Thirty-Thousand: Is This a Good idea?

[Elwar]

Only if each House member is allotted a required 18 minutes to speak on each bill before the vote.

 

[Flash]

If you like this idea, Digg it:

http://digg.com/political_opinion/Thirty_Thousand_org_Let_Washington_Represent_You

 

[misterx]

So expanding departments and government is good, because then there will be less corruption.

This would not expand government, it would dilute it. The House would still have the same amount of authority, only it would be divided up among more people. Smaller districts would make representatives more accountable to the people, and would make it easier for candidates to be elected without donations from Goldman Sachs.

 

[Imperial]

They are suppose to represent the people, not political beliefs.

What if the people disagree with you? No, you can hold a representative accountable and criticize them, but ultimately a republic gives your rep a mandate to act in your name. You give him the right by voting.

 

[nobody's_hero]

If 535 politicians can come up with 1,100-page bills which they vote on without reading, by my calculations, we could expect to start seeing 61,682-page bills that will be voted on without being read, if the total number of congress critters was raised to 30,000.

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

The biggest problem for me is that congressmen have designated areas (districts) that vote for them. That means that if a person gets elected to be in congress and gets 51% of the vote while the other person got 49%, then that means that a huge portion of the population is without representation. Maybe there should be a limited amount of seats available for each state based on the population and people can vote for someone who represents their political interests. If there were atleast 200 seats per state, then i am SURE that atleast a few TRUE conservatives would get int per state. And if you add up the numbers on a national level then we could get some pretty good representation in congress.

Basically, i wouldn't mind having more congressmen as long as they don't have "districts" that they represent. I'd rather they represent a political belief.

I like the basic idea of having 6,000 reps and I like the quoted idea above.

I'm sure not being represented where I live. My critter basically votes the opposite of how I'd like him to every time.

-t

 

[Flash]

Bump.

 

[Galileo Galilei]

http://www.thirty-thousand.org/


Adding more seats to the House of Representatives?

This is an excellent website, I actually posted it here on RPF a couple months ago.

The House does not adequately represent the people.

This issue, along with the 17th amendment, are the two biggest assaults against the Constitution.

James Madison had a plan to change the House sizes as the nation grew, but it was never ratified with the rest of the Bill-of-Rights.

If you look at the debate over the original Constitution, representation is at the heart of the matter, George Washington himself pushed for the 30,000.

At a minimum, the House sizes shoud be divided by 4, and we should quadruple the number of reps in the House.

 

[Original_Intent]

More politicians, more corruption.

More politicians, more accountability.

 

[Galileo Galilei]

House sizes of 700,000 are way too big. Running for office in a district that size can only be done successfully by professionals.

In 1910, in violation of the US Constitution, the House was set at 435 members.

Having a giant House with 1700 members or 5000 memebrs seems weird, but it would represent the people a lot better than what we have now.

 

[teamrican1]

Yeah, but the critical reform in all this is abolishing House salaries too. If they still get paid you are basically just creating a whole new Department of Homeland Security. Get rid of the salaries and the annual legislative session won't last more than a week or so, which is what our founders intended. I think secession is a lot more important movement than this one, but no harm in advancing both.

 

[Original_Intent]

Even better than the 30,000 ideas is most laws made at the state and local level, and when FedGov tries to exceed its contitutional bounds, they get read the riot act.

 

[Galileo Galilei]

Yeah, but the critical reform in all this is abolishing House salaries too. If they still get paid you are basically just creating a whole new Department of Homeland Security. Get rid of the salaries and the annual legislative session won't last more than a week or so, which is what our founders intended. I think secession is a lot more important movement than this one, but no harm in advancing both.

If you abolish House salaries, then only very rich people will be in the House. The House is supposed to represent the common people.

Ben Franklin made this very suggestion at the Constitutional Convention, but it was voted down. You can look up Madison's comments on this, they are very interesting.

In my opinion, House members should have higher pay, but they should cut their benefits by an even greater amount.

 

[Galileo Galilei]

btw - secession is already a right granted to the states under the Constitution.

But the power to set House sizes has been seized by the House from the states since 1910.

Representation is the most fundamental aspect of any government. Without just representation, it doesn't matter if you have rights or separation of powers or anything else.

The heart of James Madison's Virginia plan was representation based of the number of free sovereign individuals.

 

[AutoDas]

and what's the problem with rich people in the House of Representatives? the idea behind no-pay for government workers is they have to do productive work in the market outside of the state.

 

[Galileo Galilei]

and what's the problem with rich people in the House of Representatives? the idea behind no-pay for government workers is they have to do productive work in the market outside of the state.

There is no problem with some rich people in the House. The problem is that the people in the House are supposed to REPRESENT the average person from their district. Most people aren't rich. So if you have all rich people, then the middle class is not represented.

If the House had no pay, only people wealthy enough to take off two years from work could be representatives, not including the time and money they need to campaign for the job in the first place.

Have you actually read through the website that is the subject of this thread?

 

[AutoDas]

There is no problem with some rich people in the House. The problem is that the people in the House are supposed to REPRESENT the average person from their district. Most people aren't rich. So if you have all rich people, then the middle class is not represented.

If the House had no pay, only people wealthy enough to take off two years from work could be representatives, not including the time and money they need to campaign for the job in the first place.

Representatives of the House are supposed to represent their constitutes -- not their pocket book. The founding fathers understood this and it was expected of representatives to have a full time job while serving in Congress. Being a politician is not supposed to be a career.

Have you actually read through the website that is the subject of this thread?

Noooo

 

[Galileo Galilei]

Representatives of the House are supposed to represent their constitutes -- not their pocket book.

True.

The founding fathers understood this and it was expected of representatives to have a full time job while serving in Congress.

Not true.

 

[Flash]

http://forum.thirty-thousand.org/


Lawsuit seeks larger House under 'one person, one vote'

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=110124

A lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi alleging that instead of following the U.S. Constitution, Congress has allowed a system of representation where a vote in Mississippi is worth only about half that of a vote in Rhode Island or Iowa.

The action filed by an organization called Apportionment.us explains that because of the growth of the population in the U.S. to more than 300 million now, combined with a turn-of-the-last-century decision setting the number of U.S. representatives at 435, voters across the U.S. are treated far differently.

"The inequality today is severe and unjust," the organization states on its website. "The primary measure that the Supreme Court has used to determine voter equality is to compare the largest and the smallest districts. According to the 2000 census, Montana was the most under-represented and Wyoming was the most over-represented. In simple terms, it took 1.83 Montana voters to equal just 1 Wyoming voter, which is grossly unfair."

The U.S. Supreme Court, in the "Karcher" case, already has ruled that a deviation of 0.6984 percent, which is "over 90 times smaller" is unconstitutional, the organization said.

The case was filed on behalf of voters in the most under-represented states, including John Tyler Clemons of Oxford, Miss.; Jessica Wagner of Kalispell, Mont.; Krystal Brunner of Nisland, S.D.; Lisa Schea of Newark, Del.; and Frank Mylar of Sandy, Utah.

 

[Andrew-Austin]

Yeah lets add more chairs on to the titanic.

And who are the guys who ultimately must be the ones to put this idea in to practice? Congress, the same Congress with a 95 re-election rate, they would have to vote yes on this bill. Why would they vote yes on this bill? Thirty thousand congressman means their vote would count considerably less, they would have to in effect vote to dramatically decrease their own power and make the seat grabbing efforts of the parties much more complicated. And well, their votes don't technically have to align with the views of their constituency.

The House does not adequately represent the people.

Because political representation, isn't actually representation at all.