This is a draft of mine from those dark days before we became fixated on Ukraine…..
Or as we use to call this thing….a Constitutional Convention….
A Convention is the mechanism used to amend our US Constitution……or as some call it exercise the Article Five of the Constitution…..
For those that are ignorant of this article…..
Article V Convention, amendatory convention, or a convention of states, applied for by two-thirds (currently 34) of the state legislatures, is one of two processes authorized by Article Five of the United States Constitution whereby the United States Constitution may be altered. Amendments may also be proposed by Congress with a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate…..
Article V of the Constitution says how the Constitution can be amended—that is, how provisions can be added to the text of the Constitution. The Constitution is not easy to amend: only twenty-seven amendments have been added to the Constitution since it was adopted.
Article V spells out a few different ways in which the Constitution can be amended. One method—the one used for every amendment so far—is that Congress proposes an amendment to the states; the states must then decide whether to ratify the amendment. But in order for Congress to propose an amendment, two-thirds of each House of Congress must vote for it. And then three-quarters of the states must ratify the amendment before it is added to the Constitution. So if slightly more than one-third of the House of Representatives, or slightly more than one-third of the Senate, or thirteen out of the fifty states object to a proposal, it will not become an amendment by this route. In that way, a small minority of the country has the ability to prevent an amendment from being added to the Constitution.
Article V does potentially provide a way for the states to bypass Congress, although it has never been used. Article V says that “on the Application of two thirds of the Legislatures of the several States, [Congress] shall call a Convention for proposing amendments.” The convention can propose amendments, whether Congress approves of them or not. Those proposed amendments would then be sent to the states for ratification. As with an amendment proposed by Congress, three-quarters of the states would have to ratify the amendment for it to become part of the Constitution.
Article V also allows Congress to choose between two ways that the states might ratify an amendment. An amendment can be ratified by the state legislature—the part of the state government that enacts laws for the state. But Congress can provide instead that the states must call conventions for the single purpose of deciding whether to ratify an amendment. So far, though, with one exception (the Twenty-First Amendment), every amendment has been ratified by state legislatures.
Now the Civics lesson is over let’s move on…..
The last attempt to ratify was the Equal Rights Amendment…..and that was a clusterf*ck……
I have been saying for decades that we need a convention to clarify the Constitution…..the Founders did a helluva job in being vague which in my mind leads to all the confusion and chaos around our Constitution.
Let me return to the thought of the day……
The latest attempt to ratify is going to be the same chaotic mess as the ERA…..
Conservatives in states have put together a campaign of ratify the Constitution in their favor…..mostly it deals with money……
Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Utah and Mississippi have also approved resolutions of their own.
It will take 34 states to trigger a Convention of the States. COS organizers said “momentum” is on their side.
For me there are several problems with this attempt by conservs……
Calling a Constitutional Convention is very dangerous. If Congress called a Constitutional Convention, or attempted
to do so, the country would be thrown into great turmoil, a period of extraordinary tension and deep anxiety, and
likely find itself quickly mired in momentous, lengthy legal and political battles of great consequence to the nation’s
future.
States cannot limit the agenda of a Constitutional Convention. A Constitutional Convention would open up the
Constitution to whatever amendments its delegates chose to propose, just as the convention that produced the current
Constitution ignored its original charge, to amend the Articles of Confederation, and instead wrote an entirely new
governing document.
A balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution would be a highly ill-advised way to address the nation’s longterm fiscal problems. By requiring a balanced budget every year, no matter the state of the economy, such an
amendment would raise serious risks of tipping weak economies into recession and making recessions longer and
deeper, causing very large job losses. That’s because the amendment would force policymakers to cut spending, raise
taxes, or both just when the economy is weak or already in recession — the exact opposite of what good economic
policy would advise.
This is just another attempt to exclude portions of our society from the government….a typical conserv ploy that goes back for decades…..the same trivial games these conservs always play.
I say if you call for a convention then the attempt should be made to clarify all the vagueness in the Constitution….not pick and choose what will be addressed.
Any thoughts?
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Well, you got me on this one, old buddy. I had to read this four times.. and I still am not sure what you’re talking about.. and I do not mean that as any sort of counter-opinion. I am saying I am literally not sure what you are talking about. Seems all my life I’ve heard echoes of some balanced budget amendment. The ERA was passed some 50 years ago… and I was much younger and I do not personally recall the political struggle.. nor the process itself, given amendment-dabbling seems pretty rare and I would need a renewed civics lesson on how the Constitution even allows that, which I know it does.
I have no idea what is currently going on toward a balanced budget amendment or even the current politics of it all…. and most importantly I have little idea of the pros and cons of any debate regarding it. I consider myself about as average an American as most and being familiar with amendment-adding to me barely exists past the classroom knowledge that the process exists. You’re trying to convey an “alarm” and I didn’t even know there was a “thing”.
The balanced budget is only important when Dems are in power….no alarm? That what they said about so many things…….chuq
Let them call the convention if they so desire .. the only result will be a clone of the way things are done in Congress right now which, in itself, as you say, is a “Clusterf**k” as it is … no further embellishment needed … I do not think there is anybody in the Congress right now who is in the least qualified to even entertain the thought of a constitutional convention, much less see one through to an amenable and reasonable conclusion. Besides, with the Right Wing SCOTUS doing the dance it is doing, a constitutional convention is not necessary because the right wads in the SCOTUS will slowly and deliberately bring the same results about as they reinterpret the law of the land (Call it rewrite the constitution) to transform The United States from a democratic Republic into a Right Wing Authoritarian Fourth Reich,.
With so many states now in GOP hands there is the possibility that things could change substantially….chuq
Things have been changing substantially and things are going to continue to change even more substantially because American lemmings will let it happen.
Feeding ignorance and stupidity have brought us to this point…..chuq
We used to have one set of laws for all of Britain. Then we gave partial self-governance to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Since then, there are conflicting laws in different parts of the UK, and it always seems to be a mess that needs sorting out.
From what I can see of America’s system, there is too much power given to each state.
Best wishes, Pete.
I agree and I write lots about the abuses of so-called ‘state’s rights’……chuq