Email doodlings - thoughts on the 17th Amendment and why it needs to be repealed - Granite Grok

Email doodlings – thoughts on the 17th Amendment and why it needs to be repealed

Still more from from an email thread:

It is a tough sell – but if one is going to go Constitutional, and not be 1/2 way about it, you do have to accept that sometimes "tough love" has to be a part of it.  Until I saw Greg’s depiction of what the Amendment had done, I merely thought that a Senator was just like a Congressman – albeit with a different title and only 100 of ’em.  Given what the political climate is today, and the ills that have been set upon us by that repeal (states rights and all that portends), I’d be willing to give up my direct vote to put that part of the Republic back in.

People often whine that Americans are ungovernable – the Founders deliberately made it difficult to get things done and now with Obama and the Progressives ramming all this stuff through, it should be obvious why – and why the brakes have to be reset.  From Betsy’s Page:

That supposed stimulus bill that the Democrats passed yesterday to help fund state workers carries strings telling the states how they must use the money.Specifically, the bill stipulates that federal funds must supplement, not replace, state spending on education. Also, in each state, next year’s spending on elementary and secondary education as a percentage of total state revenues must be equal to or greater than the previous year’s level.

Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi did the math and figured out his state will be…

worse off. Mr. Barbour says the bill will force his state "to rewrite its current year [fiscal 2011] budget. Preliminary estimates of the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration show that we will now have to spend between $50-100 million of state funds—funds that must be taken away from public safety, human services, mental health and other state priorities and given to education—in order for an additional $98 million of federal funds to be granted to education. There is no justification for the federal government hijacking state budgets, but that is exactly what Congress has done."

And what have the Fed $$ [and the attached strings that come with that $$ in the way of having to change our laws and our ways to fit a DC bureaucrat’s ideal] done here in NH?  Turned our Legislators into beggars….

Is it right that the Feds regulate/demand State spending?  Is that true Federalism?  

Republic or democracy?  Representation or ‘the mob"?  Shall we vote? Will we keep it?

>