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One
concern of those who drafted the Constitution of the United States was that
representatives should not have such small constituencies that the office
would fail to attract able candidates.
Even so, Chairman of the Convention, George Washington, called for a
minimum constituency of 30,000 instead of the already approved 40,000. This was his only suggestion regarding
details of the Constitution and it was adopted. THE
FEDERALIST, No. 51 states that “dependence on the people is, no doubt, the
primary control on the government.” No. 52 adds “… it is particularly
essential that ..” the representative “… have an immediate dependence on and
an intimate sympathy with the people.” Now, with
the congressional districts having average populations of about 690,000, and with only 524,160 minutes in a
year, we face a very different situation.
All Representatives, whatever their origins, become members of the
upper class by virtue of their salaries and perks alone. The long sessions and increasing details of their involvement in
nearly all matters of government, keep their minds and bodies within the
confines of the “Beltway” most of the time.
National journalists, pollsters, lobbyists, and congressional staff
members, along with legislative “earmarks,” get them reelected. Meanwhile, it is literally impossible for
them to allot one minute of their time per year to each constituent. Our
representatives should be much more numerous; they should spend most of their
working time in their districts; and they should have infrequent, but
authoritative votes on major public issues.
In order to add that to the Constitution, I suggest the
following: Proposed Amendment Page
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FACTS TO PONDER: The First Amendment to our Constitution is
not what the First Congress proposed for that spot. Partisan divisions of Congress and the
Presidency in the second half of the twentieth century differed extremely
from those in the first half. Since 1930, no Republican President has
enjoyed a partisan congressional division as favorable as Clinton’s was in
1993-1994, but all other Democrat Presidents have fared better than Clinton. If the average Representative were to spend
1000 hours per year meeting face-to-face with individual constituents, it
would not be possible to spend 10 seconds with each constituent. In just 5 weeks of 2006, Israel lost
approximately twice (as a percentage of its population) as many soldiers in
Lebanon as our military fatalities in five years of the “War on Terror”. Just the increase of
violent deaths domestically, among American youths in the 1960’s and ‘70’s,
exceeded our combat fatalities in Vietnam. According to the World Health
Organization’s calculations of increased malaria deaths following the ban on
DDT, that policy has already been more deadly than Hitler’s “final solution”. The pension funds held by state and local
governments, and by corporations, for their employees exceed the “National
Debt”. None of the above is a secret, but none is
emphasized in the mass media. See
attached link for more
information.
American
Politics |
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Ivan Parkins |
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DISASSEMBLE THE HOUSE By Ivan W. Parkins PhD. |
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To order
Dr. Parkins book, Perspectives For
American Society Contact
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2008, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author and can be obtained by contacting info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
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About
Ivan W. Parkins: Dr.
Parkins is a retired professor of Political Science from Central Michigan
University. He received his PhD from
the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval
Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval
officer during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama. He is a recent widower with three
daughters, 3 grand children and 2 great grand children. Dr. Parkins has written extensively, having
authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column for many years. |
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WHAT HAVE THE PEOPLE NOTICED? By Ivan
Parkins Democracy rests upon an assumption that the people
are well-informed. Or as Thomas
Jefferson put it, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted
with their own government. Whenever
things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they can be relied upon
to set them right.” A long life of studying, teaching, observing, and
writing about American government has left me with two main conclusions. First: that the public has generally been
right, and is so now in its belief that “the system” needs changing. Second: that the public is greatly confused
regarding what changes are needed. Authoritarians may deny their people some
information, but mostly they brainwash them with disinformation. Old sayings about the pen being mightier
than the sword can be misleading.
Often the sword has been used first, to control most of the pens. The pens are then used to “disinform” the people in ways that permit most swords
to remain sheathed. Once firmly
established, authoritarians control virtually all schools, publishing, news
facilities, and other sources of information. Today, that is becoming more difficult. But, what if most of the pens, i.e.
professional communicators, were to unite in cooperation with one another and
with one political party? That is the
transformation that I have witnessed in American society since World War
II. Mass communication, especially
television, has invaded households to an unprecedented degree. Schools and teachers have been nationalized
by union and governmental actions.
Possible competitors such as families and churches have been harassed
and legally restricted. The one place in our national system where
information has been most extensive and public choice most informed has been
presidential elections. There, three
recent Presidents, (Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan ) won reelections by the
largest popular pluralities and by three of the largest majorities in our
history. Johnson was then discouraged
from seeking the additional term for which he was legally qualified. Nixon was promptly forced to resign. Reagan survived and in many respects
triumphed, but only by facing long and severe harassment. Since then, President Clinton survived two terms in
office, in spite of having been impeached by the House of Representatives and
losing in the courts on the several challenges that he brought there. He and his defenders claimed that it was
all over a “private sexual matter”.
Congress, unwilling to face media friendly to Clinton with another
election pending, left most other issues to Clinton’s own subordinates. Even so, the House indicted, and a secure
room filled with hundred of documents showing evidence and testimony of
witnesses was provided for the Senate.
No Democrat Senator signed into that room before voting to
acquit. Coincidentally, Clinton was
the only President since Wilson, many years earlier to win the office twice
without winning a popular majority either time. Our current President, Bush, did win a popular
majority in 2004, only a slim one, but better than any Democrat since
Johnson. He has faced what have
probably been the most voluminous and intense media attacks upon his
Presidency and his person endured by any President. Now, talk radio, cable television, some of the new
publications, and a few websites offer promise that the people may become
better informed. But several decades
of public brainwashing by the media have left scars that threaten democracy
in America. How can people choose a
better course when they know so little about the one that we have traveled
recently? -February 2008 |
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Re-Runs Page 3 |
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Liberalism, an Aversion to Facts For more than two decades I believed myself to be a “liberal”, but that
was four decades ago. Now, the ideas
and aversion to facts, of many people who claim to be liberals seem not to
have changed in those four decades. In
1971, I clipped from my newspaper a cartoon by Bill Mauldin, of WWII
fame. It represented President Nixon
as overseeing a huge flow of funds into Indo-China and promising some petty
support for social programs. Using
budget figures from standard references, I discovered that the
Kennedy/Johnson Administrations had a higher average rate of military
expenditures and lower social spending than Nixon’s most recent year at the
time. I wrote a letter to Newsweek magazine in Feb. 1977,
in response to Lester Thurow’s column (2/14/77). Here are some excerpts. “Lester Thurow’s column may
serve better to illustrate than it does to explain the reasons for our lagging
productivity.” “Productivity is frequently, and meaningfully,
related to the quantity and quality
of machinery which a workman uses.
Since 1950, the U.S. has lagged behind the principal democracies of Europe, and far behind Japan, in the portion of its product
which it has reinvested in new plants and machinery. At the same time, and while our military expenditures were declining, we have more than
doubled the portion of GNP which we invested in education.” “Blaming moneyed and military
elites for America’s economic and social problems would have appealed to me two
or three decades ago. Today, it is far
too popular, and too carelessly done.” About a year later, I wrote a letter to the editor, U.S. News & World Report (1/16/78) in response
to Professor Thurow. “Professor Thurow says,
“While no one is against investment in physical assets, we also need to invest more
heavily in skills, education and other things that build earning capacity in the
future.” Is he really talking about
the United States?” In 2008, the evidence and my views have not changed greatly. Recently, I noticed that one of America’s
oldest great fortunes had been liquidated, for many millions. I estimated that it was about 250 times as
large as I expect my estate to be. I
also checked and found, as I had expected, that the largest recent fortune,
earned by a person much younger than I is about 400 times as great as the
older one was. Soaking the rich with taxation makes more sense as hate and revenge than
it does as economic policy. As long as voters believe “economic facts” quoted by celebrities without
checking them against THE STATISTICAL ABSTRACT OF THE UNITED STATES or
another reliable reference, our economy and our country will suffer. Ivan Parkins- February 24, 2008 |