The fewer the states, the better the union - Garrison Keillor

[Sapphire Blue]

Wednesday, November 29, 2006
The fewer the states, the better the union
By GARRISON KEILLOR

I'm sitting under a banyan tree in Honolulu with a big glass of pomegranate juice, and the sea is glittering and surfers are skimming in on low waves, and the election is over, so let's all relax and quit irritating one another. OK? Nancy Pelosi, the she-wolf from Sodom, is the madam of the House, so you Republicans just get over it. Cash in your blue chips and invest in gold ingots and maybe real estate in Costa Rica. The black helicopters have landed. Live with it.

Democrats intend to bring reform to Washington, and why not begin with the Senate? It has been sorely in need of reform for a century or so. Two senators per state is a good idea in theory, assuming they are half smart, but then you look at George Allen, a lumbering frat boy from the state of Madison and Jefferson, and you think, whoa, something is wrong with this picture. We need some horizontal control.

Let's start at the beginning and redraw the map. First of all, is there a reason for Wyoming to exist as a state? I have often wondered about this. Why give two Senate seats to a half-million dime-store cowboys while California gets two seats for 34 million people? (Wyoming has roughly the population of Sacramento.) It's OK if Wyoming sends somebody with brains and an independent streak, but when they send a couple of Republican hacks, it makes no sense.

(snip)

And that is how you create a permanent Democratic majority. Tom DeLay showed us the way. Learn from the master. Those dinkeldorfs who ran the show for 12 years must never be allowed to return to power. Take those suits to the cleaners. Subject them to alternative interrogation techniques until we get to the truth. George Allen would make a decent host of a daytime quiz show. He came dangerously close to running for president. Ai yi yi yi yi. Let's get to work.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/293953_garrison29.html?source=rss

[JanMichael]

1. kick. we have a stupid fuckin' system. redraw everything.

period .

[Warpy]

2. The Senate was designed that way for a purpose

back in the day, so that the rural south wouldn't find themselves governed entirely by the industrial north. While the House is supposed to represent the people, the Senate is supposed to represent the STATES. It's much the same today.

There have always been the occasional buffoons in the Senate. Saner parties than the GOP have kept them around for comedic relief but never given them much actual power. Reagan changed that when he gave the party to the lunatics. I have to think this is a temporary situation because people are getting heartily sick of being bullied by those lunatics.

Two things are overdue, though. One is raising the membership of the House to, say, 600. Any more than that and the whole thing gets unwieldy, but raising it that far might just help more people feel like they've actually got some representation.

The second thing is first changing the EC to make it proportional, and then abolishing it altogether. Conservatives would scream if we did it all at once, so making it redundant and then getting rid of it is the right course.

I'm always leery of tinkering with the Constitution. It's worked pretty well for over 200 years and been self correcting for most of it. If it manages to allow us to self correct again, perhaps it might be wiser to keep most of it as it is, including the Senate that seems to represent too many acres of empty land.