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Oligarchic Senate Still ‘Treasonous’ After All These Years : Information Clearing House - ICH

Where are gutsy muckrakers of yesteryear? In a stunning 1906 Cosmopolitan expose, journalist David Graham Phillips made history with his headline, “The Treason of the Senate.” He then justified his condemnation of mercenary senators, then cherrypicked by states and owned by nefarious Trusts:

Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the
situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of
interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be.

By 1914, the 17th Amendment mandated senators be popularly elected but, judging by today’s unevolved results, we have not yet salvaged one of the Founders' worst blunders. This American replica of the House of Lords, our least democratic, least representative organ, lives on, still the blockage after all these years.

You’d think franchising ex-slave descendants, non-land-owning men and wise women would save us? Yet our pretend elections, especially when counting votes tests southern I.Q.’s, only obscure contemporary 1906-style corruption. We pay senators from, say, Oklahoma as dumb as posts, as willfully ignorant about science and economics as history, hence easy pickings for modern “trusts” run by smarter executives. Beyond the energy, mining, banking and endless war cartels, robber barons of health will spend $400 million fighting reform just this year, on top of $50 million channeled to Senate Finance committee members. None dare call that treason, just good business.
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A Senate Unfit to Rule

Our decadent Senate epitomizes privilege and prerogative, seniority and senility (often rescued only by death) – guaranteed to be a generation in arrears. Over decades, elections (if fair) may displace uninformed, petty tyrants inconvenienced by majority rule. But do we have decades? That leaves only Constitutional redress: correcting outdated, dysfunctional institutions is why Jefferson endorsed political revolutions every generation. The majority must act by invoking the amendment process.

The urgency of now: in one regard, this country is worse off than in the 1930’s. The duration and severity of that depression empowered a strategic team of leaders – a progressive president and co-operative, post-medieval Congress. Together, this alliance achieved massive, historic advances: old-age pensions, serious regulations like Glass Stiegal, genuine pump-priming, and more – proving government the best cure to our worst excesses. Where's today's team or any urgency?

Instead of a first-rate starting team, we’re saddled by minor-league treachery by intellectual midgets. Today’s Senate may not be the most corrupt of all time, but the gap between its fitness and foresight vs. what must be done for survival has never been greater. The problems are global, complex and daunting, thus the small, partisan minds that clawed their way into power are wholly inadequate to the task.
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Reality always works for someone. The status quo is just peachy for the 1% haves, especially when have-nots are manipulated to vote against their interests. Do we have another 225 years’ leeway before the second Constitutional Convention? If political gridlock is not reversed, then Gore Vidal’s ominous prophecy applies, leaving open only the kind of banana republic we’ll become. ....