Florida Constitutional Amendment - Article III, Section 20
Standards for legislature to follow in Congressional redistricting
Congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party. Districts shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Districts must be contiguous. Unless otherwise required, districts must be compact, as equal in population as feasible, and where feasible must make use of existing city, county, and geographical boundaries.
Now consider Step 14 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:"
Step 14 - stop configuring Congressional districts to almost guarantee the reelection of incumbents.
Both ideas, Step 14 and the Florida ballot initiative are remarkably similar, especially when you read some of the underlying thoughts regarding Step 14:
- Avoid situations like the Congressional District 6 in New Jersey where you have physically cross over into another district in order to hit all parts of District 6, i.e. District 6 is not contiguous.
- Ensure that the widest geographic diameter of a district is no more than three times the diameter of the shortest diameter, consistent with the "districts must be compact" criteria of the Florida ballot question.
- No district should spill over into more than two counties unless two counties do not provide enough residents to justify one Congressional district, similar to the criteria above of "using existing city, county, and geographic boundaries."
- District 5 is a Republican New Jersey Congressional district that starts in the upper northeast part of the state, runs along the whole northern border to the upper northwest corner of the state where it makes an abrupt left hand turn and comes down the western side of the state.
- District 12 is a Democratic district that runs from the western border of the state all the way east to the Atlantic Ocean, the eastern border, crossing five counties (almost 25% of the counties in New Jersey). Along the way from the western edge to the eastern edge of New Jersey, it meanders up and down, left and right, suiting the whims of the Democrats in order to create a Democratic dominated district.
Same thing with a Republican voter in District 12. Their votes will rarely matter since the Democrats have stacked that district with Democratic-like voters. Eventually, these minorities in these districts will stop voting since their votes do not matter, due to the configurations of their districts. And once people stop voting because their votes really do not matter, our democracy suffers while the political class gets more powerful and more entrenched.
Congratulations to those people in Florida that worked hard to get the two ballot initiatives on fixing the voting district problem in the state approved and on the ballot. I am sure a lot of work went into obtaining the necessary petition signatures required to put these issues on the ballot and they probably faced any number of legal and other challenges from incumbent Florida politicians who did not want to see these types of freedom enhancing questions get to the general voting population.
While the above two ballot questions are binding and will be incorporated into the state Constitution if approved, the third ballot initiative is non-binding but is just as important:
Balancing the Federal Budget A Nonbinding Referendum Calling For An Amendment To The United States Constitution
In order to stop the uncontrolled growth of our national debt and prevent excessive borrowing by the Federal Government, which threatens our economy and national security, should the United States Constitution be amended to require a balanced Federal budget without raising taxes? Yes or no.
This ballot question is totally consistent with the spirit and meaning of Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government:"
Step 1 - establish a five year program that reduces the size of the Federal government budget and expenditures by 10% a year in all departments.
Both ideas want to get Federal spending under control before it bankrupts the country and sinks our democracy. The one small issue I have with the Florida resolution, and I am not being critical, is that we may not have enough time to go through the whole "amend the Constitution process." That process would likely take years since it would have to be approved on a state by state basis and the political class is likely to fight it logistically and legally in order to delay it every step of the way.
An example of such a delaying tactic is President Obama's refusal to start cutting the Federal budget now, preferring to wait for his commission on fiscal integrity to come up with their recommendations early next year. Not only is this a cowardly approach, refusing to make the tough decisions now in order to hide behind the commission's findings and recommendations, it is unnecessary since there are any number of things to do now, as outlined in "Love My Country. Loathe My Government," that would greatly reduce the Federal budget without damaging the nation's well being or security:
- Step 1 - there is plenty of waste and redundancy in government that we could start eliminating now. The Republicans have been trying to that via their YouVote program but every recommendation so far has been killed by the Democrats.
- Steps 9, 10,11,12 - would start addressing the entitlement problems we know we already have with Federal pensions and Social Security, we do not need a commission to tell us what these are two problem are.
- Step 5 - greatly increase the amount of investigations into fraud that occur within the income tax process and the Medicare/Medicaid processes, fraud that likely costs the Federal government hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
- Step 30 - bring back almost all foreign deployed U.S. troops and start trimming our defense budget. Our stationing of 50,000 or so U.S. troops in Germany, 50,000 in Japan and 30,000 in South Korea are from another world and another time, they all need to be brought home and the savings cashed in. Also, Obama needs to fulfill his campaign promise to bring ALL the U.S. troops home from Iraq, not leave 50,000 or so there indefinitely.
- Step 44 - among other things, this step would eliminate all Congressional earmarks, savings upwards of $20 billion a year.
These steps are what we could start doing now while the process to change the Constitution to require a balanced Federal government budget is underway to solve the problem permanently.
All three initiatives would go a long way to restoring freedom in America. Eliminating the gerrymandering of voting districts would re-empower those voters whose previous votes never mattered since they were placed into bogus and biased voting districts. Getting Federal spending under control would reduce the power over our lives that the political class currently has and should eventually keep more of our earnings and wealth in our pockets and out of the clutches of the Federal government budget. With more money in our pocket, our freedom to live where and how we want, how we educate our kids, our much we contribute to charities, whether or not we start a new business, and how much we spend to expand the economy is greatly enhanced. More freedom in our life, more money in our pockets. Thank you Florida for getting the process started.
Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
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