How do you compete with urban areas from less populated rural areas though? They have all the news, TV, and more importantly the outstretched hands waiting for "free" stuff.
The "free stuff" is how the voter is bribed, and they accept the bribe because our educational system doesn't teach civics and Rule of Law any more, just "Social Justice" andPC nonsense.
Dan's point hits the nail on the head. Our federal legislative branch was created with two houses to eliminate the tyranny of the minority by the majority. Thus, the Senate has two members from each state regardless of population. All appropriation bills must start in Congress but a majority of the Senate is also needed for a bill to pass, and the president has to sign it. To get around this Constitutional limitation the "Unfunded Mandate" is used, which forces actions required by laws to be funded at the state level, thus no "appropriations" by Congress are needed.
Nebraska is a unicameral supposedly to save money but also to avoid political rancor. It can be easily abused, however, and the worst abuse is that high density city populations can pass laws that make no sense for low density urban or rural populations. Perhaps a body that has two members from each country to act in the same way that the Senate does?
George Norris, a "New Deal Republican" who settled in McCook, wore out two sets of tires while he drove throughout the state campaigning for the measure. He said the two-house system was outdated, inefficient and unnecessary.
Norris said the bicameral system was modeled after the British Parliament, which is made up of the House of Commons, with representatives elected by the people, and the House of Lords, with its aristocratic members appointed by the king.
We now know what the British system wrought on their people, who are caught in a massive, violent crime wave with no way to defend themselves, or to even try for fear of being prosecuted. In America the SCOTUS has ruled that the police have no obligation to protect any specific individual even if they know that person is under a lethal threat or even being attacked! Besides that, the police take an average of 8 minutes or more to respond to a 911 call. This is usually 6 or 7 minutes after the damage has been done. All they do is pick up the bodies and "take statements". For that they don't even need to carry guns.
A weakness Norris didn't see, or didn't want to, is that not many people, aside from the wealthy or those on welfare, can afford to set aside two or three months each year to assemble. Those not living in Lincoln have the added expense of finding room and board while they are here.
Times have changed. Businesses no longer send their employees all over the country to have meetings. They use virtual meetings. Moving to Lincoln or Washington D.C. is what is outmoded and outdated. It also puts all the fish in one barrel, making them easy targets for lobbyists and influence peddlers to do the concealed face-to-face "business" of passing checks for votes. That millions of voters can have their votes canceled by one person with millions of dollars is a disgrace to our system of politics.
It's time we set up a two house legislative body with the second house having one or two people per county to balance the influence of voter bribing. AND, it is time we set up an isolated optical fiber network with 100GB bandwidth, unconnected to the WWW, that allows an elected representatives to meet virtually with other legislators via their computers, much like a Google G+ chat, but from their local office, where their voters can visit them and keep an eye on who else visits them also.
