Legislation, petition, intent and content

The Following is a Proposition Paper for the Jacksonian Party.

Anyone who tries to actually understand the legal and civil codes, along with legislation needs have some understanding in legal background. That is because the House and the Senate are chock-a-block with lawyers, who love putting in weasel wording to get exceptions and loopholes and other goodies that a plain intent document would not allow. Further, the actual Citizenry input to new legislation is virtually nil today as lobbyists use their contacts to push ideas of large groups that may or may not have the general interest at heart.

Jacksonians distrust this legislation at a distance idea fully.

So all legislation under a Jacksonian concept would have two main parts to it. The first is the INTENT part and the second the CONTENT part.

• Intent is the actual, plain language intent of the legislation as passed. Whenever adjudicated or set before a jury this part of the law is predominant as it describes the clear intent of Congress in passing the legislation being enacted into law. This will be limited to a 1,000 word document no longer than 2 paragraphs. Call it the legal abstract of intention.
• Content is the legal content to clarify how the Intent is to be carried out. That can be voluminous but is merely a way to clarify and regularize the Intent.

If a jury of common Citizens cannot understand the Content, then they shall use the Intent to guide them. To be ruled UnConstitutional the Intent must be at variance with the Constitution and the Court must demonstrate the problems between the Intent and the Constitution clearly. If a case is rejected based on poorly worded or otherwise not understandable Content, that portion of the law is held in abeyance, but the Intent is still the Law of the Land. Congress shall either redo the Content portion or clearly pass Legislation of Understanding that they will let normal Citizens rule on Intent ONLY. The Congress shall have 30 days to either pass the latter or inform the Citizenry that new Content wording is being made and give a deadline for its passage. If the new Content does not pass or is not made into Law, then the Intent is kept as the Law of the Land for Citizens to figure out on their own.

Lobbying

Only Citizens may lobby their Representative or Senator.

No corporation, foreign power or other grouping may lobby the Government.


Petitions

Petitions for new legislations with clearly worded Intent language shall be presented to a Representative and shall have no less than 1,000 signatures from voters in that District. When presented the list of signatures will be passed back to the State for verification of all voters.

For Senators the amount of signatures shall either be 1,000 or 100 per District in that State, whichever is GREATER. All signatures will likewise be screened by the State for verification.

Each Representative and Senator shall allot 1 hour per petition for hearing its need and description. The individual that will do this will be chosen at random from amongst the signatures and may NOT include any of the original drafters of the Intent document nor anyone from their families nor anyone gathering signatures. All of these individuals must be clearly listed so that they can be removed from the selection list. A common Citizen who has signed a Petition will be brought as quickly as is feasibly possible to the Office or other site where the Representative(s) and/or Senator(s) shall hear the Petition. Such meetings will be publicly recorded, but shall NOT be public meetings. After the presentation the Yea's and Nay's will be counted and the Petition shall move forward or not based on that vote. If a single Representative or Senator is all that can be briefed at one time, that briefing shall be recorded and played as soon as possible to the other Senators and Representatives involved. Each member shall cast their vote on paper ballot in a signed and sealed envelope and when all have been briefed the envelopes Read Out as to Signer and their Vote.

This new Intent legislation shall have appropriate Content drafted for it and all members of the House and Senate shall view all appropriate recordings made by the Citizen presenters and then hold appropriate debate on the legislation.

The only other method for starting legislation is to help Federal Government Agencies do their appointed work.

Representative and Senators who have ideas for good legislation must go to the Citizenry and present their idea(s) and have the Citizenry then take up the Petition process. Again, clearly stated Intent language shall be used to do so and the originating Representative or Senator must recuse themselves from the entire organizing, voting and procedural language process until the final legislation is presented on the Floor of their respective chambers for final debate and voting.

All legislation and laws shall have a maximum 10 year 'sunset' provision. The original legislation may be re-passed so as to reset the 'sunset' clock.



The idea behind this is: if an idea is good and can be clearly stated then ANYONE signing up for it should be able to explain it to their Representative and Senator *without* coaching. If a Senator or Representative cannot clearly explain what needs to be done to their Citizens, then it is unlikely to be good legislation in the end. Either way the entire legal system must get back to rule of the Intent of the Law. Currently we are headed to a Law of Rules, where minor loopholes and such are exploited by a system of lawyers and lobbyists to the disadvantage of the People.

This MUST end.

If the Law cannot be clearly and easily understood, then it is NO DAMN GOOD.

As my Uncle Joe pointed out: "The lawyers make the law, the lawyers represent the law, the lawyers sit on the bench and rule on the law and the people just can't understand it as it is."

That is RULE BY LAWYERS and must END.