Zimbler,
re: "I'd love to hear what you would like to have had incorporated into the Constitution."
I haven't made a formal project out of this, so I'm going to omit more things by far than I'm going to state. Excuse me for that, though it's probably for the best. A complete list would take months to write and amount to a few dozen pages.
Also (everyone), please don't nitpick me over semantics or little errors if you do get the gist of my point. Disagree if you wish. Adding improvements would be great. But please don’t nitpick. I don't have that sort of time. I’m assembling this quickly to address topics I remember complaining about over the years... but there are going to be holes, I'm sure. Either logical failings I didn't think through, or stipulations I forgot to make.
Most of my comments are in areas where I believe the intent of the more prominent Founders failed to be followed but SHOULD have been. I, by the way, most admire Jefferson.
My goal in any Constitutional changes would be to greatly weaken the Central government and return most control to the individual states. In a free society, citizens MUST have the right to depart when a government is intolerable. That means that an alternative must be reasonably available. Fifty individual states gives Americans that kind of flexibility. Fifty clones that kowtow to an all-powerful Central Authority does not.
States joined the Union voluntarily. They should be allowed to leave voluntarily - after making reasonable payment for U.S. property they take and doing the same for citizens who do not opt to go with their seceding state.
All federal laws should sunset.
Term limits should be enacted to eliminate most of the political Lifers. Eight years is plenty for any elected Federal position.
Primary sources of federal funds should include corporate income taxes, tariffs, and property taxes. Very little else (that I can think of). Goodbye personal income tax (which is actually theft in a BARTER situation. I give my time; you pay me what my time is worth; there has been no GAIN to tax!)
Borrowing from my earlier post: If the Constitution had a few additional checks to ensure that there would always be a healthy fear [of god or other mysterious authority] in the judges who legislate, the congressmen who vote against their own state sovereignty, the presidents who would be king, and the people who do not take up arms against an overarching, irresponsible government, we would be in far better shape today. Checks should primarily be established to prevent mid- and long-term collusion between the branches based on party association, and to motivate officials to do their jobs. Someone else can brainstorm and delineate what those might be or how they should work; I haven't thought them through.
No elected official should earn more than the average American worker.
After leaving office, no elected official should be exempt from laws and programs affecting other Americans except for the President who should receive special consideration for 15 years.
Elected officials convicted of criminal or other misbehavior should receive penalties approximately ten times those of ordinary Americans who commit comparable crimes.
The budget should be balanced. It should be directly correlated to changes in the GDP. If the economy improves 2%, spending can improve 2%. If the GDP goes down, so must the spending.
Money should be backed (intelligently, of course.) Fiat money ALWAYS eventually fails. It is why we are now undergoing QE-1..QE-2..QE-3..QE-4..QE-INFINITY, even though most Americans don’t yet know or believe that sad fact.
Voting –State assemblies select Senators, as they did prior to 1913. Only tax-paying property owners can vote for Representatives and for the President. Presidential votes are weighted by the average property taxes paid in the prior five years. And yes, this means that Bill and Melinda Gates’ votes for President carry thousands of times the weight of yours or mine.
Congressmen who vote for war MUST send two members of their immediate family (father, mother, sister, brother, child) into combat, or go themselves.
Presidents who wage undeclared war (90+ days) shall be removed from office.
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