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Toward a Constitutional Convention

U.S. Constitution Threatened as Article V Convention Movement Nears Success

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Mark Twain

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Time for a Constitutional Convention? (7/28/2022)

Can the system be saved? Institutionalism vs. Democracy By Karen Greenberg (7/20/2022)

Trump's presidency has amended the Constitution. Not formally, of course, but informally...which matters just as much.

...no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished them, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right. (A letter to Madison from Jefferson Sept. 6, 1789. Quoted in Larry J. Sabato's book 'A More Perfect Constitution'
...the American Revolution produced a system much closer to a monarchical society in the United States, even though the monarch is elected by the people, than the system in the British Commonwealth countries, where the power of the prime minister is much less that that of the American President. There is, indeed, almost a "law of irony of revolutions" - they nearly always tend to produce what they were intended to oppose. Certainly the Russian Revolution produced a nonhereditary czar with far greater powers than the unfortunate Nicholas II, in the shape of Lenin and Stalin and their successors. Kenneth E. Boulding, The World as a Total System
What conservatives are really arguing for is a return to the three historic embodiments of tyranny that the Founders and Framers identified, declared war against, and fought and died to keep out of our land. Those tyrants were kings, theocrats, and noble feudal lords....They stripped the president of the power to declare war...Separated the State from the church and they rejected feudalism (broadly defined as "rule by the super rich.) From Thom Hartman's book Threshold.
I believe in limited government ... No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literary or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens to contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race. Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of it All.
Nuclear weapons undo governments and undo anything that could be meant by democracy ... We had a choice: get rid of nuclear weapons or get rid of Congress and the citizens. We got rid of Congress and the citizens. Thermonuclear Monarchy, Choosing Between Democracy and Doom Elaine Scarry
"As Richard Wilkinson, coauthor of The Spirit Level, has said, “If Americans want to live the American dream, they should go to Denmark.” The Privatization of Childhood

Why Canada Races on Gun Policy When America Crawls (6/2/202 2)

‘We’re No. 28! And Dropping!’ (9/9/2020)

The Electoral College Will Destroy America (9/8/2020)

Fixing Our Founders' Mistakes (12/29/2017)

Schools indoctrinate everyone that the Constitution is a perfect document, but as an adult, if you are paying attention, you can see that there is no functioning democracy, and government does not serve the people. Government cannot and does not make long-term policy for much of anything, so is incapable of responding to people, long term challenges, or honoring international agreements.

Originalism binds us permanently to decisions made centuries ago, so should be subject to periodic popular review. Jedediah Purdy writes in his visionary book Two Cheers for Politics: “A constitutional referendum every 27 years, would mean that every generation of adults would live under a basic law that affirmed their sovereign role.” important book.

The President is much more powerful than the king we sought to overthrow. Corporations more powerful than the one we threw out at the Tea Party. Theocracy is entrenched in the Supreme Court. The Congress is money driven. The military dominates the economy.

The President can become a dictator, the Congress is paralyzed, SCOTUS leans right, election integrity questionable, democracy weak. The GOP and Trump attempted to overthrow the republic.

"'The ruling classes have in their hands the army, money, the schools, the churches and the press. In the schools they kindle patriotism in the children by means of histories describing their own people as the best of all peoples and always in the right. Among adults they kindle it by spectacles, jubilees, monuments, and by a lying patriotic press.'" (Tolstoy, Government is Violence - Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, Phoenix Press, 1990, p.82)

For a number of reasons the US slowly retreated from democracy. after WWII US government, without consulting voters, decided to maintain an empire, and to become a Thermonuclear Monarchy (see Elaine Scarry's book of that title.)

Republicans never liked the New Deal, they have been leaders in the expansion of extreme wealth inequality, and they facilitated the growth of organized crime, recently much of it Russian, the result: the US government does not respond to the will of the people.

The two party system is not part of the Constitution and is a polarizing curse on elections. implementing standard, ranked-choice voting would allow for multiple parties without making them spoilers.

The original Constitution reflects the founders wariness of concentration of power. They structured the three branches of government to avoid that, but checks and balances have been seriously weakened by an unaccountable executive branch, SCOTUS has chipped away at democracy, the private sector has huge incentives to create corporate monopolies that overpower government. Weakened anti-trust law lets them do it.

Fascism occurs when wealth inequality becomes extreme. Oligarchs then rule. The economy becomes unstable. Wealth is extracted from the majority. Authoritarians produce a dictator. To protect their wealth and power, such nations sometimes take violent action against their own people. Syria, Russia, and many other countries fit this description. It has almost happened here. It's not over. There has always been a Fascist minority in the US.

Time to recognize that the US Constitution is no longer working. For one thing, it doesn’t support the principle of one-man-one-vote. Rural State votes have much more weight than urban. That’s why the Senate is Republican, the Electoral College selects a President without the popular vote, and why the Supreme Court leans right.

Democracy is rare, but a goal that is important to good government. The wisdom of the crowd is better than any single individual, but needs to be carefully harvested for best decisions.

Right wing [Republican] government is never good. It tends to dictatorship. When an individual head of state makes most decisions for a nation, particularly the most urgent ones, if he is wise, policy may be good, but if not he can do considerable damage. Prior agreements may be nullified, so cannot be relied upon. Often he is an oligarch/kleptocrat himself, rewarding other oligarchs who support him. Europeans stripped Kings of their power and they are now safer. The US should do the same for the President.

States rights turned into yet another Constitutional problem. States that want to attract manufacturing bust unions, those that want to attract rich people reduce taxes for them, some are overly corporate friendly, partisans manage untrustworthy elections. Repeal of the Voting Rights Act restored race discrimination to elections. Some States may shape their laws to allow money laundering. Standardization might solve some of these problems, so that competition between States does not continue to be a race for the bottom. Republican States usually perform poorly, just as right-wing governments do.

A revised Constitution should more clearly define Federal, State, Local, and what power is reserved for the people.

The Presidency should be made dictator proof.

International agreements, that we have signed, should be considered a part of the law, not to be revoked by the President without the consent of Congress. The Universal Delaration of Human Rights should be incorporated. The US should join the International Criminal Court, adopt the GDPR, plan ahead for digital technology, and otherwise respect international law, like the ban on nuclear weapons.

Privacy rights are not written in the Constitution, they should be clarified.

Our political system does not respond to long term problems, those longer than an election cycle. We may be too late to save the climate.

Science denial is dangerous. It is the reason for hundreds of thousands of pandemic deaths, and even worse is the failure to act in the face of dire climate warnings. The kids will inherit a hostile planet. Government, at any level, should not be allowed to interfere with science, including medicine. Add to the Bill of Rights: Congress shall make no law interfering in science or medicine.

Although the Constitution is hard to change, the Supreme Court can shape it, has become partisan and favors Republicans which is why Citizens United and campaign finance allows floods of corporate cash, the 2008 Heller decision started the wilding of America, guns are allowed even when there is no organized militia, gerrymandering is not illegal, the Voting Rights Act was overturned allowing discrimination in elections, surveillance capitalism, Bush v Gore brought us the forever wars and the lack of attention to the climate threat, Corporate favoritism has produced monopolies, and deference to the President have bought us close to Fascism. We had a narrow escape, but the coup continues.

"The public tragedy of Sept. 11 dramatically shifted the focus in Washington from debates over federal privacy legislation to a mania for total information awareness, turning Silicon Valley’s innovative surveillance practices into objects of intense interest. As Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, observed, the intelligence community would have to “rely on private enterprise to collect and generate information for it,” in order to reach beyond constitutional, legal, or regulatory constraints, controversies that are central today. By 2013, the CIA’s chief technology officer outlined the agency’s mission “to collect everything and hang on to it forever,” acknowledging the internet companies, including Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Fitbit and telecom companies, for making it possible. The revolutionary roots of surveillance capitalism are planted in this unwritten political doctrine of surveillance exceptionalism, bypassing democratic oversight, and essentially granting the new internet companies a license to steal human experience and render it as proprietary data." Shoshana Zuboff "The Coup We Are Not Talking About" New York Times Jan. 29, 2021

As a result of the attempted coup January 6 2021, domestic terrorists, mostly extreme right, will be seen as a national threat, and there is likely to be enhanced domestic surveillance.

Constitutions are often structured similarly, whether Nations or States. There is an upper and lower assembly, usually competing classes, the head of state may still be powerful. Examples include the UK, US, most US States, and even the UN.

War is an addiction for right-wing government, just as it is for the US. Democracy uses it only for self-defense.

Restructuring could restore good government. To make the principle of ‘one man, one vote’ reality, we would need to abolish the Senate and the Electoral College. Only one people’s assembly should rule. We don’t need the Electoral College or the Supreme Court either, both are undemocratic and used to subvert the will of the majority. They are gamed by powerful Republican interests like theocrats or corporate supremacists to further corrupt the system.

Wealth inequality is not up for discussion much, although it is a serious, worsening problem. Since there is nothing to stop it, inevitably wealth concentrates, authoritarianism emerges, and if a dictator results he is likely a sociopath, a corrupt kleptocrat, human rights abuses follow.

Nordic countries are structured in such a way that they perform better, have the best metrics for standard of living and happiness. Although their taxes are high, they get a good deal with universal health care, free education, family leave, elder care that does not strip seniors of assets. Along with these social programs, strong unions keep wages high and damp down wealth inequality. Their government delivers for the people.

Nordic countries, (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden) provide examples of well functioning governments. Their kings were stripped of most of their power, instead becoming ceremonial national icons. We should do that for our Presidency and we would be much safer. “Richard Nixon in 1974, when he was threatened with impeachment, revealingly, he told reporters, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” (quoted in Elain Scarry's book: Thermonuclear Monarchy). No one should have such power.

We should learn from the Nordic model which performs better by most important metrics. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

Ben Franklin said it is a Republic if you can keep it. On the current trajectory it appears the US is becoming a fascist state with potential for the same devastation as fascists in the past, only this time nuclear. In the longer run, destruction will occur by climate collapse, which the GOP is in denial.

Democracy is better than dictatorship.

Concentration of Power

The framers of the Constitution had great suspicion of concentration power. Checks and balances were supposed to counter it, but recent events show they are no longer working. Trump ignored them and was unchecked. Voting GOP has consequences, this book presents some of the results.

There has been immense concentration in the private, unaccountable sector. Anti-trust has not kept monopolies from removing competition from the economy.

Media has become so concentrated that it has little local accountability, a lot fewer jobs, downsized news, partisan hate speech, a message that allows for little well informed opinion, and rhetoric that is polarized and too often incendiary. We have seen in Rwanda how powerful talk radio can be. Fox News spread deadly lies about the pandemic.

We are having a close brush with fascism. We may have lost WWII.

Elections

The Constitution should be revised to assure that elections have integrity. The process needs to be revised and strengthened so that it cannot be rigged. Campaign finance underlies our laws, so eliminating Citizens United and regulating money in politics is important.

Primary candidates are selected by who raises the most money. Because elections are run by the advertising industry, candidates must spend plenty for air time, spend part of their day raising money, so they work for the wealthy, not the people. Which means big donors get to select the candidates. Boss Tweed said “I don't care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating. ”

Lawrence Lessig, founder of Rootstrikers, described in some detail Congress' dependence on campaign money as the reason we have lost our republic. His book is titled Republic, Lost. See this link..

The two party system was not part of the Constitution. It is polarizing and continues to be a bad idea. It can be mitigated with ranked choice voting and reforms which allow all adult citizens to vote, a ban on gerrymandering, and other voting reforms like HR1. It’s questionable if we can trust vote counts any more. Since the two parties have put our government in gridlock, we need to break the two party monopoly.

Congress persons need to spend a large part of their days raising money in order to stay in office instead of focusing on their job. Congressional debates look to be made in an empty chamber with CSPAN cameras watching.

To remove the need for big money in campaigning, political messaging should be confined to public media.

Paper ballots are probably the most secure voting technique. When voting machines are used, they should be open source to be open to audit. Secure, standardized voting procedures should require Range Voting to break the 2 party monopoly.

The Electoral College should be eliminated.

Another thing, wealth concentration continues inexorably. It has been truly said that the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The rich game the system to extract wealth from the rest of us and to benefit themselves. The poor turn to religion and become Republicans. Wealth inequality is extreme and there is the golden rule: who has the gold rules. Combine extreme wealth inequality with racism exacerbated by immigration and the result is right-wing politics, which never yields good government. It becomes authoritarian and Fascist.

The Russians found that Trump needed money and the GOP was for sale, so with some election interference, Trump was the product. Russian regime change succeeded. Trump did considerable damage to government, just what Putin wanted.

There ought to be an ethics clause in the Constitution: It would specify that profiting from public office is illegal.

Restore Checks and Balances

Presidency

Notice that it has been all down hill since Reagan. Wealth has been extracted from most people for a small minority, plutocrats who govern.

The Presidency has grown too powerful, threatening those checks and balances we heard about in school.

If the Republican concept of an imperial Presidency is allowed to stand, we will lose our Constitution altogether. Bush, like Nixon, argued that the President is above the law. Trump thinks he can do anything. The Constitution needs to be altered so that no President ever makes that mistake again.

Republicans worked for decades to create a unitary Presidency resulting in Trump, who refused oversight or Congressional subpoenas, fired Inspector Generals, decapitated the DOJ removing prosecutors investigating him from SDNY, EDNY, hid tax returns which could show his dependence on Russian money, appeared to pander to Putin, and pardoned criminal associates.

The President, thanks mostly to the GOP, usurped Congressional authority. He ignored Congressional oversight and there is seemingly nothing Congress can do about it. Why can the president unilaterally withdraw from an international treaty without Congressional consent ? He can press a button and kill millions of people, just as he can go to war for any perceived reason. He sent troops into American cities to arrest peaceful protesters. He was oblivious to the thousands of people dying from a pandemic. He attempted to influence the outcome of his next election by degrading operation of the Post Office, running a marginal candidate to split the vote, and this is in addition to the usual GOP cheating at elections: gerrymandering, voter suppression, poll tactics that create long lines, etc. Further, the President put National sovereignty ahead of human rights, so we have concentration camps with kids in cages. Trump did nothing in response to Russian bounties on American soldiers. We should make the Presidency a ceremonial office just as the Europeans did with their royalty.

A President who can do anything is a dictator, and first hand evidence of failure of the Constitution.

Democracy is better than dictatorship.

Congress

Remember the Constitution was written 'for the people'. The only way people can be the deciders is through their representatives in Congress, but studies show that Congress represents the funders... not the people.

Congress abetted the usurpation of power by the President and it has become money driven so that it has lost its deliberative function.

Congress is dysfunctional, unresponsive, social supports failing, government chaos, and since the Senate blocks about everything, checks and balances are inoperable. It could not reign in corruption publicly displayed by Trump. Lawrence Lessig’s book Republic Lost has more details.

War Power belongs to the Congress

We ought to break our addiction to wars. The Congress should reassert its sole power to make war.

The Constitution does not authorize any effort to remake the middle east. We need to reach a consensus that the US is not to build an empire. Agreement on that would remove the need to build and support the world's largest military. We could get back to building a better standard of living.

People cannot be deciders unless government is open and transparent. The Bush administration deliberately kept its activities and records secret, and would not even respond to Congressional subpoenas for routine information. So did Trump. That should be criminal.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has been captured by right wing interests, and often does the wrong thing.

Justices should be term limited and held to same ethical standards as other judges.

Citizens United should be overturned.

Bill of Rights

It could have been better if FDR's Second Bill of Rights had been implemented.

The first amendment is well served when there is a really free press, but media should not have the right to deliberately lie. (Courts have ruled that they can.) Talk radio is the voice of the Republican party: it enabled the election of Trump and Bush, cheered for war, and didn't notice any problems with the economy until it fell off the cliff. Media distorts politics for the benefit of funders.

The Fourth amendment has been gutted. We have no fourth amendment rights at the airport. President Bush took it upon himself to wiretap without court or any other oversight. There ought to be reconsideration of this. The Bill of Rights could be strengthened so that we again have fourth amendment rights against arbitrary search and seizure

The Fourteenth Amendment was supposed to protect people, not corporations. See this. http://www.kickthemallout.com/article.php/Story-Two_Step_Plan

Corporations

Corporations are a creation of the State and should be required to be good citizens since they have been ruled to be actual persons. There should be caps on CEO compensation. They should be taxed fairly. There should be a revival of anti-trust.

Corporations are the engines that created the US oligarchy. Workers and shareholders votes should make them more democratic.

The Supreme Court was wrong and a change to the Constitution should remedy it. Corporations are not people, and do not have the rights of people. If they are not good citizens they need to be eliminated. Their influence on the political process should be restricted. Workers should be represented on Boards.

Corporate governance needs limitations. See Thomas Geoghegan's "Notebook" in Harper's for March 2010.

Corporations have grown too large to fail, and we now have to bail them all out with taxpayer funds. Although the Supreme Court decided that the only obligation of Corporations is to make a profit. Allowing them to spend unlimited amounts of money to buy elections will have dire consequences. Already, their voices are by far the loudest from broadcasters.

Corporations have become much more powerful than people, particularly in light of the recent Supreme Court decisions.

Corporations, to retain their charter, must be good citizens.

Economy

Our economic measures are no longer appropriate. Similarly, our economic direction is misguided. The financial sector, Speculators, casinos, and weapons manufacturers have gone wild. Thoughtless deregulation was the problem.

Empire

The U.S. will not get its fiscal problems under control until it rejects the urge to build an empire. The outlook for rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, providing universal healthcare, or any real civilization is bleak unless we wind down our profligate military expenses. There is no longer any credible threat to justify the world's largest military expenditure. It is an ugly government jobs program and an economic bubble. Other countries see it as a threat.

Secrecy

The law should require that high-level officials keep complete records that are open, unless judicial oversight agrees that they should be closed. A revised Constitution should reject the 'executive privilege' claimed by Nixon, Bush, and Cheney. They are public servants, not dictators. Refusing to deliver needed information to the Congress should be a crime and an impeachable offense.

Covert agencies are not accountable. They not only have budgets that are large and hidden, they have been responsible for all US wars since WWII and many illegal activities. We know that the CIA has run drugs into Los Angeles, that Afghanistan under the Taliban produced almost no narcotics but now it produces a large part of the worlds drugs, the agency has engaged in renditions, torture, assassinations, regime changes...and it has supported dictatorships in many parts of the world. If good US citizens were fully informed, there would be an even more massive change of politicians.

There must be some restraint, judicial oversight, of the governments decisions of what secrets to keep. The Bush administration's volume of 'classified' documents was unprecedented, and extremely ant-democratic. Without a doubt, the Bush administration's worst abuses occurred because they could keep their activities secret.

They succeeded in neutralizing the FISA court. They were able to do this, in addition to other crimes, because it was secret.

Information that caused us to go to war in Iraq was extracted using torture....in secret.

Having failed to learn lessons from history, we went to war in Iraq based on twisted information. The same people, some felons, who justified the massive and dysfunctional arms buildup in the Reagan administration also were responsible for twisting 'intelligence' to justify the war in Iraq. Although media is complicit in keeping Americans ignorant about these facts, Congress, unwilling or unable to access classified information, has failed in its oversight of the executive branch. Secrecy will likely be a fatal poison for the US Constitution.

We know that the Bush administration used secrecy to hide very unsavory political activities, lawbreaking, ideological falsehoods, and an assortment of lies. There was no accountability.

Trump brought us to a close brush with Fascism. Without timely change in course, the forecast is bleak.

Right now, we are on a path for destruction.

Outlook

We could learn from other countries that are better at governing like the Scandinavians, who have the best metrics for standard of living and happiness. Because Scandinavians have the best government and the happiest people, We should consider restructuring to be more like them.

We should learn from the Nordic model.

Nordic countries, (Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden) provide examples of well functioning governments. Their kings have been stripped of most of their power, instead becoming ceremonial national icons. We could do that for our Presidency and we would be much safer. “Richard Nixon in 1974, when he was threatened with impeachment. Revealingly, he told reporters, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead.” (quoted in Elain Scarry's book: Thermonuclear Monarchy) No one should have such power.

Restructuring could restore good government. To make the principle of ‘one man, one vote’ reality, we need to abolish the Senate and the Electoral College. Only one people’s assembly should rule. We don’t need the Supreme Court either. It is gamed by powerful interests like theocrats or corporatists to further corrupt the system.

Seems to me that for the US, the simplest short term improvement would be Ranked Choice voting to break the 2 party monopoly. Also, HR1: The For The People Act could make a difference.

There are a number of good reasons that the Constitution needs revision. See Call A Convention.

Realistically, the outlook is grim. Our politics seems incapable of responding to climate warnings.

..."A constitutional convention to rewrite our governing document would unleash every bat in America's political belfry. More modest changes, though, remain in the realm of the possible. " Harold Meyerson in the American Prospect October 2011

Bibliography

Links

Conference on the Constitutional Convention

Convention USA