This piece by Ezra Klein is spot on — and very eloquently says what I’ve been saying for a half dozen years: Reform the Senate.
Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
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Hank Kalet 
Time to kill the direct election of Senators. Unfunded mandates on the States didn't happen them. Where is NJ going to come up with the 1B$ for it's share of the \”health care\” bill?Time to secede?
Time to end direct election of senators???????? Then who picks the senators? Oh yeah, then the state goofernments pick the senators as before the 17th amendment. They did such a great job, some state goofernments didn't get around to selecting a senator for years and that state had no representation in the senate for years. Taxed without representation. The population of those states was rightly outraged and thus we have direct elections of senators since 1913. And yet, libertarian still rants on about ending direct elections of senators which would not solve anything and would create a whole host of new problems. Libertarians hate democracy. Tough luck, we live in a representative democracy or a democratic republic. It is not a pure democracy but no one is calling for a pure democracy. Libertarians hate government but they want to keep the populace out of the legislative process and have the goofernment be all powerful by having state goofballernments select senators?? That does not compute but then again libertarianism is a junk cult full of inconsistencies.How many Americans would be willing to give up their right to vote for their senators (and to cede that to state legislatures or the governor)? Would right wing crazies like Jon Corzine or the Democratic dominated state legislature to select our senators?Secede from the union and have President Corzine or President Christie be the head of our ship of garden state?I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United counties of NJ and to the goofpublic for which it stands, one nation under Goofy with liberty and justice for all.
So where is that 1B$ coming from? I'm sure that either Corzine or Christie would have impressed \”our\” senators to get us a deal like Nebraska!The Dead Old White Guys wanted the popular will to be tempered and delayed so that calm cool heads could prevail rather than \”scratch my itch\” thinking. A republic is supposed to have minority rights. I'm a minority and I don't feel like I have any rights. Just the right to pay for more and more gooferment. While it does things that I am morally and fundamentally opposed to — aboirtion, war, welfare, and bigger and bigger gooferment. Where are my rights?