Talk:Saving South Sudan

Discussion of the proposed UTSS Constitution in General

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Contributing to specific parts of the proposed UTSS Constitution. 

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Discussion of Specific Parts of the UTSS Constitution

Arranged in order, with links between the section of the Constitution and this Discussion

Preview #11 Freedom of Religion & Speech

(11) to protect freedom of religion, which means there can be no federal law, passed by Congress, forcing anyone to attend, give to, agree with, or pay taxes to, any religious organization.

Nor any law that limits the free expression by any citizen or government official of any religious view, but especially these principles found exclusively in Christianity: abhorrence of slavery, of torture, of war (except in self defense), of less than equal protection of the laws for the most vulnerable (women, children, orphans, immigrants), of bribes, and of sexual violence.

However, federal laws may restrict speech – even religious speech – which persuasively calls people to commit crimes as defined by the laws of Congress, (which represent the majority of South Sudanese voters), on communication platforms which cross tribal boundaries.

Discussion

1. 11 says what the First Amendment to the U.S. constitution was originally understood to mean.

There was a problem in early America that is like the problem in South Sudan today with Christian and Moslem tribes trying to live side by side under the same laws. In Christian tribes today, slavery and many things done to women are crimes, and it is a crime to even promote them, while in Moslem tribes they are religious obligations which they can’t avoid promoting when they read their scriptures in public! How can they live together in peace?

From 1789 to 1860, the Southern states held slaves – some captured from Sudan by Moslems – which was a serious crime in the laws of the Northern States. Both sides stood on the same Scriptures! So the division then should have been much easier to resolve than the division today. But the division was supported by violently different claims about those same Scriptures.

Then there was war. Four years. The war that produced the most casualties of any war in U.S. history, 750,000, and the only war in world history fought by free men, to free slaves.

The war didn’t stop when the troops went home. The bullets stopped, but the lawyers started. In the United States, the 13th Amendment was enacted in 1866 to outlaw slavery except for conviction for a crime, so the Southern states simply passed laws against what everybody does, that applied only to blacks. Blacks “violated” these “laws”, and then were “sentenced” to slavery.

So the 14th Amendment was enacted in 1868 that made states give everybody “equal protection of the laws”. There could be no laws that applied more to blacks than to others. This was the first time, since the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789, that the federal laws and courts had jurisdiction over what states do within their own borders.

Although it is very good that slavery was finally outlawed throughout the United States, jurisdiction over the internal affairs of states has been evil.

For example, based on that same “equal protection of the laws” clause of our 14th Amendment, our Supreme Court has ordered all states to allow mothers to kill their unborn babies, for the past 44 years. And now courts are using it to force states to certify sodomite (homosexual) “marriage”.

It took a bloody civil war, and the irregular passage of Constitutional Amendments without letting Southern Congressmen even vote, to finally outlaw slavery in Christian America. It may be much more difficult for the UTSS to force Moslem tribes to give up slavery and subjugation of women, where those crimes are embedded and honored in their religion!

So this will be a choice faced by South Sudanese: do you want a government that will force all tribes to give all their citizens “equal protection of the laws”, the way the 14th Amendment does for the U.S.? Do you want to force all tribes to apply its laws equally to all people? Or do you want the federal government to let such tribes alone, to live by whatever religious values they choose?

In other words, do you want to outlaw Sharia?

In other words, where you have a Moslem tribe, do you want to make it a condition of joining the UTSS, that they outlaw slavery and subjugation of women, and all the rest of their Qu’ran-honored crimes? So that if they refuse, they may not join the UTSS but will become their own sovereign nation, like a Native American tribe, within South Sudan’s borders?

Federal jurisdiction over the equality of laws within tribes will place a considerable burden on federal courts.

Unless the UTSS Constitution clearly asserts such jursidiction, Federal laws will have no jurisdiction over laws any Tribe may make concerning activity within its borders. Congress may pass only federal laws.

For example, a Moslem tribe may choose to retain slavery. However, if its slaves were captured from across its borders, federal laws have jurisdiction. If people are held by a tribe who never wanted to be members of the tribe, and who have not been lawfully convicted of any crime, that is kidnapping across a tribal border and a federal matter.

Perhaps there is value in permitting evil to continue among those who choose it, as a reminder to the rest of the land how ugly it is. But a federal Congress with jurisdiction over “man stealing” across borders, may establish extradition agreements to free people forced by a tribe to join it, or to be Moslems.

As for visitors to a tribe, they are subject to its laws while visiting, just as visitors to another U.S. State, or to any other country, are subject to its laws while visiting. It is only a small problem in the U.S., where the variation is not nearly so dramatic as between Christian and Moslem laws. The federal government may certainly issue warning bulletins for tourists.

Governor Abbot of Texas wants to pass a Constitutional Amendment to “1. Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one State.” That’s what the U.S. Constitution did, before 1868. Its collision with “equal protection of the laws” may need more discussion of how they can operate side by side in America.

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1-1 The House

The Legislature of the United Tribes of Southern Sudan, consisting of a Senate and House of Representatives, is the only body authorized by this Constitution to create laws. Adapted from Article 1, Section 1, U.S. Constitution

Discussion

In other words, neither the President nor the Supreme Court can pass laws. The President can veto laws, thus forcing Congress to pass them by a 2/3 majority rather than just a “simple” majority (over 50%). But the President can’t pass a law. Today, our president’s cabinet writes “administrative laws” authorizing bureaucrats to swarm across America writing rules, levying fines, and seizing property, and our Supreme Court sometimes overturns laws and writes new ones, but these powers are not in our Constitution.

Here is a choice for Sudanese: should the UTSS legislature be called “Congress”? How about “Parliament”, or simply “Legislature” – meaning the body that legislates, or passes laws?

“Parliament” means where the executive, the Prime Minister, is elected by the legislature from its own members; in a “Congress”, the President is independent and is elected directly by the people. There are a few other differences.

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1-1-1 Composition and Election of Members

(Article 1, Section 1, Clause 1) Members of the House of Representatives will be elected every two years, from each tribe, by the adults of that tribe, by secret ballot. Candidates must be as qualified as leaders of their Tribal Council. The President has no legal power to appoint Representatives, remove Representatives, or to influence elections by any exercise of law. Adapted from Article 1, Section 1, Clause 1, U.S. Constitution

Discussion

Tribes, or States? A choice to consider is whether the subdivisions of the South Sudan government should be tribes, or the current system of 32 “states”, increased recently from the 10 created by the 2011 Constitution.

When you tell people where you are from, do you say “I am from ____ state” or “I am from ____ tribe”?

What authority settles issues within a tribe or between tribes: the state governor, or the tribal council?

What political subdivision has been constant for generations, with boundaries everyone has known for years: tribes, or states?

Divisions by tribes are natural, fixed, and familiar. Self government within tribes is centuries-old habit. Tribes may be a more stable foundation of government than the new “states” whose number changes about every two years, led by governors not elected by the people they govern but appointed by someone from another tribe.

This will be a choice for South Sudanese. Perhaps states will continue to be the choice. Meanwhile these proposals will proceed as if Tribes will prove the preferred subdivision.

What others say about the importance of tribal authority:

The Brookings Institute recommends: “Integrate traditional institutions into conflict resolutjion mechanisms. Ethnic groups in South Sudan, like in other parts of Africa, have long employed traditional institutions (e.g., village or tribal councils) to resolve conflicts. As part of the nation-building project, South Sudan should carefully examine these traditional institutions and incorporate them into its constitutionally mandated legal and judicial institutions in ways that are consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international treaties and conventions.”

Sudan: Behind the defiance, a whirr of diplomacy - May 7th 2009 - Violence in south Sudan - Old problems in the new south - Southern Sudan is becoming bloodier than Darfur - Jun 2nd 2009 Middle East and Africa “Tribal councils come together to make what we Dinka term “the good decision.” 

When conflicts arise or situations present themselves, the people, led by their chiefs and their elders, will sit in a circle to discuss what needs to be done. This is the traditional way, and it apparently has worked over many, many generations.” Seed of South Sudan: Memoir of a ‘Lost Boy’ Refugee by Majok Marier and Estelle Ford-Williamson, pub. McFarland, p. 168,

These sorts of tribal fights over access to the best grazing lands have been at the heart of many of Sudan's bloody wars. Up to the 1980s, such conflict was well managed by local inter-tribal councils. Such forums used to resolve how far the nomadic tribes, or pastoralists, would be allowed to bring their cattle through the lands of settled farmers. The marauding herds would cause a lot of damage as they passed through the farmers' fields; but inter-tribal councils worked out the compensation that the nomads had to pay to the farmers as a result.

This system, however, broke down in the 1980s after the terrible drought and famine of the early 1980s, during which some nomadic tribes lost as much as 80% of their livestock. Furthermore, many of the Arab tribes were now armed, for their own political purposes, by the Islamist politicians in the central government in Khartoum. This made the young nomads much less inclined to use old peaceful arbitration methods; now the armed nomads could just shoot their way through.

But it is dispiriting that these clashes still happen, and on the scale of the past few weeks. In recent years the UN and international NGOs have tried to revive the old tribal arbitration systems, even demarcating the seasonal migration routes with clearly marked poles. Yet still the fighting continues, in the south, in the centre and in Darfur.

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1-1-3 Apportionment of Members and Taxes

(Article 1, Section 1, Clause 3) The populations of the Tribes will determine how many Representatives they have in Congress, and how much tax each Tribe owes directly to the UTSS. Adapted from Article 1, Section 1, Clause 3, U.S. Constitution (That clause from the U.S. Constitution matches from here through the end of the following chart.)

Refugees in the Bush and in refugee camps, who do not pay taxes to the Tribes, and do not participate in elections, will not be counted as part of the populations of the Tribes.

The Census, which shall record only the NUMBER of eligible voters – not names, addresses, or children – shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United Tribes, and every 10 years afterwards, as Congress directs by law.

There will be one Representative for every forty thousand population, using rounding to establish the number. Until the first census is conducted, the following chart shows the Representatives allowed each tribe. Representatives of tribes numbering less than 10,000 will have 1/2 vote and 3/4 the expense account of other representatives; representatives of tribes numbering less than 5,000 will have 1/4 vote and 1/2 the expense account. Their tribes may make up the differences, and their representative will have the same right to speak as others, or may combine with other small tribes to reach a total 10,000 population and elect someone to represent them.

Discussion

Originally the U.S. federal government did not collect taxes from individuals; thus the federal government had no reason or excuse to keep everybody's name and address, or to track the movements of every citizen. “Direct Taxes” meant taxes paid directly by states to the federal government.

In the fiscal year 2015-2016 the GRSS collected a PIT, Personal Income Tax, of 1.138 billion SSP, or $69 million USD, less than 10% of its total revenue. There are several reasons to abolish this tax, just as it was in America before our 16th Amendment created our personal income tax.

Income Tax creates a government record of every individual, making it easy for tyrants to find and identify its victims. There is no good reason for a national government to track all its citizens. There are many bad reasons. See Revelation 13 and 14, and compare Numbers 1 with 1 Chronicles 1 and 2 Samuel 24. Or see “Why the ‘Mark of the Beast’ Matters” or “E-verify too close to the Mark of the Beast for comfort” or “E-verify’s Fatal Problems”.

It forces individuals to spend considerable time counting money which would be better spent making money.

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1-1-3b Apportionment of Members and Taxes

(Article 1, Section 1, Clause 3) ...The Census, which shall record only the NUMBER of eligible voters – not names, addresses, or children – shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United Tribes, and every 10 years afterwards, as Congress directs by law.

Discussion: 

Although the U.S. Constitution doesn't specifically limit the amount of information which census workers can record, it was understood then that a government able to monitor its citizens is a tyranny, so the first Census recorded only last names and how many in each county had that same name. Exodus 30:12-16 attaches grave importance to conducting a Census so it is not only accurate, but so that not even names are recorded: every citizen gives a fixed sum of money, and only the money is counted. In each region, every citizen walks through a line and drops his money, too quickly for any scribe to record his name.

His chief is there, who will know if anyone is missing. The federal government doesn’t need to know. The chief is motivated to get everyone there because the more people they count, the more representatives the tribe has in Congress; but the chief is not motivated to get more representatives by emptying his own purse into the pot to create fictitious voters, because the sum of money required to significantly increase his power would make him poor.

God placed so much emphasis on this system that He said the money actually constituted “a ransom for his soul, that there be no plague among them”. A “ransom” is something which buys freedom for someone in captivity, and certainly this system “buys” safety from dictators.

It was more of a burden on the poor than on the rich, because everyone paid the same amount – it equaled about a week’s salary. But the poor benefited more than the rich, because tyrants pick on the poor more readily than on the rich.

Perhaps, back then, as it would probably be done today, those who really had nothing to pay were given the payment by friends or even by their chiefs.

In The Sudan today, it is unlikely that any census done any other way will be accurate, because people will not come out of the Bush to give their names, lest their political enemies find them and kill them. But they will give something of value, if they have it, if they remain known only by their own chiefs, in order to give their own people representation.

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1-1-3c Apportionment of Members and Taxes

This discussion is of the Chart showing populations and names of tribes, and how many representatives and senators that should give them:

Discussion:

The challenge of this paragraph is to come up with a formula that won’t fill our meeting hall with 10,000 Congressmen. The United States presently has 425 Congressmen meeting in a single hall. As U.S. population has grown, the population required to authorize one Congressmen has been raised, so that now states have one Congressman per about 600,000 population.

In the U.S., even the smallest state has one full Congressman and two Senators. But no state ever had fewer than 20,000 people. [In 1770, Georgia had the smallest population: only 23,000, not counting slaves. New states were not admitted until their population reached 60,000.] One practical problem with giving a tribe with fewer than 1,000 people a full Congressman, is that larger tribes will be tempted to split, in order to get more representation and more expense accounts! That trick could give very small tribes equal representation with very large tribes!

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1-2-5 Speaker, other Officers, Impeachment

(Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5) The House of Representatives shall choose its own officers. Only the House has authority to initiate an “impeachment”, which means to charge the President, a federal judge, a Senator, a Representative, or a department head, for noncriminal offenses. The House cannot convict, but only “impeach”; it is the Senate which must then hold trial, with the power to convict and remove from office. Adapted from Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution UTSSdiscussion 1-2-5

Discussion

When Bill Clinton was impeached, people said impeachment should only be for criminal offenses. But this paragraph proves otherwise. It says only the House of Representatives can Impeach. Well, if impeachments were only for criminal offenses, that wouldn't be true, because as we saw in 1999, not even Presidents are immune from prosecution, in ordinary courts, for felonies. But the purpose of impeachment is to remove a politician from office for actions which are not quite crimes, but are scandalous enough to tarnish the work of Congress.)

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1-3-2 Classification of Senators; Vacancies

(Article 1, Section 3, Clause 2) Senators shall be chosen by the Tribal Councils of the tribes they represent, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. No part of the federal government has any legal authority over any part of the selection of any Senator. Adapted from Article 1, Section 3, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution (That section of the U.S. Constitution corresponds to this and the next paragraph.)

Discussion

An equal voice. There are 78 tribes total. 35 have at least 40,000 population. 13 have between 10,000 and 40,000. 29 have fewer than 10,000. The population of one is unknown.

The U.S. Constitution provides two senators for each state, which means 100 Senators for our current 50 states. This gives an equal voice to every state, regardless of size, in the Senate, while the House gives an equal voice to every voter.

This was reasonable in the U.S. because there were never any really tiny states. In 1770, Georgia had the smallest population: only 23,000, not counting slaves. New states were not admitted until their population reached 60,000.

But will Sudanese choose strict equality with tribes with as few as 300 souls? If so that will make the above paragraph simpler; 2 senators per tribe. (The U.S. wanted two rather than one, so that if one got sick the state would still be represented.) The above is suggested in case Sudanese choose to give small tribes a more equal voice, but not a perfectly equal voice, with their numerous neighbors.

Appointment by Tribal Councils. A later Amendment caused U.S. Senators to be elected by the people directly. But American experience throws doubt on whether that was a better idea. We see how the candidate, in order to become known to that many more people, requires that much more money for transportation, literature, and other communication, which means he is more vulnerable to bribes. And it is more likely that he will receive campaign funding from outside his state.

In the original system, people elected their own state legislators, who were local men they knew; and their legislators had a better opportunity to get to know, and to discern, who would best represent their state in Washington. Not only did they have more opportunity, but they had far more interest in voting wisely than the average citizen. In South Sudan, the Tribal Councils know the candidates well, without the necessity of an expensive campaign.

A candidate can more easily confuse millions of citizens who barely know him, than a few dozen sharp leaders who know him intimately. One wins support of millions with his wealth; one wins support of a few wise men with his reputation.

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1-6-1 Compensation and legal protection

(Article 1, Section 6, Paragraph 1) ...During sessions, and while traveling to and from sessions, they shall be immune from arrest for any crime except disturbing the peace, or any felony [serious crime]. (While at home they may be arrested and prosecuted for minor as well as for major crimes, just like anyone else.) They may not be interrogated, by any other government official, for any position they take during a session. They may be arrested for treason (for fighting, helping, or encouraging enemies of all the Tribes) but must be released if the House does not vote within 10 days to pursue impeachment proceedings.

Discussion

The less stable a government is, the easiest it is for a president to falsely accuse a leader of “treason”, and to then imprison him indefinitely. A 10 day limit is suggested to discourage this.

If there were no immunity in the U.S. Constitution, it would be easy to falsely charge a Congressman with, say, “spitting on the sidewalk”, and get him arrested just in time for an important vote.

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1-6-2 Independence from the executive

(Article 1, Section 6, Paragraph 2) No lawmaker may take any additional government job. Nor may he later take any government job that was created, or whose salary was increased, while he was a lawmaker.

Discussion

This is to avoid creating an incentive for a lawmaker to use his influence to create a job with a fat salary, in anticipation that he himself may later take it. Return to UTSS Constitution

1-8-1 Section 8: What Congress CAN Do

(Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 1 of the U.S. Constitution) Specifically, the power of Congress is limited to the following:

1. Taxes.The Congress (the House & the Senate) shall have power to tax factories, natural resources, imports, and Tribal Councils in proportion to their tribal population. Tribal Councils will administer collecting the tax from their tribe; the federal government will have no authority to collect a Personal Income Tax – PIN – from individual citizens. The only lawful purpose for collecting taxes will be: to pay federal debts, to supply military forces during war, and to help tribes do together what they cannot do alone. All tax rates shall be uniform throughout the United Tribes, including the tax per person levied against tribes, which pay proportionate to their population but the rate per person is uniform. Taxes shall not be “graduated” according to income.

Discussion

“Taxes, duties, imposts and excises”, says the U.S. Constitution. Duties is another name for imposts, as far as I can tell. “Taxes” appears to be only a general name for the other three. So apparently only two distinct taxes are meant here, which are the only two kinds of taxes that the U.S. federal government collected for over a century: tariffs, also called duties, or imposts – a tax on imported products; and Excise Taxes. The U.S. government relied mostly on tariffs.

The Wikipedia article, “Excise Taxes in the U.S.”, tells us that for its first century, the government’s only income was tariffs [taxes charged on imports] and excise taxes [collected mostly from producers of alcohol, tobacco, and sugar].

Those are treated today as “sin taxes”. They are justified both to raise money and to discourage their use. Then, no one knew either one of the three were harmful.

The three items God recommends be taxed are basic necessities. God’s model government takes 10% of income for local government – church and the judiciary combined, Ezekiel 44:24, and less than 1% for national government functions, Ezekiel 45:13-16. (Actually, only 1/60th of the wheat and barley, 1% of olive oil, 0.5% of sheep, and nothing else.)

If the UTTS government would submit to a budget of only 1% of South Sudan’s GDP, along with stopping its encouragement of war, the economy would explode! (In the good way!) Yet that would still pay its leaders and employees a hundred times more than average citizens get.

The U.S. federal government could not tax individuals until 1913 with the 16th Amendment. Before that, federal taxes were collected directly from state governments, besides taxing factories and imports. ["lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises"] When the U.S. Government got the right to tax individuals, it acquired a constantly updated database of every citizen’s address and personal business, and the ability of state legislatures to boycott federal waste was lost. Now our federal government makes thousands of rules the states must follow in every detail of their work, and there is very little the state governments can do on their own. Likewise in the Sudan, if you let the President collect taxes from each citizen, you will give him the power to become your dictator; but if you make him take his money from your tribal councils, your Tribal Council will remain the primary government over its own people, and your Tribal Council will remain politically strong enough to stand against federal abuses of power.

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1-8-3 Uniform Regulations

(1-8-3) To negotiate uniform standards governing trade with foreign nations, trade that crosses Tribal borders, and trade with refugees in Refugee Camps and in the Bush (although Congress will have no jurisdiction over trade, or transportation, or any other commerce that takes place within a Tribe’s borders). The only legitimate purpose for regulations is to encourage technology, and make it available to all, with simple, uniform standards that make it easier for providers to provide it, for users to use it, and harder for monopolies to drive out competitors. Unnecessary, complicated, inconsistent, confusing regulations only strangle technology. A petition from half the Tribal Councils are sufficient to create a regulation, or to repeal one, unless that is then overcome by a vote of 3/4 of Congress.

Discussion

This is the infamous “commerce clause” which U.S. judges have twisted into authority for the Federal government to become a dictator over the states.

Originally the Founding Fathers wanted Congress to only do things like build roads and canals that crossed state lines. Later came railroads, telegraph lines, and radio. Air traffic controllers are an example of a legitimate Federal function, since planes take off in one tribe and land in another, and therefore need uniform ground communication procedures. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is another example, since there are many more radio and TV stations that would like to transmit, than there is available air space, and since radio and TV signals cross state lines. The FCC decides who may go on the air, and under what rules. When railroads began, they made tracks of several different widths, so that a locomotive built for one could not operate on another. Congress set a uniform width for the coast-to-coast railway after the Civil War.

But regulations can strangle development.

A modern example of commerce which crosses state lines which develops its own standards far better than had Congress intervened, is computer languages. Better standards are developed by just letting the engineers and investors experiment until they come up with the best combination. Can you imagine where America would be today, if while Edison was trying to invent the light bulb, Congress had told him what material he needed to use for a filament?

What more legitimate area of FCC involvement could there be than telephones? They certainly cross state lines, and uniformity of standards is required for all states to benefit. 50 years ago the FCC regulated not only standards, but rates. It caused so many problems that Congress finally “deregulated” the industry. As soon as they did, creativity was released. The industry immediately started planning new inventions they weren't really free to do much with before. Cable TV, the Internet, and cell phones rose from that freedom which would likely have come much later or never had the FCC remained in the business.

Federal involvement in state internal matters trickled in until 1932, when President Franklin Roosevelt illegally opened the floodgates. He did it by adding Supreme Court justices beyond the 9 which had been America's tradition, until he had enough justices willing to approve the radical expansion of federal government powers which he had bullied through Congress. Let me just list a few of the types of unconstitutional programs he created, so you can see the choice before you: do you want a government like America has now, or would you prefer genuine freedom?

First is Social Security. Before that, elderly people had much lower property taxes so they could better afford to live in their homes. Those that couldn’t could move to “County Homes”, nursing homes paid for by counties.

Now our total average tax burden is about 31% from at least 97 different taxes that Americans pay. What are taxpayers getting back for all their money? About one fourth. For example, in the case of welfare, about 3/4 of the federal welfare budget goes for “overhead”, leaving about 1/4 for those in need. Although overhead is only one measure of a charity’s efficiency, generally, if a charitable nonprofit had that much overhead, it would be shut down by the government!

Which system do you want for Sudan? Do you want Tribes to care for their own poor by whatever means they think good? Or would you like the federal government to take that money out of the Tribal economy, waste 75% of it, and then be a combined Scrooge and Santa Clause to your grandparents? Another invention of Roosevelt was the Farm Program. Before Roosevelt, farmers lived off the land and sold their surplus. In good years, when the supply exceeded demand, prices were lower, but since overall expenses were low, farmers survived. In bad years, farmers suffered and waited for good years. One of the first things Roosevelt did to change this was to preside over how banks recovered from the 1929 Depression. Many banks went bankrupt because when people came to draw money out of their savings and checking accounts, banks didn't have enough.

Of course, people who had borrowed from the same banks still had those loans to repay. Other banks would “buy” those outstanding loans from the bankrupt banks, but courts excused them from repaying the debts owed BY the bank! What a system!

So if a farmer had a $1,000 loan, but also had $1,000 in a retirement account, the farmer lost his $1,000 savings, but still had to repay the loan! After a few years of this, much of America’s farmland was now owned by banks! (My source: the stories of my grandparents, who lost their farm during that time.)

As this was going on, Roosevelt was busy taking America off the Gold Standard. Before that, paper money was backed by gold; in other words, there was a dollar's worth of gold or silver stored by the U.S. for every paper dollar printed, or no more was printed; and it could be exchanged for gold or silver, which had a stable value, so that America suffered virtually no inflation or deflation from 1800 to 1930. Roosevelt made it illegal to own gold! He seized it all! And gave us paper dollars unbacked by gold. That way he could print as many as he wanted, which created dramatic inflation.

In order to create some token restraint on his printing of paper money, he decided to “back” the money with the value of the farmland owned by the banks! (Don't ask me exactly how THAT worked.) Well, about this time farmers were in debt up to their eyeballs, trying to pay interest on their new loans with the banks, at higher rates of interest because of inflation, and there were a couple of bad years, so Roosevelt decided it was time to “help” the farmers. He created the Farm Program. In the Farm Program, the problem Roosevelt meant to attack was the problem of oversupply – too much food, which brought the price of food down. What a problem!

If there wasn’t enough food, he reasoned, then hungry people would be willing to pay more for food, and then farmers would make more profit on the portion they sold. So Roosevelt’s Farm Program literally paid farmers to keep certain acres idle! This program has gone through so many changes since then that merely growing crops and cows is an insignificant part of the work of farmers today. They need a Ph.D. in government programs and the Chicago Board of Trade. They need to stay in debt for ever larger tracters so ever fewer farmers can cultivate ever more acres, because the profit margin is too low for a small farm to support a family!

Taxes are through the roof because taxes are based on the resale value of the land for “development” (building houses and shopping malls), not on the profit made from the land, and certainly the taxes don’t drop in bad years when there is no profit!

Well, I apologize for trying to cram nearly a century of political frustration into a page, and perhaps not doing justice to the issues in the view of many, but this is a choice for Sudanese. Which system do you prefer for Sudan? The original U.S. Constitution? Or “Roosevelt's Constitution”?

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1-8-5 Money, Measures

(1-8-5) To mint gold-backed currency, regulate the value of money, fix the rate of exchange with foreign money, and standardize measurements of weight and distance so they will be uniform for all tribes;

Discussion

Would you like to have a currency that the whole world uses? Forget paper money. Use gold and silver. Back transactions with gold and silver. You won’t have inflation. The whole world will start trading in SSP’s.

Sudan has gold, lots of it, so how dumb is it to sell it to foreigners below its value, and then print paper money which plunges in value? Sudan has more opportunity than most countries, to trade in real gold, and in certificates backed by gold (where Sudan stores gold and prints only enough paper money to equal the value of the gold, so that anyone might at any time exchange their paper money for an equivalent value of gold). Doing that would make SSP’s the most reliable currency in the world!

But no backing of money would make much sense in Sudan unless it could include cows. But with gold-backed paper money, you could “make change”. That is, for example, you could have paper money in small units, such that 200 of them, for example, might be exchanged for one cow. In that way you could buy and sell, with accuracy, things much less valuable than an entire cow. Maybe you could call them “cowbills”.

When the U.S. was on the gold standard, it could not circulate more paper money than it had enough gold to cover it. In the same way, if Sudan prints paper money backed by cows, the UTSS will have to own many cows to equal the value of the paper money. It may not be in Sudanese interest to go heavily into the cow business.

Another alternative, practiced for centuries before the U.S. issued gold-backed dollars, was for banks to issue “gold certificates” equal to the value of the gold they held in their safes. In that way, people could conveniently exchange money without carrying heavy metals about with them all the time. Individual farmers could do this. They could be authorized to issue certificates equal to the value of their cows, yet would keep the cows in their possession until someone wants to exchange his paper for a cow. This would be a way a farmer could sell all or part of a cow, while keeping possession of the cow for breeding or milking until it is redeemed. But what do you tell the certificate holder, when his cow dies? Well, maybe gold is more stable.

But what if one farmer sells certificates worth half a cow, and his neighbor does the same, and one man has both certificates and wants to redeem them for a cow? And what if the farmer doesn’t want to sell? I’m just trying to be creative here in the absence of any knowledge of any human experience in this, but perhaps the law could say that any farmer who sells certificates for part of a cow is required to exchange one cow in exchange for other certificates totaling the value of one cow. But after that, he is not required to sell any more, although of course if he did he would receive valuable certificates in exchange.

U.S. money, today, is backed by nothing but everybody's faith that it is worth something. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is appointed to a 4-year term by whoever is President when the last one steps down, with the governors under him appointed to 14 year terms, and their principal power over the economy is to adjust the Prime Lending Rate, the rate at which the Federal Reserve will lend money to banks. This indirectly controls how much paper money will be added or taken to the U.S. money supply, which determines whether we will have inflation or deflation.

The Chairman has this enormous power over the U.S. economy, and yet he is accountable to no one! He may not be removed from office by the President, Congress, or the Courts! Though most of the rest of U.S. Government is a Republic (a representative government under the rule of law), the Fed Chairman alone has the power of a King for 4 years!

News reporters generally treat the current chairman as if he is absolutely trustworthy and extremely wise, but no one knows how much this may be out of fear, since it does little good to complain about your King.

There are three great dangers with this system: (1) the Chairman might not be absolutely trustworthy. He might not like the current president, so he might hurt the economy just before he faces re-election. Or he might tell his financial friends when he is going to change rates again, so they can sell or buy stock accordingly and make fortunes. (2) He might not always be extremely wise. He might even be human, on occasion. Even with the best intentions, he might make decisions that hurt the economy. In fact, he might become consistently foolish, and there is nothing for the nation, and the rest of the world whose economies rise and fall with the U.S. economy, to do but go into worldwide depression!

By going off the gold standard, and yet desiring stability in a paper economy, we now have an extremely complicated, and extremely vulnerable, economy. It was not that way in the original U.S. Constitution. U.S. money was backed by gold until about 1933, when Roosevelt actually made it a crime to own gold! U.S. money was the most stable in the world, there was nothing complicated about it, and there was no inflation or deflation.

Even today, though most of the world’s currencies are paper with no backing, there are traces of sanity. Israel has, or is moving towards, a money backed by the ancient silver shekel. Russia has taken a step towards an intent stated long ago to displace the U.S. Dollar with its own gold standard. With cows already an established medium of exchange in Sudan, and the discovery of lots of gold, it may be the most natural thing for Sudan to establish a currency with real backing, rather than worthless paper.

Greedy politicians prefer worthless paper for their money, because they can have many clever devices for controlling it. So everyone else in the world who wishes their country would return to a currency backed by something of real value, is laughed at by their politicians as if it were “controversial”. But in Sudan, it may be that a stable currency backed by items of real value may be the least controversial policy the UTSS could take.

Return to proposed UTSS Constitution

1-8-12 Arming Soldiers

(1-8-12) To raise and supply armies (only when war is declared) consisting of full time soldiers; but no appropriation of money for the army shall supply them longer than two years.

Discussion

This is one of the clauses that keeps the U.S. army under civilian control. An American general cannot take control of the civilian government, because he would run out of money in two years. He has no efficient means of collecting taxes without the civilian government. Were he to attempt to wage war against civilians, the economy would hopelessly crumble; but worse, he could not win, because Americans are armed, thanks to the second amendment; and if he committed so great a crime as a takeover of civilian government, Americans would fight. (We hope.)

And even if the President and Congress tried to use the army to take over America, the people could vote out Congress in less than two years. Even if Congress were to cancel elections, this provision of the Constitution is a valuable aid to the People, because it would prevent Congress and the President from a gradual takeover. Being forced to cancel elections would be like being forced to declare war: it would serve notice to Americans that the time to fight has come, if they are to remain free.

Of course, a government that lawless would not be embarrassed to simply ignore this little guard in the Constitution! But even when government is too corrupt to be ashamed to violate the constitution, the value of a constitution short and simple enough for most people to understand is that when it is ignored, everyone knows it, who is not too zoned out playing games on their smart phones to care. And the more people who know how their government should behave but isn’t, the less people will tolerate misbehavior, and the government knows it.

Notice this provides for “raising” armies. In other words, not just increasing troop strength, but raising an army where there was no army before. This wouldn't make sense if there were always a standing army even in time of peace; but it was assumed that armies would only be raised when war was declared, and they would be disbanded when peace returned. Meanwhile, the only forces available in an emergency were the state “militias” - that is, all the armed men able to fight, but who work their regular jobs when there is no war and only come together for periodic training, as our National Guard does today.

When the constitution was written, it was a principle accepted by all that an army which remains on duty even in time of peace is a giant step towards dictatorship. That's why the preceding wording about appropriations no longer than two years implies that armies were regarded as temporary.

The following provisions explain that the part-time citizen militia would be the first called to repel invaders, because they would be already prepared; while a full time army would take time to train. In other words, it is the part-time citizen militia upon which the nation fundamentally relies for protection; but when additional forces are needed, a full time army can then be raised. Presumably the army would consist largely of militia members who simply transfer from part-time status as militia troops to full-time status as army troops.

Return to Proposed South Sudan Constitution