Quote:
Originally Posted by
MCP-001
A bicameral legislature is necessary step to make sure that unpopular, ill-conceived legislation does not pass in the legislature easily.
The problem is that a bicameral legislature does not prevent unpopular, ill-conceived legislation from passing easily. It only means that someone with a bad piece of legislation in the House needs to find someone with a bad piece in the Senate. The two collaborate and it moves forward.
A bicameral legislature only makes the process of governing more expensive.
Quote:
The idea was to create a balance between the populated and rural areas of Michigan, similar to how the US Senate was originally set up balance out rural and populated states, until the SCOTUS Reynolds v. Sims decision. The idea was so that populated area, like Detroit, couldn't impose unpopular laws on rural areas of Michigan like the U.P..
Except that that's not how it's set up under our current constitution. Districts in the Michigan Senate has always been based on population.
Quote:
This was created after the legislature got themselves into hot water several years back by perpetually giving themselves raises. It was created as an "escape hatch", so to speak, to get the raises without actually having to vote on them. The legislature also wrote it in that they must vote to NOT accept a pay raise.
Well, duh! Of course, the Legislature wants a system where they automatically get a pay raise. The question is: Why should be keep a Constitution in place that gives it to them?
Quote:
Because Michigan Voters WANTED term limits back in '92. It passed by about 60-40, and prevented us from having perpetual politicians like Levin, Dingell and Conyers who rack up trillions in debt, support bad legislation and represent their political party more than they do their home district.
My question is why do we still have them?
Term limits haven't solved any of those problems. We still have career politicians, they just move around more frequently.
The only thing that term limits have done is to make the bureaucracy more entrenched.
Quote:
Let me give you your analogy another way.
The people who write laws and democrats and republicans.
The people who will get spots writing a new constitution [[if approved), will be democrats and republicans. They don't give a rat's tail what you want, they will do the bidding of their party masters. Once a new constitution is written, it will become a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
So, if you are looking at a new car, do you really want one that was built by Toyota?
So, what? You keep a Constitution that we know does not work because you don't want to have to risk rejecting another version of it in a couple of years.
We've hit rock bottom. The worst thing that can happen is that a Convention produces a version just like the one we have now.