16 June 2009
Albany Tea Party No. 2
Here's an early report of the second "tea party" event to take place in Albany this year. The location this time was the State Capitol itself rather than the riverfront Corning Preserve. The event was scheduled before last week's state senate debacle, but that still-unfolding storyline may have swelled the ranks of today's protesters. Organizers were hoping for thousands, but this report puts turnout at hundreds, though more might appear during the afternoon depending on lunch hours and other details of scheduling. Again, organizers declare themselves non-partisan, but there is a decidedly anti-government slant to the right from what I've seen in photos brought back to the office. People are carrying signs calling for repeal of the 17th Amendment, for instance, or declaring that "Global Warming is a Fraud." I'm hoping that there might be video footage of the event for me to consult tonight. If any of it is worth embedding, I'll post it later.
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4 comments:
Repeal the 17th Amendment? (blink blink) I don't get it. Are they saying there should be no Senators? Are they saying the governor should appoint or the people should not vote? It doesn't seem to make much sense.
Maybe they mean there should be term limits on these people who keep getting re-elected somehow (Hum?) and then just do nothing for their constituents. I'm thinking maybe before the 17th ammendment that they couldn't be in that office for more than 6 years? If someone who knows the constitution well could respond, I'd like to know.
Of course, the person who made the poster may have meant the 16th Amendment, a constant annoyance to such people, but lost count. To answer Suzanne: state legislatures could re-elect U.S. Senators indefinitely before the amendment was passed. I suspect the protesters wouldn't want to give that power back to this state's legislators.
Presumably, if a Senator is doing a bad job, he wouldn't get re-elected. Of course, these days people vote for the party, not the candidate, which explains why we have such a poor track record insofar as our senators go.
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