Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

As for changing my mind, I will support ANY political candidate that will uphold the Constitution and favor a small and limited government. Right now, most of those appear to be some of the new comers in the Republican party. Not all, but most. 

That would go hand in hand with limiting the power of government agents to infringe upon the rights of a person outside the most highly extreme situations, correct?

Since we've basically fully devolved in to politics here

And peacefully, I would add, which makes me proud to be here.

My proposal involves big business making big investments in communities, creating shopping, jobs, better infrastructure. It involves people like us making small donations to help fund better activities for children and equipment for sports, etc.

It involves people like donating our time to help promote the message and build trust. I'd start with community elders, to try and build trust.

Back to the state government. So in this case the people of the state are not the state, but the politicians are.

We had the 17th amendment chat a while back. And in the most neutral way, it struck me as an interesting brand of elitism. I'm not saying that in terms of bringing any baggage with it. In a lot of decision-making, elitism is a benefit (a person with elite engineering knowledge should be in charge of engineering projects). But when we say, the people who select senators should be state reps and governors rather than the people of a state, we're arguing for elitism.

No... Respectfully, you missed the point of that discussion.

It's that we are a federal republic, and that each individual state may have desires and incentives that are unique to them as an entity.

One of those desires is that prior to the 17th amendment, to some extent each individual state guarded its autonomy in certain areas. The state legislatures didn't necessarily WANT to cede power to DC. That was true whether it was California or Wyoming or Rhode Island. 

Originally the House was to represent the peoples' interests, and the Senate was to represent the states' interests. The 17th Amendment made the Senate just a slightly different version of the House.

The original makeup of the Senate was, IMHO, designed to create one additional brake on power moving from state capitals to DC. 

Real constitutional questions: 

1) Does the Supreme Court have the power to overturn a law that Congress passed on the basis that the Supreme Court thinks Congress relied on the wrong data to support its findings?

2) Does the executive branch have the authority to take money that Congress allocated for one thing, and unilaterally decide to instead use it for something else? 

3) What governs the President's use of executive order?

4) Does the President have the unilateral right to terminate a foreign treaty that another president and congress previously approved?

5) Do Americans have any right to privacy?

6) What powers does the Tenth Amendment reserve for the people?


I don't necessarily disagree on the Department of Education. It's primary role, as I understand it, is to fund food and special education programs. Those could be the states' responsibility. Congress could block grant/delegate the authority to spend that money to the states, with appropriate oversight. Of course, the federal government took on these responsibilities because of the impression that states weren't appropriately addressing them. This is a small fraction of government spending, but it's something to look at.

How much streamlining in the tax code are you up for? Eliminating various line-item deductions? No more 401K, no more home mortgage deduction, no more child tax credit? No distinction between personal and business taxes? No distinction between wealth and income taxes?

I've met SF Badger, he's a stand up guy, no doubt.  He's trying to do the right thing, even if he is a lawyer.

Uh-oh; I feel like I must have missed something here... :-)

Not to mention, politicians already lean extremely heavily into the donation market - not sure that has been a beneficial development.

I'm not for reparations, as in writing a check.

None of these people were slaves, and their ancestors would not have been slaves had their previous owners (rich black people in Africa) had not sold them to rich white people.


Now, if you want to talk about reparations in a different light, I'm happy to go there. Things like investment in their communities, schools, businesses, infrastructure, jobs, etc.

That's how this gets fixed. Not talking about it.

DOING IT.

I'm not talking about reparations for slavery.
I'm talking about all the crappy illegal/unconstitutional stuff the government has done to them since slavery was abolished.