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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2010, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
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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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Front Page |
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In This Issue: · OUR POLITICAL CRISIS AND IT’S
CONSTITUTIONAL PROPORTIONS · DOMINATION OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
BY DEMOCRATS FOR 80 YRS. · “THE IDEA” OF REPRESENTATIVE
DEMOCRACY · DISASSEMBLE THE HOUSE |
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OUR POLITICAL CRISIS HAS CONSTITUTIONAL PROPORTIONS The
first amendment was not the original first amendment. Do you
know what was? By Ivan W. Parkins The huge numbers of miscellaneous Americans
who have turned out for “Tea Parties,” protesting the political stalemate and
fiscal crisis that we face, are a strong indication that more than
contemporary policy issues is at stake.
The seed for this present crisis was planted more than two centuries
ago in the adoptions of our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. Only the Civil War of the early 1860s has
exceeded the present threat to the very skeleton of our nation! “We the People of the United States,” ratified
those basic documents. And from them,
plus an environment especially well suited to the founding of a new and
significantly different nation, America has prospered. But the more than two centuries of our
growth, and changing social conditions, have required amendments. Our Founding Fathers anticipated that, but
not the likelihood that their own first proposal of amendment would not be
ratified. When, yielding to popular pressures, James
Madison and others of the First Congress of the United States drafted
proposals for a bill of rights, the first right that they attempted to assure
was fair and adequate allotments of Representatives. But that is now the only one of their
proposals that has never been ratified—and the original language is now quite
out dated by huge population growth and other factors. As a result, what was originally intended to
be, and to remain, the branch of government most representative of “we the
people,” is now arguably the least representative, and in the present
instance is probably the most hated, of our federal elective authorities. It is a crisis relating intimately to our
Constitution, and imperiling the future of our nation. We need a replacement for the originally
proposed first amendment. We need a
much more intimate system of representation.
SEE MY PROPOSAL ON DISASSEMBLING THE HOUSE. |
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SINCE 1930, (FOR 80 YEARS) THE
DEMOCRATS HAVE DOMINATED THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES THIS IS
NOT WHAT THE FOUNDING FATHERS HAD
ENVISIONED By Ivan W. Parkins The nearly complete dominance of what was to
have been our most popular branch of government by one political party for
eighty years is a terrible example of representative democracy. That is especially true because in the same
period partisan control of the popularly elected Senate has changed more, and
the partisanship of our popular Presidents has changed frequently. Two factors go far in explaining Democrat
dominance in the House. In 1930 party
column ballots were common, and many voters
made one mark at the top of a column to elect their choice of a
President and with him other officers of the same party. Presidential “coattails” were very
influential at a time when our most dominant President, a Democrat, held
office. But, following WWII there was
a movement among independents and many Republicans to reduce the effect of
coattails, partly by changing to office block ballots. If voters do not vote straight party tickets,
how do they choose among individuals running for the lesser offices? Many vote for the more familiar name. And, especially in very populous election
districts, the more familiar name is apt to be an incumbent or one made
familiar by the mass media. By 1960
familiar names in our very large congressional districts were likely to
belong to either a Democrat incumbent or a Democrat favored by newly emerging
television. The forty years (1954-1994) of unbroken Democrat majorities (33
to 155 votes) in the House of Representatives can best be explained as the
effects of incumbency and bias in the mass media. Since 1954
Republican Presidents have won 8 elections, 6 were popular majorities,
3 of them landslides; meanwhile Democrats won the Presidency 6 times but only 3 were by popular
majorities and only 1 was a landslide. More recently, with the emergence of cable
television, talk radio, Fox News, a revamped WALL STREET JOURNAL, etc.
Republicans have achieved some small majorities in the House. Additional partisan changes in the House
are now quite possible. But, the
larger problem remains, and grows. Either we must have enough more
Representatives to facilitate greatly their personal contacts with individual
constituents or we will not have, in fact, the kind of representative
democracy in which we claim to believe.
SEE MY PROPOSAL ON “DISASSEMBLE THE HOUSE”. |
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“THE IDEA” OF REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY By Ian W. Parkins Democracy is the idea that
political authority derives from the people. And, in the long term, democracy depends
upon the degree to which government effectuates the ideals and nourishes the
interests of the people.
Representative democracy is the practical acknowledgement that simply
welcoming the voices of large masses of people produces disparate cacophony
with little meaningful direction. But,
if defined groups of people can select one of their number as the best
spokesperson for their group, a conference of those representatives can
achieve an orderly approximation of the common view. The original plan of our Founding Fathers, in
a time when communication was much more difficult than it is today, was that
Representatives would be chosen from the various parts of this nation by
people among whom they had extensive personal contacts. Those Representatives would then assemble
from time to time at the nation’s capital to meld a limited number of views
into public policy. It was a practical
plan for enabling a nation of a few million people to share in governing and
live in reasonable harmony. Today,
with a vastly larger population, and with greatly enhanced means of
communication, the plan needs constitutional change. The idea that Representatives should have
extensive and often personal contacts among those that they represent is now
mocked by congressional districts in which the numbers of people exceed the
number of minutes in a year (minutes in 365—24hour days, not a work
year). Our House of Representatives has become a
dysfunctional farce, and tragedy.
Furthermore, that is not simply due to the shortcomings of individual
members and rules of procedure. Any formula of representation that provides
few enough Representatives to consult and bargain together will not be
numerous enough to allow meaningful contacts of Representatives with their
constituents. We need to expand, greatly, the number of
Representatives; and that implies that they perform their role from separate
locations. See my proposal for that change which I
wrote almost 50 years ago.
SEE MY PROPOSAL |
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DID YOU
KNOW? A.K.A.
Parkins Points to Ponder By Ivan
W. Parkins …NOT ALL
PARTIES SERVE
TEA... On
August 1, 1946, in Athens TN, the local Sheriff, also known as Boss,
took all ballot boxes into the court house, protected by scores of armed
deputies. They were soon surrounded by
hundreds of armed WWII veterans. After
losing the porch of his “fortress” to dynamite, the sheriff surrendered. A
veterans’ slate won the election and not much more that was newsworthy
happened. …….. According to Wikipedia, a March 2009 atmospheric measure of CO˛ showed 387 parts per million (p.p.m). At 10,000 p.p.m. people get drowsy.
At 70,000 to 100,000 they get ill or die. 10,000 p.p.m.
can be
reached in a poorly ventilated auditorium. ….. At the time that Congress ordered a halt to all financial, air,
and military equipment support to our allies in South Vietnam, it appeared
the South Vietnamese were successfully and willingly holding off the attacks
of the Communists, without support from American ground forces. ….Both of the major presidential impeachment efforts of recent
Congresses, Nixon’s and Clinton’s, were subsequently denounced as improper in
books by the Chief Investigative Counsels chosen by the House Judiciary
Committees to pursue them—and those Chief Investigators were both Democrats. In Nixon’s case the charges were drawn by
the Judiciary Committee in such a way as to exclude evidence of any similar
behaviors by earlier Presidents; in Clinton’s case they were drawn so as to
exclude Clinton’s most obviously official and illegal acts, grants of
citizenship to persons not eligible and severe campaign finance violations. ….. Since the Korean War, the trend of military spending, as a portion
of this nation’s gross domestic product , has been downward to a little less
than half of what it was in 1951-52.
Meanwhile, spending for education, health, and other welfare have all
taken increasing portions, and together have taken much more than spending
for defense. …..One hasty act of the Environmental Protection Agency,
joining with the World Health Organization in the ban on DDT, resulted in
more deaths (of Blacks from malaria) than all the deaths from all ethnic conflicts and
American military engagements in our nation’s history. |
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DISASSEMBLE THE HOUSE By Ivan W.
Parkins 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,
SEE MY PROPOSAL. |