The Problem We All Ignore.

There is a serious systemic problem in the structure of the American government of which we are all aware, but which we all ignore and pretend that it does not even exist. This problem has the capability to destroy our government and has prevented the proper functioning of our government at least since the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is now becoming magnified with every legislative session.

This problem is the United States Senate. It must be changed or it will destroy the American nation.

I am not speaking about the bi-camelarization of the legislative process, certainally not the staggered terms of the senate which provides continuinity. I am speaking about the democratic process itself and that of republican representation. This resulted from a great compromise at the beginning of our country that balanced the cities with the rural areas. Now, we have
rural states with enormously greater proportional representation than the more populated states. This results in an effective denial of proper representation for large numbers of Americans. For example, the 2.5 million members of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota and Alaska have the same voting power as the 100 million people in California, Texas, New York and Florida. To put it another way, each person is Wyoming has the same clout in the Senate as 70 Californians. Or another way, the population in the city of Tampa, Florida has the voting power as one-third of the total population of the entire United States.

As the world moves into new realms of international complexity and finds itself dealing with problems involving global pollution, nuclear weapons, international terrorism, a rapidly growing globalization of international economies, America is still dealing with a horse-and -buggy legislative structure to draft national laws largely due to a Senate that is still serving a sparcely populated, rural nation. The United States in 2009 passed the point at which most of its citizens now live in urban areas. As more and more Americans move into industrailized and urbanized areas which are concerned with issues such as light rail transportation, gun control, health care, higher education and other issues, their per-capita voting power in the Senate decreases and that of those people who remain in rural areas continues to grow in proportion.

According to Wikipedia on 2009.1103Tu2326 ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
As of July 1, 2008, the estimated population of the 50 states and District of Columbia was 304,059,724. The top nine states in population contain slightly more than half of the total population. But they are represented by only 18 senators. The twenty-five lowest-population states contain less than one-sixth of the total population. But they have half, 50, of the total senators - the other half of the senate represents 5/6 of the US

Additionally, too often the rural states with low populations have prevented the nation from action desired by the majority of the people such as the restriction of civil-rights laws by southern states in the 1950s and 1960s. Or as we see in today’s health care debates.

So what to do? 1. become aware of the problem, of its magnitude and possible consequences. 2. create a discussion group to talk or write about it. 3. find important criteria for alternatives. 4) To explore possible alternative structures. 5) Publicize the issue.