests.
We are opposed to the so-called Aldrich currency bill, because its provisions would place our currency and credit system in private hands, not subject to effective public control.
COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT
The time has come when the Federal Government should co-operate with manufacturers and producers in extending our foreign commerce. To this end we demand adequate appropriations by Congress, and the appointment of diplomatic and consular officers solely with a view to their special fitness and worth, and not in consideration of political expediency.
It is imperative to the welfare of our people that we enlarge and extend our foreign commerce.
In every way possible our Federal Government should co-operate in this important matter. Germany’s policy of co-operation between government and business has, in comparatively few years, made that nation a leading competitor for the commerce of the world.
CONSERVATION
The natural resources of the Nation must be promptly developed and generously used to supply the people’s needs, but we cannot safely allow them to be wasted, exploited, monopolized or controlled against the general good. We heartily favor the policy of conservation, and we pledge our party to protect the National forests without hindering their legitimate use for the benefit of all the people.
Agricultural lands in the National forests are, and should remain, open to the genuine settler. Conservation will not retard legitimate development. The honest settler must receive his patent promptly, without hindrance, rules or delays.
We believe that the remaining forests, coal and oil lands, water powers and other natural resources still in State or National control (except agricultural lands) are more likely to be wisely conserved and utilized for the general welfare if held in the public hands.
In order that consumers and producers, managers and workmen, now and hereafter, need not pay toll to private monopolies of power and raw material, we demand that such resources shall be retained by the State or Nation, and opened to immediate use under laws which will encourage development and make to the people a moderate return for benefits conferred.
In particular we pledge our party to require reasonable compensation to the public for water power rights hereafter granted by the public.
We pledge legislation to lease the public grazing lands under equitable provisions now pending which will increase the production of food for the people and thoroughly safeguard the rights of the actual homemaker. Natural resources, whose conservation is necessary for the National welfare, should be owned or controlled by the Nation.
GOOD ROADS
We recognize the vital importance of good roads and we pledge our party to foster their extension in every proper way, and we favor the early construction of National highways. We also favor the extension of the rural free delivery service.
ALASKA
The coal and other natural resources of Alaska should be opened to development at once. They are owned by the people of the United States, and are safe from monopoly, waste or destruction only while so owned.
We demand that they shall neither be sold nor given away, except under the Homestead Law, but while held in Government ownership shall be opened to use promptly upon liberal terms requiring immediate development.
Thus the benefit of cheap fuel will accrue to the Government of the United States and to the people of Alaska and the Pacific Coast; the settlement of extensive agricultural lands will be hastened; the extermination of the salmon will be prevented and the just and wise development of Alaskan resources will take the place of private extortion or monopoly.
We demand also that extortion or monopoly in transportation shall be prevented by the prompt acquisition, construction or improvement by the Government of such railroads, harbor and other facilities for transportation as the welfare of the people may demand.
We promise the people of the Territory of Alaska the same measure of legal self-government that was given to other American territories, and that Federal officials appointed there shall be qualified by previous bona-fide residence in the Territory.
WATERWAYS
The rivers of the United States are the natural arteries of this continent. We demand that they shall be opened to traffic as indispensable parts of a great Nation-wide system of transportation, in which the Panama Canal will be the central link, thus enabling the whole interior of the United States to share with the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards in the benefit derived from the canal.
It is a National obligation to develop our rivers, and especially the Mississippi and its tributaries, without delay, under a comprehensive general plan covering each river system from its source to its mouth, designed to secure its highest usefulness for navigation, irrigation, domestic supply, water power and the prevention of floods.
We pledge our party to the immediate preparation of such a plan, which should be made and carried out in close and friendly co-operation between the Nation, the States and the cities affected.
Under such a plan, the destructive floods of the Mississippi and other streams, which represent a vast and needless loss to the Nation, would be controlled by forest conservation and water storage at the headwaters, and by levees below; land sufficient to support millions of people would be reclaimed from the deserts and the swamps, water power enough to transform the industrial standings of whole States would be developed, adequate water terminals would be provided, transportation by river would revive, and the railroads would be compelled to co-operate as freely with the boat lines as with each other.
The equipment, organization and experience acquired in constructing the Panama Canal soon will be available for the Lakes-to-the-Gulf deep waterway and other portions of this great work, and should be utilized by the Nation in co-operation with the various States, at the lowest net cost to the people.
PANAMA CANAL
The Panama Canal, built and paid for by the American people, must be used primarily for their benefit.
We demand that the canal shall be so operated as to break the transportation monopoly now held and misused by the transcontinental railroads by maintaining sea competition with them; that ships directly or indirectly owned or controlled by American railroad corporations shall not be permitted to use the canal, and that American ships engaged in coastwise trade shall pay no tolls.
The Progressive party will favor legislation having for its aim the development of friendship and commerce between the United States and Latin-American nations.
TARIFF
We believe in a protective tariff which shall equalize conditions of competition between the United States and foreign countries, both for the farmer and the manufacturer, and which shall maintain for labor an adequate standard of living.
Primarily the benefit of any tariff should be disclosed in the pay envelope of the laborer. We declare that no industry deserves protection which is unfair to labor or which is operating in violation of Federal law. We believe that the presumption is always in favor of the consuming public.
We demand tariff revision because the present tariff is unjust to the people of the United States. Fair dealing toward the people requires an immediate downward revision of those schedules wherein duties are shown to be unjust or excessive.
We pledge ourselves to the establishment of a non-partisan scientific tariff commission, reporting both to the President and to either branch of Congress, which shall report, first, as to the costs of production, efficiency of labor, capitalization, industrial organization and efficiency and the general competitive position in this country and abroad of industries seeking protection from Congress; second, as to the revenue producing power of the tariff and its relation to the resources of Government; and, third, as to the effect of the tariff on prices, operations of middlemen, and on the purchasing power of the consumer.
We believe that this commission should have plenary power to elicit information, and for this purpose to prescribe a uniform system of accounting for the great protected industries. The work of the commission should not prevent the immediate adoption of acts reducing these schedules generally recognized as excessive.
We condemn the Payne-Aldrich bill as unjust to the people. The Republican organization is in the hands of those who have broken, and cannot again be trusted to keep, the promise of necessary downward revision.
The Democratic party is committed to the destruction of the protective system through a tariff for revenue only a policy which would inevitably produce widespread industrial and commercial disaster.
We demand the immediate repeal of the Canadian Reciprocity Act.
INHERITANCE AND INCOME TAX
We believe in a graduated inheritance tax as a National means of equalizing the obligations of holders of property to Government, and we hereby pledge our party to enact such a Federal law as will tax large inheritances, returning to the States an equitable percentage of all amounts collected.
We favor the ratification of the pending amendment to the Constitution giving the Government power to levy an income tax.
PEACE AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
The Progressive party deplores the survival in our civilization of the barbaric system of warfare among nations with its enormous waste of resources even in time of peace, and the consequent impoverishment of the life of the toiling masses. We pledge the party to use its best endeavors to substitute judicial and other peaceful means of settling international differences.
We favor an international agreement for the limitation of naval forces. Pending such an agreement, and as the best means of preserving peace, we pledge ourselves to maintain for the present the policy of building two battleships a year.
TREATY RIGHTS
We pledge our party to protect the rights of American citizenship at home and abroad. No treaty should receive the sanction of our Government which discriminates between American citizens because of birthplace, race, or religion, or that does not recognize the absolute right of expatriation.
THE IMMIGRANT
Through the establishment of industrial standards we propose to secure to the able-bodied immigrant and to his native fellow workers a larger share of American opportunity.
We denounce the fatal policy of indifference and neglect which has left our enormous immigrant population to become the prey of chance and cupidity.
We favor Governmental action to encourage the distribution of immigrants away from the congested cities, to rigidly supervise all private agencies dealing with them and to promote their assimilation, education and advancement.
PENSIONS
We pledge ourselves to a wise and just policy of pensioning American soldiers and sailors and their widows and children by the Federal Government. And we approve the policy of the southern States in granting pensions to the ex-Confederate soldiers and sailors and their widows and children.
PARCEL POST
We pledge our party to the immediate creation of a parcel post, with rates proportionate to distance and service.
CIVIL SERVICE
We condemn the violations of the Civil Service Law under the present administration, including the coercion and assessment of subordinate employees, and the President’s refusal to punish such violation after a finding of guilty by his own commission; his distribution of patronage among subservient congressmen, while withholding it from those who refuse support of administration measures; his withdrawal of nominations from the Senate until political support for himself was secured, and his open use of the offices to reward those who voted for his re-nomination.
To eradicate these abuses, we demand not only the enforcement of the civil service act in letter and spirit, but also legislation which will bring under the competitive system postmasters, collectors, marshals, and all other non-political officers, as well as the enactment of an equitable retirement law, and we also insist upon continuous service during good behavior and efficiency.
GOVERNMENT BUSINESS ORGANIZATION
We pledge our party to readjustment of the business methods of the National Government and a proper co-ordination of the Federal bureaus, which will increase the economy and efficiency of the Government service, prevent duplications, and secure better results to the taxpayers for every dollar expended.
GOVERNMENT SUPERVISION OVER INVESTMENTS
The people of the United States are swindled out of many millions of dollars every year, through worthless investments. The plain people, the wage earner and the men and women with small savings, have no way of knowing the merit of concerns sending out highly colored prospectuses offering stock for sale, prospectuses that make big returns seem certain and fortunes easily within grasp.
We hold it to be the duty of the Government to protect its people from this kind of piracy. We, therefore, demand wise, carefully thought out legislation that will give us such Governmental supervision over this matter as will furnish to the people of the United States this much-needed protection, and we pledge ourselves thereto.
CONCLUSION
On these principles and on the recognized desirability of uniting the Progressive forces of the Nation into an organization which shall unequivocally represent the Progressive spirit and policy we appeal for the support of all American citizens, without regard to previous political affiliations.
Additional Note:
Pay attention to Madison's words used when describing PROPERTY
Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life...; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
It would seem certain that money is property and income is money so therefore - using a variable rate "progressive" system is a clear violation of the "TAKING CLAUSE"
The act of government taking for redistribution would require them paying "JUST COMPENSATION." This would clearly end income tax as we know it. Another reason for repealing the 16th amendment.
Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience, which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection for which the public faith is pledged by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact. – “Property” in The National Gazette (29 March 1792) James Madison
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. – Annals of Congress (1794-01-10) James Madison
SOURCE LINK For Additional Note:
http://api.ning.com/files/ZwIi6Kh8TRM8S9mWCh1jVDneJsVihpTmHoGWsswEE8isCZvgMo*Eoq-Lf1mDDCZsdpjIKFnuZprxCRGglBKzAKSSL40sAh-X/1792MadisononProperty.pdf
The people of the United States are swindled out of many millions of dollars every year, through worthless investments. The plain people, the wage earner and the men and women with small savings, have no way of knowing the merit of concerns sending out highly colored prospectuses offering stock for sale, prospectuses that make big returns seem certain and fortunes easily within grasp.
We hold it to be the duty of the Government to protect its people from this kind of piracy. We, therefore, demand wise, carefully thought out legislation that will give us such Governmental supervision over this matter as will furnish to the people of the United States this much-needed protection, and we pledge ourselves thereto.
CONCLUSION
On these principles and on the recognized desirability of uniting the Progressive forces of the Nation into an organization which shall unequivocally represent the Progressive spirit and policy we appeal for the support of all American citizens, without regard to previous political affiliations.
Additional Note:
Pay attention to Madison's words used when describing PROPERTY
Amendment 5 - Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life...; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
It would seem certain that money is property and income is money so therefore - using a variable rate "progressive" system is a clear violation of the "TAKING CLAUSE"
The act of government taking for redistribution would require them paying "JUST COMPENSATION." This would clearly end income tax as we know it. Another reason for repealing the 16th amendment.
Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience, which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection for which the public faith is pledged by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact. – “Property” in The National Gazette (29 March 1792) James Madison
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. – Annals of Congress (1794-01-10) James Madison
SOURCE LINK For Additional Note:
http://api.ning.com/files/ZwIi6Kh8TRM8S9mWCh1jVDneJsVihpTmHoGWsswEE8isCZvgMo*Eoq-Lf1mDDCZsdpjIKFnuZprxCRGglBKzAKSSL40sAh-X/1792MadisononProperty.pdf