Tag: constitution

Constitutional Convention?

On By southwerkIn business ethics3 Comments

We here in America should start practicing democracy instead of pretending. The government no longer works for human beings only for lobbyists and their employers.

When the American Government under the Articles of Confederation began to break down, the great men of the nation acted to save the country from dissolving into a dozen or so petty states.

We’re in the same situation now. We just don’t have any great men. Our current crop of politicians are contemptible. Would let a anyone involved in that disgrace of a “budget ceiling” negotiation work for you?

What should a constitutional convention do? Get rid of the Senate. The idea that the two Senators from North Dakota should have the same weight in national deliberations as the two Senators from California is bizarre and ridiculous. What’s more it allows a small minority to have veto power over the rest of the nation. That’s why we have farm supports that make no sense here financially while causing havoc overseas. You can’t make intelligent policy when a minority can derail intelligent action. Let’s have a single house legislature with the seats distributed by population. That’s democracy. Pretending that the states are actually independent countries is an idea the Civil War should have finished off for good.

The second thing we should do is get rid of the electoral college. Elect the President directly by the voters. Electing Presidents by states electoral votes is a formula for disaster. You get Presidents without actual majorities.

The third thing is to put the right to vote into the Bill of Rights. Every kind of shenanigans is now being employed and has been used throughout American history to keep people from voting. Let’s make sure everyone is on the same set of rules. It’s wrong to stop people from voting. Period.

The Constitution created a government divided in purpose to make oppression less likely. It wasn’t a bad idea but now it is no longer viable. The government and the those influencing it are more the enemies of the people than ever before, and because the government only sort of responds to the voters, that response is muted and ineffective. We need a government strong enough to resist large pressure from large economic organizations but weak enough to leave people individual rights.

To keep our rights, it is time to change the form of our government. Now.

James Pilant

https://southwerk.wordpress.com/2011/08/05/constitutional-convention/

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Herman Cain: Americans Have The Right To Ban Mosques In Their Communities (via Huffington Post)

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

No. they don’t.

The right to practice or not practice a religion is enshrined in the Constitution.

Here’s Herman: “Our Constitution guarantees the separation of church and state,” Cain said in an interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “Islam combines church and state. They’re using the church part of our First Amendment to infuse their morals in that community, and the people of that community do not like it. They disagree with it.”  

Don’t any number of American churches, for instance, Christian Reconstructionists, combine those elements, if you accept and it’s a big acceptance, that Islam is how he describes it.

As for infusing their morals into the community. I live in a dry county – enough said; there is plenty of infusion going on right now with the Christian religion.

If you watch Fox News for an hour, you might get his view point that Islam is a combination of church and state, a Sharia time bomb waiting to put all of our women in burkas and all of our men wearing unmarred beards with a little hand chopping for theft thrown in. However, the actual religion of Islam, not the comedic version on Fox, is the religion of more than one and one-half billion people. They range from deep into the South Pacific – Indonesia and Malaysia, all the way across the world to Surinam in South America. They have a wide range of laws and belief systems about those laws. As an attorney, I assure you I have seen nothing that would in any way suggest any attempt to make Sharia law part of American law, further it cannot creep on us anymore than any other set of laws.

Muslims are being painted as part of world wide campaign of subversion. I say to you with complete confidence, that if one and one-half billion followers of Islam were on the warpath, we would know about it. In that kind of conflict our deaths would be in the thousand per day with the toll mounting by the hour. There are estimated to be around twenty thousand members of Al Queda. Those are our principle enemies, they and other small groups angry at American actions in the Middle East. That’s it. There is no evidence that American Muslims are anything but patriots barring the occasional violent individual we can find in every religious sect.

This is the politics of fear, of unreason, of moral cowardice. Please don’t let yourself or anyone you know be led on a “moral” crusade to destroy a threat that does not exist while destroying a critical component of American Democracy. If you cannot build a mosque in America, if popular opinion is enough to stop it, who else’s church can we stop? I know of no church in the United States, – not one – that is not controversial.

They start here by claiming to defend religion while setting a precedent that can limit or eliminate building any church anywhere in the nation.

If we believe in the Bill of Rights, then the mosque should be built. If we believe in toleration of different religions and ideas, the mosque must go up. If we believe in allowing patriotic Americans who happen to have a different faith to exercise their rights, the mosque must go up.

Americans are a great people, this is one of those opportunities to demonstrate that.

James Pilant

While You Were Sleeping, They Abolished the Fourth Amendment (via Evil of indifference)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I had the same thought. According the court, if the police attack my home, I am supposed to be cooperative and then complain through proper channels. What if I like my home (and possessions) a lot? Won’t this make the police feel a little too comfortable about hitting the “wrong” house?

This guy doesn’t like the ruling. I don’t like the ruling.

James Pilant

“Two recent Supreme Court cases have served to virtually abolish the Fourth Amendment in the United States of America, with citizens no longer being “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”” “In a precedent described by dissenting justices as “breathtaking” and “unnecessarily broad,” the Indiana Supreme Court ruled last week in a 3-2 vote that doing anything to resist police busting down … Read More

via Evil of indifference