Month: May 2018

At the Philadelphia Convention, the most difficult challenge was the sovereignty of the states.  The “monster sovereignty”, Washington had called it.  In forming the federal government, were the states surrendering their sovereignty?

Sovereignty is supreme political power.  The sovereign gets the final say, and cannot be overruled.  I believe that the Constitution did not take away the sovereignty of the states, and the people.  Rather, it made it collective.  The states, and the people, remained sovereign, but only if they acted in concert with one another.   This is statecraft of the highest order.

The power to unilaterally amend the Constitution gives the states, and the people, the  final say, and makes them the collective sovereign.  The power to amend includes within it the power to impeach.  The states, and the people, could, theoretically, not only impeach the President, the Supreme Court, and the entire Congress. they could abolish them as institutions.

Except the Senate.  Thanks to the last floor amendment, in the last hour, of the last day of the Convention, the Senate cannot be abolished.  Governeur Morris proposed this amendment, and it passed without dissent.

This makes the states, and the people, as long as they act in concert with one another, the sovereign in our constitutional system.  Other than abolish the Senate, and its equality of state suffrage, the states, and the people, can do anything.  There is no appeal, no higher authority.

I say “the states, and the people”, advisedly.  Because Congress can require that any amendment be ratified by the people, not by the state legislatures.  If the state legislatures became, collectively, some sort of threat, any amendment they propose can be submitted to the people, acting in state conventions.

The retention of collective sovereignty by the states, and the people, is a feature, not a bug.  As Hamilton summed up his case for ratification in Federalist 85, “We may safely rely on the disposition of the State legislatures to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority.”

Up until now, that reliance has been misplaced.  Activating Article V with the Mason Amendment will change all that.

Let the erection of barriers begin.

 

 

George Will used to have interesting things to say about politics, but that was long ago.  The older he gets, the more of a pest he becomes.

His latest, a vicious attack on Mike Pence, is a byproduct of his Trump Derangement Syndrome.  George is highly offended by Trump, his moral inferior.  This despite the fact that Trump is accomplishing more for the sacred cause than Ronald Reagan.

No matter.  He’s a boor.  So he’s not welcome in George’s little tea party of a world.  A world, I might add, which is shrinking rapidly.

It came to me last night, on my daily nature walk.  We’re going to fix Article V, and pass the Mason Amendment.  I can see it clearly now.

The nice thing about it is its elegance.  An elegant solution is one in which the optimal outcome is achieved with the minimal expenditure of effort and expense.

I don’t need to form an organization or raise any money.  I don’t need to get any publicity.  I don’t need to convince anyone who isn’t already convinced.  I just need to channel and harness energy which is already in existence.

That energy exists because of the years of effort by hundreds of people, starting with State Senator Jim Clark of Maryland in 1975.  He started the campaign to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment using Article V.   That campaign happened to peak in 1983 when Alaska became the 32nd state to pass a BBA Resolution.

That’s when the opposition organized, led by national figures in the Democratic Party, beginning with House Speaker Tip O’Neill.  They allied themselves with the paranoid right, led by Phyllis Schlafly.  A full half of those 32 BBA Resolutions were rescinded.

The BBA Task Force launched its counter offensive some seven or eight years ago, and its work laid the groundwork for the final solution.  All that work, and the sacrifices made by Bill Fruth, Dave and Suzie Biddulph, Loren Enns, David Guldenschuh, and many others are going to pay off.

I’ll need to make my case to a select group of state legislators after the November elections.  I have a lot of time to set it all up.

I feel like Newton when he saw the apple fall from the tree.  It was all in plain sight, if you just looked, and thought, hard enough.

 

I don’t care how good your genes are, no 71 year old man can possibly keep working as hard as President Trump for more than four years.

Does he even sleep?  He’s up in the middle of the night to greet released prisoners from North Korea, and then, apparently, puts in a very full day of work.  He’s got so many balls in the air it makes your head spin.   I hope he can keep it up for another two and a half years.  But four years beyond that, until he’s 79?

He’ll avoid the second term curse, and hand the ball off to someone he trusts.  I’d bet on it.

From the LA desk of J. T. Kelly:

Kim & Trump meet

June 12 in Singapore

The big meeting will be in Singapore,  Asia’s premier rich amazingly well governed state of the art City State.  This tiny island nation is one of the world’s most important centers of trade, finance and commerce. It’s name means Lion City, and in it’s Confucian way, it is a modern version of La Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta ( In the Venetian language, the most serene republic of Venice) for over a thousand years the richest and most influential city in Europe.  Interestingly, it’s totem was also the lion and  the red and gold flag of Venice was a golden image o  Lion of St Mark.

So North Korean President Kim will see with his own eyes the most successful and envied example of Asian values successfully implemented by a democratic but authoritarian government that in its Chinese way is very much like the patrician government of the old Venetian Republic.  Kim will no doubt be dazzled by Singapore like most first time visitors.  Even a jaded capitalist like Donald Trump will no doubt also be impressed by this unique nation which while surprisingly egalitarian is also severe in its laws that fine people for ordinary slovenliness and arrest, try then send narcotics dealers to the gallows.

President Trump tweeted: “We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!”  And his enemies must have had fit when they read President Trump touting World Peace and telling us that he and Kim if they can make peace and end the nuclear standoff in Korea will give the gift of peace to the whole world.   Imagine if they do and next year the unlikely dynamic duo share a Noble Peace Prize?  It would be as unexpected as Henry Kissinger and his north Vietnamese counterpart sharing one or Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat making peace and sharing a similar Noble award.

Donald, Melania and Pence

Welcome home three Nork prisoners

Last night the President, First Lady and VP Pence all went to Andrews airfield to welcome home the three Korean American former prisoners of North Korea.  The three who were Christian missionaries were arrested and convicted of activities against the North Korean State and given long sentences.   However as part of the heats and flowers leading up to the Nork-US summit meeting, the pardon and release of the three is a major example of good faith and trust leading up to the meeting.  As many journalist noted the three men appeared to be in good health and to have received acceptable treatment by their Nork prison staff, in sharp contrast to the last American sent home who was in critical condition and died a few days following his return.  That was a major PR fiasco for the Kim regime and only made things worse.  They clearly made sure it didn’t happen this time.

The atmospherics leading up the meeting are important if only for show.  We can expect clips on Nork TV of President Kim eating a hot dog and watching one or more NBA playoff games and making nice comments or the skill of one or more teams or players.  We can also expect to see pictures of President Trump chowing down or a hot bowl of Bibimbop (rice bowl with meat, veg & egg) with gusto or having some Korean barbecued beef with kimchee fried rice and telling us that the Koreans are really great cooks.

At  home in Los Angeles this 

morning brought a surprise too.

The LA Times editorial board gave a ringing endorsement of our former Mayor and Alcade Tony Villaragosa in the Governor’s contest.  I was surprised since the Times editorial board usually toes the predictable Progressive line in a stuffy morally superior way.  But they didn’t follow the Progressive herd and opt for Gavin Newsom,  this time they went with the hometown candidate.  Two things come to mind about this.  The first is there just might be something about Gavin they know and we don’t.  The other is it validates the old Irish adage, “Better the devil you know than one you don’t.”  Even more it is interesting because this time Tony V is clearly running as the moderate Democrat and is openly reaching out to Independent and Republican voters as the best most broad based choice for California. It’s not hard to do because Gavin is beating the drum for all the current Progressive issue package including a call for California setting up its very own single payer health care system and all the other Progressive clap trap on their wish list.

Who knows, from what we saw in this week’s primaries, the voters in both parties in four important states went for the more moderate candidate on the list and nixed the Steve Bannon wild and crazy guys on the GOP side and rejected the ideologically pure ones on the Democratic side, including a perennial gadfly who’s kind of fun and full of wild themes, Dennis “The Menace” Kusinich in Ohio.

From the headlines today

Did Trump’s lawyer go rogue?

It’s beginning to look like Trump’s “Mr Fix it” private lawyer Michael Cohen may have gone rogue and reached out to major corporations and others to sign up with his law practice and use his personal standing with the President to help them with their issues.  This perhaps explains a whole series of things.  This sleazy and maybe even criminal activity clearly warrants looking into by the appropriate authorities and falls outside Special Counsel Mueller’s mission, which would explain why he punted it to the US Attorney’s Office for the southern district of New York.  It also explains why the Trump White House seems to have backed off from their initial outrage at Cohen’s troubles.  It’s clear now that things that go far afield from his dealing with the Porn Star and point at open influence peddling that might match or even exceed the sleazy dealing that end the career of then Illinois Blogovich in the previous Administration. Like the Godfather said, keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Chris Lizza pops off

Hillary for New York AG

And gets hit from all sides.

This is  one of those funny events where everybody is stunned and promptly hammers a really inappropriate if not crazy idea.  I guess it was one of those late night ideas that popped into his head, like some of Trump’s of message tweets, long time political journalist Chris Lizza proposed that the Democrats might want to offer the State Attorney General’s job vacated by disgraced former AG Schneiderman to Hillary Clinton.  Sure on the face of it Hillary is a known quantity, she is experienced office holder, a New Yorker, a Yale Law School alumna and lawyer and she carried New York State in the last election in a land slide.  But there are many reasons it wouldn’t work.  First it would be a step down for Hillary who had been a US Senator and Secretary of State, not to mention a two time serious candidate for President. Secondly,  while a long time resident and voter in New York State, Hillary would be from outside the very inbred and peculiarly New York political world.  Even more to the point, Hillary does not have day to day managerial experience to run a big wide ranging legal operation that is a very demanding and detailed job at the best of times and one that has seen the catastrophic destruction of the careers of two recent incumbents.  New York politics is a bare knuckles game and they don’t prisoners or show mercy to anybody. Wonder when the Democrats will start coming up with fresh faces and new ideas.  If they want to refight every battle from decades ago, they are going to miss what’s on the table now.