Congressional Reform Act of 2011

I've copied and pasted the text of an email sent to me.  

See this link for formal debunking.

My comments are below in red italics. I skip the debunking and proceed to the guts of the issue.

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Very important   

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why?  Simple!  The people demanded it.  That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.

Texas adopted the 26th Amendment on April 27, 1971. I was 9 years old and don't recall whether "The people demanded it" or not.  It sounds like a good idea but I disagree with allowing anyone under 21 to vote.

Hitting the 18th birthday doesn't make one a voter.  This is a responsibility I've too often seen teenagers treat unfairly. A few more years of exploring humanity and its implications is usually necessary to vote wisely.

Q: Lebsack, We 18-year-olds can drink alcohol and fight wars - You don't think we should vote?

A: Darn tootin', Bucky, you're too young. 

Children have been drinking heavily and defending themselves against aggression since we walked out of the Garden - this doesn't mean they're smart enough to vote.  I say Let's give the squirts a few more years of seasoning to learn to make wise decisions ....and about the drinking age (We don't really enforce the drinking age, we enforce age modified alcohol sales/possession plus we've got laws against drunkenness... make that public drunkenness.) - it should be repealed - whether a child drinks should be a parental responsibility.  I disapprove of ever giving more power to the state.

Your argument about war fighting is silly.  The United States typically sends immatures to fight wars but that doesn't make it right. 

Anyone of any age has the right to defend themselves and their freedom against foreign aggression but you're not referring to self-defense. You're talking about joining the military for lack of any better option then being sent to fight a synthetic war.  This is both another issue for another day and it doesn't translate to a privilege to vote for public policy/public officials.

 

Of  the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the  land... all because of public  pressure. 

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.  This is one  idea that really should be passed  around.
Congressional Reform Act of 2011
1.  Term  Limits.
 12 years only, one of the possible options  below..
   A. Two Six-year Senate terms

Disagree - 

One Six-year Senate term... plus the 17th Amendment should be repealed.

The founders meant for the Representatives to represent the people.

The founders meant for the Senators to represent the states.

Representatives should be elected by majority vote.
Senators were originally chosen by any method that state chose - voting, appointment, rock/paper/scissors (method is not important) - they went to the Senate to cast votes not according to their own desire but as INSTRUCTED by their state.  Since the states sent them to Washington DC the state could easily recall them if they failed their duty.  Often the governor or state legislature chose the senators.  Same story, if the governor or state legislators failed their duty they could be recalled.  
It's not so easy today with Senators being elected by popular vote for multiple terms.
Little term/ little damage.
Lots of terms/ lots of damage.






   B. Six Two-year House terms

Disagree - two two-year terms max.

 Plus - No Representative should be eligible to ever be in the Senate and vice-versa.

   C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
You're just asking for trouble.

2. No Tenure / No  Pension.
 A  Congressman collects a salary while in office and  receives no pay when they are out of  office. 

I'll leave this up to the individual states which should decide for themselves how to compensate those they send to the U.S. Congress.  

The federal government should pay them NOTHING.  The states send them to D.C. - let the states pay them.


3. Congress (past, present & future) participates  in Social  Security.  All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to  the Social Security system immediately.  All  future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American  people.

see item #2 above
4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan,  just as all Americans do.

copy/paste
5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.  Congressional pay will rise by the  lower of CPI or 3%.

control C/control V
6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American  people.

7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
Do you really want to make this happen?

See item #2 above.  

Let each individual state provide for their own Congress persons while they are in D.C.


Salary
Staff
Housing
Junkets
Office
Research
all of it
The federal government supplies Congress with a roof ONLY - the U.S. Capitol building.
Talk about a cost cutting measure - turn in some faulty accounting to the folks back home and you're looking for a new job - as it should be.

8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/11. The  American people did not make this contract with  Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.  Serving  in Congress is an honor, not a career. The  Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then  it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.  THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!   If  you agree with the above, pass it on.   If not, just delete it.
Please keep it going.

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Where Would You Choose To Live ??

http://drhurd.com/index.php/Daily-Dose-of-Reason/Politics-Government/Why-Obama-and-People-Like-Him-Hate-Israel.html

Hank Rearden Voice Mail

Plastic - Worth It's Weight In Petroleum

Plas-tastic !!

Fruit, vegetables, meat, grains -  

All safely stored and transported in plastic containers.

All harvested with machinery using plastic parts.

All fresh, clean, nutritious.  

Lacking plastic, our food supply would be much smaller and much weaker.

People would die, like they have been for the entire history of mankind.
Plastic - One more tool to clean our food, extend our lives, make life better.

Mike Rawlings Wants To Be Dallas Boss of Schools

I received an advertisement by post encouraging me to vote Mike Rawlings for Dallas Mayor.  

Four pages, folded, full bleed color, card stock - very well printed.  

Too bad that the content is sloppily written and poorly reasoned.  

Maybe the people of Dallas are stupid.

It got a bit wrinkled from being stuffed into a fanny pack and transported by  bicycle.

The complete document can be found on Scribd.com

I've pasted much of it below with comments.

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"A good Mayor can’t sit back and be silent on education. It’s an issue that touches us all, and impacts our children, our economy and our future as a city." Mike Rawlings

Our children ?? No.

I don't have children and I don't accept responsibility for educating the children of others, much to their relief.

My parents were both teachers, and my son will start teaching next year, so for me, education is personal. 

I'm happy for your parents, not quite so thrilled for your son.  

Education IS personal - so personal that 

THE CITY COUNCIL SHOULD STAY OUT OF IT. 

It changed my life, and it can change the lives of so many of our Dallas families if we can just get it right.

"Just get it right"?  You don't sound very confident.

"Ay, there's the rub." You won't get it right... but don't feel bad... you cannot get it right. You're making yourself a volunteer, an un-asked for volunteer.

The education industry is not the responsibility of the Mayor.  If you want Hinojosa's job, apply for it.

Some people think that reducing crime will grow our city. Well, our crime has gone down over the past few years Kunkle agrees and people are still moving to the suburbs. I think they are leaving for better schools. 

Ya think??

Our parents shouldn’t be forced to choose between sending their children to an academically unacceptable school or moving to the suburbs. 

Agreed, Mr. Rawlings, which is why you should allow (how sad that we must beg) parents to educate their children, not the government.  

I doubt you'll ever go logically forward with your own statement.

Fact is, we cannot be a great city without great public schools, You know this isn't true, even more so than I and stronger schools will build stronger neighborhoods. 

That’s why, as Mayor, I will implement a comprehensive and sustainable plan to help improve our public schools. We must be accountable as leaders, and as a community, for helping educate our schoolchildren – because it’s an issue that touches us all.

I thought you wanted to be Mayor of Dallas?  Oh, I see, your method of getting elected is a straw man - promote solutions to issues over which you have no authority.  It's certainly easier than tackling a problem head on.

Wait, maybe I'm not seeing through you as well as I thought.  Do you plan to Obama DISD ??, to just run it without mandate or authority of any kind?  Keeping reading, kids.

The only way to fix the school system is to remove government from the school system.

Injecting yourself into the mix as Mayor will not work.  

We'll wait and see.  Let's come back later and see if the graduates of DISD's 2021 high schools are better educated than the graduates of DISD's 2011 high schools.

A sustainable plan to help public schools.

Impacting policy.
As Mayor, Mike will create an Urban Mayors Task Force, calling on the Mayors of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio to lobby Washington and Austin for public government school funding in our urban areas that need help the most.

Why not call on the Mayors of Mesquite, Flower Mound, Venus and Melissa? Because Big Mayors demand big money.  

"Throw more money at the problem and we'll solve it."  
Where does that money comes from? Who are you asking to fund Dallas schools?  These people. 
Is this the way you ran Pizza Hut?

These areas represent more than 50% of the state’s population, and already use their collective firepower interesting metaphor to lobby for critical transportation dollars – we should be doing the same for our schools.
These transportation dollars of which you speak are not used well in urban areas.  They're used to build highways that destroy urban areas.

Organizing an Education Army.
Mike will use the Mayor’s office as a bully pulpit to recruit and engage a volunteer force to support our schools. We can start by engaging the more than 300,000 seniors living in Dallas DISD cannot do this without the help of the Mayor's office?, many of whom are looking for volunteer activities We certainly cannot afford to pay them and a way to give back they TOOK nothing to the community. From staffing reading programs, to initiating PTA chapters in schools that don’t have them organized Why haven't the parents done this?, to helping with tutoring and mentoring – the manpower is out there The Teacher's Union may have something to say about this to help, and Mike will lead to identify, organize and put it to work for schools.  Are you going to fix the streets?

Leveraging private resources. DISD does this already.  Even childless individuals know this as 'school taxes'.
As Mayor, Mike will create an umbrella group – one point of entry and dispatch read this as "I'll be the boss, I'll control the coffers." – for the dozens of non-profit groups that want to help education but are currently sittin' in the shade relaxing due to lack of real leadership. By organizing and leveraging these private and non-profit resources, we can provide the funding and human capital for big advances – like working to promote neighborhood and parental involvement Parent's are not currently involved?, providing new technologies for the classroom  that may be cut in the upcoming state budget You've heard about that?, and helping support arts and athletics that suffer from Dallas ISD cuts. 
DISD's current management is incompetent, huh?

Improving communications.
As Mayor, Mike will initiate regular meetings and exchanges between City and Dallas ISD leadership to communicate and collaborate on how best to leverage resources.  
How can I put this gently?  
There is a reason the citizens have chosen to keep separate the governing of the City and of the Schools. One example is consolidating Dallas ISD Police and the Dallas Police to improve effciency and put more dollars into classrooms. Like the governance, the people of Dallas choose to not have the Dallas Police Department roaming the campuses.  If and when it is needed, they'll let you know. And, Mike will work to hold all parties accountable to a measurable metric of success that demonstrates progress and rebuilds faith in our public school system.

Who has the right plan to help our schools?

Mike Rawlings
see above

David Kunkle

No plan for education. 

I agree.  Education planning should done by the parents directing the  DISD Board of Trustees. They have hired a Superintendent Of Schools and other staff as they deem necessary.  

Ron Natinsky

Will “push us all to find innovative partnerships,”and will participate in existing programs. Will also “promote worldwide our educational assets and push for new ones.”

Mike Rawlings is not worried about RN's chances.

Dr. Michael Hinojosa

Of course not, what does he know about education?



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Mr. Rawlings - 

Good luck with the campaign and your potential term as Mayor of Dallas. 

I certainly hope you prioritize and learn that unearned money is wrong.