Glossary

I will update this as time goes on, but I feel the time has come to add this.

Bother - Also known as a Bothsider Freak An individual who insists that both sides of the political spectrum of the same no matter what evidence is provided to the contrary.  See also Truther or Birther.

Carthaged - Burying an idea so far deep in history that it becomes forgotten or lost or irretrievably changed, like how the Romans not only burned Carthage, but salted the earth around the city so it could never rise again.  Sure, the memory of Hannibal and the Alps lives forever...but check a map...Rome lives.  There is no Carthage except Carthage, IL maybe...and I doubt that's what Hannibal fought for....

Shrugger - Follower of or one sympathetic to Objectivism, specifically Atlas Shrugged.  They also typically believe they have secret secret knowledge that none of the rest of us have ala RandGoldOwl.

11/30/2024

Murdercop - In a society without accountability of Law Enforcement, Cops aren't Cops, they're Murdercops

Windowfucker - A person who asks, "How much property was damaged in a riot?"rather than "How many people were hurt in the Riot?" or "Why did the Riot Happen?"

Virus Ally - See also RFK JR, people who think Vaccines are false or claim to just want a different vaccination schedule but everything they say or do clearly indicates that they're just murderous virus ally freaks

[Cons] Article 1 Section 9 (1 of 4) The Migration or Importation of Persons

In general, this section is a good idea.  Listing out what a legislature (if you must have one) cannot do is mandatory.  If my idea listed in my comments on Section 8 are used, then you want to list explicitly those items not chosen for local OR Federal government in the Brundlestagg.  I almost skipped this part, because it doesn't deal with my biggest issues with the constitution but there are some very VERY important things here, so I'm breaking the post into four parts; Migration, Habeus Corpus/Rebellion, Bills of Attainder/Ex Post Facto, and Titles of Nobility.

This post shall deal with Migration.

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

This little turdlet staining the shining gem that are the ideas behind our constitution is precisely why we need a new one.  In the current constitution, you can 'amend' to your heart's content, but the old language is still in the original document.  Forever, shall the nation of the United States of America bear the shame of being a haven for slavery...and quasi slavery after that in the form of Jim Crow and Sharecropping.

How can we ever move beyond the mistakes of the past if the very foundation of our country enshrines them?  No one is talking about forgetting or white washing here.  After all, does anyone seriously believe that humanity (except conservatives) would actually forget slavery?  Hell, even conservatives wouldn't because they love to gripe about the civil war and the civil rights act so much.

But so MANY people were not in that room with the founding fathers when they put that document together. How many were not Christian? Not White? Not Men? Not Rich?

The list goes on and on.  If a room full of proportionally representative population groups of every race, creed, region and religion were drafting a new constitution; how likely would you be to get a 2/3rd majority that says tiny little population specs like Wyoming get as many senators as California which has 1/6th of the population?  Also, we're not a tiny nation anymore, which means things like the Conneticut Comprise, which we had to have to band together for protection against Britain just aren't necessary.

Rural areas of the country wield FAR AND VAST disproportionate representation in the senate.  And there are many many other flaws, including the seeming inability for 3rd parties to get anywhere, the inability for the elite to be held accountable for crimes, etc etc etc.  I'll be addressing them endlessly in posts to come, but HERE the point is that without the 50 year cycle of revising the constitution, the system can be (and is) rigged against those who weren't there to begin with.

A conservative would like to say that someone who ISN'T conservative has just as much of a vote as they do, but like so many things they say, that's a total lie.  A citizen of Wyoming has just 30 times more influence in the senate, and even at a Presidential level, the population per member of the electoral college is vastly different, since Wyoming gets 3 representatives when it might not even normally merit a third of one in any rationally conceived system.

Slavery is one of the great abominations of human history.  And yet even now, Christians in an effort to defend the bible, and conservative confederate neo confedeate apologists speak about how it wasn't 'that bad.'  Very VERY few of the people making these kind of comments had ancestors that they relate personally to as slaves.  Yet the efforts of conservatives to white wash history are essentially never ending.

This clause, this nasty disgusting little clause 'for the greater good' led to millions more still being sold into slavery, being born into captivity.  You cannot tell me about how awesome and special the prelude of the document is "All Men are Created Equal" and "We the People" when this black mark of shame still stains the document.  A barely passed amendment in a civil war does not undo the disgusting nature of this clause.

NO amendment will ever undo it.  It tarnishes the entire document forever.  THIS clause, Article 1, Section 9 Clause 1 BY ITSELF argues for a new constitution, much less all of the other reasons we have for starting over.

[Link] This is what a Bother Is.

[Cons] Article 1, Section 8 - Minutia - (3 of 3)

In this section, I will address each component individually

The Congress shall have power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

A government that cannot tax is not a government at all.  And defense is the first and foremost duty of any sovereign government.  This is its most basic duty that even the Shruggers agree must be a necessity.  The grey area becomes 'the general welfare' which to a Shrugger seems to mean those that fate has arbitrarily chosen to receive wealth, often stolen or earned on the exploitation of others far in excess of what they deserve...wheras to the rest of us, we believe in rewarding hard work and creativity but not in so disproportionate a fashion as to deprive the rest of us of a basic means of comfort and taking part in the fruits of our magnificent society.

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

I'm with the Shruggers on this...a balanced budget should be enshrouded in the constitution.  We disagree on how much you can do with it, but if you are spending money you don't have, you're doing it wrong.  Only a declared war against a specific power with a specific end condition (ie Surrender) should be able to waive this clause, and it should require a yearly popular vote to continue both the war and the debt.

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

Shruggers hate this because of how much freedom it gives the federal government.  I can potentially understand that...don't like it? Change the constitution but don't claim to love your holy holy constitution and then ignore the parts that you don't like...like this one.  And since this may not come up again...a nation that doesn't honor its treaties has no honor...and no moral authority.  Until we honor our treaties with the various native tribes in this country, I want to hear no politician thumping their chest about how awesome we are. 

To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

Debtors prisons are returning thanks to Shrugger efforts to criminalize being poor.  How monstrous can you be?  They also want to end the 14th amendment to the constitution.  Now, I agree, couples flying to this country for the express purpose of having children here is wrong.  So arrest and imprison the parents.  We should honor no treaty with any nation that refuses to extradite such termites to us for lawful punishment.  But the children? They're still citizens.  If they're born on US soil, they are a US citizen.  Anything else will result in a permanent underclass like the koreans in Japan. 

And if we're going to have a permanent non citizen underclass, let's start with the conservatives.  Since most folks will have a problem with that...justifiably, then lets have none.

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To control the money is to control the government.  Germany rules the EU by default because of their fiscal policies.  Allowing all states to print money as they will is the height of ignorance and stupidity.  You should allow people to be fools if they wish, so it should be in the 'federal/state mix' to be chosen by BrundleStaag, but only morons would give this to the states.

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current coin of the United States;

This goes without saying that if you have money you must be able to keep people from stealing it by printing.

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

The Internet should be a right to every citizen of the United States at a basic level.  It is the new post office, and it should be provided as a utility service.  Net Neutrality should be a right to every living soul.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Corporations are not people.  The perpetuation of the 100 year old copyright is an abomination to the artists who make them and often see nothing for their work, stuffed into the hands of those who speculate in markets and do nothing to help the common man.  REAL discoverers and REAL engineers and REAL creatives should profit from their work for 20-40 years...not corporations.

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

A government without courts of law is not a government but the current mob who holds the most power.

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

Piracy of the nautical crime was punishable by hanging then, and it is the prerogative of any state that trades by sea to crush this now.

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

So long as it is done by popular vote, and as long as we are the primitive violent psychopath species we currently are, this must be necessary.  Letters of Marque are only a good idea if you are dealing with pirates.  Mercenaries are a horrible horrible idea.

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

Try one year. 

To provide and maintain a Navy;

No navy = no trade = No civilization worth having.

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

Obvious.

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

Switzerland and Finland have the right idea.  National service of SOME kind to be able to vote is a good idea. 

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

No problem with this.  Except the stupid selling of commissions which is idiotic and fortunately not done any more.

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

Most of this is just about allowing Federal land which is fine, but the District of Colombia deserves representation in congress...or else anyone who lives there should be exempt from federal taxes.  Didn't we fight a war about "No taxation without representation"?

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

If a legislature can't make laws, what's the point of it? If you must have it, let it work.

[Phil] The 3rd Branch is Now Political

It is time to stop pretending that judges are impartial.  They never were, and now the veneer of civilization has fallen off the court's already crumbling mask.  Masks and illusions and symbols are important, and can sometimes make society work better.  Despite howls by the Shruggers to claim that only the concrete is best, illusions can do a lot of good, like making a piece of paper exist as money.  It's certainly better than gold.

But that illusion is gone now.  Rampant politics, not the rule of law is the order of the day.  Citizen's United was a big crack.  Bush V Gore was another.  But this pretty much only allows paint chip eaters to pretend the Supreme Court is anything but a team of who supports which crowd.  Oh, I grant you, sometimes there are shocking combinations on the court...but it is almost always for the 1% rather than the 99%.  After all, they're almost all wealthy, and they're there for life.

Electing judges has had a 'bad' effect in state politics for a while, but at the same time judges do respond to their constituents.  There is a reason people elect district attorneys and the like.  In fact, perhaps we should start electing all major office holders...judges, secretaries, generals, admirals, ambassadors....make them all accountable to the public at large.

Money only goes so far, but in every historical case, unelected bodies like the old senate, become corrupt and beholden to the wealthy.  Money still does a lot in politics, but corruption runs most rampant when you can buy a few, rather than the masses.  Our Less Fortune Friends love to harp on and on about how democrats stay in power by providing 'goodies' to the plebes, but Our Less Fortunate Friends instead just elect folks who keep the 1% in power...

And they're just general idiots.

[Rant] Tolerance of Intolerance is Not a Virtue

Have you seen this ridiculous comment cycled by your conservative friends?

"The left are only tolerant with people who agree with their agenda.  What happened to tolerance of my beliefs?"

Let's turn that around shall we?

What we WANT is liberty for all, not just for caucasian monotheists who think that the steam engine is a really scary idea.

When you say "Your freedom ends at the end of my nose" what you mean is "Your freedom ends where I want it to and my freedom goes where I want it to."

When *WE* preach tolerance what we mean is, "Hey, you wanna worship a scary God who sends hurricanes to punish people because they're acting the way He made them in the first place, that's OK, but don't impose those beliefs on us."

We won't even get into the extremely un Christ Like manner most of these supposed 'followers of Christ' behave.

While it is true that it seems that every single conservative talking point is a lie (and I mean ALL of them) and there are no conservative values (to be eventually covered in another post) THIS one annoys me more personally because it takes an actual liberal virtue and turns it on its head as if somehow tolerance means accepting intolerance of other people.

What kind of a stupid moron believes that? I mean seriously?

Tolerance means accepting others until they start trying to force you to behave according to their lifestyle...and not having state sanction for your narrow and harmful beliefs is *NOT* harmful to you, no matter how many convuluted insane claims you make otherwise.

[Cons] Article 1, Section 8 - Brundlestaag (2 of 3)

I'll be honest, I have no idea why I choose that name for this, but I like the way it sounds.  I want to talk about the actual process of how this would work...the hard nuts and bolts of making a pool of issues, and determining what the government can't do; what local governments do; and what the federal government does.

What a government can't do isn't necessarily a right.  After all, if we're using a modern definition of rights instead of the libertarian or classical definition, a right can be something you have a right TO, rather than a right to have the government NOT do.  I argue that rights are a separate thing in that; I think every constitution should have a Bill of Rights, but that should be a secondary product of deciding which spheres of authority a government should be able to regulate.  I'll be addressing my ideas of a Hierarchy of Rights in Article V or when I deal with the amendments.

Step 1)

So then, how do you determine what the areas you're picking from are?  I argue that the easiest way is to allow people to nominate; say allow the signatures of 25,000 people to ensure that an item gets added to a master list.  That's it.  And you get to add your name to say...5 petitions.  That will give you a pretty good list to start.

After that, delegates can group items together in packages as they see fit.

If you don't allow bundling, you're going to have two points like 'Naval Security' and 'Coast Guard'...while not the same thing, delegates might want them to be the same thing.  And a better example, 'Environment' and 'Acid Rain' which is very granular...

It can allow putting everything together very difficult.  More importantly, if you don't set down some rules somehow, then the delegates might just make up their own list and ignore the suggestions.

I also think allowing delegates to add their own items is a good idea to patch holes.  For example, if no one thought to add 'school lunches' but certain delegates think its a good idea, then you can go from there.

Why use such a chaotic process on something so important? Because its very democratic, and it ensures a remix when the constitution is forged. It means you're going to get a constitution to serve the modern needs of society, rather than archaic notions of what dead people want.

In short, its a reset button.

And yes, the process could be subject to abuse.  You know what? So is any process, but at least this way the entry is open, transparent and ensures at least the fact that EVERYONE in 'we the people' is involved at the forefront.

And as for how to prevent problems, I think the emphasis should be put on the ratification and the delegate selection.

Step 2) Delegates

If there was ever a moment where you NEED a legislature, then the formation of a constitution is one.  I suppose you could have some crazy wiki thing where you freeze it after a set period of time...but trust me, that just wouldn't work well.

So the question is, how do you select the delegates?  "Good and Wise Men" won't cut it since last time around we got a bunch of conservatives that thought owning people was OK.

I could do strengths and weaknesses again but in this case I think there is only one way to do it that won't allow for conservative corruption; random draw.  You need a large sample; say 500...and then you randomly select from the entire population of the government.  Yes, that means you're going to get some stupid people.  And yes, that means that you're likely to get at least 25% conservative/libertarian voters, but if you publicly select the delegates via social security number via random lottery style...then at least you're getting somewhere.

You *MUST* pay these delegates enough to live for 6 months to a year while they hammer out constitutions.  (I'll get to that.)  Rich people shouldn't be the only people who can afford to be delegates.  You allow them to elect officers and divide into committees.

How are random people going to do this? Advisers, also randomly selected from both local and federal officials from the previous government.  They have no voting power, but their experience can help the delegates understand what it is they're supposed to do.

No system is perfect, but this way you still have institutional knowledge, and by random selection with a sufficiently large sample, you're going to ensure that all sexes, races, creeds, religions and the like are involved in the creation of the document.

But just in case...

Step 3) 3 Competing Constitutions.

You have three different groupings of government areas set up into piles of federal authority, local authority and that government is not supposed to touch.

From a practical stand point, I understand you saying, "Well what if they select something insane like not allowing the local or the federal government to regulate murder?"

There are three checks on that:

1) Everyone gets to vote on the competing constitutions for what they like best.  - That will ensure fatally flawed documents are left behind.

2) The Hierarchy of Rights

I'll be addressing this in the future....but this document will become part of the constitution after the first Brundlestaag.

3) Line Item Veto

Everyone will also have the ability to line item veto, by two thirds majority, sections of the constitution that they don't like.

Step 4) Ratification by 2/3rd majority.

Because this is a democracy, not a conservative republic.

Problems:
1) How do you deal with conservative disruption like filibusters and the like?

No system can ever be entirely conservative proof.  However, you can have a process whereby people who are not contributing any solutions can be removed by 2/3rds of the delegates.

If that doesn't work, then you simply have the auto default by the OLD constitution gets put into play if people don't get off their asses and do nothing; which gives a slight bias towards conservatives, but can also protect liberals from conservative mischiefs too.

Nothing is perfect, and it is better than what we have now. It puts a process in place to make change and allow people to make change as they will.

2) It's easy to remove sections of government that people don't like but hard to put in sections that a minority wants.

I'm a liberal, but I'm also in favor of small government.  If you can't convince at least a majority of randomly selected delegates to put something in the local or federal government section, then you really shouldn't be forcing people to do it.  Make your case to the public, not the courts and not a legislature.

Educate.

3) You could still have a monstrous provision that attacks or singles out a minority of some kind and harms them.

You could.  But really right now you can do that via amendment if you get enough people.  Remember that if you can't you just go back to the status quo.  You can have prejudice with no amendment in theory protecting you; such as Defense of Marriage Act invoked by conservative 'christians.'

Addendum: There are solutions to society's problems besides the government.  Even though the Libertarian anti government lens is insane, that doesn't mean that small government is a bad thing.  In another post I will talk about alternatives to government action that still allow a society to solve issues that are desired to be addressed that fall into the third category but are not given to local or federal governments in this process.