Constitutional Amendments -- There Is A Pattern.

Started by TboneAgain, October 14, 2014, 09:34:14 PM

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walkstall

Quote from: AlfredDrake on December 15, 2014, 06:00:25 PM
I've already decided a long time ago I want to be free, which means I have a voice, and I'm not squashed by powerful forces that  don't give a damn about me unless I can make them some money.

Trust me.  NOT all people or companies are that way.   You had a choice you could have worked for someone that give a shit.    If I did not like the people or companies that I work for through the years I move on.  I worked and paid taxes for over 65 years.  My last 36 years was for a company with great people.   
A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.- James Freeman Clarke

Always remember "Feelings Aren't Facts."

AlfredDrake

Quote from: Solar on December 15, 2014, 06:27:44 PM
You do realize, TEA is an ideology, not a party, right?

Tea Firebrand Wins Big in Iowa. Republican Joni Ernst, an outspoken right-winger, is the new Senator-elect from Iowa. In 2014, it appears, the key to winning in a swing state is to avoid talking about issues and emphasize pig castration.
Search domain www.thedailybeast.comthedailybeast.com

Tea Takes Wendy Davis' Senate Seat, Konni Burton Wins
Big Government; Big Journalism; Big ... Breitbart Sports; The Conversation; The Wires; Location Specific Navigation. Breitbart London; Breitbart Texas; Breitbart California; Tea Party Takes Wendy Davis' Senate Seat, Konni Burton Wins. Print article Send a Tip. by Merrill Hope 4 Nov ...
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Tea wins big in Texas runoff elections | Human Events
Bare-knuckle political brawls end in Tea Party wins for Lt. Governor, U.S. House, and Attorney General. POLITICS. RedState; ... The Tea Party counted another big win in Texas by unseating 91-year-old incumbent Rep. Ralph Hall, ... © 2014 EAGLE PUBLISHING, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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I understand.  It's an ideology inside a party that doesn't want to have anything to do with it.  It's an ideology inside a party that would love to run Jeb Bush for president.  That's Mr. Amnesty Bush.  That's an ideology inside a party who's presidential candidate John McCain called Ted Cruz looney toons.  They're already developing a strategy for 2016 that's going to completely ignore and repudiate the Tea ideology so they can move to the center.  They're going to outspend the Tea ideology by sums you can only dream of.  If Tea wins that bare knuckles fight, then it can square off against Hillary, who's already moved towards the center and will capture all the independents.  Tea needs to find a voice that can at least resonate within the Republican party or form another party.

Solar

Quote from: AlfredDrake on December 15, 2014, 07:41:12 PM
I understand.  It's an ideology inside a party that doesn't want to have anything to do with it.  It's an ideology inside a party that would love to run Jeb Bush for president.  That's Mr. Amnesty Bush.  That's an ideology inside a party who's presidential candidate John McCain called Ted Cruz looney toons.  They're already developing a strategy for 2016 that's going to completely ignore and repudiate the Tea ideology so they can move to the center.  They're going to outspend the Tea ideology by sums you can only dream of.  If Tea wins that bare knuckles fight, then it can square off against Hillary, who's already moved towards the center and will capture all the independents.  Tea needs to find a voice that can at least resonate within the Republican party or form another party.
Again, it matters not what the rino do, they just showed the nation they don't give a damn about their constituency, or rather the people left with no other option but to elect  people the Establishment selected for them, or how they pushed to allow millions of illegals to flood the country.

That's over! were you been asleep in 2010 when TEA swept he Nation and both party's in seizing more than 700 Legislative seats?

It matters not what you think, but the facts speak for themselves where the anger of the Right translates into minimizing the power of the Establishment.

Get back to me in January.
Official Trump Cult Member

#WWG1WGA

Q PATRIOT!!!

supsalemgr

Quote from: AlfredDrake on December 15, 2014, 07:41:12 PM
I understand.  It's an ideology inside a party that doesn't want to have anything to do with it.  It's an ideology inside a party that would love to run Jeb Bush for president.  That's Mr. Amnesty Bush.  That's an ideology inside a party who's presidential candidate John McCain called Ted Cruz looney toons.  They're already developing a strategy for 2016 that's going to completely ignore and repudiate the Tea ideology so they can move to the center.  They're going to outspend the Tea ideology by sums you can only dream of.  If Tea wins that bare knuckles fight, then it can square off against Hillary, who's already moved towards the center and will capture all the independents.  Tea needs to find a voice that can at least resonate within the Republican party or form another party.

I must have missed Hillary moving to the center. The last I heard she said we should have empathy for our enemies and corporations do not create jobs. Where are you getting your news?
"If you can't run with the big dawgs, stay on the porch!"

Solar

Quote from: supsalemgr on December 16, 2014, 04:15:35 AM
I must have missed Hillary moving to the center. The last I heard she said we should have empathy for our enemies and corporations do not create jobs. Where are you getting your news?
Apparently liberal rag opinion pieces that reference other liberal rags to back up their bull shit.
Did you read through that piece of tripe he posted to evidence his point?
It was packed full of links to other lib opinion pieces as proof to back up their claim that an ideology has been smite.

A claim about as ludicrous as claiming they had killed off belief in God.
Official Trump Cult Member

#WWG1WGA

Q PATRIOT!!!

Possum

Two numbers which are usually not discussed but help the left are : 47% pay no taxes, 67% receive more from the govt. than they pay in. (These numbers come from the bortz talk show and I do not remember where he got them).  We are not losing our voice in our government due to corporate donations,  we are losing our voice due to all of the handouts!

red_dirt


      Equally disconcerting is the blatant disregard for the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.
Even though the excesses began discretely prior to the election of Barack Obama, his administration
has thrown discretion out the door.

      If in Mexico, which has no guaranteed right to privacy in one's personal business, would you feel
comfortable logging on to the internet for banking transactions?  I'm sure people do, but we know it
can't be the same. For one thing, one man controls all the phone lines, and he answers not to the public.
Under Obama, America has just about gotten to the same place. People and governments routinely trespass
"private" communications here, with impunity.

      People have lost any comprehension of how important this is and the ramifications. Because merchandisers and others have figured out ways to turn this trespass to a profit, the money is now
available to influence law makers to the will of the trespassers. The Founding Fathers didn't have
internet marketing in mind when they drafted the 4th amendment, any more than Obama when he
stomps all over it, with Congressional quiet.

daidalos

Quote from: TboneAgain on October 14, 2014, 09:34:14 PM
Several recent posts have brought up the subject of "bright moments" or "golden opportunities" for legislative and/or constitutional change in this country. A fairly simple review of the history of amendments to the constitution shows an unmistakable pattern, which can be used as a guide for future campaigns.

BACKGROUND

The US Constitution is the literal political backbone of the nation. Its terms, its words, its thoughts actually form the federal government under which we all exist. Amending the US Constitution is, in the obvious sense of the word, a monumental act, and it has always been meant to be so.

The Constitution is not, as the Left wants to claim, a "living document." It is quite literally permanent and restrictive, by careful and deliberate design. It was crafted by indisputably wise men to create a central government... and at the same time to limit that very same government in every way they could think of. The men who wrote and promoted the Constitution understood, in ways that most citizens of this country today cannot, the existential dangers of a strong central government. James Madison is often cited as a model of federalist thinking, but he wasn't alone. As I am wont to quote, George Washington had this to say: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent. It is force."

Nevertheless, the men who wrote the Constitution provided for its amendment. It could be changed for reasons carefully and thoroughly considered by the people, and those changes would have to be voted on accordingly. Right out of the starting gate, at the demand of numerous of the original states, the first ten amendments were quickly adopted en bloc in 1791, just two years after the basic Constitution had been accepted. Unlike later amendments, the first ten were less literal changes to the document, and more extensions of it, and especially extensions and specific explanations of the document's limits on the new federal government. They were concise but expansive statements of what that government could NOT do. They consistently referred to the rights of "the states" and "the people" and they contained the words, "shall make no law," words specifically and directly pointed at the new national government. The Bill of Rights contains most of what people like Barack Obama refer to as "a charter of negative liberties," the most hated of which are the freedoms so eloquently described in the First, Second, Ninth, and most especially Tenth Amendments.

Amendments 11 and 12 were adopted in 1795 and 1804, respectively. They have been largely dismissed as "bookkeeping" amendments, minor corrections to the original document. Since then, the US Constitution has been amended fifteen times. Those amendments are more than rare. They are bellwethers of national thought. And they run in cycles -- they come in bunches.

POST-CIVIL WAR (RECONSTRUCTION) AMENDMENTS (1865-1870)

More than sixty years passed between the 12th and 13th Amendments. Then came three new amendments in just five years -- the 13th (abolishing slavery) in 1865, the 14th (establishing citizenship for former black slaves) in 1868, and the 15th (establishing voting rights for blacks) in 1870. It is worth noting that there was a strong movement meant to amend the Constitution to reduce the "lame duck" period between national elections and inaugurations, but it failed at that time. Argument pointed to the 4-month period between Lincoln's election and his installation in office, a period when the nation was being divided, and during which it could be reasonably argued that the will of the electorate was not being served. This issue would arise again later.

THE FIRST PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT (1913-1920)

After the Fifteenth Amendment, more than forty years passed before another was enacted, and it too was one of a series. In 1913, Amendment 16, which provided the national government with the power to tax personal incomes -- a power specifically prohibited in the original Constitution -- was ratified, and the first legal federal income tax law was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson, the first openly Progressive president. Just months later, the Seventeenth Amendment -- mandating the popular election of US senators -- was ushered in by the same man.

Before he left office, Wilson also heralded two more amendments. The Eighteenth enacted Prohibition and triggered the infamous Volstead Act. The Nineteenth, which extended voting rights to women, was greeted by Wilson in his last year in office.

THE DEPRESSION EMERGENCY/FDR (SECOND PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT) (1933-1951)

In the midst of the Great Depression, two issues grabbed public attention to the extent of generating Constitutional amendments. First, the voters did not care for the fact that, given 20th century technology, the federal government was still allowing four months for the change of governments after an election. (This was mentioned earlier.) As 1933 opened, it is fair to say that a high percentage of the voting public couldn't wait to see the backside of Herbert Hoover. The 20th Amendment, enacted in FDR's first year, provided for that change to move from March 4 to January each year. (Exact dates vary with office.)

Also enacted that year was the 21st Amendment, a landmark goal of the FDR campaign. Briefly stated, the 21st Amendment erased the 18th amendment, and Prohibition ended. Prohibition had always been hated as an extension of Victorian prudery from an earlier time, and by 1933, Prohibition had been widely recognized as one of the causes of the economic depression gripping the country.

I'll put one more amendment into this category -- the 22nd. In 1944, Franklin Roosevelt was elected to his fourth term as president. Even before his death, public opinion was leaning toward thinking he had been in office too long. The 22nd Amendment, finally enacted in 1951, placed a two-term limit on the office of president.

THE SIXTIES/HIPPIE AMENDMENTS (THIRD PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT) (1961-1971)

Liberalism/progressivism once again asserted itself in the 1960s. One of the first things young John F. Kennedy did after taking office was to preside over the adoption of the 23rd Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted the District of Columbia a pair of electors to vote in the Electoral College. Before the decade was out, the 24th Amendment, which prohibited poll taxes, and the 25th Amendment, which revised succession procedures, became law. Finally, in 1971 the long-festering movement to empower youth gained fruition with the 26th Amendment, which dropped the voting age to 18.

CONCLUSION

Outside the timeframes specified in the four distinct periods outlined above, and recognizing that the 11th and 12th Amendments were, as generally acknowledged, "bookkeeping" corrections, only one constitutional amendment has taken place -- the 27th, ratified in 1992. And even that was a relatively "minor" act, defining how quickly Congressional salary increases can become active. (Critics then and now point out that the amendment route to this solution was massive overkill.)

The timeline of amendments to the Constitution proves that that particular mechanism is powered by two things -- national emergency and the prominence and power of liberal/progressive forces.

Yep, the 27th needs to be repealed too. Because of it, Congress gets an automatic pay raise, unless a member can introduce, and get passed a bill to stop it that year.

Yeah right like that's going to happen. Who the hell is going to vote to deny themselves a pay increase? Not many.

That's one that ignores human nature. Which the founders never did. They kept and had in mind human nature, when they wrote the Constitution and then the Bill of Rights for example.

And that's the genius of the framers Tbone, in my own opinion.  :smile: About the Constitution being a document that is, static, stable, and restrictive.

It's that way because the "central" government was created for one reason. To establish the means, for the central government to provide for the creation of a military and to provide "mutual" defense for the States that's pretty much it. The rest of the Constitution, was designed to limit what the Federal Government's involvement in our personal daily lives would be. Leaving the rest of things, such as "healthcare" or "term limits" for example, as something each individual, sovereign STATE would decide for it's own people themselves.

Not what we wound up with is it, but that's what it was supposed to be.

Now skip ahead to today, there's a push to hold a new Constitutional Convention. Each time there's been a "revision" to our Constitution, through the amendment process.

There has been a liberal progressive attempt to include things, which would destroy the U.S. as a free and libertine, Constitutional Representative Republic, as it would grant to the Federal Government expanded authority to act in area's of the States rights, and in our daily lives.

So I am personally, not convinced we should hold one. Especially given the liberals of today...but if it is called for by the requisite State Governments, fine.

In that event all we the small fry citizen's like us can do, is pray those sent to represent the States are smart enough to take into account basic human nature, and wise enough to recognize liberal progressivism, and reject it.
One of every five Americans you meet has a mental illness of some sort. Many, many, of our veteran's suffer from mental illness like PTSD now also. Help if ya can. :) http://www.projectsemicolon.org/share-your-story.html
And no you won't find my "story" there. They don't allow science fiction. :)

daidalos

Quote from: red_dirt on January 24, 2015, 03:08:36 PM
      Equally disconcerting is the blatant disregard for the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.
Even though the excesses began discretely prior to the election of Barack Obama, his administration
has thrown discretion out the door.

      If in Mexico, which has no guaranteed right to privacy in one's personal business, would you feel
comfortable logging on to the internet for banking transactions?  I'm sure people do, but we know it
can't be the same. For one thing, one man controls all the phone lines, and he answers not to the public.
Under Obama, America has just about gotten to the same place. People and governments routinely trespass
"private" communications here, with impunity.

      People have lost any comprehension of how important this is and the ramifications. Because merchandisers and others have figured out ways to turn this trespass to a profit, the money is now
available to influence law makers to the will of the trespassers. The Founding Fathers didn't have
internet marketing in mind when they drafted the 4th amendment, any more than Obama when he
stomps all over it, with Congressional quiet.

http://wizbangblog.com/content/2009/08/22/white-house-admits-it-hired-firm-to-spam-americans-on-health-care.php

2009 it's reported they're selling private communications to third party, for profit corporations.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/privacy-advocates-seek-protection-consumers-feds-healthcare-site/

2015 the White House admit's it was/is selling private communications too for profit third party corporations.

Now right before friday's announcement. Last week in fact, on the fourteenth, I recieved an email telling me that as a smoker I better hurry up and get enrolled now.

Because that if I didn't, afterwards I might not be able to get Insured and then I would be facing fines assessed by the IRS, and possibly even 25 years prison time or both.

Note that despite the White House denials, that the new law, includes any jail time if you don't get insured and then don't pay the "fines" the email, which I recieved, also states that I cannot share any of the information in it.

As it's "proprietary" to the company which sent me the email.

How the hell someone can make such a claim about an email they sent to me unsolicited is beyond me.

As there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in that situation. But that's what it says at the bottom of the thing.

But it did, despite White House denials that the new law includes any provision of jail time, for not being insured or if you are given fines by the IRS and don't pay them.

It did tell me that I would face imprisonment if I didn't sign up with healthcare.gov

And I got this email, despite never ever having signed up on healthcare.gov because I already knew I didn't have/need too. As I have ins, through Medicare and Medicaid and (god forbid if need be) the VA already.

It told me I smoke, have type 2 Diabetes, and suffer Chronic pain, all of which again I have never sent to any ins company as I already have coverage.

I was thinking prior to this, that one of my Dr's had sold them this information. Which would be illegal as all hell, so I was trying to be smart about things, and find out which Dr office did, and then sue them out of practicing medicine again, unless they are doing so for free because they're paying me their paychecks for the rest of time.

But now, I suspect this means instead they sold, to this third party company that sent me the email, my personal VA and Medicare and Medicaid information. All three of which are governmental agencies I recently gave my email address too.

When asked for it, when dealing with getting a bill paid, as it should have been to start with.

Now I know though, how I got the email, how my info was obtained by a for profit ins company, and how someone in one of the few State's I've never visited in my life, had someone show up at the ER trying to use my Med ins. to obtain care.

Anyway's my point is this. We just yesterday had an admission by the White House, that this was indeed going on. What assurance would we the people have, that government won't do it again?

If not for some sort of amendment which would enumerate that if the government does this to a citizen, those government officials, all the way to the top, will be facing fines, personally liable for any punitive damages arising from any harm caused by this breach of privacy, and jail time or all three.

None. It's time that Congress act to seriously protect the personally identifiable information of our citizen's.

Instead of doing things, which only enable the citizens, personally  identifiable information. As in this day and age, where everyone walking down the road knows what ID theft is, it is unconscionable that the Government is doing this, and the Congress refuses to act to stop it, and to help those by providing assistance to stop ID theft in it's tracks.

Which the FTC will NOT help the individual to do. Which they won't do, if the perps of the crime are individuals.

Instead only collecting data on companies, from consumers who think they've been wronged. (Which is stupid given most ID theft is not done by a corporation, but an individual).

Don't believe me, call their ID theft line sometime. And then listen to the recording our Government's paying big buck for, really close. As they sort of ramble it off real fast like.

The whole situation of our nation is crap, and it's all stemming from expansion of the Federal Government through means other than amending the Constitution. Because the Constitution is intentionally difficult to amend.
One of every five Americans you meet has a mental illness of some sort. Many, many, of our veteran's suffer from mental illness like PTSD now also. Help if ya can. :) http://www.projectsemicolon.org/share-your-story.html
And no you won't find my "story" there. They don't allow science fiction. :)

daidalos

Quote from: Mountainshield on October 24, 2014, 12:34:24 AM
I'm sorry I have to ask again, if the amendment process is so powerful then why doesn't the Conservatives or Republicans use it?
Amendments are actually pretty rare, instead we have a Congress that passes acts, to change the Constitution, thereby avoiding the amendment process entirely.

Take Obamacare for example.
One of every five Americans you meet has a mental illness of some sort. Many, many, of our veteran's suffer from mental illness like PTSD now also. Help if ya can. :) http://www.projectsemicolon.org/share-your-story.html
And no you won't find my "story" there. They don't allow science fiction. :)

daidalos

Quote from: TboneAgain on October 14, 2014, 09:34:14 PM
Several recent posts have brought up the subject of "bright moments" or "golden opportunities" for legislative and/or constitutional change in this country. A fairly simple review of the history of amendments to the constitution shows an unmistakable pattern, which can be used as a guide for future campaigns.

BACKGROUND

The US Constitution is the literal political backbone of the nation. Its terms, its words, its thoughts actually form the federal government under which we all exist. Amending the US Constitution is, in the obvious sense of the word, a monumental act, and it has always been meant to be so.

The Constitution is not, as the Left wants to claim, a "living document." It is quite literally permanent and restrictive, by careful and deliberate design. It was crafted by indisputably wise men to create a central government... and at the same time to limit that very same government in every way they could think of. The men who wrote and promoted the Constitution understood, in ways that most citizens of this country today cannot, the existential dangers of a strong central government. James Madison is often cited as a model of federalist thinking, but he wasn't alone. As I am wont to quote, George Washington had this to say: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent. It is force."

Nevertheless, the men who wrote the Constitution provided for its amendment. It could be changed for reasons carefully and thoroughly considered by the people, and those changes would have to be voted on accordingly. Right out of the starting gate, at the demand of numerous of the original states, the first ten amendments were quickly adopted en bloc in 1791, just two years after the basic Constitution had been accepted. Unlike later amendments, the first ten were less literal changes to the document, and more extensions of it, and especially extensions and specific explanations of the document's limits on the new federal government. They were concise but expansive statements of what that government could NOT do. They consistently referred to the rights of "the states" and "the people" and they contained the words, "shall make no law," words specifically and directly pointed at the new national government. The Bill of Rights contains most of what people like Barack Obama refer to as "a charter of negative liberties," the most hated of which are the freedoms so eloquently described in the First, Second, Ninth, and most especially Tenth Amendments.

Amendments 11 and 12 were adopted in 1795 and 1804, respectively. They have been largely dismissed as "bookkeeping" amendments, minor corrections to the original document. Since then, the US Constitution has been amended fifteen times. Those amendments are more than rare. They are bellwethers of national thought. And they run in cycles -- they come in bunches.

POST-CIVIL WAR (RECONSTRUCTION) AMENDMENTS (1865-1870)

More than sixty years passed between the 12th and 13th Amendments. Then came three new amendments in just five years -- the 13th (abolishing slavery) in 1865, the 14th (establishing citizenship for former black slaves) in 1868, and the 15th (establishing voting rights for blacks) in 1870. It is worth noting that there was a strong movement meant to amend the Constitution to reduce the "lame duck" period between national elections and inaugurations, but it failed at that time. Argument pointed to the 4-month period between Lincoln's election and his installation in office, a period when the nation was being divided, and during which it could be reasonably argued that the will of the electorate was not being served. This issue would arise again later.

THE FIRST PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT (1913-1920)

After the Fifteenth Amendment, more than forty years passed before another was enacted, and it too was one of a series. In 1913, Amendment 16, which provided the national government with the power to tax personal incomes -- a power specifically prohibited in the original Constitution -- was ratified, and the first legal federal income tax law was signed into law by Woodrow Wilson, the first openly Progressive president. Just months later, the Seventeenth Amendment -- mandating the popular election of US senators -- was ushered in by the same man.

Before he left office, Wilson also heralded two more amendments. The Eighteenth enacted Prohibition and triggered the infamous Volstead Act. The Nineteenth, which extended voting rights to women, was greeted by Wilson in his last year in office.

THE DEPRESSION EMERGENCY/FDR (SECOND PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT) (1933-1951)

In the midst of the Great Depression, two issues grabbed public attention to the extent of generating Constitutional amendments. First, the voters did not care for the fact that, given 20th century technology, the federal government was still allowing four months for the change of governments after an election. (This was mentioned earlier.) As 1933 opened, it is fair to say that a high percentage of the voting public couldn't wait to see the backside of Herbert Hoover. The 20th Amendment, enacted in FDR's first year, provided for that change to move from March 4 to January each year. (Exact dates vary with office.)

Also enacted that year was the 21st Amendment, a landmark goal of the FDR campaign. Briefly stated, the 21st Amendment erased the 18th amendment, and Prohibition ended. Prohibition had always been hated as an extension of Victorian prudery from an earlier time, and by 1933, Prohibition had been widely recognized as one of the causes of the economic depression gripping the country.

I'll put one more amendment into this category -- the 22nd. In 1944, Franklin Roosevelt was elected to his fourth term as president. Even before his death, public opinion was leaning toward thinking he had been in office too long. The 22nd Amendment, finally enacted in 1951, placed a two-term limit on the office of president.

THE SIXTIES/HIPPIE AMENDMENTS (THIRD PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT) (1961-1971)

Liberalism/progressivism once again asserted itself in the 1960s. One of the first things young John F. Kennedy did after taking office was to preside over the adoption of the 23rd Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted the District of Columbia a pair of electors to vote in the Electoral College. Before the decade was out, the 24th Amendment, which prohibited poll taxes, and the 25th Amendment, which revised succession procedures, became law. Finally, in 1971 the long-festering movement to empower youth gained fruition with the 26th Amendment, which dropped the voting age to 18.

CONCLUSION

Outside the timeframes specified in the four distinct periods outlined above, and recognizing that the 11th and 12th Amendments were, as generally acknowledged, "bookkeeping" corrections, only one constitutional amendment has taken place -- the 27th, ratified in 1992. And even that was a relatively "minor" act, defining how quickly Congressional salary increases can become active. (Critics then and now point out that the amendment route to this solution was massive overkill.)

The timeline of amendments to the Constitution proves that that particular mechanism is powered by two things -- national emergency and the prominence and power of liberal/progressive forces.
Tbone it wasn't"overkill" because that was done. It was overkill because it put into place a system, wherein a person would have to intro a bill, and then get it passed, to stop themselves from getting a raise automatically.

Um yeah right, when was the last time you ever saw anyone, willing to cast a vote in the affirmative, to deny themselves a raise, across the board?



One of every five Americans you meet has a mental illness of some sort. Many, many, of our veteran's suffer from mental illness like PTSD now also. Help if ya can. :) http://www.projectsemicolon.org/share-your-story.html
And no you won't find my "story" there. They don't allow science fiction. :)