Post your Consitutional Amendment ideas here

[Mesogen]

In the same way that we have spearation of Church and State, we need Spearation of Corporations and State.

Corporations are created by the state. It's just that now, the government is beholden to the coporations instead of the other way around, which is the way it used to be.

 

[LittleLightShining]

I'm Sorry you guys feel this way, but it would be the easiest way to eliminate the electoral college, delegate counts. Have people who are educated, and yes College educated take their tests, and know alot about the world, I guess you could as well take a constitutional test to be eligible to vote as well., not people who just go to a DMV and sign up to vote.

I am not college educated. Apparently a college education doesn't give one a leg up in the spelling department. To be honest, the most well-informed people I know are not college (indoctrinated) educated. And they haven't begun their adult lives mired in debt. Don't get me wrong, a college education is a fine thing, but a Constitutional amendment mandating one in order to vote is a very disturbing idea.

 

[Mesogen]

Thankfully, a Republic does not use mob rule to make such important decisions. The founding fathers gave us a perfect Constitution and the original needs no and will have no changes.

So we should still use the 3/5 rule? It would come in handy for states with lots of illegal immigrants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_compromise

The 3/5 rule was probably the one thing that led to the civil war and all kinds of strife beforehand.

(edit: About "mob rule" : any guess how the Constitution was formed? That's right, democratically. Any guess as to how its amended? You guessed it. Mob rule.)

 

[Mesogen]

And all this crap about "the constitution doesn't ban things"?

Which constitution are you reading?

Here's just one example:

Article 1 Section 10 - Powers prohibited of States

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

 

[billyjoeallen]

We need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing personal, financial and medical privacy.

The 4th amendmend gives us some protection, but not nearly enough.

 

[Elliott]

In order to be eligible to vote you must have a college degree.

I'm with you in spirit, but I think an IQ test and a supplemental history/current events test would be more appropriate. Questions like:

Who is the Vice President?
How many states are in the union?
Saddam Hussein was the president of which country?
What country attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor?
etc...

Everyone wouldn't need to be a genius, but should have at least moderate (100 score) intelligence. People beneath that level cannot even begin to comprehend the complexity of politics. If you watch "Jay Walking" on The Tonight Show, it's terrifying to imagine that these people actually have the ability to vote.

PS. I have an MBA and I'm personally quite smart. But I also have several good friends without degrees who are terribly intelligent. I have two friends who have been MENSA tested to easily exceed the "genius" standard and neither has been to college. Likewise, I know many morons who do in fact have degrees. Some morons even have graduate degrees.

 

[Danny]

The rationale for raising wages for Federal Employees is so they don't seek money from lobbyists/other corrupt practices. Do you disagree with this?

Banning lobbyist contributions is a violation of freedom of speech, and we should be fighting for their rights. Frankly, i'm shocked to see that so many Ron Paul supporters would be thrilled to have the Constitution amended to enact some form of campaign finance regulation.

Our goal needs to be to limit government to the powers defined in the Constitution. When this happens, companies will have no reason to hire lobbyists because it will be understood that government doesn't have the authority to pass the laws that they want.

 

[fedup100]

So we should still use the 3/5 rule? It would come in handy for states with lots of illegal immigrants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_compromise

The 3/5 rule was probably the one thing that led to the civil war and all kinds of strife beforehand.

(edit: About "mob rule" : any guess how the Constitution was formed? That's right, democratically. Any guess as to how its amended? You guessed it. Mob rule.)

Illegals are illegal......Ron Paul will tell you and I will tell you, we won't be dickering with the original Constitution.....have fun dreaming.

If it ever comes a time when this type of ideas= voting = changes by the populace to the constitution, you can kiss your ass and your Country goodbye.

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Banning lobbyist contributions is a violation of freedom of speech, and we should be fighting for their rights. Frankly, i'm shocked to see that so many Ron Paul supporters would be thrilled to have the Constitution amended to enact some form of campaign finance regulation.

Our goal needs to be to limit government to the powers defined in the Constitution. When this happens, companies will have no reason to hire lobbyists because it will be understood that government doesn't have the authority to pass the laws that they want.

Freedom of speech is a right of individuals. Lobbyists support the right of corporations that have snuck in under the guise of "corporate person hood" - a legal fiction giving them the rights of an individual, in fact more rights than an individual, but immunity from having to follow many of the laws real individuals have to and a get out of jail free card if they break the law.

The Constitution is supposed to protect us from corrupt and predatory businesses interests, not protect those same interests. No where in the Constitution does it say the right of the corporations to...

-n

 

[Danny]

Freedom of speech is a right of individuals. Lobbyists support the right of corporations that have snuck in under the guise of "corporate person hood" - a legal fiction giving them the rights of an individual, in fact more rights than an individual, but immunity from having to follow many of the laws real individuals have to and a get out of jail free card if they break the law.

The Constitution is supposed to protect us from corrupt and predatory businesses interests, not protect those same interests. No where in the Constitution does it say the right of the corporations to...

-n

I don't think anyone is going to disagree with you that most lobbyists are bad. The question is about the best way to stop them. As a Ron Paul supporter and believer in limited government, I really don't think that more government and more laws is the answer. You simply aren't going to be able to create a law that keeps lobbyists and corporations out of the game without squashing individual freedom of speech or third parties at the same time.

The answer has to be freedom for anyone to give as much money as they want to any candidate they want, but at the same time a Constitutionally limited government where there are no favors or votes to sell. Lobbyists really aren't the problem. The problem is a system that tasks elected officials with wealth redistribution. With so much up for grabs, can you really blame the corporations for going after it?

Ron Paul is a perfect example of how this would work. RP gets no money from lobbyists. It's not that he refuses lobbyist donations, he will accept money from anyone. Lobbyists are just smart enough to realize that RP is voting with the Constitution, which doesn't allow him to vote for handouts.

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Lobbyists really aren't the problem. The problem is a system that tasks elected officials with wealth redistribution. With so much up for grabs, can you really blame the corporations for going after it?

I thought I had a pretty good plan to fix this in post 56. It's kind of buried now, so I'll repost:

Congress shall pass no unfunded mandates. All current unfunded mandates are to be immediately repealed.

For every new law Congress passes, they must review and repeal 5 existing laws, until such time as the total number of Federal laws number less than 400. At that time, the total must be kept under 400 laws.

Any law that is considered unconstitutional by the public via collecting 100,000 signatures, shall be put in the queue for mandatory review.

All laws must be on a single subject and no “trailers” may be attached that are not on that specific subject. All laws with such trailers will have the trailers immediately repealed if they are not on the same subject as the original bill.

All bills under consideration must be posted for public comment IN THEIR FINAL FORM, one month prior to being voted on for public comment. Any change due to public outcry shall reset the posting time, with the changes presented and highlighted. In short, no law may be passed in less than 2 months.

All bills must be written by members of Congress. Any law that was in whole or part written by lobbyists shall be immediately repealed.

No bill shall be longer than 4,504 words – the length of the US Constitution without signatures or amendments, and no member of Congress may vote on a bill until they have read it in it's entirety.

Any law over 50 pages shall be immediately repealed.

Any bill that was passed into law between the hours of 10pm and 7am EST shall be immediately repealed.

Any bill that was passed into law when fewer than 3/4ths of the members of Congress were in attendance shall be immediately repealed.

Any bill that points to another law and makes modifications of a single word, sentence or paragraph shall be immediately repealed.

If a law is to be modified, it must be reviewed in it's entirety as to if it is Constitutional and if it has in fact had the desired effects on the problem it was passed to solve.

All laws should sunset and be reviewed for Constitutionality and effectiveness before they are voted on to be continued.

Any law that was passed on the basis of emotional appeals for justification and that used anecdotal evidence to support the need for it shall be immediately repealed.

All Federal Regulations must be passed by Congress, and not enacted by the agencies that wrote them. No agency or branch of the Federal Government may have more than 50 regulations and the regulations must abide by the same length, review, Constitutionality, and sunset provisions as Congressional laws. No more than 20 agencies may have regulations of any sort.

Congress shall operate under a modified PAYGO system, where every year it's budget shall be determined by not only paying off the DEFICITE (the interest on federal loans and debt), but also after paying off a portion of the DEBT, ideally at least 5% of the original total every year BEFORE spending on anything else.

The US Government shall not outsource or award no bid contracts.

No agency of the US Government shall operate at a profit or as a revenue generating entity using products developed at taxpayer expense. Reports, books, tapes and software shall be available at cost.

All government patents and products developed at taxpayer expense, including highways, bridges, printed matter, etc. must be public domain and may not be given to private industry to use on an exclusive basis.

The practice of using approved vendors by federal agencies for materials acquisition is to stop immediately.

Any member of Congress that has any ties to a corporation, may not vote on legislation that benefits that corporation. Stock ownership, close personal ties and former employment count.

Whichever of the 2 major parties has a minority in Congress shall have their votes weighted as a handicap so that voting along party lines would result in a 50/50 tie if everyone voted.

All voting for federal office or delegates shall be conducted in the following way:

All ballots must be paper and placed in a clear container with a lid having a slot. These containers shall be in full public view from the beginning of voting till the votes have been counted. They are to be sealed with the same type of holographic security tape used in high security government instillations (SCIF's) and further protected with serial numbers and signatures. Upon the close of voting the public is welcome to come watch and participate in the count. Those doing the count shall be chossen by lottery and equally divided between the 2 parties with a republican and a democrat paired for each voting counting team. The votes will be counted in full public view twice (by different counters) and any discrepancies between the counts will result in starting over with different people counting. At no time shall the containers leave the public view until the counting is finished and results posted.

All votes shall be counted immediately after the election and no delay is permissible. If at any time the ballot boxes leave public view, the election must be repeated from scratch for that precinct.

Entrance and exit polling by the media or reporting on same before final results are released shall be banned.

Any media organization shown to favor one candidate over the other shall immediately have their broadcast license revoked. This includes debates, broadcast and publication.

Delegates shall be awarded by county or congressional district or via a caucus process. No more winner take all states.

No money may be borrowed by the federal government from foreign countries or business interests.

No new money may be minted unless $1 is taken out of circulation and destroyed for every new $1 produced. No new money can be minted until after 1% of the total US Dollars in circulation today are removed and destroyed per year. This is to continue until the value of the dollar is once again in line with the value of gold and silver, and then must be kept in balance.

All the gold in Ft. Knox must be inventoried on live TV and the results released to the public. There must be full disclosure of all past transfers of gold from Ft. Knox along with the reason.

The federal reserve is to be immediately be abolished.

No company or corporation may control over 5% of a business market, if that business market has revenues in excess of 1 billion dollars a year.

All I can think of right now...

-n

 

[DamianTV]

We need a constitutional amendment guaranteeing personal, financial and medical privacy.

The 4th amendmend gives us some protection, but not nearly enough.

+1

Privacy is considered a PENUMBRA RIGHT and is not explicitly defined. It needs to be explicitly defined.

Any and All Rights as established, now and forthcoming, in the Bill of Rights shall not be disregarded, waived, or volunteered away by any Civil Agreement or Contract.

----

If you download software, they cant make you waive any of your rights, specifically the 4th as a penumbra for right to privacy, to use their software.

If you get a job, your employer does NOT have any legal authority to stand on to make you do what they want at home. On the clock is different. At home is NOT their business. Yes that includes drugs too. Do drugs at home and I dont care. Do them on my business and Im gonna have a problem. However, even ON the clock, they still have to respect all of your Rights.

If you buy a can of soup, it doesnt give the party you bought the soup from the legal authority to sell your private financial information to anyone without your knowledge and explicit concent. Reason for this is that is what insurance companies are all ready trying to do. Insurance companies want to know what you buy at the store so they buy information you give away with club cards, so they can turn around and say you eat too much bacon and we are gonna have to raise your rates. Not that they are any more inclined to pay anyway.

----

And someone needs to come up with something about the f***ing RIAA.

 

[Mesogen]

Illegals are illegal......Ron Paul will tell you and I will tell you, we won't be dickering with the original Constitution.....have fun dreaming.

If it ever comes a time when this type of ideas= voting = changes by the populace to the constitution, you can kiss your ass and your Country goodbye.

You said the original Constitution was the way to go. Before the Bill of Rights. Before the 13th amendment. Maybe you meant the original Articles of Confederation?

It had the 3/5 rule that said slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for census purposes.

Is this what you had in mind? Because if it is, states with lots of illegals could use them in the census (at the 3/5 rate) and get more representatives in Congress. Is this what you want?

And the part in the original Constitution where it says it can be amended (Article 5), should we keep that?

 

[BigRedBrent]

2) Electronics in the voting process needs to be outlawed. The includes diebold touchscreens as well as electronic scanners.

Well actually electronics could be used to decrease voter fraud. Someone already brought up that machines could be used to print you results on paper for you to review and you would keep a receipt for your own records. With the receipt you could use a code from it to make sure your vote was counted. As well as computer counting an entirely separate process of hand counting would also be used to verify the computer totals. I am sure even more intelligent things could be added to this process to limit voter fraud even further.

So it would make it simple to vote and later verify your vote as well.

 

[Alex Libman]

To start...

• "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade ..." -- around page 1083, Atlas Shrugged.

Since this would mean an end to all income and sales taxes, a practical implementation of this might have some sort of a gradual step-by-step plan for capping government spending as percentage of GDP.

When fully implemented, that amendment should make federal monopolies (ex. post office, federal reserve, etc) and prohibitions impossible, and limit the size of government drastically, so we can have a little fun with further amendments...

• All "civil servants" shall be made to wear a large yellow "G" at all times. Any "G-man" who displeases any taxpayer shall be made to prostrate himself on the ground until apology is accepted, or be fired if apology is refused.

• Implant a streaming camera into the forehead of every high-ranking civil servant at their expense, with 24/7 audio and video being streamed live to the Internet and permanently archived. No one in Washington should be able to scratch his balls without his "constituents" knowing about it! (Stockholders may demand the same of their corporate executives.)

• A herd of highest-ranking members of the U.S. armed forces should be forced to jog butt-naked across any country we're thinking of initiating force against (including sanctions), with the words "we don't want to invade you" written on their chest and back in the local language. This should be a constitutionally-mandated requirement before ANY military action can be taken (with the theoretical exception of a full-scale invasion on any U.S. state, or returning fire in a confirmed intentional nuclear strike against us). If they don't shoot them, the military operation cannot proceed. (False threat of "American imperialism" is the only thing keeping those totalitarian regimes in power...)

• Torture and execution shall be legal only for civil servants who lie us into a trillion-dollar war...

 

[Number19]

...Remember that Founding Fathers believed people were endowed with inalienable rights, and pretty sure that would include vote...

The right to vote was EXTREMELY restricted by our Founding Fathers. Our nation was not founded as a "democracy" and in fact, the founders had an aversion to the concept.

 

[Uncle Emanuel Watkins]

It would be easier for us to achieve happier lives as Americans by reestablishing an unbiased media along with a true 2 party system than it would be for us to create another law or ammendment that might endanger the Constitution by the altering of its civil meaning irreparably.
Besides, the unreported significance of the Ron Paul movement is the broad support he has attracted from both the liberal and conservative ends of the political spectrum. When we bicker about the sanctity of the Constitution, we divide ourselves up as half of us concerned with bringing the other half of us to an unhappy justice -- which brings little satisfaction to our souls while such behavior festers hatred.
Because of the misguided notion that we can find happiness in vengence, our profit in this nation has disappeared while we have become wholly consumed with a need for more law makers, more lawyers, more courtrooms and more police officers. As our hatred increases for each other in these courtrooms, there becomes a need for even more law makers, more lawyers, more courtrooms and more police officers. Of course, our civil right to be happy as American citizens has taken a back seat to our vengeful quest for half our population to bring the other half of us to an unhappy state of justice.
More importantly, this in turn has hindered my ability to go fishing.
Having the ability to go fishing because it makes me happy is the primary civil purpose of the U.S. Constitution. If it weren't for this cherished civil concern in our Constitution, then we could just trash it, change it or use it for toilet paper. Instead, we as Americans would be better off going to war because, as has become our culture, it is better to be dead than to be an unhappy American.
Here is my cool boat that I like to go fishing in. It is a ten foot porta-bote built in the USA and cool as all get out!. As it will folds up to look a lot like a surfboard, it sits 3 and will plane out at 20 MPH with only a 5 horse power Nissan! Here is the kind of boat I have below:
http://www.porta-bote.com/
In their pursuit of happiness, some Americans might not desire the 5 hp Nissan I have but the new powerful Yamaha 350 like the one posted here:
http://www.nauticamarine.com/event.php?event=14

 

[Number19]

Could we have another branch of government that checks all proposed bills, like the supreme court, but before they are voted on?

Costa Rica has controls on their government of this nature.

 

[Number19]

Government shall not classify citizens, either by race, creed, class, denomination, physical attribute, or by any other qualification or singularity. All legal citizens of these United States are now and forevermore free individuals, sovereign entities protected from harm foreign and domestic by their appointed government but especially from their appointed government.

Excellant - you show a good sense of constitutionality.

 

[Number19]

...Secession. This issue is so huge, I'm surprised it hasn't been addressed before. Heck, we fought a civil war over this! The constitution sets out criteria for joining the United States; it makes no mention of leaving the union. This really needs to be addressed: people should be free to have the choice to leave the union without violence, preferably by popular vote of the state (Hawaii would be the first to go). Also covered should be the splitting up of states (like Texas or California), merging (Dakotas), and eviction or kicking out of a state by the rest of the country (which may happen to California eventually)...

Another excellant point that shows an understanding of constitutional requirement.