George Soros has selected Common Cause, and its spokesman, former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, as the leaders to oppose Article V.  Their latest salvo is reproduced in full at the bottom of this post.

Soros-affiliated organizations stopped the Article V BBA Resolution in Montana two years ago, got Delaware to rescind in 2016 and Maryland and New Mexico to rescind this year.  They, along with the John Birch Society, are our principal opponents.  Strange bedfellows indeed.

Their press release contains some glaring errors, and my only hope is that some member of the media will look into their allegations.  We can’t seem to get any publicity.  Maybe they will get some for us.  They say the BBA Task Force is “well funded”.  We wish.  We’re doing it on a wing and a prayer.  They say we’re backed “by billionaires like the Koch brothers.”  The Kochs, and no person or organization affiliated with them, has ever given us a dime.  With the recent departure of our Executive Director, we’re an all volunteer force.  None of us are paid.  We get some of our expenses reimbursed, but all of us have made in-kind or other donations.  Some have put in thousands of dollars, or, in the case of the original Co-founders, hundreds of thousands.  Field Director Loren Enns has given up his job, his house and his car, and incurred substantial personal liability hiring lobbyists.  Maybe if we can get a reporter interested, they could talk to Loren, and understand the truth.

It’s interesting to look at their list of 200 organizations.   These people are supposedly horrified at Article V as a threat to the Constitution.  But look at the list, beginning with the African-American Health Alliance, ending with the Women’s Voices Women’s Vote Action Fund.  It contains the usual suspects, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, the NEA a lot of the unions, including the AFL-CIO.  How many of these groups have ever shown any interest in the Constitution?  None.  But what almost all of them do have in common is a dependence on federal government money, in one form or another.  They don’t care about the Constitution.  They just want to see the federal dollars keep flowing.

Or, in some cases, like Soros himself, what they really don’t want is for the States to rediscover their powers, latent in Article V.  That’s bigger than a balanced budget amendment.  And that’s what they’re really afraid of.  The States, if they act together, can supervise the federal government.  And demanding a balanced budget could be just the beginning.

That might depend on Congress.  If they learn a lesson from having a Balanced Budget Amendment imposed on them, maybe another Article V Amendment Convention wouldn’t be necessary.  Article V is a way for the States to act when Congress won’t, or can’t.  My belief is that it will be used more than once.

And that’s what George Soros is afraid of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Than 200 Organizations Oppose Calls for New Constitutional Convention, Warn of Dangers | Common Cause | Common Dreams

 

More Than 200 Organizations Oppose Calls for New Constitutional Convention, Warn of Dangers

As wealthy special interests groups increase their efforts, constitutional rights and public interest groups stand in opposition to an Article V convention that could rewrite the U.S. Constitution

Today 230 national, state, and local groups are releasing a letter in opposition to calls to convene a new constitutional convention. The letter comes as wealthy special interests groups are increasing their efforts to call a convention for the first time since 1787, and are now just six states away from reaching their goal.

The letter focuses on the threat of a “runaway convention,” where every American’s constitutional rights and protections could be at risk. Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, a convention can be called when two-thirds of the states (34) petition for a convention to enact amendments to the constitution. Most legal scholars agree that all 34 applications must be on one issue, but once a convention is called anything could be brought up.

“A constitutional convention call, even on a single issue will become a Pandora’s box – once it’s open there will be no controlling where it goes, putting every Americans’ basic rights on the auction block,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause. “The wealthy special interests who are funding this push do not share the best interest of the American people, and there are no rules to limit their influence on what could be brought up once a convention is convened. Legislatures should follow the lead of Delaware, New Mexico, and Maryland in rescinding their applications for an Article V convention to protect everyone’s constitutional rights.”

“A constitutional convention would wreak havoc in the country,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21. “It would open up the nation’s charter and all of the constitutional rights and protections it provides for the American people to fundamental change in a political environment of great divisiveness and polarization. Our first and only constitutional convention took place in 1787. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton will not be available to serve as delegates if a second constitutional convention is called. It needs to be prevented.”

“The implications of a Constitutional Convention are staggering,” saidRobert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Our country faces enough problems and division. We don’t need to add to them and inflame an already toxic political environment by placing at risk the constitutional structure that has served us well for more than two centuries — and heading into dangerous, unknown territory by calling a convention to rework the Constitution. Leading legal scholars from across the political spectrum agree that once convened, the scope of the convention in seeking to rewrite the Constitution could not be limited.”

Activists on both the left and the right have called for an Article V convention on different matters, but the risk of a runaway convention is the same regardless of the issue. There is currently a well-funded effort to call a convention to enact a federal balanced budget amendment (BBA), which claims to have active applications in 28 states. Although there has been bipartisan opposition to an Article V convention, the push for a convention on a BBA is being led by Republican legislators and conservative special interest groups bankrolled by billionaires like the Koch Brothers. A leader in the push to rewrite the Constitution is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate lobby that masquerades as a charity to provide its corporate backers with a tax break. Despite claims by ALEC and other convention proponents, most legal scholars agree that a convention cannot be limited to one issue. With no rules governing a convention, a runaway convention involving a major overhaul of the Constitution would likely result.

The letter, which is signed by diverse group of constitutional rights, labor, environmental, immigration, government reform, healthcare, and public interest groups, urges legislators to oppose calls for a constitutional convention and rescind Article V convention applications on the books in their state. In just the last two years, the legislatures in Delaware, New Mexico, and Maryland have successfully rescinded their previous Article V convention applications, including on the BBA. A similar effort is currently underway in Nevada.

To view the letter and a full list of the organizations signing on, click here.

To view this release online, click here.

Common Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest.

 

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Alaska’s Legislature consists of three basic political factions, Republicans, Democrats and Bush.  Bush legislators, usually around 15% of the whole, can be either Democrats or Republicans.  But their party identification is essentially meaningless.  They are part of the Bush Caucus.  If given the choice, they will usually organize with the Democrats, most of whom believe, as they do, that the State of Alaska should spend a large part of its revenue on behalf of Alaska’s Natives, and the other residents of remote Alaska.  This is where the greatest need is, and where, over the years, a greater dependency on the State has developed.  But if the Democrats don’t treat them right, they’ll organize with the Republicans.  Most of them are DINO’s, Democrats In Name Only.  In 1982 DINO Al Adams led a legislative coup, installing Republican Minority Leader Joe Hayes as Speaker.  This political flexibility means they hit far above their weight.

For forty years the State has relied almost exclusively on revenue extracted from the oil industry.  But the Alyeska Pipeline now runs at 25% of capacity, the price of oil is far less than it once was, and, at least for the time  being, new fields are not coming on line nearly fast enough to refill the pipeline.

After the 2016 election, three moderate Republicans joined the Bush and the Democrats to form a majority coalition.  Its leader is Bryce Edgmon from a Bush district around Dillingham, who is the first Alaska Native Speaker of the House.  Part of the solution to Alaska’s fiscal woes the House Coalition and Independent Governor Bill Walker have devised is the renewal of the State income tax, repealed by initiative in 1980.

I once heard former Democratic Representative John Hellenthal describe how the original Alaska income tax was passed in the 1950’s, during territorial days.  All the legislators knew it had to be done.  Even as a Territory, they had to have revenue from somewhere.  But they also knew the voters who elected them would be furious.  As Helenthal put it, they all jumped off the cliff together.

Once the oil money started gushing into Juneau, an income tax was unnecessary, but the political powers in Juneau, led by a Bush Republican, Governor Jay Hammond, didn’t want to give it up.  If no one paid any taxes personally, then no one would care too much what was done with the oil money.  Hammond thought an income tax gave people a stake in government.  And he wanted to save as much oil money as possible in his Permanent Fund, where it could be used to benefit generations of Alaskans yet unborn.

Libertarian Representative Dick Randolph wasn’t buying it, and he, almost single-handedly, had the income tax repealed by initiative in 1980.  He even got the voters a refund of their 1979 income tax, which they’d already paid.  This made Libertarians quite popular for a time.

Elected Governor in 1986, Democrat Steve Cowper, at the beginning of the 1987 Legislative Session, went off somewhere for a long weekend and had an epiphany.  Either Alaskans had to give up their shiny new Permanent Fund Dividends, or we had to have an income tax.  I was the House Republican Minority Leader at the time, and I remember wondering if Cowper had been smoking some Matanuska Thunder—-.

We blew Cowper off, and as a result Alaskans haven’t paid a dime in income tax in 30 years.  All the while receiving nice fat annual dividend checks.  No wonder Republicans have been so popular in Alaska.

Periodic efforts have been made to reinstate the income tax, most notably by former Governor Hammond in 2004.  He made the same arguments he made against Dick Randolph in 1980.  Hammond may have been right is some cosmic sense, but an income tax in Alaska is a very hard sell.

And would it last?  Wouldn’t there be an initiative to repeal it, just as there was 37 years ago?  Maybe not.  Maybe times have changed, and Alaska is different now.  We may find out.

 

 

 

 

Congress needs to do something in the next two weeks or the “government shuts down”, whatever that means.  The government wouldn’t actually cease to function, but some services could be curtailed.  The last time this happened was in October of 2013, and the Obama administration tried to make it painful, in order to pressure the Republicans in Congress.  Remember those pictures of WW II vets being denied access to public memorials in D.C.?

Every government shutdowns has its own dynamic.  There were five under Carter, but the disruption they caused was minor.  He had a Democratic House and Senate, and no one wanted to create a mess.  His successor, Bush 1, vetoed a Continuing Resolution in 1990 because it was not accompanied  by a deficit reduction package.  When a veto override failed, the Congress, under complete Democratic control, quickly passed another CR along with the package Bush had demanded.  It was no big deal.  His son, big spender Bush 2, had no shutdowns.

So when we think of shutdowns, we think of those under Clinton and Obama  — a Democratic President dealing with a Republican controlled Congress.  It was Clinton and Obama who shut down the government.  Only the President can do that.  They both wanted more money from a Republican Congress, and they both soon got their way.

Now we have a Republican Congress and a Republican President, and the minority Senate Democrats are threatening to filibuster a spending bill, and cause a “government shutdown”.  They demand not only that no funding for the border wall be included, but that more money be committed to Obamacare.

Let me suggest that such a “government shutdown” today would be almost totally different from the Clinton and Obama experiences.  Yes, one thing would remain the same:  it’s all the fault of unreasonable Republicans.   Mitch McConnell was so terrified of being blamed for a shutdown, he unconditionally surrendered Congress’ power of the purse the day after the 2014 election that made him Senate Majority Leader.  But Trump has shown that you can defy the media, and if the Republicans don’t have the courage to do it, they will be forever revealed as spineless wretches.

Let’s think this through.  Six months ago the Democrats lost the White House, the Senate, and the House.  Yet, from their minority position in the Senate, they will shut the government down if the duly elected President, along with elected majorities in the House and Senate, want to spend money the Democrats don’t want to spend on a wall?   And, furthermore, they will also shut down the government if they don’t get the additional spending on Obamacare?

Democrat tails wagging Republican dogs.

As President, Trump can minimize the impact of a “shutdown” by executive order, creative accounting, and generous interpretations of the law.  Very few people need be affected by a shutdown.  If Trump and the Republicans let an hysterical media force them to spend money they don’t want to, and give them a veto over spending, it’s over.

The Democrats have no power in Washington, except the power of the press.  I know Trump is trying to be kinder and gentler, but if he caves here he’s weaker than George H. W. Bush was.  There is one institution more unpopular than Trump, and that’s Congress.  And that’s who he needs to fight, in the person of Chuck Schumer, a man more unlikable than he is.

I mean, if you can’t handle Schumer, what kind of a man are you?

 

In his 2015 book “The Evolution of Everything” Matt Ridley makes a compelling case that evolution is now and always has been the key to all real progress in the world.  It’s a little dense, not a beach book, and demands some concentration to appreciate, but it’s well worth it.

Evolution explains everything.   Ridley starts with the General Theory of Evolution, and in 16 chapters applies evolutionary principles to the universe, morality, life, genes, culture, the economy, technology, the mind, personality, education, population, leadership, government, religion, money, and the internet.  This guy is smart, and all of these subjects are explored using the theory of evolution.

He says, “Evolution is a story, a narrative of how things change.  It implies the emergence of something from something else.  It has come to carry a connotation of incremental and gradual change, the opposite of a sudden revolution.  It brings the implication of change that comes from within, rather from being directed from without.  It also usually implies change that has no goal, but is open minded about where it ends up.”

Applied to politics, evolution sounds to me like conservatism, even libertarianism.  The absolute antithesis of evolution is modern totalitarianism, fascist or communist.  Because evolution is freedom, and to evolve you must be free to do so.

You don’t need to be a visionary to see the long arc of history.  It’s where we’ve been headed for the last 500 years.  More wealth, more health, more freedom, less violence and war, more personal autonomy.  This is where the natural force of evolution is taking us.

And who hates evolutionary change, and demands instead immediate solutions cooked up in some faculty lounge?  The primitive left, of course.  Use the brute force of the state to impose the desired outcome.  This is 20th century thinking, obsolete, and destined, like communism, for the ash heap of history.

Obamacare wasn’t an evolution in the provision of health care.  It was a top down revolution from above.  When it began to implode in October of 2013 the whole leftist agenda went down with it.  That was a turning point in American political history, and Trump came to power in reaction to it and to all the many excesses of Obama and the left in general.  It was a reaction election, a rejection election.

Trump is a symptom, not a cause.  He didn’t create the conditions for his political rise.  He was simply shrewd enough to see what was happening in this country, and smart enough to take political advantage.

If Trump fails, it won’t mean the rise of the new left.  Someone else will take his place, perhaps someone with superior political skills.

I believe evolution, as it’s taking place today, is away from the center, and back to the people.  Evolution is a bottoms up phenomenon, not a top down.  For evolution to work its many magics requires freedom, and that is where the long arc of history, and evolution, bend.

 

None other than Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf, came up with the concept of “the big lie.”  The idea is that if you’re going to lie, make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually people will believe it.  The big lie about the United States Constitution is that it is the result of a “runaway convention” in 1787.

This lie has been embraced by the opponents of Article V, as they argue that an Amendment Convention called under Article V could “run away” and destroy the Constitution.  For over 30 years this lie has been used by the right wing John Birch Society, along with the Eagle Forum.  The irony is that these people claim to revere the Constitution, some believing it to be divinely inspired.  But how can you revere, and honor, a document you believe was the result of a flagrant and deceitful violation of existing law?

In any event, this lie has been effectively exposed by two leading constitutional scholars, Rob Natelson of the Independence Institute, and Mike Farris, who recently withdrew from the Convention of States Project.  In an article in The Hill, Natelson makes short work of the big lie.  Please click on his piece if you want a concise and definitive rebuke of the runaway nonsense.

At WND.com Rita Dunaway reviews a more substantial work by Mike Farris in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, titled Defying Conventional Wisdom: The Constitution Was Not the Product of a Runaway Convention.  This is an in depth, authoritative analysis of all the original historical documents from all thirteen States.  Farris proves his point beyond a reasonable doubt.  He’s done the entire Article V movement a great favor.  This is legal and historical scholarship of the highest order, and we are all in Mike’s debt.

The principal previous authors of a scholarly work on the subject, Ackerman and Katyal, in the 1995 University of Chicago Law Review, are destroyed by Farris.  Unlike the Birchers, the reason they want to call the Constitution the product of a runaway is in order to disparage it.  If it’s somehow illegitimate, it can be more easily ignored.

Fred Lucas in the Daily Signal  has done a little work on Article V, and written it up.  If Lucas wants to write about Article V, he should acquire more than a superficial knowledge.

Eventually, a serious reporter for a serious publication is going to look into all this, it seems to me.  That’s the way it’s seemed to me for three years.  But that was before we were having a Convention of States.