Would state governments be any less able to game city boundaries than they are House districts?
You'd need to amend the Constitution bigly for this. You can do this after you win, but not as a way to win.
Who would the non-city senators from a state represent? The whole state including the separately elected senators, or the rump state with the cities excluded? That is, living in NYC, would I vote for two or four senators?
"I yield my time to the senator from the parts of New York state with no building over five stories tall."
Why not de-certify statehood? Re-merge the Dakotas, divide Wyoming among its neighbors. Hell, split the Dakota Territory between Montana and Minnesota and call it even. We probably shouldn't sell Alaska back to Russia, so it gets to stay.
There is only one actual solution here, as I'm sure I've become even more tiresome than usual in repeating. It's not like having Houston, El Paso, San Antonio, and Dallas all in the same state is some sort of natural law. No -- it's an accident of history, and we continue with it because it's how people identify. It's no more 'solid' a circumstance that having two Dakotas and a Wyoming.
Do people in Maine miss being ruled by Boston? That's how bad Buffalo would feel if it was severed from Albany and NYC.
There is no question at all that simple majorities in Congress, and a legislative majority in the affected state, can enact this fix. So even if Texas won't do it -- because how can they -- a simple majority in Congress and the NY and Pa legislatures lets it be done in those states.
Instead, people opt for the fantasy solutions.
Fantasize on, friends, fantasize on.
6: I really don't understand why California isn't split in two.
West California would have all the money and East California would just be scenery and meth.
The problem is that there's a tradeoff between fixing senate representation, and having effective local government. States other than CA and TX are already too small to be good units for federalism. Splitting CA into 5 states would be bad for the state economy, for higher education, etc. Maybe the solution is states splitting up, but then having more governance done by interstate compacts? You split NJ into 3 states (NY part, Philly part, the rest), you split NY into half-a-dozen (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx+Westchester, Long Island+Staten Island, and then two or three upstate states), but then have the actual governance done by a body formed by an interstate compact between Northern NJ, the five downstate NY states, and SW CT.
I've been thinking about how even as a non-religious cynical kid, the United States of America seemed so manifestly destined by a greater power to be exactly the way it was. The Constitution still going strong after 200 years, presidential elections like clockwork every 4 years, and maybe above all - exactly 50 states and 100 senators. How could that possibly be the product of chance?
In keeping with my pet thumbsuck that the US is the last medieval hybrid monarchy you rootless cosmopolitans should up and declare yourselves Federal Cities to defend your ancient liberties against the inept exactions of your baronial statehouses. You can go all in. City walls. Guilds of Barristas. Elections by lot. Street fighting.
Obviously, multi-state metro areas have to find ways to work together -- the DC area shows how this can be done, and the limits of it. NYC too is part oif a tri-state area. The real question is whether you're trying to get perfection in the Senate -- probably not really possible -- or to substantially mitigate the inequity. There's a balance, and keeping NYC together probably makes more sense than having it be 4 or 5 different states. (Although, if I was in Congress, I'd probably vote to approve whatever the NY legislature wanted to do.) What do Buffalo and NYC get out of being in the same state? Regional governance between smaller states that are adjacent makes more sense than sentimentality based on 18th century English diplomacy.
Living in a state of 1 million is great for engagement. if you want it. We're all within a few degrees of separation, and state legislative candidates come to your house. If you want to meet with your US Senators or member of congress you can. Anyway, I don't feel like 1 million is too small for a state. But even so, break NY into 3 or 4 and you'll have polities that will be fine at self-governing.
I suppose smaller states are more vulnerable to corporations, but I'm not feeling like we're more corrupt that the big states.
"The Tri-State Area was the Bi-State Area with an adjacent area right over there!"
The point, though, is that there are only two items on the menu: continue with an ever more lopsided Senate, or encourage more populated states break themselves up in ways they think make sense. Obviously, there's nothing to counter "This Restaurant Sucks!" but the menu is what the menu is.
12: Whereas here there's cross-party support to abolish two of five branches of government. And take semi-jury trials on a six-year test-drive. I think the perceived antiquity* of your constitution is a real problem for you.
*I'm binge-listening History of Byzantium, which really puts things in perspective.
My memory goes back even to the before times, in the 70s.
19: 1070s? Pre-Manzikert? 400 years to go, motherfuckers.
8: The split would be North/ South. LA and San Diego... so very different from San Francisco.
At least now, if you split California in two north-south, it would certainly be two blue states.
Even the weirder proposals didn't contemplate a coast-inland split, but with Sacramento and the Inland Empire going blue, even that might be purple all put together. Now I'm curious.
17: Wait, what are the five branches of the government, and whicih two may be abolished? Also what are semi-jury trials, and are they for criminal cases, civil cases, or both?
Splitting CA into two states does very little in terms of senate fairness (both states are still too big!). You need to split into more like 10 states. SD, Orange County, LA, Inland Empire, East Bay, South Bay, SF, etc.
26: Right. And when you split down to that level of granularity, you start creating new Missisisippis (Jefferson, Central Valley).
Update to 24: If you included 21 coastal counties in one state (including greater Bay Area, Orange, and San Diego), that would have gone 67-27 Clinton in 2016; but even the remaining 37 inland counties would have gone 49-44 Clinton.
25:
https://taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2020/07/09/2003739636
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2017/04/14/2003668673
On review, "cross-party support" is an overstatement, but the wind seems to be blowing that way.
https://taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/07/23/2003740407
I don't think anyone knows what the jury thing is actually supposed to be at this point.
I see Charley got there first, but I've been thinking a lot recently that the only real solution is a lot more states. Admit DC and Puerto Rico, sure, but then carve off each major city into a new state and indulge the rural right-wing separatists wherever they have a plausible plan. I've been mulling over the idea of coming up with a proposal for 100 states as a nice round number, even though it's very unlikely we'll ever actually get that many. Maybe using 2020 Census data when it's available.
If you just stick with the narrow point that the Republican party successfully gerrymandered state boundaries (two Dakotas, existence of WY) in the late 19th century in a way that somehow still helps Republicans, and you just want to do another gerrymander to reverse that and swing things a bit in the opposite direction. So you want maybe four or five new solid D states, including DC. But the tricky part is you can only do it in states controlled by Democrats, so you can't do the sensible good thing of making some majority D states in the deep south (the State of Memphis!). But it's also hard to split most Democratic states without one of them ending up without a major city and becoming Republican. Let's see... Make metro Boston its own state. Split CA into two (SD/LA/Orange/Inland Empire plus their water supply, and everything else). Split Hawaii in two (Oahu and the rest). Split NJ into North and South. Those should all be reasonably popular. Through in Puerto Rico and DC and you might get something that's ok on the narrow partisan question.
It would still be the case that bicameral legislatures are a terrible broken idea, that many state borders are counterproductive, that states getting equal representation is both immoral and stupid, etc.
I'm watching a private Q&A session with a well known political analyst and it's like 190 proof conventional wisdom. Infuriating at times- keeps saying how one of the most important things is how the media reacts to what Biden does.
Both sides in the wild: If the election isn't decided by Wednesday morning you're going to have both sides making outlandish claims- Republicans will say late ballots from D states are rigged, Democrats will claim the post office under Trump's appointee lost votes or there weren't enough polling sites.
A large protest movement for new states in southern cities (Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis, etc.) would be interesting. Hard to know what the chances of success would be.
But it's also hard to split most Democratic states without one of them ending up without a major city and becoming Republican.
With recent demographic/political changes this is a lot less true than it used to be (see upthread about California, for example). And I wouldn't be so sure about red state willingness to kick out the cities; rural white people hate their nearest cities, and conservative state lawmakers would likely be happy to govern a rump rural/suburban state that's much whiter and more conservative. Obviously you would need Democratic control at the federal level to make it work in terms of Senate composition.
More generally, the late nineteenth-century influx of empty Republican states was a bit of an oddity historically, and it's been much more common for new states to come in through bipartisan deals. I think adding new states is going to be a lot more successful if it doesn't look too gerrymander-y. The current Senate is malapportioned so heavily toward the GOP that most bipartisan-seeming arrangements will likely benefit Dems overall.
I'm not sure if we'll ever get a Democratic trifecta in Pennsylvania again, but if you did even though splitting into two states is no good, you could split into three states quite well and pick up several Democratic senators.
One big problem is that adding loads of new states would devastate public education in many states (since the flagships are often located in the Republican rump).
It also seems likely to me that this would cause huge shortages of health coverage in the republican rumps. I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of insurers just decided not to operate in most of those states.
34 I think the context of having the first elected Democratic president in more than 20 years since the Civil War -- and it's not like Buchanan and Pierce are anyone's favorites, looking back before the war -- who then gets beaten for re-election, shows why the Republicans would want to go all out. Cleveland may have been the best Democratic president since Polk!!?? but why take the chance.
And it worked until TR gummed up the works and let Wilson slip in a generation later.
Are we trying to preserve the basic notion of the Senate, that each state should be represented equally?
Mathematically, I think the most satisfying solution is just to weight the votes of the senators according to the proportion of the population they represent.
Or make the Senate advisory/delay-only by fait accompli. Then nobody is denied "equal representation in the Senate." The David Lloyd George option.
. . . except when Cleveland got elected again.
And he was the best Dem since Monroe, right?
Are we trying to preserve the basic notion of the Senate, that each state should be represented equally?
Yes, because that's the only way to do it without amending the Constitution.
I guess the DLG option doesn't fix the appointments issue fully. The House could increase the size of the Court or maybe even institute 20-year terms over the Senate's objection, but it couldn't keep the Senate from holding up Democratic appointments.
One big problem is that adding loads of new states would devastate public education in many states (since the flagships are often located in the Republican rump).
Hm, interesting point but I'm not so sure. Flagship universities are a very small part of "public education," and many of them already don't get much in the way of state support. K-12 schools are funded mostly by local property taxes in most states, and poorer districts are mostly in urban rather than suburban/rural areas. So there are some potential problems there but I think they're mostly problems that already exist in some form.
It also seems likely to me that this would cause huge shortages of health coverage in the republican rumps. I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of insurers just decided not to operate in most of those states.
This I'm more skeptical about. Smaller risk pools, sure, but not necessarily smaller than many existing states, and not necessarily worse off economically either. Republicans aren't poor, and most of the rump states would still include substantial suburban areas that are pretty wealthy.
I haven't read the whole thread but I fail to see how this is any less of a pipedream solution than just abolishing the senate altogether, which seems cleaner and easier. I don't think this solution would face any less opposition than that would. And both require constitutional amendment, don't they?
Just abolish the damn Senate. It worked in Star Wars.
Of course it's this morning that winds up long on work.
39, 42, 45, and 46: That's why I pointed out the last sentence of Article V in the OP-- it demands equal representation of the states, and that the equal representation of states is not subject to amendment. My hope in approaching it in the above fashion to establish that the states remain equal, there are just additional Senators from cities (and only from cities so large their population exceeds that of states), which have their own representation.
1: Yes, and that seems fine. If cities want to merge so they can get a senator, or suburbs rejoin the city for increased representation, that seems like a useful corrective to white flight.
2: Right, this is more on having won a tremendous victory, let's fix the underlying problems that have proven so glaring for so long. I know that Wyoming feels entitled to 80 times the representation of more populous states, so it'd only come about similar to the interstate voting compact; Rhode Island was eager to torpedo the constitution and keep their wildly disproportionate influence under the Articles, so I don't have any illusions that small rural states would eagerly participate.
3: They'd be The Senator from the Great City of Los Angeles, we recognize the Senator from the City of Miami, etc. The conceit is that states are still equally represented, so the Senator for New York state still represents the people living in New York City; New York City simply has its own senators to ensure that its interests are also represented at the federal level.
5,6: I guess that states can divide once they're states, since Massachusetts did so when Maine became its own state. Forgetting that example, I'd worried that states would have to revert to territories and independently petition for admission again, which seems very prone to blockage by the remaining states who have senators (since territories lack them) who could play games with readmission, similar to the post civil war requirements to adopt amendments prior to readmission to congress.
45: No, it doesn't require a constitutional amendment, that's the whole point. You just need to pass a law at the federal and state levels and you're done.
(DC has a separate issue which is that the constitution has special provisions for the federal district as such, and so you couldn't make all of DC into a state without a constitutional amendment. This is why the main proposal is to shrink the federal district so it only encompasses the core area which is almost entirely government buildings and has very few residents, and turn the remaining part into a new state. There's a small problem though in that the remaining federal district would still get 3 EVs. But these are DC specific. (There's also a Texas specific thing, which is that Texas, but no other states, might be able to split itself into parts with only a state law and not a federal law.))
47.last: There's also KY and WV. Though WV was somewhat extra-constitutional.
Part of the reason that I thought that this could be a useful approach is that it feels like an expansion of the franchise, which has been popular historically. A high school history narrative of voting is that originally only rich white guys could vote, by the 1820s all white men could vote, then by the 1860s all men could vote, then in the 1910s women joined the franchise -- and we added the direct election of senators. In the 1960s we let 18 year olds vote... so, continuing the trend, why not let cities vote for their own interests, instead of having to work through their state? Why, a great city needing a state to represent them... you might as well have the state choose your senators instead of voting for them yourself. How barbaric! (Obviously, tongue firmly in cheek.)
A different reason I thought this approach might work is that it could lead to odd bedfellows. For now, republicans as a whole have reason to support the way that the senate is currently apportioned... but if Texas is getting another 6 senators, do they want to fight that hard to maintain the current arrangement? Since they win either way, they don't have to be rabid about it.
But I know that I have blind spots since I'm close to it. Of course, it's all pipe dreams anyway, it just felt like less divisive (less spiking the football) than bringing in DC alone, which is too easily portrayed as rewarding loyalists.... which plays into the "blacks vote how Democrats tell them" narrative.
7 (belatedly): If a California split doesn't give us Lo-Cal and No-Cal, I don't want to play.
On an Al Franken podcast a guest said that if you split California into 7 states and admit both Puerto Rico and DC as states, that basically gets the senate to even. Doesn't give the Dems an advantage, just balances out the existing Republican advantage. That's all I remember, as I didn't read the book, so don't ask me how all California states end up blue, but they did.
I guess if Democrats go the state-splitting route first, you might be able to lock in guaranteed electoral victories and never have to worry, but I wonder if there would be any practical obstacle to Republicans retaliating with the reductio ad absurdum of this if they got control of both houses again. E.g., each of the 100-ish counties in Kentucky and Tennessee could become states, creating 200 new Senators, of whom 180 or so are Republican.
48.1 -- What? Of course it requires a constitutional amendment to have senators from entities other than states. You can make cities into states, of course, which is pretty much what I am saying is the sole constitutional solution.
Pretending that adding a bunch of senators from cities within states wouldn't deprive states without such cities of "equal suffrage in the Senate" is just silly. Are there 14 states that would refuse to entertain this foolishness? There may be 40.
24: Only because we weren't courageous enough for Six Californias!.
I meant "or" instead of "and", or add 400 new Senators, whichever. At any rate, it seems like potential for Republicans to do very bad things if they think about what's possible and don't care about the practical consequences, which [gestures at the general state of the country].
For now, republicans as a whole have reason to support the way that the senate is currently apportioned... but if Texas is getting another 6 senators, do they want to fight that hard to maintain the current arrangement?
If those senators represent the cities they're all going to be Democrats, though, even in Texas.
"Mikey had a facial scar and Bobby was a racist.
They were all in love dying they were doin' it in Texas."
The issue is when you start getting states that look like gerrymandered districts, where Houston proper is split between 6 different states. I'm not quite sure even Republicans could pull that off, it's just such a nightmare for businesses.
The issue is when you start getting states that look like gerrymandered districts, where Houston proper is split between 6 different states. I'm not quite sure even Republicans could pull that off, it's just such a nightmare for businesses.
37: I'm sur they'd all accept Medicare.
58: You never know just how you look through other people's eyes.
If you're in Texas and they don't say anything about a scar, they see you as a racist.
Can you constitutionally split states? I thought there was something preventing that.
Thing is, I keep thinking that if we split a state, we should give Hawaii back, and then we're back to 50.
Can't we give back crappier states.
Can you constitutionally split states? I thought there was something preventing that.
It can only be with the consent of the state, but it can be done and has been occasionally. Maine is the most straightforward example.
There's probably no tale more unjust in the annals of colonialism than how we got Ohio. I haven't looked it up, but probably.
Thing is, I keep thinking that if we split a state, we should give Hawaii back, and then we're back to 50.
Give it back to whom? You mean grant it independence?
Moby is still fighting the French and Indian War.
We could give it to Japan. They seem to want it most.
We could always even things out by giving South Carolina to Barbados.
Hawaiians who make up 10% of the current population. Herrenvolk democracy like you've never seen it before.
I suppose as a gesture of conciliation we could also give Ohio to France.
I guess it doesn't matter so long as someone is happier.
Return Ohio to Quebec.
I suppose that the only issue I'd have with drastically increasing the number of states is that you'd eventually end up with more small states that don't have much intrinsically going for them, encouraging them to find negative-sum ways to increase revenue. Like how Delaware, Luxembourg, and island tax havens behave. Is there any race-to-the-bottom things that states could do that haven't been sufficiently explored yet?
I'd like to explore the amalgamation of non-contiguous states. The future is now! Planes exist. Maybe Texas-California could become its own country in perpetual civil war.
I'd like to explore the amalgamation of non-contiguous states. The future is now! Planes exist.
Until 1950 there were British MPs representing "The Combined Scottish Universities" and several other universities. They were abolished by Labour. Tony Blair should have brought them back.
The Irish Senate still has members like that. Although I don't think the Irish Senate has any more power than the House of Lords, so it ought to have all kinds of crazy members.
Probably because all the universities don't like being combined.
During a locally televised event, a private citizen made a HORRIFICALLY racist remark, and doubled down for a bit before seeing the expressions of other people.
This video could easily get lost to the sands of time. Or I could locate it and share it with key shit-stirrers in town.
Is there a reason that one option is better than the other?
Keep it handy until the person runs for office or starts getting power you don't think they should have.
She's a teacher at the local private school.
Sure, that's a start. But how do they feel about having seen with demons and taking malaria medication to pwn the doctors?
Sex with demons. Obviously, being seen with demons is not sufficient.
This seems like a really awkward solution to the problem, to be honest.
For a start, I don't see how you have some states sending 2 senators and some with 8 or 10 (albeit not all elected by the entire state) and not violate the pretty clear rule about "equal representation of states in the Senate". If Idaho decided that it was going to have two senators elected by the whole state, and another two elected by the whole state with the exception of the approximately 400 voters in Hazelton, that would not pass the laugh test. Idaho is effectively getting four senators that way, and that's against the rules.
Second, it also seems like it could be challenged on equal-representation grounds. Why should LB get to vote for four senators and someone living in rural NY only gets to vote for two?
If you want to fix the Senate - make it less anti-democratic - you have these options:
Get rid of the rule about equal representation and have Senate delegations proportional to population. You now have, basically, two houses of representatives.
Split up a load of big states so all the states are about the same size.
Neuter the Senate - move all its confirmation powers to the House, and leave the Senate as a powerless talking shop. (The David Lloyd George solution mentioned above, but more so.)
Abolish the Senate and become unicameral. (Or, actually, bicameral, with the Supreme Court as the appointed second chamber.)
More to the point here, in addition to the universities seats there were also Scottish burgh seats, e.g. the Elgin Burghs, that collected together a bunch of small northern Scottish towns that had different politics from the surrounding rural regions, but were individually too small to get their own seat. So maybe Austin becomes a state or two, but Corpus Cristi and El Paso would have to go together.
95: interesting. I didn't know that and it's rather a good idea. You could take it to the point of a sort of town-level version of my elective-constituency model. (http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_15754.html#1929459) All the aerospace-industry towns elect a senator; all the tiny Midwest farming communities elect a senator; all the free-range granola towns elect a senator...
The granola is ranging freely when the cameras are there, but as soon as they leave, it's back to the granola pens.
Anyway, that's basically how we got Ernst and Sanders.
96: What do you think guilds are for? Hybrid monarchy, people. Someone must have written this book already.
99: Neither hybrid, nor monarchy, nor people.
100 reminds me that there is a superstition among the Americans that the Lord, when his wrath is turned on a luckless individual on earth, prefers to bring about his death by introducing strange and irrational software errors into his Toyota hybrid automobile, causing it to accelerate or swerve without warning when driving and spread him all over an overpass support pillar.
Or, as they say in Latin, quos deus vult perdere, Prius dementat.
Eastman Kodak shares more than tripled Tuesday on plans to secure a $765 million government loan to help produce ingredients used in key generic medicines to fight the coronavirus.Someone please explain this to me.
102: Eastman Kodak is the company that makes cameras with film. Seen many of those lately? Getting any kind of a government contract would at least double their share value.
I was going to go look at the old camera I have just to prove you wrong, but it's buried too deep in the closet.
102: It turns out that the same chemicals that are used to process film can also be used to create generic drugs. Or maybe they are just close enough for our dystopian purposes.
104: Atossa has one. I think it was a gift. We've been happy to encourage its use because she's too young for anything like a phone of her own, and of course any distraction these days. But still, as manufacturers go, Eastman Kodak is probably doing worse than Victrola. Maybe better than Underwood Typewriter Company, I guess.
My uncle gave me one before I did semester abroad. It was old when I got it in 1992.
107: Plus everyone abroad had converted to metric Victrolas by then, so you couldn't even use it.
102 Announcement was Tuesday. Apparently there was major trading activity in the stock on Monday. Wish we had a functioning SEC.
94: How was neutering the House of Lords actually implemented? Did they basically have to agree to it, or were they persuaded not to contest their diminution somehow?
Here, I worry that eliminating the senate runs afoul of Article V, which basically makes messing with the senate one of the few things that amendments can't handle according to the constitution itself. Once we're in Constitutional Convention territory (to start anew), I'm afraid that we'd gain a lot in modernization, but introduce a lot of 21st century problems while retaining lots of cruft out of sentimentality.
I know when you neuter a dog, you tell them you're going for a walk in the park.
110: As I understand, various elites including the King were persuaded that keeping the Lords' power would would put them on the road to revolution. (The Liberals had just won two elections in a row on the same fiscally progressive platform which the Lords kept rejecting.)
Of course, in the UK they could just change the constitution by passing a law stating the new rules.
Unless they wrote down the laws, because it needs to be an unwritten constitution.
It only counts if it's written with a quill.
There are a fair number of states that are blue (senatorially) only because of a big city or two.
Has anyone actually checked whether turning cities into states would be a net Senate win for Democrats? If you carve NYC out of NY, you get two Democratic senators (which you have now) and there's a decent change upstate NY elects at least one Republican senator. In CA, you make LA and SF states, but the remaining part of the state returns one or more Republicans, so you may get a net gain there. IL and Chicago are similar. You have two IL Democrats already, but downstate isn't blue. What you need is red states with a big city you can make into a state. How do you get these red states to go along with the joke? Sure, try to get DC or PR or Guam admitted. PR isn't even sure they want to be a state.
I don't have the energy to do the math (much less a spreadsheet).
* Also, the belief that Texas can split into some huge number of states if they want has been debunked many times. It was proposed in an early attempt to get admitted to the union. It isn't real.
Calling people is stressful even when they are all basically nice.
116: Texting is a lot less stressful. It's great that you were willing to do the worst volunteering option. On the other hand, you probably see a lot fewer gifs of Trump. And probably less hate speech. I politely suggested to the powers that be that when our names are disguised, it would be nicer to have it be a generic guy's name so I don't have to have people call me a bitch so frequently. Texting into Michigan has been horrifying. In other news, I am very, very slow at writing letters.
PA isn't doing letters or texting yet. Or that's what they told us on our Zoom training.
I'm volunteering with Sierra Club. They've done a first pass at MI, FL, and PA and are starting a second pass in MI (what is a pass? I dunno). I think AZ is planned as well, not sure of the timing. Letters are being provided and written, then they'll be mailed at predetermined dates in October. They've committed to texting every single registered voter in those four states, somehuge number of letters to infrequent voters, and (of course) phone calls. Are you with the actual campaign?
I'm with the combined Biden/PA Democrats.
Anyway, I'm not allowed to make calls in Michigan because of the Ohio State background.
PA voters seemed nice. Sadly, even Florida seemed nicer than Michigan. Some of the volunteers have been complaining about the swearing, but I don't mind that. It's the hate speech that's legit surprising. Who on earth texts replies about white power to spam texts?
As I understand, various elites including the King were persuaded that keeping the Lords' power would would put them on the road to revolution. (The Liberals had just won two elections in a row on the same fiscally progressive platform which the Lords kept rejecting.)
Yeah, basically. And in terms of the actual mechanics, the King made it clear that if the Lords kept rejecting the reforms (which included removing the Lords' ability to reject a money bill) then he would simply create a shitload more peers to pack the House in favour of the reforms. (Something that previous monarchs had done in other cases). In response, the Lords eventually gave in.
There had previously been a tradition that the Lords could not interfere with a money bill such as a budget - this goes back to the Civil War, which was (in England) all about the Commons wanting to keep hold of the power of the purse. In 1909 the Lords decided to bin this tradition. This did not go well for them.
Here, I worry that eliminating the senate runs afoul of Article V, which basically makes messing with the senate one of the few things that amendments can't handle according to the constitution itself.
If you have a bit of your constitution that says other bits can't be changed, then that is the first bit you change.
Also, if the Senate is eliminated, then no state has been deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. Zero is equal to zero. That's even more true if the Senate is simply depowered.
One thing about this whole defund/privatize the Post Office that I don't understand is that the Post Office is literally in the Constitution. How is this constitutional?
117: I don't mind if people call me, but I deeply resent texters. E-mail is ok, but I even get pissed when work colleagues text me on my personal cell. I'm now careful to give out my landline only. I got a lot of Bloomberg spam, but that seemed to be
automated, because it went away if you texted STOP.
When I got text from the Bernie campaign as a former supporter from
2016, I asked them to stop and said I would most definitely not vote for them if they ever texted me again. When random people I don't know text me, it feels like they unlocked the door of my house and went in without knocking. Irrationally HATE.
126: All it does is empower Congress "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads." So like everything fucking else in assumes some minimum of level of good faith execution on the part of the Executive branch. Impeachment is truly the only recourse in the American Constitution. beyond elections. And they are allowed to fucking suck.
If you have a bit of your constitution that says other bits can't be changed, then that is the first bit you change.
Strongly agree. Just as no parliament may bind its successor, no constituent assembly may bind its successor, and constitutional amendments are our designated successors to the Constitutional Convention. (Although the threshold for revisions is also too high, a knottier issue.)