Miscellaneous

That’s the membership of the Federal Legislature, the supreme power under the U. S. constitutional system.
They can do anything they want, except reduce the equal suffrage of a state in the Senate without its consent.
They’ve never actually done a damn thing since they, technically, came into existence in 1789.
The three subordinate branches of the federal government, particularly the Congress, have done what they can to discourage the Federal Legislature from acting. But that may be about to change. If the R’s take the Senate I think the Congress will cooperate in good faith when called upon (when we get 34) to set the time and place for the Federal Legislature to meet for the first time.
Practically speaking, the Federal Legislature can only call itself into session when there is a broad and bipartisan consensus on the need for an amendment, and Congress refuses to listen to the people. We have such a consensus on the BBA and Congressional term limits.
But how do you get the 5,000 or so members of 34 state legislatures to agree to act together?
What we have here is a problem of communication.
This problem is being overcome. ALEC has finally stepped up, and is ready to play a leading role. The Republican State Leadership Council — a well funded arm of the Republican Party — is ready to do its part. The BBA Task Force is doing a good job with almost no resources.
And there’s the internet — the golden key to Article V. Politics, just like everything else in this world, is being transformed by the internet. The Tea Party is an early incarnation of the transformation. Others are coming, including, I fervently believe, the creation of a community of state legislators.
The meetings in Mount Vernon and Indianapolis are just a start, and a good one. Soon there will be a plentitude of networks for state legislators to choose from. The effort to use Article V to overturn Citizens United is creating an alternative, liberal, network.
In the big picture, the internet is about personal empowerment, and, at bottom, liberty.
And, thank God, Article V.

Since we managed to get Herman Cain a Friday luncheon speech at ALEC, now everybody’s going to attend, 10 in all from the Task Force. There will be some sort of reception Thursday night with Cain.
The ALEC people, particularly Mike Bowman, are doing all they can for us, and this meeting in Dallas could give us major momentum as we head into 2015. We will have representatives on two panels (not me), plus a booth — which I’ll help man. Everybody’s jacked up about it, and there seems to be a little money available. My hunch is that Dave Biddulph and his wife had a little heart-to-heart about their finances and he convinced her to put more in.
The California Assembly has passed an Article V Reso calling for an Amendment Convention to overturn Citizens United. This means they know Article V can limit the scope of the call. Which means they might be open to a Term Limits Amendment. Aaron Cook of termlimitconvention.org sent me a couple hundred of his new business cards, which I will pass out in Dallas to legislators from the 34 states we’re not targeting on the BBA. It will be extremely interesting to see what kind of reaction I get to the idea of doing Congressional term limits through Article V. I was on an ALEC panel in Orlando 28 years ago, trying to make the same pitch. I got a polite reception, but no takers.
North Dakota looks like a piece of cake, just like Louisiana. Montana and Wyoming will be my focus next year, along with Utah.
Since I’m not counting on getting to 34 until 2016, I’ve got to develop a trait I’m weak on.
Patience.

I met him in Charleston at the rally on the USS Yorktown, and had a good, substantive talk with him. He gets it, and I believe I made enough of an impression on him that he will take a look at what I’ll be sending him. It’s a draft of a speech that he will deliver to the ALEC luncheon in Dallas on August 1.
I’m going to take a week to write this speech, and it will be the best distillation of all the arguments in favor of Article V and the BBA that I know of. Some one-liners. I’m really going to give it everything I’ve got.
He wrote a fairly pedestrian op-ed on Article V recently, and I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with something a lot better. Hopefully his ego won’t get in the way of adopting my language. He’s actually a good public speaker in a down home kind of way, and this speech should be a home run for him.
The theme of the speech is that the 7,383 state legislators in this country are actually, because of Article V, a kind of super-legislature — a fourth branch of the government, superior to the other three. I call it the National Legislature.
It works for me.

Great news about the ALEC meeting at the end of July.  The BBA Task Force will be on the program twice, at a Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon panel.  We should have a good portion, if not a majority, of the 700 hundred or so state legislators in attendance listening to the pitch.  This is in addition to having the Thursday luncheon speaker, a retired Navy Admiral, giving an address on the national debt being the number one security threat to this country, and, hopefully, the outgoing ALEC Chair following up by making an  appeal on behalf of the Task Force. 

I think all this is happening because the Peterson Foundation, on our behalf, cut ALEC a check for $25,000 or so.  Money talks — and we don’t have any. 

There are a whole lot of people I hope to get a chance to talk to in Dallas.  I hope Karl Rove is there.  If I could have a serious talk with him for 15 minutes I think I could get us some of the money he controls.  Since the Peterson people are putting up the money, they’ll probably be there.  There’s a Republican group that has $25 million to spend on down ballot state races.  Plus all the state legislators.

I’m not sure who will represent the Task Force on these two panels.  I hope it’s me.  As a former state legislator, I think I could give a better pitch than anyone else.  Dave Biddulph and Bill Fruth are the two real co-founders of the Task Force, and they’ve sunk a lot of their own money into it.  So they have first dibs.  Neither had planned to go to Dallas, but this opportunity may cause them to change their mind.

November’s only a little more than four months away, and for the life of me I can’t see how it can be anything but a tsunami.  We’ve got everything going for us.  I snapped out of my year-long funk back in October, when I became convinced Obamacare would kill the Democratic Party.  If we don’t win the Senate, and pick up at least one state legislature, I will have been proven wrong.  It’s happened before, but this time, I swear, we’re going to put them down.

This country has been moving left for 100 years.  Could 2014 herald an historic ideological and political reversal?

One can dream.

I’m so confident we’ll get a BBA I’m working on #2, which in my mind is more important then #1 — term limits.

I found out about a lawyer in Kansas City who’s decided he wants an Article V Amendment Convention to propose a Congressional term limits amendment.  His name is Aaron Cook, and he’s got a website, termlimitconvention.org.  I gave him ten names in six states to call — people who have passed a BBA Resolution in their legislature, and might be ready for #2. 

A BBA should be bipartisan — 65% of Democrats support it.  But it hasn’t been, up to now.  Democrats are afraid this will hurt them politically, and a lot of leftist Dems want to close the deficit through taxes on the rich.  Term limits should be completely bipartisan.  Everybody hates Congress and just about everybody in it.  Look what just happened to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.  Congress has a 7% approval rating  — the 7% of the country that has absolutely no idea of what’s going on.  Looking at my crystal ball, I see that 7% dwindling, as Obama and a Republican Congress wage total war for the last two years of his term. 

I’ll be staying in touch with Aaron.  He’s a political amateur, God love him, but if he’s willing to devote time to this, so am I.  We’ll find allies — hopefully a bunch of Democratic ones — who will join the cause.

Great oaks from little acorns grow.