Governors of 35 states have already filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (� of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.
Really important! Hope you all do it!
This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.
An idea whose time has come;
For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn't pay into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform that is being considered...in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop. This is a good way to do that. It is an idea whose time has come.
Have each person contact a minimum of Twenty people on their Address list, in turn ask each of those to do likewise.
In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.
Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ."
While this proposed Amendment makes a hell of a lot of sense and I am all for this as an idea, there are some problems here. Since I am feeling a little lazy this morning (and I really want to bang this out so I can get to work on another project) I just dropped by snopes.com and did a little checking. Right off the bat I found something else that made sense. That being that the above proposed amendment is a little too broadly worded to come out the end of either a constitutional convention or a congressional debate unscathed and unchanged. Of course "we" can circumvent the congressional debate but remember that the "we" that can do this are still politicians, most of which are "lifers" that likely want to continue on in their career path and are probably just smart enough to realize that if they passed such a bill it would first off be mostly meaningless and secondly (if it ended up having any teeth at all) would come back to bite them and their colleagues in the a$$. To the meaninglessness of this (amendment and the assumtions on which it is presented in the email) I present quoted text from snopes.com with a few links.
- Can members of Congress retire with full pay after serving only a single term?
No. This is a long-standing erroneous rumor which we cover in a separate article.
- Are members of Congress exempt from paying into Social Security?
- Are members of Congress exempt from prosecution for sexual harassment?
- Did members of Congress try to exempt themselves from current health care reform legislation?
No. As noted in our article about Congressional pensions, although Congress initially participated in the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) rather than Social Security, since 1984 all members of Congress have been required to pay into the Social Security fund.
No. The passage of
No. This claim was based on the erroneous assumption that congressional efforts to establish a "public option" for health insurance would have required everyone (except members of Congress) to participate in a new federal insurance plan. The proposed legislation would merely have required everyone (including members of Congress) to have health insurance that met minimum benefit standards, and to that end called for the creation of insurance exchanges which would offer health insurance plans to those who could not otherwise afford insurance plans meeting the minimum benefits criteria.
In fact, the final version of the health care reform legislation that was eventually passed in March 2010 stated that "Members of Congress and congressional staff" will only have access to plans that are created by the health care bill or offered through the exchanges established by the bill:
(D) MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN THE EXCHANGE.
(i) REQUIREMENT — Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after the effective date of this subtitle, the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are:
(I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or
(II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).
(A suggestion by Louisiana Congressman John Fleming that "members of Congress should be forced to enroll themselves in the health care plan they vote for" is therefore moot.) (i) REQUIREMENT — Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after the effective date of this subtitle, the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are:
(I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or
(II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act).
And finally, I think Gore Vidal said it best when he said this, "We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarized republic. The founding fathers hated two things, one was monarchy and the other was democracy, they gave us a constitution that saw to it we will have neither. I don't know how wise they were." (Thanks Spencer for the quote.)
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