They came from Chicago.
Well, actually, they came from Glen View.
And from Grand Rapids, and East Lansing, and Okemos, and Ann Arbor.
They came from North Carolina, and New York, and Wisconsin. And from far off California.
They came hungry. And thirsty.
They came with laughter, and love and lasagna.
Their eyes were wide with delight and memories. "When did you get the braces off?” “How did you grow so tall?” “Old enough to have a beer? I can’t believe it!”
At dawn, I tiptoed through a house full of bodies. Every bed, every couch. Every nook and cranny that could accommodate a sleeping bag. Bodies everywhere.
The big day has begun.
Some went to Mass. Some ran the charity 5K down in town. Jimmy won by a mile. We knew he would.
A knock on the bathroom door.
“Hey Dad, where’s the plunger. Don’t tell Mom.”
A half dozen grade schoolers in the basement are making memories for future Thanksgiving days. Imaginations running wild, Singing, screaming, making up stories, being silly.
Takes me back to 1938 and my grandmother’s little house in Detroit.
How the wheel turns. How life revolves.
So many memories rush back. I can’t remember what I had for lunch, but I can close my eyes and smell the turkey cooking at Uncle Emmett Sullivan’s house half a century ago.
Our driveway is crammed with cars. Soon there will be thirty-one of us around a big table, celebrating the day, celebrating each other, giving thanks to an almighty Creator we all hold dear in our hearts.
And I look at that beautiful lady next to me and I ask myself, “What on earth have we done?”
Two frightened twenty-one year old college students with a 1949 Mercury and a part time job, embarking on a lifetime adventure nearly sixty years ago. Is this what we wanted ? Is this what we expected?
We never had the chutzpah to predict it. Not even that New Years Eve when the furnace went out and we sat by the fireplace and tried to look down the road.
It just happened, and keeps on happening. You gotta roll with the punches and you gotta believe.
And what ever else we have done, we surely have believed.
We have believed that a loving Creator has decreed that if we lived by His laws and the laws of His nature, we would experience the best that life has to offer.
Or as the Catholic marriage ceremony used to say, “the fullest measure of happiness allotted to man in this veil of tears.”
And so it has been.
We thank God today. Again today. As we must thank Him every day.
May your hugs be as warm and welcome. May your day be as full of cheer.
And may tomorrow’s cold turkey sandwich be all that you anticipate.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
FEAR MONGERS
Surfing the Internet the other day, I happened upon a blog called “the Liberty Papers” which was celebrating its fifth anniversary.
To mark the occasion, they reprinted some of their “best” essays. One of them offered the shrill and tired arguments against an Article V Convention which have been repeated and repeated by the John Birch Society and others who don’t trust the American people.
Their keynote is always the letter that Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote to Phyllis Schlafly. He said:
I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the convention would obey. After a convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the convention if we don’t like its agenda. The meeting in 1787 ignored the limit placed by the confederation Congress “for the sole and express purpose.”
Sometimes a half truth is more deceiving than an outright lie.
Burger was quite right in saying that a convention makes its own rules and cannot be muzzled.
But when he says that a convention cannot be ‘stopped,’ he is talking nonsense.
The convention can amend the constitution? Are you kidding? There is no way the convention could do that.
The constitution only gets amended when three quarters of the states ratify an amendment. That’s thirty-eight states.
And the states can only ratify amendments that come from the United States Congress.
An Article V convention can’t send amendments out to the states. It has to send its proposals to the Congress. Then the Congress decides whether an amendment should be ratified by state legislatures or by conventions in each state.
Unless the Congress agrees on the method of ratification and sends the amendment to the states, nothing - absolutely nothing - can happen.
So it’s like everything else in politics. If an amendment is popular enough, the voters will insist that the Congress send it out to the states to be ratified. If an amendment is unpopular, or even sufficiently controversial, the Congress will sit on it, and nothing will happen.
But if the “too late to stop” argument is a phoney, the claim that the 1787 convention was a run away meeting that ignored limits placed on it by the confederation Congress, is downright preposterous.
Let’s look at the record.
From September 11 through September 14, 1786, twelve delegates from five states met in Annapolis, Maryland. It was called a “Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government.”
The Commissioners accomplished only one thing. They decided to ask all thirteen states to send delegates to Philadelphia the following May.
They got a good response. By February of 1787, the confederation Congress had before it several resolutions calling for a convention in Philadelphia.
Here is what they adopted:
Resolved that in the opinion of Congress it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a Convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several states be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the states render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government & the preservation of the Union.
Chief Justice Burger cites the phrase “for the sole and express purpose’ without mentioning what the purpose was. A half truth. Cheesy lawyer trick.
What the Congress really said was “for the sole and express purpose of REVISING the articles of confederation.”
Webster’s dictionary tells us that REVISING means remodeling, revamping, remaking, doing over.
Revising is not the same as amending. Revising means creating a whole new constitution. A revised constitution. A different constitution,
The original Articles of Confederation contained a provision that they could not be amended without the unanimous agreement of all thirteen states. A daunting requirement. And a good reason to go to Philadelphia.
True, the 1787 document required only nine states to ratify. But it also said that only those states which ratified it would be bound by it. By 1790, all thirteen states were on board, so the question of whether the United States of America was born in 1781 or 1789 is moot.
In any case, the Burger legacy is mischiefious.
The super patriots who love our constitution and regard it as divinely inspired seem willing to worship everything but Article V.
Those on the far left oppose a convention because they fear crackpot conservatives.
Those on the hard right oppose it because they fear hair brained liberals.
They’re all afraid of We The People.
Burger was educated in a working man’s law school in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Somehow, he outlived his populist roots.
It can happen if you spend a lot of time in Washington, D.C.
To mark the occasion, they reprinted some of their “best” essays. One of them offered the shrill and tired arguments against an Article V Convention which have been repeated and repeated by the John Birch Society and others who don’t trust the American people.
Their keynote is always the letter that Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote to Phyllis Schlafly. He said:
I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the convention would obey. After a convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the convention if we don’t like its agenda. The meeting in 1787 ignored the limit placed by the confederation Congress “for the sole and express purpose.”
Sometimes a half truth is more deceiving than an outright lie.
Burger was quite right in saying that a convention makes its own rules and cannot be muzzled.
But when he says that a convention cannot be ‘stopped,’ he is talking nonsense.
The convention can amend the constitution? Are you kidding? There is no way the convention could do that.
The constitution only gets amended when three quarters of the states ratify an amendment. That’s thirty-eight states.
And the states can only ratify amendments that come from the United States Congress.
An Article V convention can’t send amendments out to the states. It has to send its proposals to the Congress. Then the Congress decides whether an amendment should be ratified by state legislatures or by conventions in each state.
Unless the Congress agrees on the method of ratification and sends the amendment to the states, nothing - absolutely nothing - can happen.
So it’s like everything else in politics. If an amendment is popular enough, the voters will insist that the Congress send it out to the states to be ratified. If an amendment is unpopular, or even sufficiently controversial, the Congress will sit on it, and nothing will happen.
But if the “too late to stop” argument is a phoney, the claim that the 1787 convention was a run away meeting that ignored limits placed on it by the confederation Congress, is downright preposterous.
Let’s look at the record.
From September 11 through September 14, 1786, twelve delegates from five states met in Annapolis, Maryland. It was called a “Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government.”
The Commissioners accomplished only one thing. They decided to ask all thirteen states to send delegates to Philadelphia the following May.
They got a good response. By February of 1787, the confederation Congress had before it several resolutions calling for a convention in Philadelphia.
Here is what they adopted:
Resolved that in the opinion of Congress it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a Convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several states be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein as shall when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the states render the federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of Government & the preservation of the Union.
Chief Justice Burger cites the phrase “for the sole and express purpose’ without mentioning what the purpose was. A half truth. Cheesy lawyer trick.
What the Congress really said was “for the sole and express purpose of REVISING the articles of confederation.”
Webster’s dictionary tells us that REVISING means remodeling, revamping, remaking, doing over.
Revising is not the same as amending. Revising means creating a whole new constitution. A revised constitution. A different constitution,
The original Articles of Confederation contained a provision that they could not be amended without the unanimous agreement of all thirteen states. A daunting requirement. And a good reason to go to Philadelphia.
True, the 1787 document required only nine states to ratify. But it also said that only those states which ratified it would be bound by it. By 1790, all thirteen states were on board, so the question of whether the United States of America was born in 1781 or 1789 is moot.
In any case, the Burger legacy is mischiefious.
The super patriots who love our constitution and regard it as divinely inspired seem willing to worship everything but Article V.
Those on the far left oppose a convention because they fear crackpot conservatives.
Those on the hard right oppose it because they fear hair brained liberals.
They’re all afraid of We The People.
Burger was educated in a working man’s law school in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Somehow, he outlived his populist roots.
It can happen if you spend a lot of time in Washington, D.C.
Friday, November 19, 2010
NURSES ON STRIKE
On November 14, 2002, about half of the nurses at Northern Michigan Hospital in Petoskey, Michigan walked out on strike.
They were represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
A teamster, you may know, is a fellow who drives a team of horses. Teamsters were the forerunners of truck drivers. The folks who brought the food to market and moved all sorts of other things around.
Jimmy Hoffa was the hero of the Teamsters union. A legendary fighter for the working man, tough, ruthless, ambitious. He cozied up with the mob. Did time in jail. Then one day he had lunch at Machus Red Fox in Oakland County and disappeared.
Hoffa’s son, Jim Jr. is a lawyer. He became President of the Teamsters in 1998.
That was about the time the International Brotherhood of Teamsters began to expand. After all they really weren’t driving teams of horses anyway, so why limit the membership to truck drivers?
Unhappily, they brought a confrontational representation strategy to the table. It didn’t look good on the descendants of Florence Nightengale.
Northern Michigan Hospital hired replacements for the striking nurses. About half of those who had gone on strike left the union and went back to work.
But a die-hard core of protesters hung on. Their picket lines in front of the hospital became a tradition in the little northern town. By 2004 they were featuring the claim that theirs was the longest nurse’s strike in history.
By 2006, the hospital was declaring that the strike was over. The union had given up its efforts to retain certification as the official bargaining agent for the nurses.
I have been a patient at Northern Michigan Hospital. It’s a wonderful place, full of caring, dedicated people. Just what a hospital is supposed to be.
I see in the paper that a strike has just been averted at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing. Good news.
Our daughter-in-law, Catherine, is a supervisory nurse there. She was frantic about the possibility of a strike which would have required her to cross picket lines manned by her friends and coworkers.
Got me to thinking.
The idea of a strike is to generate public support for the labor side of the bargaining table. That’s why they carry signs and walk up and down the sidewalk.
Going on strike means forfeiting wages. It also means depriving the employer, and more critically, the employer’s clients or customers of their services.
That’s the part I find very hard to understand.
Nurses are supposed to care about their patients. The vast majority of them do. They really, really care. That’s why they became nurses. That’s why they empty bedpans. Cheerfully.
A nurse’s strike sounds like an oxymoron. Nurses nurse. That’s what they do. How can a nurse who doesn’t nurse be a nurse?
But nurses are also employees. They are working folks who do what they do, not only because they love what they do, not only because they are dedicated to taking care of sick people, but also as a way to earn a living and to provide for themselves and their families.
So what are they to do when they are at odds with their employers over the conditions and terms of their employment?
That’s particularly sticky since for the most part their employers are non profit, charitable corporations, governed by unpaid Boards of Directors, and supported by public generosity or the local taxpayers.
So a nurses strike is a war between the good guys and the good guys.
What are we patients and potential patients and patient’s families supposed to think?
It strikes me that there must be a better way. A tertium quid as we lawyers might say. A third thing. Something outside of the box.
How about this?
Instead of punishing the patients by withholding their services, why don’t the nurses donate their earnings back to the hospital?
Instead of walking up and down the sidewalk in the dead of winter carrying homemade signs, why not invite the media into the hospital cafeteria to film the nurses tearing up their paychecks?
A little hard for the hospital administrators to plead poverty in the face of nurses foregoing their compensation.
I’m just one guy, but if I read in the paper or saw on the nightly news that nurses were tearing up their paychecks to protest their working conditions, I would be tempted to dig pretty deep and throw something into the pot myself.
Bizarre? Maybe.
But I’ll wager it would have been more effective than the Teamsters inspired confrontational strategy that ruined so many lives and careers in Petoskey.
They were represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
A teamster, you may know, is a fellow who drives a team of horses. Teamsters were the forerunners of truck drivers. The folks who brought the food to market and moved all sorts of other things around.
Jimmy Hoffa was the hero of the Teamsters union. A legendary fighter for the working man, tough, ruthless, ambitious. He cozied up with the mob. Did time in jail. Then one day he had lunch at Machus Red Fox in Oakland County and disappeared.
Hoffa’s son, Jim Jr. is a lawyer. He became President of the Teamsters in 1998.
That was about the time the International Brotherhood of Teamsters began to expand. After all they really weren’t driving teams of horses anyway, so why limit the membership to truck drivers?
Unhappily, they brought a confrontational representation strategy to the table. It didn’t look good on the descendants of Florence Nightengale.
Northern Michigan Hospital hired replacements for the striking nurses. About half of those who had gone on strike left the union and went back to work.
But a die-hard core of protesters hung on. Their picket lines in front of the hospital became a tradition in the little northern town. By 2004 they were featuring the claim that theirs was the longest nurse’s strike in history.
By 2006, the hospital was declaring that the strike was over. The union had given up its efforts to retain certification as the official bargaining agent for the nurses.
I have been a patient at Northern Michigan Hospital. It’s a wonderful place, full of caring, dedicated people. Just what a hospital is supposed to be.
I see in the paper that a strike has just been averted at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing. Good news.
Our daughter-in-law, Catherine, is a supervisory nurse there. She was frantic about the possibility of a strike which would have required her to cross picket lines manned by her friends and coworkers.
Got me to thinking.
The idea of a strike is to generate public support for the labor side of the bargaining table. That’s why they carry signs and walk up and down the sidewalk.
Going on strike means forfeiting wages. It also means depriving the employer, and more critically, the employer’s clients or customers of their services.
That’s the part I find very hard to understand.
Nurses are supposed to care about their patients. The vast majority of them do. They really, really care. That’s why they became nurses. That’s why they empty bedpans. Cheerfully.
A nurse’s strike sounds like an oxymoron. Nurses nurse. That’s what they do. How can a nurse who doesn’t nurse be a nurse?
But nurses are also employees. They are working folks who do what they do, not only because they love what they do, not only because they are dedicated to taking care of sick people, but also as a way to earn a living and to provide for themselves and their families.
So what are they to do when they are at odds with their employers over the conditions and terms of their employment?
That’s particularly sticky since for the most part their employers are non profit, charitable corporations, governed by unpaid Boards of Directors, and supported by public generosity or the local taxpayers.
So a nurses strike is a war between the good guys and the good guys.
What are we patients and potential patients and patient’s families supposed to think?
It strikes me that there must be a better way. A tertium quid as we lawyers might say. A third thing. Something outside of the box.
How about this?
Instead of punishing the patients by withholding their services, why don’t the nurses donate their earnings back to the hospital?
Instead of walking up and down the sidewalk in the dead of winter carrying homemade signs, why not invite the media into the hospital cafeteria to film the nurses tearing up their paychecks?
A little hard for the hospital administrators to plead poverty in the face of nurses foregoing their compensation.
I’m just one guy, but if I read in the paper or saw on the nightly news that nurses were tearing up their paychecks to protest their working conditions, I would be tempted to dig pretty deep and throw something into the pot myself.
Bizarre? Maybe.
But I’ll wager it would have been more effective than the Teamsters inspired confrontational strategy that ruined so many lives and careers in Petoskey.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
WHAT'S THE USE?
Alexis de Tocqueville was one smart Frenchman.
He was sent to the United States in 1831 at the age of 25 to study our prison system. He ended up writing a two volume classic entitled “Democracy in America,” which is – or was – required reading for all political science majors.
At the risk of losing you, I want to quote from his chapter entitled “Despotism in Democratic Nations.”
Stay with me. This is good stuff. He warned that we might become
an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provi-dent, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government will¬ingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and sup¬plies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their prin¬cipal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of prop¬erty, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
In short, the Frenchman predicted that America might morph into a nation of myopic, self centered pleasure seekers, governed by a nanny state that controls our lives from the cradle to the grave.
That’s the danger when people think they can vote themselves rich, healthy, happy and secure.
H. L. Mencken, the cynical sage of Baltimore, pointedly observed that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
That dark sentiment surfaced this afternoon in an email from a very good friend. He was responding to my last blog touting Convention USA. Here’s what he said:
GUILTY AS CHARGED! I can’t tell you how many times I came within a micrometer of sending in my subscription to the cause only to fall victim to my ongoing and ever increasing malaise of hopelessness. I must admit it is my own weakness and I have to deal with it but I cannot make myself believe anyone or any group will ever be able to get the people of this nation to agree to real change for the better. There are too many vested interests to fight against, too many who just don’t give a damn and just too many really ignorant folks out there. I again must tell you how much I enjoy your blogs, how much I agree with your point of view and insights and how much respect I have for you as a highly intelligent, clear thinking and dedicated patriot. I just don’t hold the majority of folks in this nation in a similar regard
It’s hard to be critical of a guy who says such nice things about you.
But the fact is that the shoulder shrugging “What’s the use?” attitude so prevalent among good folks, well meaning folks, common sense folks in every corner of our land constitutes a mountain of inertia that protects and perpetuates all the things these same folks complain about at the barber shop and the hairdresser.
I have always believed that the generality of mankind can recognize truth, and that in the long haul, the truth is what sets us free.
I believe in democracy because I trust the intuitive wisdom of the great unwashed.
Does every jury of average citizens always come up with the right verdict? Of course not.
But in the lives of human beings and of nations, decision making is not an exact science.
I have a good friend who subjects his choices to the “smell test.” We all do something like that.
The American people are essentially conservative. Not in the political sense, but they are conservative in that they have a strong bias in favor of the status quo. They prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know.
The ideologs and the crazies will always gravitate toward a convention for proposing amendments to the constitution. They will bring brief cases full of ideas. Radical ideas. Unworkable ideas. Just plain goofy ideas. And a few damn good ones.
It will take some patience to hear them out. It will take discernment to recognize the solid, the practical, the acceptable proposals, and it will take courage and determination to see them through to public consensus.
But that is what self government is all about.
The mid term elections are over. The party is over. It’s time to go to work.
He was sent to the United States in 1831 at the age of 25 to study our prison system. He ended up writing a two volume classic entitled “Democracy in America,” which is – or was – required reading for all political science majors.
At the risk of losing you, I want to quote from his chapter entitled “Despotism in Democratic Nations.”
Stay with me. This is good stuff. He warned that we might become
an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provi-dent, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government will¬ingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and sup¬plies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their prin¬cipal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of prop¬erty, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
In short, the Frenchman predicted that America might morph into a nation of myopic, self centered pleasure seekers, governed by a nanny state that controls our lives from the cradle to the grave.
That’s the danger when people think they can vote themselves rich, healthy, happy and secure.
H. L. Mencken, the cynical sage of Baltimore, pointedly observed that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
That dark sentiment surfaced this afternoon in an email from a very good friend. He was responding to my last blog touting Convention USA. Here’s what he said:
GUILTY AS CHARGED! I can’t tell you how many times I came within a micrometer of sending in my subscription to the cause only to fall victim to my ongoing and ever increasing malaise of hopelessness. I must admit it is my own weakness and I have to deal with it but I cannot make myself believe anyone or any group will ever be able to get the people of this nation to agree to real change for the better. There are too many vested interests to fight against, too many who just don’t give a damn and just too many really ignorant folks out there. I again must tell you how much I enjoy your blogs, how much I agree with your point of view and insights and how much respect I have for you as a highly intelligent, clear thinking and dedicated patriot. I just don’t hold the majority of folks in this nation in a similar regard
It’s hard to be critical of a guy who says such nice things about you.
But the fact is that the shoulder shrugging “What’s the use?” attitude so prevalent among good folks, well meaning folks, common sense folks in every corner of our land constitutes a mountain of inertia that protects and perpetuates all the things these same folks complain about at the barber shop and the hairdresser.
I have always believed that the generality of mankind can recognize truth, and that in the long haul, the truth is what sets us free.
I believe in democracy because I trust the intuitive wisdom of the great unwashed.
Does every jury of average citizens always come up with the right verdict? Of course not.
But in the lives of human beings and of nations, decision making is not an exact science.
I have a good friend who subjects his choices to the “smell test.” We all do something like that.
The American people are essentially conservative. Not in the political sense, but they are conservative in that they have a strong bias in favor of the status quo. They prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know.
The ideologs and the crazies will always gravitate toward a convention for proposing amendments to the constitution. They will bring brief cases full of ideas. Radical ideas. Unworkable ideas. Just plain goofy ideas. And a few damn good ones.
It will take some patience to hear them out. It will take discernment to recognize the solid, the practical, the acceptable proposals, and it will take courage and determination to see them through to public consensus.
But that is what self government is all about.
The mid term elections are over. The party is over. It’s time to go to work.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
WHY DO IT?
I called a meeting and nobody came.
Well, not exactly nobody. Eight out of fifty. Hardly a quorum.
Early this year, with a few gracious friends, I started a non profit corporation called Convention USA. The idea is to conduct a convention on the Internet which will propose needed amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
The Internet is full of proposals to amend the Constitution. Some worthy and serious. Some not so sensible. Still there are lots of them and literally thousands of people touting one or the other.
My idea is different. I felt, and still feel, that there is a need for some serious statecraft in America.
I’m not talking about the sexy, hot button issues, the stuff of the hard right or the far left. I’m talking about boring, technical, procedural changes. I’m talking about the nuts and bolts of good government, the kinds of changes that will protect our federal republic from the ravages of time, corruption, drift, ignorance, self interest and just plain laziness.
Convention USA is open to all citizens of the United States. They are not identified by party affiliation or philosophical disposition. This is not a bi-partisan effort with an aisle running down the middle to separate the majority and the minority. This is a non-partisan enterprise, in which each delegate is known only as an interested citizen.
I know. I know. Folks tell me that you can’t find a roomful of people these days who don’t have strong opinions about what’s wrong with our government. The eight delegates who checked in at the meeting last Sunday, God bless them, are not bashful about sharing their opinions.
But there were forty-two others who didn’t show up. They are exactly the kind of folks we need to make this convention work. They are the silent majority. America’s vast reservoir of common sense. They are the people who can build a consensus in favor of nitty gritty constitutional reforms that can make our government work better no matter which party elects the Speaker of the House or the President of the Senate.
We need to look at all three branches of the federal government and see what can be done to make sure they exercise only those powers the Founders intended to give them.
Start with the Congress. Does anyone, liberal or conservative, really think that members of Congress should vote on bills they have never read?
And who really is in favor of omnibus legislation that includes thousands of unrelated subjects? Most state constitutions specify that every bill must be limited to a single subject or purpose, which must be stated in its title. This is simply a question of good legislative practice. It belongs in the Constitution where it can’t be changed by the very people it is meant to discipline.
And how about the Supreme Court? Who doesn’t want our highest court to be truly non partisan, or at least as non-partisan as humanly possible? Haven’t we seen enough of the wrangling and mud slinging associated with the political process of appointment and confirmation?
Criticism of activist judges on the Supreme Court usually comes only from the other side of the issue. Conservatives excoriate judicial activism when the judges are liberal, and vice versa. We need to explore ways to bring the brightest and the best judges from all across America to the high court. We need Justices who do not come to the court with a political agenda
Every one of the nine current Justices of the United States Supreme Court attended either the Harvard or the Yale law school. Is it really in the best interest of the nation to allow two universities such inordinate influence on the development of our constitutional law?
Felix Frankfurter, when a law teacher, famously observed, “The Supreme Court is the Constitution.” If this is what graduates of Harvard and Yale believe, how can we expect the Court to respect the words of the Constitution or the intent of those who ratified it?
If the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government need fixing, the executive branch needs even more attention.
The founders explicitly shunned the idea of creating an American monarchy. George Washington himself refused even to consider the possibility. But what is the modern Imperial Presidency in the United States?
The President of the United States is routinely designated as “the most powerful person on the planet.” He is Commander in Chief of the world’s most potent military forces. He has his finger on the big red button which can launch a cataclysmic global holocaust.
To millions around the world, he is more popular than a rock star and more infallible than the Pope.
But for the fact that his term of office is limited, the President of the United States has all the indicia of a monarch. His family in ensconced in a hallowed palace. His wife has a multi-million dollar bevy of ladies in waiting who attend to every detail of courtly life from wardrobe to hairdressing to social scheduling.
A fleet of jet airplanes stands ready to carry him wherever he chooses to go. His entourage dwarfs that of any king or potentate on earth.
He appoints legions of aids and special assistants who work not for the government, but for the President. He makes them czars over the economy, the environment, technology and terrorism. While the Constitution permits the Congress to authorize the President to hire “inferior officers” without confirmation, the title “czar” suggests a level of power and authority which is hardly inferior.
There are no quick and easy fixes to these problems. They need cautious, deliberative attention and analysis. Proposed amendments must be examined by many pairs of eyes and debated well and seriously if they are to earn the support of the American people.
Constitutional reform is no sport for the short winded or the faint of heart.
But America is worth the effort.
Well, not exactly nobody. Eight out of fifty. Hardly a quorum.
Early this year, with a few gracious friends, I started a non profit corporation called Convention USA. The idea is to conduct a convention on the Internet which will propose needed amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
The Internet is full of proposals to amend the Constitution. Some worthy and serious. Some not so sensible. Still there are lots of them and literally thousands of people touting one or the other.
My idea is different. I felt, and still feel, that there is a need for some serious statecraft in America.
I’m not talking about the sexy, hot button issues, the stuff of the hard right or the far left. I’m talking about boring, technical, procedural changes. I’m talking about the nuts and bolts of good government, the kinds of changes that will protect our federal republic from the ravages of time, corruption, drift, ignorance, self interest and just plain laziness.
Convention USA is open to all citizens of the United States. They are not identified by party affiliation or philosophical disposition. This is not a bi-partisan effort with an aisle running down the middle to separate the majority and the minority. This is a non-partisan enterprise, in which each delegate is known only as an interested citizen.
I know. I know. Folks tell me that you can’t find a roomful of people these days who don’t have strong opinions about what’s wrong with our government. The eight delegates who checked in at the meeting last Sunday, God bless them, are not bashful about sharing their opinions.
But there were forty-two others who didn’t show up. They are exactly the kind of folks we need to make this convention work. They are the silent majority. America’s vast reservoir of common sense. They are the people who can build a consensus in favor of nitty gritty constitutional reforms that can make our government work better no matter which party elects the Speaker of the House or the President of the Senate.
We need to look at all three branches of the federal government and see what can be done to make sure they exercise only those powers the Founders intended to give them.
Start with the Congress. Does anyone, liberal or conservative, really think that members of Congress should vote on bills they have never read?
And who really is in favor of omnibus legislation that includes thousands of unrelated subjects? Most state constitutions specify that every bill must be limited to a single subject or purpose, which must be stated in its title. This is simply a question of good legislative practice. It belongs in the Constitution where it can’t be changed by the very people it is meant to discipline.
And how about the Supreme Court? Who doesn’t want our highest court to be truly non partisan, or at least as non-partisan as humanly possible? Haven’t we seen enough of the wrangling and mud slinging associated with the political process of appointment and confirmation?
Criticism of activist judges on the Supreme Court usually comes only from the other side of the issue. Conservatives excoriate judicial activism when the judges are liberal, and vice versa. We need to explore ways to bring the brightest and the best judges from all across America to the high court. We need Justices who do not come to the court with a political agenda
Every one of the nine current Justices of the United States Supreme Court attended either the Harvard or the Yale law school. Is it really in the best interest of the nation to allow two universities such inordinate influence on the development of our constitutional law?
Felix Frankfurter, when a law teacher, famously observed, “The Supreme Court is the Constitution.” If this is what graduates of Harvard and Yale believe, how can we expect the Court to respect the words of the Constitution or the intent of those who ratified it?
If the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government need fixing, the executive branch needs even more attention.
The founders explicitly shunned the idea of creating an American monarchy. George Washington himself refused even to consider the possibility. But what is the modern Imperial Presidency in the United States?
The President of the United States is routinely designated as “the most powerful person on the planet.” He is Commander in Chief of the world’s most potent military forces. He has his finger on the big red button which can launch a cataclysmic global holocaust.
To millions around the world, he is more popular than a rock star and more infallible than the Pope.
But for the fact that his term of office is limited, the President of the United States has all the indicia of a monarch. His family in ensconced in a hallowed palace. His wife has a multi-million dollar bevy of ladies in waiting who attend to every detail of courtly life from wardrobe to hairdressing to social scheduling.
A fleet of jet airplanes stands ready to carry him wherever he chooses to go. His entourage dwarfs that of any king or potentate on earth.
He appoints legions of aids and special assistants who work not for the government, but for the President. He makes them czars over the economy, the environment, technology and terrorism. While the Constitution permits the Congress to authorize the President to hire “inferior officers” without confirmation, the title “czar” suggests a level of power and authority which is hardly inferior.
There are no quick and easy fixes to these problems. They need cautious, deliberative attention and analysis. Proposed amendments must be examined by many pairs of eyes and debated well and seriously if they are to earn the support of the American people.
Constitutional reform is no sport for the short winded or the faint of heart.
But America is worth the effort.
Friday, November 5, 2010
BUY, BUY, BUY
My golfing buddy, Dan, is a man well attuned to the vagaries of the stock market.
He says it’s time to buy.
Two reasons. First, the third year of a President’s term of office has historically been a good year for investment. Second, legislative gridlock encourages investor confidence.
Makes sense to me. Mark Twain, Daniel Webster and others are credited with the quote, “No man’s liberty or property are safe when the legislature is in session.”
Whoever said it, there’s a germ of truth in it.
The sheer volume of legislation can befuddle the citizens, make businessmen timid, and cause economic activity to grind down to a snail’s pace.
The more new laws are cranked out of Congress, the more investors get jittery. Hiring decisions, equipment purchases, new product introductions, a whole host of business decisions become dicey when legal obligations and consequences are uncertain.
The Republicans are about to descend on Washington.
They come with a mandate to change the change, undo what has been done, and somehow get America back to full employment.
Not very likely to happen.
In the first place, the Republicans don’t control the Senate, so they can’t pass any legislation which requires the concurrence of both houses. Then there is the little matter of Presidential veto. The GOP can’t even override a veto in the House of Representatives.
So it looks like gridlock is coming.
Good for Wall Street, and probably good for Barack Obama. In 2012 he will no doubt take a page from Harry Truman’s playbook and rail against the “do nothing Republican Congress.”
That will be an effective slogan among those who insist that government must “do something” about jobs, mortgages, education, crime, or whatever. Fill in the blanks.
I happen to believe there are a great many things that government shouldn’t try to do something about. People have a wonderful way of solving their own problems, right from the ground up. Usually, the best thing that the government can do is nothing at all.
Anyway, there must be a point of diminishing returns when it comes to law making. The annotated version of United States Code runs to 370 big, fat volumes. The tax code alone contains over 44,000 pages and more than 5.5 million words. The Code of Federal Regulations which contains the authoritative pronouncements of all the national government’s boards, bureaus and agencies used up nearly 81,000 pages two years ago. No telling how many more pages are being added to accommodate the new health care bureaucracy.
Enough already. How about a moratorium on law making?
Or how about taking a look at the “Repeal Amendment.”
Advanced by Georgetown University law Professor Randy Barnett and William J. Howell, Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, the Repeal Amendment would give the state legislatures a way to undo unpopular federal legislation. Here’s what it says:
Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.
Much of the impetus for the Repeal Amendment flows from dissatisfaction with the legislation which has been dubbed “Obamacare.” But there is a deeper significance. The tenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Especially since the advent of the New Deal in the 1930’s, there has been a steady encroachment of the national government into the areas which were always considered the prerogative of state government.
States have always been considered to be the repository of the police power. In legal parlance, the police power is the authority to pass laws which affect the health, safety, welfare and morals of the people.
Education, marriage and divorce, criminal laws, corporations, the regulation of trades and professions, real estate, probate matters, and a host of similar areas of legislation have traditionally been within the jurisdiction of state and local government.
Unhappily, Uncle Sam has the exclusive power to coin money. And so the “Golden Rule” tends to prevail. He who has the gold makes the rules.
What authority was not given to the feds by the constitution has been purchased by a power hungry national government. Money for roads, money for schools, money for law enforcement. Whatever comes from Washington comes with the control of the national bureaucrats.
National Socialism rose up in Germany back in Franklin Roosevelt’s time. It became known by the acronym NAZI. The NAZIs were the bureaucrats, the czars, the bosses, the rulers who made all the decisions and issued all of the orders.
National Socialism in America?
Not here, please God. Not on this hallowed ground.
He says it’s time to buy.
Two reasons. First, the third year of a President’s term of office has historically been a good year for investment. Second, legislative gridlock encourages investor confidence.
Makes sense to me. Mark Twain, Daniel Webster and others are credited with the quote, “No man’s liberty or property are safe when the legislature is in session.”
Whoever said it, there’s a germ of truth in it.
The sheer volume of legislation can befuddle the citizens, make businessmen timid, and cause economic activity to grind down to a snail’s pace.
The more new laws are cranked out of Congress, the more investors get jittery. Hiring decisions, equipment purchases, new product introductions, a whole host of business decisions become dicey when legal obligations and consequences are uncertain.
The Republicans are about to descend on Washington.
They come with a mandate to change the change, undo what has been done, and somehow get America back to full employment.
Not very likely to happen.
In the first place, the Republicans don’t control the Senate, so they can’t pass any legislation which requires the concurrence of both houses. Then there is the little matter of Presidential veto. The GOP can’t even override a veto in the House of Representatives.
So it looks like gridlock is coming.
Good for Wall Street, and probably good for Barack Obama. In 2012 he will no doubt take a page from Harry Truman’s playbook and rail against the “do nothing Republican Congress.”
That will be an effective slogan among those who insist that government must “do something” about jobs, mortgages, education, crime, or whatever. Fill in the blanks.
I happen to believe there are a great many things that government shouldn’t try to do something about. People have a wonderful way of solving their own problems, right from the ground up. Usually, the best thing that the government can do is nothing at all.
Anyway, there must be a point of diminishing returns when it comes to law making. The annotated version of United States Code runs to 370 big, fat volumes. The tax code alone contains over 44,000 pages and more than 5.5 million words. The Code of Federal Regulations which contains the authoritative pronouncements of all the national government’s boards, bureaus and agencies used up nearly 81,000 pages two years ago. No telling how many more pages are being added to accommodate the new health care bureaucracy.
Enough already. How about a moratorium on law making?
Or how about taking a look at the “Repeal Amendment.”
Advanced by Georgetown University law Professor Randy Barnett and William J. Howell, Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, the Repeal Amendment would give the state legislatures a way to undo unpopular federal legislation. Here’s what it says:
Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.
Much of the impetus for the Repeal Amendment flows from dissatisfaction with the legislation which has been dubbed “Obamacare.” But there is a deeper significance. The tenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Especially since the advent of the New Deal in the 1930’s, there has been a steady encroachment of the national government into the areas which were always considered the prerogative of state government.
States have always been considered to be the repository of the police power. In legal parlance, the police power is the authority to pass laws which affect the health, safety, welfare and morals of the people.
Education, marriage and divorce, criminal laws, corporations, the regulation of trades and professions, real estate, probate matters, and a host of similar areas of legislation have traditionally been within the jurisdiction of state and local government.
Unhappily, Uncle Sam has the exclusive power to coin money. And so the “Golden Rule” tends to prevail. He who has the gold makes the rules.
What authority was not given to the feds by the constitution has been purchased by a power hungry national government. Money for roads, money for schools, money for law enforcement. Whatever comes from Washington comes with the control of the national bureaucrats.
National Socialism rose up in Germany back in Franklin Roosevelt’s time. It became known by the acronym NAZI. The NAZIs were the bureaucrats, the czars, the bosses, the rulers who made all the decisions and issued all of the orders.
National Socialism in America?
Not here, please God. Not on this hallowed ground.
Monday, November 1, 2010
JUST FOR MEN
Returning to Florida always involves the ritual of picking up accumulated mail and discontinuing the postal forwarding instruction.
Waiting in line, I noticed a poster on the counter just to the left of Russell, the Florida State football fanatic who always brightens my visit to his shop.
I did a double take. The poster said “MEN.” In big, bold, red letters.
What is this, right there in the United States Post Office? MEN? What could the federal government, that hotbed of gender equality, possibly be saying to men, that it doesn’t also want to say to women?
For a moment, overcome by disbelief, I pondered the possibility that Russell had somehow become an avant garde perpetrator of free enterprise. Perhaps he was renting counter space to a men’s hair care manufacturer. Or maybe Viagra. That’s it. The old rascal is selling Viagra.
But on closer inspection, I discovered that the poster was part of a display which held a supply of brochures, explaining, of all things, the selective service system.
Well, I’ll be darned. That thing must have been there at least since the Korean War. Why had I never noticed it before?
So I took one.
It was crisp and new. Didn’t mention the Korean War. It just said that, in case of war, a serious war, acknowledged by the Congress and the President, it might be necessary to conscript people into the armed forces.
So, just to be safe, the Congress, in its wisdom, passed a law requiring all males, whether citizens or not, between the ages of 18 and 25, to register with Uncle Sam. Within 30 days of turning 18. And it’s a felony if you don’t.
Just to make the cheese a little more binding, the law adds disqualification for various educational benefits for those who don’t sign up. It affects other federal entitlement goodies as well.
When I got home, I went to the source of all wisdom and knowledge, Google, and checked it out.
Indeed the selective service law was reinstated in 1980 during the term of President Jimmy Carter. True to his impeccable liberal credentials, President Jimmy urged the Congress to include women in the law.
They didn’t.
So, of course, along came one Robert Goldberg who filed suit against Bernard Rostker, the director of the federal selective service, claiming that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law, by reason of the fact that it exempted women.
The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868. It contains not a word about gender equality. The people who ratified it had just fought a civil war in which the armies of both sides were staffed by males. The idea of females marching into combat was totally foreign to them.
The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. It said nothing about military service.
Still, the United States Supreme Court could only muster a 6-3 majority to uphold the constitutionality of the selective service law.
Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the majority, offered the silly reason that the law was designed for emergencies when combat soldiers were needed, and since women were not allowed combat duty, it made sense to exempt them from the draft.
That was in 1981. Today, women are regularly assigned to combat duties. Does that mean the Constitution has changed? If another case gets to the high court, will they announce that there is no longer a compelling reason to exempt women?
Why on earth, especially in light of the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to achieve ratification, wouldn’t it have been enough for Rehnquist just to say that the Constitution doesn't forbid a law drafting men or requiring them to register for possible conscription?
Be that as it may, Goldberg lost, and the ‘selective’ selective service law is still on the books and still enforceable.
At least until somebody else challenges it.
A lot of folks these days agree with Jimmy Carter.
We have ladies in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there’s lots of literature out on the Internet demanding that women be subject to conscription.
Maybe it will come to pass someday. If it does, I just hope it comes about democratically through legislation by elected representatives of the people and not by the writ of Supreme Court Justices who have anointed themselves as the oracles of ‘emerging community standards.’ Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.
Anyway, the battle of the sexes is turning into a free for all.
With girls who want to act like boys and boys who want to act like girls, maybe the only meaningful requirement for military service should be the willingness to die for your country. Or as General Patton so eloquently put it, to make the other son of a bitch die for his country.
One wonders if Renee Richards could have been convicted of a felony for failure to register.
It’s an old dodge. Achilles got out of the Trojan War by dressing as a girl.
Waiting in line, I noticed a poster on the counter just to the left of Russell, the Florida State football fanatic who always brightens my visit to his shop.
I did a double take. The poster said “MEN.” In big, bold, red letters.
What is this, right there in the United States Post Office? MEN? What could the federal government, that hotbed of gender equality, possibly be saying to men, that it doesn’t also want to say to women?
For a moment, overcome by disbelief, I pondered the possibility that Russell had somehow become an avant garde perpetrator of free enterprise. Perhaps he was renting counter space to a men’s hair care manufacturer. Or maybe Viagra. That’s it. The old rascal is selling Viagra.
But on closer inspection, I discovered that the poster was part of a display which held a supply of brochures, explaining, of all things, the selective service system.
Well, I’ll be darned. That thing must have been there at least since the Korean War. Why had I never noticed it before?
So I took one.
It was crisp and new. Didn’t mention the Korean War. It just said that, in case of war, a serious war, acknowledged by the Congress and the President, it might be necessary to conscript people into the armed forces.
So, just to be safe, the Congress, in its wisdom, passed a law requiring all males, whether citizens or not, between the ages of 18 and 25, to register with Uncle Sam. Within 30 days of turning 18. And it’s a felony if you don’t.
Just to make the cheese a little more binding, the law adds disqualification for various educational benefits for those who don’t sign up. It affects other federal entitlement goodies as well.
When I got home, I went to the source of all wisdom and knowledge, Google, and checked it out.
Indeed the selective service law was reinstated in 1980 during the term of President Jimmy Carter. True to his impeccable liberal credentials, President Jimmy urged the Congress to include women in the law.
They didn’t.
So, of course, along came one Robert Goldberg who filed suit against Bernard Rostker, the director of the federal selective service, claiming that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the law, by reason of the fact that it exempted women.
The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868. It contains not a word about gender equality. The people who ratified it had just fought a civil war in which the armies of both sides were staffed by males. The idea of females marching into combat was totally foreign to them.
The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. It said nothing about military service.
Still, the United States Supreme Court could only muster a 6-3 majority to uphold the constitutionality of the selective service law.
Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the majority, offered the silly reason that the law was designed for emergencies when combat soldiers were needed, and since women were not allowed combat duty, it made sense to exempt them from the draft.
That was in 1981. Today, women are regularly assigned to combat duties. Does that mean the Constitution has changed? If another case gets to the high court, will they announce that there is no longer a compelling reason to exempt women?
Why on earth, especially in light of the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to achieve ratification, wouldn’t it have been enough for Rehnquist just to say that the Constitution doesn't forbid a law drafting men or requiring them to register for possible conscription?
Be that as it may, Goldberg lost, and the ‘selective’ selective service law is still on the books and still enforceable.
At least until somebody else challenges it.
A lot of folks these days agree with Jimmy Carter.
We have ladies in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there’s lots of literature out on the Internet demanding that women be subject to conscription.
Maybe it will come to pass someday. If it does, I just hope it comes about democratically through legislation by elected representatives of the people and not by the writ of Supreme Court Justices who have anointed themselves as the oracles of ‘emerging community standards.’ Whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.
Anyway, the battle of the sexes is turning into a free for all.
With girls who want to act like boys and boys who want to act like girls, maybe the only meaningful requirement for military service should be the willingness to die for your country. Or as General Patton so eloquently put it, to make the other son of a bitch die for his country.
One wonders if Renee Richards could have been convicted of a felony for failure to register.
It’s an old dodge. Achilles got out of the Trojan War by dressing as a girl.
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