If you could change the Constitution, what would you change?

I would make Jefferson and Madison's 11th Amendment to the original Bill of Rights law.

I quote: "This proposed Amendment would have prohibited “monopolies in commerce.” The amendment would have made it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise try to influence elections. Corporations would be chartered by the states for the primary purpose of “serving the public good.” Corporations would possess the legal status not of natural persons but rather of “artificial persons.” This means that they would have only those legal attributes which the state saw fit to grant to them. They would NOT; and indeed could NOT possess the same bundle of rights which actual flesh and blood persons enjoy. Under this proposed amendment neither the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, nor any provision of that document would protect the artificial entities known of as corporations."

http://soundingcircle.com/newslog2.php/__show_article/_a000195-000205.htm

would have to ride a horse down the mall in Washington.

Secondly, if we can't get that, I'd amend the Constitution to say that the President may not pardon himself/herself, their successor, or anyone who has committed a crime while working in the Executive Branch during his or her administration. Pardons can also only be issued for convicted criminals, no pre-emptive pardons.

Boy we got off on the wrong track right at the beginning, didn't we?

Amendment XXVIII (I think that's the next number?)

Ban all private money in political campaigns; devote a percentage of the federal budget--say 1%--to candidate access to voters; set up a commission to distribute it (to all duly regisistered candidates); reclaim some of our public airwaves for political debate (if necessary amend contracts/licenses with media; fair compensation for election use of facilities). Goal is to open up our democracy to news ideas and fresh faces, and to banish corporations and the unfair power of the wealthy from our political life forevermore.

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And,

Ban private corporations from our election system. No secret source code. Maybe mandate paper ballots.

It may have been OK in the 18th century, but it is time to get rid of it. I would like to see some version of Instant Runoff Voting.

The original Constitutional process was inteersting.

Each state legislature picks learned people to be their electors.

Those electors look around the country and choose two people who would make good presidents.

The House of representatives chooses a president from among the top five vote-getters.

An interesting process that might have worked except for political parties and corruption.

Members of Congress shall not be privileged from arrest during their term in office for any reason.

(This supersedes Article I, Section 6, clause 1.)

something more readable would be nice. Maybe Times New Roman.

Get rid of "Electors" (the Electoral College).

Hold elections on weekends --- when people might actually be able to go --- not on a workday.

The Constitution outlines protected Rights but it is not clear whether Atomic Arms are protected or just arms (musket) borne by a militia. What exactly constitutes a militia anyway?

amendments that would prevent Texas and California from fielding presidential candidates for 100 years and bar anyone with Bush DNA from any office, elected or unelected, at any level of government.

I'd really like to consider anything that would prevent monopolization, stratification of wealth, abuse of labor, and end the fiction that corporations are somehow citizens.

That's why I usually get called a communist at least four times before lunch.

1. Corporations are not people are not covered by the bill of rights, etc.

2. Political contributions are not speech. Banned. Replaced by public financing.

3. Right of Privacy is protected

4. Right of collective bargaining is protected

5. People earning more then 10x the median national income are taxed at double the effective tax rate of average of people who make less than 10x the median income.

6. Health care and retirement security are fundamental rights.

7. Universal education is a fundamental right. Equality in school funding.

8. President may not pardon anyone in his administration or pardon anyone connected to the investigation of any member of his administration.

9. Handguns and semi-automatic weapons are banned. Only hunting weapons are allowed and bullets are taxed heavily.

10. Responsible Drug possession and use is legalized and heavily regulated to decrease negative social impacts.

11. Serialized Paper ballots counted by hand. Non-partisan redistricting. Non-partisan administration of elections. Majority needed to win election with Instant Run off voting. Election day is a holiday. Voting is compulsory with a "None of the above option."

12. Troop deployments in excess of 50,000 require explicit approval of congress and quarterly status reports. Troop deployments in excess of 100,000 trigger an automatic randomized draft with no deferments.

13. Military spending shall not exceed 1% of GNP unless a formal state of war is declared by Congress. War spending must be included in all budgets.

14. All regressive forms of taxation are prohibited

15. No for-profit business entity with annual revenues exceeding 10 million dollars may employ people to lobby congress.

16. Strict media ownership regulations

17. If a super majority of Congress votes that a President was seated fraudulently all Court appointments of that president shall be removed from the bench and replaced within a period not to exceed 8 years.

18. Minimum 4 weeks vacation for full time employees with more then 12 months on the job.

19. Intelligence Agency regulation....repeal and prohibit most of the National Security Act.

20. Codify Posse Comitatus. Outlaw domestic survielance.

21. Limit the tactics the Government can utilize in response to civil unrest.

22. All agents of the US government must obey all United States laws whether on U.S. soil or not.

23. No agent of the military or any itelligence services may engage in torture (define torture.)

24. Internet as common carrier. No provider of internet services may interfere or block any company that wishes to provid service that is carried over the common carrier.

right to privacy.


Water is a common owned and maintained by the people of the state and community.

Trust me, you really, really, don't want this. With the internet as a "common carrier", ISP's wouldn't be allowed to use all of their existing tools to block spam.

We're talking emails by the thousands, delivered to every person's inbox, every day, because the *cost* of sending each email is so low, and if that email *isn't* delivered, the ISP can be sued by spammers.

The reason we don't all recieve hundreds of pieces of mail every day is that it costs a *lot* to send and recieve messages. If we paid the same amount for the internet (to keep internet "junk" messages at the same level of junk mail), we'd be paying 37 cents for every email and IM we send, and twice that cost (at least) for web pages. As in, reading this web page would have cost you 37 cents to tell the server that you want to see it, and DU would have to pay maybe 5 bucks to send a much bulkier "message" back to you.

Unless, of course, you have something in mind to prevent carrier abuse?

And I don't think telling Time Warner road runner that they may not block Internet TV on thier cable modems would effect SPAM.

Common Carrier does not stop the FCC from instituting a do-no-call list...why would it stop ISPs from blocking spam?

I particularly like this one:

12. Troop deployments in excess of 50,000 require explicit approval of congress and quarterly status reports. Troop deployments in excess of 100,000 trigger an automatic randomized draft with no deferments.

That would certainly force the politicians to carefully consider whether or not to send us to war given that their own children won't be able to get out of it.

-Laelth

from which he or she is elected. Let anyone run anywhere, the way it's done in the UK...where ever the candidate has the best chance of winning.

the carpetbagger amendment?

"Let Americans Vote for Any American They Choose to Represent Them." As mobile as this nation has become, the silly requirement that senators and representatives live in the state or district from which they are elected is obsolete and should be discarded.

Jefferson Was Right

By Dr. Michael P. Byron

Most Americans don’t know it but Thomas Jefferson, along with James Madison worked assiduously to have an 11th Amendment included into our nation’s original Bill of Rights. This proposed Amendment would have prohibited “monopolies in commerce.” The amendment would have made it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise try to influence elections. Corporations would be chartered by the states for the primary purpose of “serving the public good.” Corporations would possess the legal status not of natural persons but rather of “artificial persons.” This means that they would have only those legal attributes which the state saw fit to grant to them. They would NOT; and indeed could NOT possess the same bundle of rights which actual flesh and blood persons enjoy. Under this proposed amendment neither the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, nor any provision of that document would protect the artificial entities known of as corporations.

Jefferson and Madison were so insistent upon this amendment because the American Revolution was in substantial degree a revolt against the domination of colonial economic and political life by the greatest multinational corporation of its age: the British East India Company. After all who do you think owned the tea which Sam Adams and friends dumped overboard in Boston Harbor? Who was responsible for the taxes on commodities and restrictions on trade by the American colonists? It was the British East India Company, of course. In the end the amendment was not adopted because a majority in the first Congress believed that already existing state laws governing corporations were adequate for constraining corporate power. Jefferson worried about the growing influence of corporate power until his dying day in 1826. Even the more conservative founder John Adams came to harbor deep misgivings about unchecked corporate power.

A few years after Jefferson’s unsuccessful attempt to incorporate this amendment into the Bill of Rights, the fourth Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Marshall, unilaterally asserted the Court’s right to judicial review in the seminal case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. In practice this meant that the Supreme Court would have sole and unchecked power to determine what the Constitution meant. Jefferson was aghast. His fear lay in the knowledge that an unelected branch of government, one which is not subject to the will of the citizens, and is effectively immune from check by the two elected branches of government (Only one Supreme Court Justice has ever been impeached—none have ever been convicted and removed) was now solely responsible for determining the meaning of the Constitution. The meaning of the Constitution, and hence the very nature of our political system, was now in the hands of an unelected and effectively uncontrollable body. “The Constitution has become a thing of wax to be molded as the Court sees fit” Jefferson lamented.

In 1886 Jefferson’s twin Constitutional nightmares collided in a train wreck which has effectively derailed true democracy in this nation and indeed across the globe as other nations have either copied our unfortunate example, or have fallen under the dominion of our multinational corporations—or both.. The precipitating event was the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. This case is cited to the present day as having conferred the status of “natural” as opposed to “artificial” personhood upon American corporations. In fact the Supreme Court declined to rule on the issue. J.C. Bancroft Davis, the Clerk of the Court, an attorney, who curiously was also a former railroad company PRESIDENT, used his position to simply write this conclusion into the head notes which summarized the case. Ever since this fateful event; this sleight-of-hand rewriting of the Constitution, corporations have had the status of “actual” persons whose rights are fully protected by the Constitution. It was a coup against democracy which succeeded because there were no real external checks and balances on the Court, and because the Court itself chose not to act to repudiate Davis’ rewriting of the Constitution. The thing stood. Precedent was established. Jefferson’s “thing of wax” nightmare had come to pass.

<snip>

What is to be done? Let’s open our eyes and admit that the emperor has no clothes. Let’s admit that our democratic, constitutional, system was derailed more than a century ago. Until we return power to the hands of flesh and blood citizens EXCLUSIVELY, until corporations are summarily striped of “personhood”, until this legal obscenity is abolished, we can have no real freedom, democracy cannot flourish. Furthermore, to ensure that the will of the people is respected and reigns supreme, all members of our federal judiciary must face periodic reelection by the citizens—just as is the case for our judiciary here in California. Until and unless these things come to pass we cannot be a free people. Because we are fundamentally NOT a free people, because our ability to act and to build freely upon our inspirations is constrained by corporate forces beyond our present control, we cannot live up to our full potentials as human beings. Once these goals are accomplished there shall be such an explosion of innovation in economic and political and scientific entrepreneurship as to make Periclean Athens seem timid. It’s up to each of us to act NOW. Freedom itself hangs in the balance.

Dr. Mike Byron teaches Political Science at CSU San Marcos, as well as at Palomar, Mira Costa, and Mesa Colleges. He was the Democratic Party’s write-in candidate for the 49th Congressional District last year. He can be contacted at: mpbyron1@cox.net

Last updated on 01/26/03

EVERYTHING! And now these same corporate entities, that wrote themselves in, in the margin--after growing into monstrous, US-based, global corporate predators--have gained control over the tabulation of our votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code in the new electronic voting systems that were purchased by our corporate-bought election officials in the 2002-2004 period, with $4 billion in federal 'boondoggle' funding from Bush's Congress.

Our VOTES are now owned and controlled by two PRIVATE CORPORATIONS (Diebold and ES&S), who can change them or 'disappear' them at will, in secret, with no accountability.

These mega-corporations have many ways to control us including the sheer mega-bucks they have to buy our political representatives, but now we have no mechanism--no vote, no transparency in vote tabulation--with which to regulate them, tax them or de-charter them. They now own the castle and all the land, and we peon citizens are excluded from our own soveriegn, collective ownership, and no longer even have a say (let alone sovereignty) about how things are run in our own country. This is WHY our government is waging war, and torturing people, and permitting private military contractors like Halliburton, and banks and energy companies, to steal us blind, and reduce us all to slave labor and cannon fodder.

To even begin to remedy this situation, we must somehow get rid of these corporate-controlled voting machines.

Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

Corporations Are People, Too
By Thom Hartmann
Tom Paine
April 15, 2003
Thomas Paine said it best.

"It has been thought," he wrote in The Rights of Man in 1791, "...that government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: And this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist."

Thus, Paine and others of the Revolutionary Era reasoned, any institution made up by and of humans -- from governments to churches to corporations -- must be subordinate to individual living people in terms of the rights and powers held by the institution.

Because of the unique frailties and depths of passion unique to humans, just after the U.S. Constitution was ratified Thomas Jefferson and James Madison began a campaign to amend it with a 12-point explicit statement that would clearly and unambiguously place humans -- who had created government -- above their creation. This was the birth of what would become the Bill of Rights, and it originally had 12 -- not 10 -- protections for citizens’ rights.

On Dec. 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to James Madison about his concerns regarding the Constitution. He said, bluntly, that it was deficient in several areas. "I will now tell you what I do not like," he wrote. "First, the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations."

Such a bill protecting natural persons from out-of-control governments or commercial monopolies shouldn’t just be limited to America, Jefferson believed. "Let me add," he summarized, "that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."

<snip>

And elected officials across the nation are discovering that meaningful campaign finance reform, effective environmental protections and human-friendly health care will only happen when corporations can no longer use the extraordinary power of the Bill of Rights to insinuate themselves into politics and legislation.

An Internet search on the phrase "corporate personhood" will find thousands of sites discussing or devoted to the topic, and models of legislation to remedy the error of 1886.

But the first step, as always, is awakening people to the root cause of the problems we face -- the use of corporate personhood by a handful of the world’s largest enterprises to insinuate themselves into governments and seize control of legislative and regulatory agendas. As enough voters learn the history and realize the consequences of this, the solution -- ending corporate personhood -- will become more and more possible, and Paine’s and Jefferson’s original idea of democracy representing "we, the people" will come back to life.

The vast majority of what he's written is what I've fumbled and stumbled around to discover for myself, albeit nowhere nearly as erudite and academically well-informed as Thom. Both his spiritual and political outlooks are extraordinarily synergistic with my own. (I've only recently come across Thom, not being an AAR listener.)

He's so f'in smart and he's such a good communicator. He's amazing.

Kicking and posting so I can follow-up on the morrow! Great discussion issue, Quixote!

Sleep time, now.

:bounce:

no irrelevant riders may be added.

That's where a lot of our corruption comes from. The Acme Company wants the right to dig up the only nesting ground of the whoozit bird, and they pay Senator Stinko to write an exemption to the Endangered Species Act for them and bury it deep in the funding bill for school lunches or something equally beneficial. Then Senator Stupid adds a rider containing funding for anti-Satanist education in the public schools. Then Senator Sap is invited to the White House and persuaded to introduce a rider that will give Osama bin Laden a multiple entry visa for the U.S.

By the time the school lunch funding measure reaches the floor of the Senate, it has so many irrelevant amendments hanging off it that it's referred to as a "Christmas tree bill."

My Constitutional amendment would forbid this practice.

I like some of the previously mentioned amendments about the military, especially the one about deployments of more than 100,000 troops triggering a draft. I'd just add that young people related to the president, vice-president, or other White House officials, or young people who were related to Senators who voted to approve the troop deployment would be the first to be drafted and sent to the front lines. This would prevent any more ego trip wars.

Pretty much every problem in politics can be traced back to the corrupting influence of money. I would like nothing more than to see America adopt a European-styel campaign finance system.

Other than that it's fine.

Get rid of congressional districts, allow for at-large proportional representation for the house, at a ratio to be decided by the state with the smallest Population, getting rid of the artificially low number of 335 members in the House.

... that makes the federal circuit courts of appeals and district courts constitutionally-mandated. Did you know that Congress could, if it chose to, abolish the federal circuit courts, the district courts, the bankruptcy courts, and all the lower federal courts? Only the Supreme Court is constitutionally-mandated. This could become a problem if Congress ever decided it didn't like the rulings coming out of the lower federal courts.

-Laelth

Also, I would remove the money from campaigns. Each candidate for president with more than say, 50,000 petitioners on his behalf would get an equal amount for campaigning - say $1 million, and that would be IT. Any more spending than that would end in a prison term.

I could never claim to be as smart as those guys. :D

it's just b-shit that the least populous states have the same voting power as the most populous states.