Too many topics for one amendment. This is a whole new constitution. Politically it makes more sense to offer multiple amendments that allow Congress to then pass legislation. Also, No. 1 on the list should be repealing the exception clause in the 13th amendment that allows penal institutions to used forced labor.
Thank you for doing this hard work, and for the opportunity to help shape a better future. I agree with Rachel C and Regretting Florida that it’s too big and needs to be broken up, and that “person” should be biological. Here are my ideas:
Section IV: Voting and Elections
* The voting age should be 15 to 85. Young people should have the right to help shape the world they’re about to inherit, and old people shouldn’t get to impose their will on the world they are about to lose interest in.
* Item 7 should say, “Foreign contributions …” instead of “Foreign campaign contributions …”
* Candidates should be required to participate in multiple debates and town hall Q&A sessions. These are the “interview” portion of their “job application”, and we, the employer, have the right to know their true intentions. If they don’t want to expose them, they can seek employment elsewhere.
* Candidates should be required to support their claims and assertions with provable fact-based evidence. Any form of dishonesty should be grounds for disqualification.
* Breaking their word should be grounds for removal. Most places, lying on a job application already is.
* Voting wards, precincts, districts, etc. should be roughly geometrical in shape with no more than seven sides and contain approximately equal voting-age populations.
* Religious organizations contributing to or participating in any kind of political activity should be taxed. It’s only fair. (This one came from another Substacker. It’s a great idea, and maybe should be extended to ALL nonprofits participating in our politics.)
* Corporations should not be allowed to vote.
Section V: Education
* Freedom from religious and political indoctrination should be extended to private and home schools. We should watch them like a hawk, as a lot of hateful bigotry comes right out of home schools.
* Healthy Democracy depends heavily on an engaged, well-informed Citizenry. As future voting citizens, children’s right to learn everything should outweigh parents’ right to deliberately keep them ignorant of anything.
Section VII: Right to Economic Activity and Benefits
* Oh, please don’t limit our economic structure to Capitalism. By definition, Capitalism is the very antithesis of the Greater Good. If you must stick to Capitalism, at least don’t let it run roughshod over us again. At least limit Executive Compensation to fifty or so times what the lowest-paid Employee or “Independent Contractor“ makes. There are plenty of highly talented people very capable of running any Executive Management, and there’s no Greater Good reason to keep that kind of power exclusively in the hands of people driven primarily by greed.
Section VIII: Right to Privacy
* Need to define “not biologically related”. Siblings, cousins, second-cousins, third-, fourth-, whatever, you have to draw the line somewhere, else nobody could marry anyone at all.
* Why limit a marriage to only two people?
Section X: Separation of Powers and Governmental Integrity
* Appointments should require multiple Nominees from whom our Senate selects the final Appointee. This way we get the Best of the Best (or Least of the Worst) our Presidents have to offer. And, there’s an automatic backup Appointee. (Our Senate could implement this right now if it wanted, since it writes its own rules. But then it could also deimpliment it later on.)
* The Executive should have an entity similar to a Police Department Internal Affairs office, empowered to suspend pending investigation any Officer from the President on down, given probable cause to believe they’re lawbreaking, and fulfill the duties of the suspended officer during suspension. Honest, ethical Officers won’t try anything illegal anyway; investigations into their behaviors would be quick and only minorly disruptive. Corruption would be stopped dead in its tracks, before taking root and doing so much damage, so much damage, and the duties of the suspect would not just fall onto some lackey. Under the Tenth Amendment, this entity could be answerable to the States, not the Feds. There is no scare-scenario persuasion the proponents of Unitary Executive Theory can put forth that is worse than Reality right now.
* Our Supreme Court should be required to measure its decisions against the Preamble to our Constitution. Any Legislation that does not conform to those ideals should be stricken down.
* Age limit all Appointees, not just the top positions.
Section XI: Statehood
* States should be allowed to secede, but incentivized to stay.
Section XII: Enforcement
* This Amendment should supersede previous conflicting provisions.
Great ideas, but I agree it is too much for one amendment. We could start with a dictionary definition of a “person,” making clear that corporations and other for-profit entities are not persons.
Also, how would your Supreme Court justices be selected?
Also need to deal with “private equity” companies.
Define Good, in the case of healthcare. I want to be on that committee!
You want corps to be people. Absent that, they couldn’t sue and be sued. The problem w Citizens Untied isn’t the conclusion that corps are people- that’d been established for 125 years prior. The problem is that it effectively allowed bribery.
Sorry but there is way too much in this amendment to pass. Too many will find something they disagree with even if they agree with most of it and for that reason will oppose it.
This is an unserious pipe dream. It is absent any recognition of the methods of ratification or consideration of the current electorate’s political discourse. If the ERA couldn’t get ratified, this is laughable.
Section VIII:3 seems unnecessary. Generation after generation after generation of first-cousin (etc.) marriages is extremely unlikely and one marriage between one set of cousins is not the problem. This amendment seems VERY long. Other than these two points, however, I am FOR it.
Isn’t this kind of absurdly large? If you want to pass a bunch of amendments, it might be easier to pass an amendment that makes it easier to pass an amendment (like 55% instead of 2/3 in both chambers to send an amendment off for maybe 3/5 of states to ratify?). Then subsequent amendments wouldn’t be so rare
Too many topics for one amendment. This is a whole new constitution. Politically it makes more sense to offer multiple amendments that allow Congress to then pass legislation. Also, No. 1 on the list should be repealing the exception clause in the 13th amendment that allows penal institutions to used forced labor.
Presidents cannot hold office if they are criminals.
Thank you for doing this hard work, and for the opportunity to help shape a better future. I agree with Rachel C and Regretting Florida that it’s too big and needs to be broken up, and that “person” should be biological. Here are my ideas:
Section IV: Voting and Elections
* The voting age should be 15 to 85. Young people should have the right to help shape the world they’re about to inherit, and old people shouldn’t get to impose their will on the world they are about to lose interest in.
* Item 7 should say, “Foreign contributions …” instead of “Foreign campaign contributions …”
* Candidates should be required to participate in multiple debates and town hall Q&A sessions. These are the “interview” portion of their “job application”, and we, the employer, have the right to know their true intentions. If they don’t want to expose them, they can seek employment elsewhere.
* Candidates should be required to support their claims and assertions with provable fact-based evidence. Any form of dishonesty should be grounds for disqualification.
* Breaking their word should be grounds for removal. Most places, lying on a job application already is.
* Voting wards, precincts, districts, etc. should be roughly geometrical in shape with no more than seven sides and contain approximately equal voting-age populations.
* Religious organizations contributing to or participating in any kind of political activity should be taxed. It’s only fair. (This one came from another Substacker. It’s a great idea, and maybe should be extended to ALL nonprofits participating in our politics.)
* Corporations should not be allowed to vote.
Section V: Education
* Freedom from religious and political indoctrination should be extended to private and home schools. We should watch them like a hawk, as a lot of hateful bigotry comes right out of home schools.
* Healthy Democracy depends heavily on an engaged, well-informed Citizenry. As future voting citizens, children’s right to learn everything should outweigh parents’ right to deliberately keep them ignorant of anything.
Section VII: Right to Economic Activity and Benefits
* Oh, please don’t limit our economic structure to Capitalism. By definition, Capitalism is the very antithesis of the Greater Good. If you must stick to Capitalism, at least don’t let it run roughshod over us again. At least limit Executive Compensation to fifty or so times what the lowest-paid Employee or “Independent Contractor“ makes. There are plenty of highly talented people very capable of running any Executive Management, and there’s no Greater Good reason to keep that kind of power exclusively in the hands of people driven primarily by greed.
Section VIII: Right to Privacy
* Need to define “not biologically related”. Siblings, cousins, second-cousins, third-, fourth-, whatever, you have to draw the line somewhere, else nobody could marry anyone at all.
* Why limit a marriage to only two people?
Section X: Separation of Powers and Governmental Integrity
* Appointments should require multiple Nominees from whom our Senate selects the final Appointee. This way we get the Best of the Best (or Least of the Worst) our Presidents have to offer. And, there’s an automatic backup Appointee. (Our Senate could implement this right now if it wanted, since it writes its own rules. But then it could also deimpliment it later on.)
* The Executive should have an entity similar to a Police Department Internal Affairs office, empowered to suspend pending investigation any Officer from the President on down, given probable cause to believe they’re lawbreaking, and fulfill the duties of the suspended officer during suspension. Honest, ethical Officers won’t try anything illegal anyway; investigations into their behaviors would be quick and only minorly disruptive. Corruption would be stopped dead in its tracks, before taking root and doing so much damage, so much damage, and the duties of the suspect would not just fall onto some lackey. Under the Tenth Amendment, this entity could be answerable to the States, not the Feds. There is no scare-scenario persuasion the proponents of Unitary Executive Theory can put forth that is worse than Reality right now.
* Our Supreme Court should be required to measure its decisions against the Preamble to our Constitution. Any Legislation that does not conform to those ideals should be stricken down.
* Age limit all Appointees, not just the top positions.
Section XI: Statehood
* States should be allowed to secede, but incentivized to stay.
Section XII: Enforcement
* This Amendment should supersede previous conflicting provisions.
* This Amendment should be effective immediately.
Great ideas, but I agree it is too much for one amendment. We could start with a dictionary definition of a “person,” making clear that corporations and other for-profit entities are not persons.
Also, how would your Supreme Court justices be selected?
Also need to deal with “private equity” companies.
Define Good, in the case of healthcare. I want to be on that committee!
You want corps to be people. Absent that, they couldn’t sue and be sued. The problem w Citizens Untied isn’t the conclusion that corps are people- that’d been established for 125 years prior. The problem is that it effectively allowed bribery.
I’m certainly no lawyer. I suppose there are ways around that bribery part.
Sorry but there is way too much in this amendment to pass. Too many will find something they disagree with even if they agree with most of it and for that reason will oppose it.
Snap elections if Congress cannot adopt a balanced budget.
Oregon's constitution has more than 200 amendments; it doesn't function so well either.
It’s pretty to think so. An overwhelming victory and replacement of the fake anti-court is needed.
This is an unserious pipe dream. It is absent any recognition of the methods of ratification or consideration of the current electorate’s political discourse. If the ERA couldn’t get ratified, this is laughable.
Section VIII:3 seems unnecessary. Generation after generation after generation of first-cousin (etc.) marriages is extremely unlikely and one marriage between one set of cousins is not the problem. This amendment seems VERY long. Other than these two points, however, I am FOR it.
Isn’t this kind of absurdly large? If you want to pass a bunch of amendments, it might be easier to pass an amendment that makes it easier to pass an amendment (like 55% instead of 2/3 in both chambers to send an amendment off for maybe 3/5 of states to ratify?). Then subsequent amendments wouldn’t be so rare