Forum Post: A proposal for a single cause that Occupy can rally behind
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 30, 2011, 1:03 p.m. EST by Braineologist
(1)
from Chapel Hill, NC
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
The founders envisioned a representative democracy. To do this, they provided the legislative branch with a House of Representatives, meant to be the forum where the citizenry of these united states had a voice and could craft the laws they saw best fit to govern themselves. The founders were so convinced that this element of the federal government was integral to a stable representative democracy that they wrote, in the constitution, "The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand." Furthermore, they believed this element to be so vital for the stability and survival of this government that they elaborated on the size of the House of Representatives in the first amendment to the constitution, known as "Article the First", which has never been ratified. Under the algorithm for representative size in Article the First, there would currently be 1,625 representatives in the House.
We are currently capped at 435 due to a possibly unconstitutional rule made by the House in 1910 that capped it at that number.
I propose that to ratify Article the First, or to otherwise establish a population-matched algorithm to secure equal and capable representation of the citizenry, be the cause of the 99% / Occupy movement.
All of the demands and all of the grievances boil down to one simple fact: the federal government of these united states is no longer doing what the people of these united states thinks it should do. Why? Because the mechanism by which the federal government was meant to function as a representative democracy of the people, by the people, and for the people has been removed.
In short, the people have lost their voice in our federal democracy.
We can bring it back simply by ratifying a constitutional amendment that's been on the books for the entire history of our nation.
My chant suggestion?
"RATIFY THE FIRST", broken up into its phonemes over 4/4 timing. "Ra - Ti - Fi - the - first - (breath)" ... bup budup budup (breath).
Or - 30,000 repeated.... "Thir-tee-thou-sand, Thir-tee-thou-sand"... (although this one doesn't have a breath)
for more info, check www.thirty-thousand.org and www.apportionment.us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_the_First
I have no affiliation with these sites, I just came across them years ago when I realized that this cause - to bring the House back to the people - is the only fight worth fighting if we really want to fix the problems we face, for now and for the future.
If you have questions about this, please check the websites above, as they go into great length about arguments for and against this idea.
who is going to feed, house, dryclean, insure, pension these people? the 99 percent who proportionally pay more in taxes already?
please check the links, this is all detailed.
It turns out that our taxes already pay for the feeding, housing, drycleaning etc of more than 1600 + house-of-representative related personnel in the form of office clerks and other support staff that have to be hired in order to make it possible for the 435 elected representatives to get anything done.
So, basically, we're already paying this money, but instead of it funding the work of ELECTED people, it is funding support staff.
Directly from thirty-thousand.org :
Q8: Even with reduced federal expenditures, wouldn’t it be too costly to add all these Representatives?
A8: To put this in perspective, suppose that it would cost an additional two billion dollars annually to increase the number of Representatives to 6,000 (this includes both compensation and supporting infrastructure). Though a sizable sum, it must be viewed relative to federal expenditures which total approximately 2.7 trillion dollars. Thirty-Thousand.org believes that this larger Representative body would more than offset their total costs through judicious stewardship: to recoup this additional expense they need only reduce federal expenditures by 1/10 of 1% (i.e., one-tenth of one percent). Because examples of government extravagance and waste are legion, it is quite feasible to beneficially achieve such a reduction in federal expenditures. For example, it has been estimated that the 2007 budget contains $2.4 billion of blatant pork-barrel spending [Source: Citizens Against Government Waste].
With respect to the Representatives’ numerous staff, Thirty-Thousand.org believes that the total staff size should not be increased as the number of Representatives increases. The principal justification for the congressional staffs in the first place was the need to provide constituency services to increasingly populous districts. In other words, Congress’s solution to the problem of super-sized House districts was to augment their personal staffs rather than divide their huge federal fiefdoms into smaller congressional districts.
Finally, regarding the additional cost of a larger number of Representatives, Thirty-Thousand.org agrees that “The man who would seriously object to this expense, to secure his liberties, does not deserve to enjoy them. Besides, by increasing the number of representatives, we open a door for the admission of the substantial yeomanry of our country, who, being possessed of the habits of economy, will be cautious of imprudent expenditures, by which means a greater saving will be made of public money than is sufficient to support them.” [Melancton Smith; June 21, 1788; Debates in the Convention of the State of New York]
Yeah. From the Convention. In 1788.