BTRTN: Time for a New Bill of Rights

[reggieandlee]

Born to Run the Numbers on the quiet Constitutional Crisis: it is time to end how partisan actors exploit the grey areas in our Constitution to subvert the will of the people.

http://www.borntorunthenumbers.com/2017/09/time-for-new-bill-of-rights.html

Excerpt: "Yes, the Constitution is off warranty and we blew past its 200 year maintenance and servicing without checking under the hood. Madison probably would have been stunned that there have only been 27 amendments in 240 years, and flabbergasted that only two have been ratified in the last fifty years. A strong argument can be made that the document itself actually no longer does a good job of reflecting the will and the inalienable rights of the citizens – not on the small stuff, but on the most crucial matters of government.
--Twice in the past seventeen years we have elected a President who did not win the votes of a majority of citizens.
--We have seen the will of the people to appoint a Supreme Court Justice eviscerated by inadequate governing language in the Constitution, and the very philosophical balance of the Court thereby shifted away from what the majority of the people intended at the time of the vacancy.
--We have seen the House of Representatives turned into a dysfunctional and non-productive forum for rigid ideologues to posture and preen while getting nothing done.
--We are living in a nightmare in which a single, terribly flawed and arguably deranged human being has the right and power to launch weaponry that would destroy civilization on earth, and we can do nothing about it.

[unblock]

1. much of these problems stem from gerrymandering.

it's not the sole cause, and it's not a trivial problem to fix anyway without introducing other problems.

but it sure would be a good start.

other problems include money in politics (particularly money from outside jurisdictions, e.g., billionaires funding a congressional run in another state) and the media (reinstating the fairness doctrine would help quite a bit here).


but a lot of the hyper-partisanship is a result of gerrymandering, which helps create districts in which are safer for one party or another, meaning that winning the primary is critical as the general is often a foregone conclusion. this leads to candidates that try to appeal to the partisan base and ignore the other party entirely.

[reggieandlee]

3. Great observations!

Thank you very much for the helpful comments. I totally agree on the additional issues you have raised, and that gerrymanding is at the root of both the partisanship and the intransigence that makes us unable to find workable solutions.

[markbark]

2. A new bill of rights written by ALEC?

No thank you!