Miscellaneous

What do Barack Obama and Donald Trump agree on?  How about Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell?  Anything they agree on?  How about George Soros, and the Koch brothers?  Or the Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO?  Do the Heritage Foundation and Common Cause have something in common?

There is virtual unanimity, across the spectrum of respectable opinion, including everyone named above, that there is something very dangerous in the Constitution.  It’s a forgotten provision, which has never actually been used.  It’s tucked away in obscurity, in Article V.  It’s the mechanism by which the people, acting through their state legislators, can control the federal government, and amend the Constitution.

Over a hundred years ago, the progressive movement was on the verge of using Article V for the first time in American history.  At the time, seats in the United States Senate were for sale.  A wealthy and ambitious man could go to his state legislature and buy a seat in the Senate.  Senators were not being elected by the people, but by state legislators, whose votes could be purchased.

The progressives were determined to end this corruption, and were able to get 30 state legislatures to pass Article V resolutions, calling for a Convention of States to propose a constitutional amendment for direct election of Senators.  At the time, 32 states constituted 2/3 of the union, and if the progressives got two more states, an Article V Convention of States would be called.

Terrified that the people would be able to exercise power directly, the Senate caved, and passed a resolution for direct election of senators.  That’s how we got the 17th Amendment.  For some corrupt senators, it meant the end of their political careers.  But it was a price that had to be paid, in order to prevent the use of the dreaded Article V.

All opponents of Article V use the bogeyman of a runaway convention.  None of them, except perhaps the loons of the John Birch Society, are actually fearful of a runaway.  The whole idea is laughable, preposterous.  It’s a way for those fearful of the people to justify their opposition to common sense reforms, like a balanced budget amendment, or campaign finance reform.

For seven years the Reagan Project has sought to promote Article V.  It’s had very limited success.  The message has not gotten out.  We were blacklisted by Facebook a long time ago, and this blog is deemed a threat that must be contained.

In the very near future I’m hopeful of breaking out, and getting widespread attention to the cause.  Everyone who reads this blog will be asked to help.  (No, I’m not asking for contributions.)   It will cost nothing, and only take a few minutes of your time.

Stay tuned.

 

My post of a couple days ago was incorrect as to the progress Wolf-PAC has made in red or reddish states.  National Director Mike Monetta informs me that there has been real progress in Missouri, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and a floor vote is tentatively scheduled for June 1 in Tennessee.

Ignorance is the biggest obstacle in any Article V campaign.  State legislators, for the most part, have never heard of Article V, and it sounds somehow radical to them.  If they have any brains you can explain it to them, but relatively few appreciate the critical role the Framers gave them to play in the balance of power between the federal government and the states, or the people.

In my second year at UCLA Law I saw a notice on the bulletin board for a position with the City Attorney’s office in Ketchikan, Alaska.  I applied, was hired, and on a “quarter away” program, Babbie and I spent the last six months of 1973 in Ketchikan.  There were about 20 lawyers in Ketchikan, and they were a very sociable bunch, and I made a lot of friends, including State Senator Bob Ziegler, a blue dog Democrat.

Ten years later, in 1983, I was in the state senate myself.  (This was only possible because my political hero, the 4th Governor of Alaska, Jay Hammond, had designed a senate district specifically for me.)  Bob Ziegler was a senate veteran, and took me under his wing.  One day he comes into my office and shows me a resolution he was carrying.  It was an Article V Resolution, calling for a Convention of States to propose a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

I was 37 years old, a lawyer, with substantial political experience, and a degree in political science from Berkeley.  I thought of myself as a pretty savvy guy, yet I’d never heard of Article V.  Once I gave it a little thought, I realized its significance, and I’ve been advocating for it ever since.

So I don’t hold it against legislators who are unaware of their responsibilities under Article V.  I had to be educated myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I watched the Wyoming legislature hold a virtual session today, and it went pretty smoothly.  The small glitches are easily corrected.  We’ll see more and more of this, and on balance that’s a good thing.

In Washington D.C. or at a state capitol a lawmaker is surrounded by staff and lobbyists, and is far from the voters who elected him.  In a virtual session, he’s at home with his family, neighbors and voters.  They should be the ones influencing him.  Not the special interests that congregate around the capitol.

This is especially true of Congress.  The more time a Congressman spends with the people who elected him, and the less time surrounded by lobbyists, the better.

If you look to the right of this post, you’ll see a section titled “What is the Reagan Project?”  If you read it you’ll see it’s a brief for Article V, and doesn’t even mention a Balanced Budget Amendment.  I support Article V, without qualification.  The BBA is just one of many needed reforms.

From 2013 to 2018 I worked with the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, trying to get 34 states to pass BBA Article V Resolutions.  They were the only feasible Article V movement going.  When I joined them they had 19 states, and we got it up to 29, but no further.

Despite our best efforts, and despite the fact that 2/3 of Democratic voters say they support a Balanced Budget Amendment, no Democratic majority in any legislature ever gave us the time of day.  From 2014 to 2018 it was possible, because of Republican dominance in state legislatures, to do without Democratic support.  After the 2018 election, and for the foreseeable future, any future Article V effort must be bipartisan.

Which brings us to Wolf-PAC, which seeks an Article V convention to take up campaign finance reform.  They have passed their resolution in five deep blue states, but have made no real progress in any of the 30 or so states that are red or reddish.  Wolf-PAC is populated mainly by people on the left side of the political spectrum, many of them Bernie Sanders supporters.  They think the whole of Washington is corrupt. In fact, they’re right.  If you don’t understand that, you haven’t been paying attention.

So I’ve joined Wolf-PAC, and I’ll be trying to help pass their resolution in the 2021 session of the Alaska legislature.  Their prime sponsor is Democratic Rep. Geran Tarr, a member of the coalition that controls the House of Representatives.  From what I know of her, she’s at the left end of the Democratic caucus, and not beloved by the Republicans, who control the Senate.

So it’s time for bipartisanship.  I still have friends in the Alaska Senate.  One of them, Senate Majority Leader Lyman Hoffman, I served with from 1987 to 1991.  Lyman’s from Bethel, and he’ll be able to serve as long as he wants.  He’s been an Alaskan legislator for 33 years, and I look forward to talking to him again.  We played a lot of cribbage in the legislative lounge back in the day, and have a few old war stories to share.

 

 

If you want to get ahead in a city of 8 million people, you have to be aggressive.  If you want to rise to the top, you may have to get belligerent, antagonistic.  And if someone pulls a knife, you pull a gun.

This is Donald Trump’s world, the way he’s lived his life, the way he campaigns.  We’re not used to seeing people like him in politics.  In politics, you’re supposed to be a nice guy.  A guy like Mitt Romney, a guy who’s too nice to fight.  Romney refused to attack Obama in 2012, because he didn’t want to come across as mean.  So he lost.

Then along comes Trump, a man who glories in ridiculing his opponents.  He goads them, taunts them.  He’s completely fearless, and loves to ridicule anyone who attacks him.

He now knows, for sure, if he didn’t before, that Barack Obama orchestrated the illegal surveillance of his campaign, and the attempted subversion of his presidency.  So he does what he always does, he goes on the attack.  By coining the term “Obamagate” he goads all the Democrats who hate him.

Barack Obama is no mere politician to the left.  He is an icon, and a saint.  As the first black man to be elected President, he has a unique status, and must be defended at all costs.  By calling the plot against him Obamagate, Trump throws a match in a room soaked with gasoline.  They’ve always hated him, but now their anger will reach new heights.

How dare he?  How can he belittle and smear our black messiah?  For this, he must be destroyed.  Trump derangement syndrome just became even more severe.  Any and all methods are now justified to destroy him.

A prudent politician would never do such a thing.  But Donald Trump is not a politician, and prudence is not his style.  That’s not the way they do it where he comes from.

So it’s not Trump vs. Biden.  Biden is just a stand in, running for Obama’s third term.  This election is now between Donald Trump and Barack Obama.