On September 25th, 1789, the first Congress of the United States approved 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification.
This is also the birthday of Will Smith (born 1968), best known for his roles in I Am Legend and Enemy Of The State.
—
Please wait until the “Book Bomb Day”, October 20th, 2020, to order your copy of my new book, The Ultimate Prepper’s Survival Guide. Our goal is to get it ito Amazon’s Top 100, and on The New York Times bestsellers list. Thanks!
—
SurvivalBlog Writing Contest
Today we present another entry for Round 90 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:
First Prize:
- A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
- A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any of their one, two, or three-day course (a $1,095 value),
- A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three-day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
- DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (a $1,100 value),
- Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Resources (a $350 value),
- A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
- American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.
Second Prize:
- A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
- A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, that have a combined retail value of $589,
- A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
- Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
- An assortment of products along with a one-hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).
Third Prize:
- Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
- A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
- Naturally Cozy is donating a “Prepper Pack” Menstrual Kit. This kit contains 18 pads and it comes vacuum-sealed for long term storage or slips easily into a bugout bag. The value of this kit is $220.
- Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
- A transferable $150 purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of firearms purchasing privacy!
Round 90 ends on September 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how-to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.
It is not irrelevant that the Bill of Rights submitted to the states in 1789 included not only what are now the first ten Amendments, but also two others. Indeed, what we call the First Amendment was only the third one of the list submitted to the states. The initial “first amendment” in fact concerned the future size of the House of Representatives, a topic of no small importance to the Anti-Federalists, who were appalled by the smallness of the House seemingly envisioned by the Philadelphia framers. The second prohibited any pay raise voted by members of Congress to themselves from taking effect until an election “shall have intervened.” See J. Goebel, 1 The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States: Antecedents and Beginnings to 1801, at 442 n.162 (1971). Had all of the initial twelve proposals been ratified, we would, it is possible, have a dramatically different cognitive map of the Bill of Rights. At the very least, one would neither hear defenses of the “preferred” status of freedom of speech framed in terms of the “firstness” of (what we know as) the First Amendment, nor the wholly invalid inference drawn from that “firstness” of some special intention of the Framers to safeguard the particular rights laid out there.
– Sanford Levinson. “The Embarrassing Second Amendment”. Yale Law Journal. 1989.
printable PDF: https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7254&context=ylj
HTML: https://guncite.com/journals/embar.html
“The second prohibited any pay raise voted by members of Congress to themselves from taking effect until an election ‘shall have intervened.'”
FYI – the original second amendment was ratified as the 27th amendment in 1992.
Apropos Congresscritters and their pay, a friend sent me this:
Salary of retired US Presidents .. . . . .. . . . . .. . $180,000 FOR LIFE.
Salary of House/Senate members .. . . . .. . . . $174,000 FOR LIFE. This is stupid
Salary of Speaker of the House .. . . . .. . . . . $223,500 FOR LIFE. This is really stupid
Salary of Majority / Minority Leaders . . .. . . . .$193,400 FOR LIFE Stupid
Average Salary of a teacher . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. .$40,065
Average Salary of a deployed Soldier . . .. . . .. $38,000
Congressional Reform Act of 2022
1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman / woman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they’re out of office.
2. Congress (past, present, & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen/women are void effective 3/1/22. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen/women.
Congress made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and go back to work.
Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best quotes about the debt ceiling:
“I could end the deficit in five minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.”
The 26th Amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only three months and eight days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 – before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc.
Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took one (1) year or less to become the law of the land – all because of public pressure.
Carry on