@ goldfinger
"But would this in any way diminish the importance of small states? Smaller states with career politicians have Senators with vastly more importance than their state actually should wield. Would that decrease at all?"
Probably not. Regardless of how they are selected, each state stills gets two senators. I believe that the decrease in career politicians would be consistent regardless of state size, but honestly I hadn't thought of the difference between states that could potentially arise. I still think repealing the 17th is worth it for the reduction in corruption alone. We all know how fucked up the electoral process is. State legislature elections are generally more "pure" than statewide elections.
"And would senators be more vulnerable to single term election swings, like that of the (now hated) Tea Party in 2010?"
Yes, but that's not a bad thing at all. Like I said, as things stand senators can get away with anything for about four years after reelection, because no one is going to remember come election time. They also have all of the advantages of incumbency in a direct election. In a state legislature-appointed system, the combined advantages of incumbency and guaranteed six-year terms are mitigated and/or eliminated.
The problem of corporate donors essentially "buying" senators would be eliminated as well. First of all, there is no need to campaign when senators are appointed by their state legislature. Second, no one is going to dump resources into someone that could be removed from office at any time by something as small as a grassroots movement.
"But I completely 100% reject the notion that we should get rid of income taxes. There are many reasons, but I'll pick two to go down. First off is that it is more efficient economically. Taxes on anything reduce productivity and lead to deadweight losses. Simple economics. However, since labor supply is much more inelastic than demand for goods, property, etc, the deadweight loss from a tax on income is much smaller than that on the tax of another good.
Another approach is the development approach. For the 123 years before it was enacted it wasn't efficient to collect income taxes. The government didn't have the ability to oversee that such a thing was done properly. What it did have the ability to oversee was imports coming through a few ports on the seaboard. Thus it was more efficient to raise revenue via a tax on commodities. You see this in developing nations today - which have little to no income tax while having higher commodity taxes."
All are good arguments, but those arguments are based on the assumption that the government should maintain its current size or a size similar to its current size. I'd cut the federal government to the size it was 150 years ago, and we wouldn't *need* an income tax to run it.
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