The Government's Legal Right to Lie in Legislation: USC Title 1—GENERAL PROVISIONS Ch. 1: RULES OF CONSTRUCTION

There is an issue with special interest groups drafting and lobbying (bidding effectively) for legislation in the auction thay is Congress. Establishing a lobbying cap per entity (assuming they’re redefined) would limit the influence of conglomerates vs. individuals. You and me should still have the ability to drafy legislation and have it sponsored by our representative, we need not to bar the creation of law from our citizens.

Can you expand that idea?

You and I probably agree that there is too much corporate influence on congress. We probably agree that no lobbying organization or special interest group should write the laws that congress passes (with any luck debating their merits on the record before passing them :pleading_face:) . What I don’t understand is how you would define, using your term, a ‘lobbying cap’ per entity. Why not, instead, disallow lobbying, as we know it today, altogether? Replace the system with one wherein when any member of government, be it congress or any other entity, must go on the record beforehand announcing that they are going to consult with a lobbyist or lobbying organization and then holding those consultations in public. While there might be circumstances where those consultations might involve corporate ‘secrets’ of value, I suspect those occasions are few and far between. Perhaps using a skiff with audit by a ‘trusted’ agency (FBI or other government regulator not involved in the issues discussed) might handle those situations.

My concern, though, is that worrying about lobbying from corporations is a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic after hitting the iceberg. My goal would be to eliminate corporations from participating in the political process altogether - ESPECIALLY BARRING THEM FROM CONTRIBUTING FUNDS THAT WILL ULTIMATELY BE USED TO SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN OF ANY CANDIDATE OR TO PUT FORTH ANY POLITICAL AGENDA OR CAUSE. It seems a small price to pay for all the privileges granted to corporations and their stockholders.

While it may seem odd to protect corporte rights of the rights of special interests, what a corporation can be defined as varies a lot. I could file as a corporation for my business, and if said company had multiple employees, lobbying through the entity with public consultations would be more consolidated for legislature rather than individually.

The issue with lobbying is that a locally owned store, organized as a corporation or not, could not effectively achieve a large enough voice in the auction that is Congress without a level ‘paying’ field. I would agree with an end to lobbying all together, but it’s technically protected in the 1st Amendment as a form of filing for grievances.

Yet I would agree that all entities other than US citizens as individuals should be barred from lobbying, allong with a cap set on the amount of funds alloted per person; with direct paths to either funding for the proposed program or into the US treasury, granted the issue of a deficit budget ever gets fixed. Exactly that, defined as a ‘dollar limit’ that can be lobbied per individual per any bill.

You should read through the ‘Taxation without Representation’ thread above, as it pretains more to what you’re talking about.

This thread refers to a piece of US Code that has allowed courts to skew the meaning of legisaltion and grant corporations the same rights and privileges as people.

Capping campaign funds and ensuring public donation paths is a must.

Why not amend the constitution to say that entities not born of woman cannot participate in the political process in any manner. They (entities not born of woman) cannot speak to support candidates or causes not specific to themselves, cannot provide funds or any other thing of value to support candidates or causes, and cannot lobby congress for favor or redress either directly on behalf of themselves or any group to which they belong.

Given that the world might be on the cusp of artificial intelligence and maybe even cyborgs, we probably should be reconsidering whether I government is defined for humans, exclusively, or whether artificial entities - be they legal constructs such as corporations, LLCs, etc. - or machines constructed by man or other machines are equally protected by the constitution.

We are going to be forced to recognize that human rights are not the same as rights granted under law to non-human entities and to treat the constitution and statutory law accordingly.

As you say, the future is upon us. We need wording that isn’t so… populist.

People may choose to grow their children in petri dishes in the future. We cannot stop them, we can only ensure their rights and liberties as individuals are protected. Who is to say how weird the future is going to get.

This one can’t get a blanket solve, each entity needs to be seperated and defined as what it literally is; forms of business and revenue streams vs. people with innate rights. I don’t think AI, which has a special interest group behind it’s functionality and programming, could be granted rights in it’s current form.

Adding wording defining entities born from women, which can make sense to people on the right, can be skewed and spun as ‘oppressive’ legislation by the left, or it’s media. Unity and non-partisan support is imperative to a successful reinstatement of our republican values.

As for the left or anyone twisting words and intent, anyone can do that to anything stated. Conversely, intent can be carefully stated and made clear. There are many techniques for doing so including repetition and restatement.

The principle question is whether our constitution creates rules for governing only humans or must accommodate all non-human possibilities. “Born of woman” is a phrase designed specifically to designate human beings, exclusively. There may be better ways to express that, but I’ve not yet found one. By establishing that he constitution is designed to define a government for human beings, then the left, nor anyone else, can posit that there is any intent to oppress.

I think you underestimate the degree to which AI has evolved and how fast its development will accelerate. Many involved in that community predict explosive development compounded constantly beginning next year or the one thereafter. Do a little experiment with numeric progressions: simple, geometric, logarithmic. Then apply compounded growth. Knowledgeable people are predicting compounded geometric growth rates for AI. They might be wrong, but I think we would be foolish to ignore the potential consequences.

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But you could just say ‘human beings’ and cut all the needless arguement about what a woman is with the left, if you get my reference. Obviously, anyone can skew the meaning of phrases, but the one phrase you’re selecting will cause focus to be aimed at the non-issue part of the phrasing.

Regardless, I still agree with you; technological growth and development will be even more exponential than previously with AI, which nations can handle/harness it, will progress.

This statement. 100%. Hah, our means and paths may be different but out goals are the same.

Spot on. I chose that phrase to avoid the possibility that courts might grant human status to entities not born of woman just as they have given personalty to corporations. Perhaps the phrase, “humans, born of woman” might suffice.

I chose that term more than a decade ago long before the crap about gender choice or gender reassignment was even discussed.

Good work, though. It helps to hone our language to express our intent.

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I might also be overthinking it due to the vast division in the country. There might not be much uproar about such phrasing, as the media seems to inflate non-issues like these. But explicitly stating that the rights are applied to humans and not legal structures or AI.

Manufacturing a majority who are programed to vote the way of special interest groups would be devastating to the function of our nation.

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Maybe 3/5ths or 2/3rds vote by a State legislature or petition (which is already legal) to enable a Federal Representative to step down and to instigate a temporary appointment until a special session election can take place next recess.

Exactly why i suggsted median wages. They would shift per the median wages of their constituents, this representing their financial situation more accurately. This would also creat financial incentive for constituents to increase the standard of industry in their given state/district.

I didn’t suggest set wages, Congressionally set wages. or additional layers.

Yes it will.

To add to this, lobbying should either be banned or capped per entity, as individuals could not outbid multinational corporations for beneficial legisaltion in the auction that is congress.

The problem is that members of congress must live in the DC area. All costs of living are higher in that area than almost anywhere else in the country (NY, LA, SF and maybe a few others excepted). Due to human nature, forcing representatives to live on the median salary of their districts would give the incentive to cheat, IMO, instead of raising wages in their districts.

While I applaud the intent, I believe your rationale to be immature and incomplete. (By ‘immature’ I don’t mean that it’s a function of your age. I mean that the concept has not been fully developed and thought through.

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Could you provide examples of how representatives would cheat their wages when theyd be based on the median income of their Constituents per a census?

If they cheated they’d get caught for fraud, hopefully audits dont go out the window in the future.

This hinges on publicized tax records for office holders.

Youd be tapping on another issue this hinges on too. DC is an Unconstitutional district. Maryland and Virginia need to annex DC, and unincorporate/decentralize our Union.

My remark about giving incentive to cheat was not with regard to their pay. They would find many other ways to increase their income due to the offices we elect them to serve in, just as they do today. Insider trading is rampant among members of congress. While I have no proof of it, bribes of various types are probably also common.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. To my knowledge no member of congress has absolute power :upside_down_face: but they all have more power than you or I have. I have no doubt that it corrupts them to some degree, more or less, depending on the individual. As they gain tenure, they have more and more power which is the most cogent argument for term limits . . . to curtail their power and ability to use it corruptly.

In my view, serving in any government office - elective, appointive, or by employment - is a public trust. I believe that abusing that public trust in any way should result in severe punishment, but the constitution effectively grants them sovereign immunity. The purported reason for granting such immunity is to prevent their being sued civilly thus distracting them from the performance of their duties. The posited position is that they are culpable for any criminal acts, but such are rarely pursued and when pursued to the point of conviction, almost never result in penalties that are severe enough to discourage others from following their example.

With tongue in cheek: I might suggest that the proper punishment for abuse of office whether criminal or not should result in sterilization of the perpertrator and all his/her progeny. It would go a long way toward cleaning up that slimy backwater in the gene pool.

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And not a bad one. Giving them govt housing - if of the same high calibre and quality as most public housing :money_mouth_face:- would insulate them from high DC housing costs.

enforcement of punishment is a must, and the people being punished cant do the punishing. 200%

@Ahr_Aitch @Jack0 i think we can all agree the DC Organic act of 1871 and the DC Home act of 1973 are intolerable acts that centralize Government unnecessarily.