THE FIVERS

It is perhaps a happy sign that enough people have become active in the movement to organize an Article V amendatory constitutional convention to generate disputes among them.

Perhaps a better word is quarrels. What I am seeing is the kind of personal, accusatory bickering that characterizes much of ‘politics as usual.’

It’s too bad. All of the reformers – they call themselves ‘fivers’ – ought to be working together. The task is hard enough if pursued with unity. It is impossible if we are divided.

Certainly there is a root problem imbedded in the very nature of a convention. The problem is as old and as real as the nation itself: it is not red states against blue states or Republican versus Democrat. Not really, although it feels that way.

The difficulty is that the United States consists of fifty sovereign entities of vastly different size. The ten largest states host over half of the nation’s 308 million people. At the same time, the constitution is amended by a ratification of three quarters of the states. It follows that it is technically possible to amend he constitution with a combination of states having less than half of the people.

I say ‘technically’ because as a practical matter in these days of mega networking, social media, and the ubiquitous face of television, it is quite impossible to convince the people of the small states of reforms that the people in large states oppose.

In short, it should be obvious to anyone that no amendment will be ratified which does not represent the consensus of the American people, and the convention must reflect that fact in its rules.

Ah yes, the rules of the convention. Who makes them? There seem to be three points of view on this subject. Some say Congress will make the rules. After all, the Constitution says that Congress calls the convention, so why doesn’t the ‘caller’ spell out the rules?

The answer is obvious. The Article V convention was put in the Constitution to provide a way for the states to rein in an overbearing federal government. To permit the Congress to make convention rules would be to put the fox in charge of the hen house.

It would take no stretch of the imagination to suppose that the Congress would direct that the convention consist of 545 delegates; one chosen by each member of Congress, one by each Justice of the Supreme Court and one by the President.  Hardly a recipe for reform.

A second group insists that the State legislatures should make the rules. These are folks who see an Article V convention as a convention of the States, represented by their respective legislatures. They see the convention being organized in pretty much the same fashion as Congress and the State Legislatures themselves are organized.

And how is that done? Quite simply, along party lines. Majority and minority. One side of the aisle or the other. Winner take all, State by State.

The trouble with that approach is that it can end up like Bush v Gore, with the winner getting less than a majority of the popular vote. We managed to avert a crisis in 2000 when the Supreme Court ignored the constitution and decided the election, but that impromptu approach wouldn’t work for a constitutional amendment.

No sir, the only sensible approach is the third way; let the convention make it’s own rules, but first make sure that every community in America is represented.  There are millions of Republicans in New York and scads of Democrats in Texas. A convention must hear from all the people. It must allow all the ideas to be explored, all the arguments to be made.

The convention must not be bi-partisan. It must be non-partisan. There is a huge difference. Delegates must be chosen for who they are, not for the team they play on. Brand name politics are a major cause of our dysfunctional government.

Let’s be done with name calling and impugning motives to every argument. If we listen to each other and glean the kernel of truth in every thing that is said, we might just make some real progress.

A CALL TO ACTION

Article V of the United States Constitution says that if two thirds of the State Legislatures apply, the Congress shall call a convention to propose amendments to the constitution.

In the 230 years of our history there have been more than 700 applications from the State Legislatures. Forty-nine of the fifty states have applied. Some States have applied many times.

Congress has never called a convention. Congress has never considered calling a convention. Congress has never even counted the applications.

Why haven’t they? Why has Congress ignored their obligation under Article V?

Very simply because they don’t want a convention.

The Article V convention was written into our constitution for the very purpose of giving the States a means to amend the constitution in ways that the Congress doesn’t want.

Term limits. Gerrymandering. Pork barrel laws. Balanced Budgets. Congress doesn’t want to reform itself. And Congress doesn’t want a convention that will propose reforms.

Let’s face it. The United States Congress will never call an Article V convention. No matter how many states apply. No matter how many times they apply. No matter what words they use or what amendments they want.

Congress simply will not call a convention. Not in my lifetime. Not in your lifetime. Not in the lives of our children and grandchildren. 
 

So what are we to do?

The Constitution gives us the right to a convention. With or without the call or the permission of the Congress, the people of the United States have the right peaceably to assemble for any lawful purpose.

We don’t need a call from the Congress. We don’t need anyone’s permission. The Congress can’t stop us. The President can’t stop us. The Supreme Court can’t stop us. The army can’t stop us. The FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security, nobody can stop the people from coming together to propose amendments to the United States Constitution.

All we need is the will and the way. The way is right here on the Internet. www.conventionusa.org. Convention USA – conVusa for short – is up and running. It is to be an interactive Article V Amendatory Constitutional Convention of 6,166 delegates representing every county in the nation.

All that is left is the will.

Government is like the weather: everyone talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

Whatever your politics, if you believe we need constitutional reform in America, I urge you to join me and hundreds of other patriotic citizens in this historic effort. Go to www.conventionusa.org. Find your district and register as a delegate. Then forward this page to all your friends.

You can make a difference. 

FERGUSON RIOTS

Last night, they burned the town. Thousands of people milled around in downtown Ferguson, Missouri. Many were good folks who had come to protest the decision of a grand jury not to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen ager.

But some of them – indeed, many of them -- were there to make trouble. And they did. Millions of dollars of property damage. Stores looted. Automobiles and buildings torched. Shots fired. People injured.

Most of the rioters were black and  young. They had been given a pass. Responsible people, adults, even white folks, were incensed about the shooting of Michael Brown. The TV, the newspapers, the Internet were all hyped up to react to the grand jury’s decision.

And so they came. Bearing, sticks and stones. And gasoline, and guns.

Most of the Ferguson rioters had not yet been born when Detroit was burned. On a summer night in 1967, police raided a blind pig on 12^th Street. The patrons refused to be taken downtown and the ensuing scuffle exploded into an uncontrolled rampage.

Four days later, 43 people were dead, 1,189 were injured, 7,200 were arrested and more that 2,000 buildings were destroyed.

In 1967, we lived in Detroit, on Berkeley Road near Seven Mile and Livernois. The stores just a few hundred feet from our back door were looted. We could smell the smoke and hear the gunshots.

Anarchy isn’t pretty. It’s scary. It’s insane.

Bron Cruz is not a white man. His name and his photo suggest that he is Hispanic. He is a Salt Lake City police officer who shot and killed an unarmed white teen ager two days after Michael Brown died in Ferguson, Missouri.

The family and friends of Dillon Taylor, the Utah teen ager, have organized several protests in an effort to get answers about Dillon’s death. South Salt Lake police have refused to comment. No grand jury has been convened. Only the local media gave the matter any real attention, and that has pretty much died down. Hardly anyone cares in Utah. Nobody cares in America.

On April 23, 2012, a 29 year old, unarmed Hispanic pedestrian named Daniel Adkins was shot and killed by a black man who was sitting in his car in front of an Arizona Taco Bell. No charges were ever filed against the shooter. In fact the name of the gunman has never been released by the police.

As far as I can find on the Internet, the friends and supporters of Daniel Adkins and Dillon Taylor have not looted any stores, burned down any buildings, overturned any vehicles or pranced in front of network television cameras.

The administration of criminal justice is not perfect. But civilization requires that we do the best we can, and that the people who are dissatisfied with the system work responsibly to improve it. 

Often protesters are not concerned about the system. They don’t object to the way we do things; they complain about what we do. No one claims that the Ferguson grand jury was tainted or improperly constituted, or that the constitutional requirement of grand jury indictment is not a valid and valuable civil right.

No one says that the grand jury didn’t hear all the evidence. No one is saying that they didn’t listen, or were in any way corrupted or compromised.

No sir, what we hear coming out of Missouri is the voice of the mob. Black or white, a mob is never rational, never reasonable. No doubt there are some protesters in Ferguson who want Darren Wilson indicted and put on trial, but the majority would not be satisfied unless Wilson is actually convicted.

One can only imagine what would have happened to Darren Wilson if he had been seen walking out of a police station or a courthouse last night.

A mob has no conscience. Black Americans should be keenly aware of the horrors of vigilante justice.

FIXING CONGRESS

Now that the Republicans have won the Congress, perhaps the mainstream media will allow itself to focus on needed constitutional reforms.

There are three main proposals that are usually advanced to reform our national legislature.

1)   Do something about campaign financing. This usually takes the form of: a) prohibiting all private campaign funding and requiring the government to finance campaigns; b) prohibiting certain kinds or amounts of campaign expenditures; or c) specifying who can or cannot finance campaigns.

2)   Enact term limits by constitutional amendment.

3) Increase the size of the House, shrink the districts, prohibit gerrymandering and decrease the expenses and emoluments of Congress persons.

Personally, I favor the third  approach. Public financing of political campaigns is a frightfully bad idea. Public funding is controlled by the government and the government is controlled by the incumbents. It follows that public funding of elections, controlled by incumbents will absolutely favor incumbents. Giving that kind of an advantage to career politicians is hardly the way to discourage career politicians.

I am, at best; ambivalent with respect to term limits. We have them for some offices and the evaluations are mixed. The main argument against term limits is that they deny the people the right to elect the representatives they want. My concern, frankly, is that term limits don’t address the real problems. You will still have career politicians, albeit ladder climbers rather than lifelong incumbents. You will still have interminable fund raising, expensive campaigns, cozy lobbyists, and all the shenanigans that besmirch our system today.

Moreover, term limits tend to exacerbate the career path of legislator-to-lobbyist that already makes our Congress seem like a post graduate course in representing supplicants at the public teat. 

The third approach appeals to me as the soundest. The Founders intended the House of representatives to be reapportioned every ten years to reflect the increase in the nation’s population. Because the ratio of representatives to constituents was not specifically written into the constitution, Congress was able to freeze the number of representatives, thus increasing the power of their offices every ten years.

Today, Congressmen represent an average of 710,000 people. Campaigns are expensive. That is why so many incumbents are reelected. Gerrymandered districts assure that one or the other of the two major political parties has a “safe” district.

Most importantly, Representatives do not reflect the sense of local communities. Districts which are not community-based foster appeals to the lowest common denominator of voter sentiment, typically evidenced by partisan affiliation, ethnicity or economic bias.

Large districts lead to full time legislators, large professional staffs, and centralized operations. The part time legislator who lives in his or her district and personally reads and studies Bills does not exist in  expansive and expensive constituencies.

At a minimum, we ought to eliminate gerrymandering and require Congresspersons to live in their districts. As now written, the Constitution only requires members of the House to be residents of their State. In truth, most do not actually live in their ‘home’ state, since their principal place of residence is Washington D.C. A vacation home or a campaign headquarters should not satisfy the requirement of residence.

There is much more to be said and written on this subject, to be sure. That’s why we need a convention.

TALKING TO THE KIDS

Kelly Dutcher teaches Civics at the Harbor Springs High School. Her husband, Jordan, the Harbor Barber, cuts my hair. Nice folks. Kelly invited me to speak to her classes on Thursday.

I told the students about George Mason, one of only three delegates to the Philadelphia Convention who refused to sign the Constitution. Colonel Mason thought that the new federal government would become either a monarchy or an oligarchy.

I asked the students if they knew what an oligarchy is. Several volunteers spoke up. “It’s when only a few people run the government,” said one.

“Do we have an oligarchy in America?” I asked. Lots of head shaking. Lots of “No” from the class. The United States is a democracy, or maybe a republic, but not an oligarchy.

So I asked them, “If the President and all the members of Congress and the Supreme Court were graduates of Harbor Springs High School, would that be an oligarchy?

They laughed. Then they agreed. It would certainly be an oligarchy.

“O.K. Suppose you guys decided to share the power and you let some graduates of Petoskey High and Charlevoix High share the power, would it still be an oligarchy?”

They smiled and nodded. Yes, it would still be an oligarchy.

“Did Mrs. Dutcher tell you there are three branches of government?”

A chorus of answers came from the class: Executive, Legislative, Judicial.

“All right, suppose only two of the three branches were controlled by your high school oligarchy, would the federal government still be an oligarchy as George Mason said?”

There was some murmuring, some looking around, some shrugging of shoulders. Then the heads nodded. Yes, the government would still be an oligarchy.

That’s when I sprung it on them. “Did you know that two of the three branches of our national government consist entirely of graduates of three universities, Harvard, Yale and Columbia?”

No way. They do?

Yes, They do. Now would you say that the United States might just be an oligarchy, like George mason predicted?

Somber silence. They didn’t know.

Then I told them how, when I was Dean at Cooley Law School, I wrote to Chief Justice Burger and complained that all the law clerks in the Supreme Court were from four or five law schools. Would the Justices consider interviewing graduates of the other 170 law schools in America?

Burger wrote in reply that he always asked his former clerks to recommend candidates, and he was satisfied with the results. Pretty tight club, it seemed to me. So I put together a national law school dean’s list. Asked all the deans around the country to send me the name of one top student in their senior class, and we published an attractive book with pictures, biogs, and recommendations.

I sent copies to Burger and all the other Justices. Nothing happened. Nada. Zilch. Nobody got hired. Nobody got interviewed.

That’s how an oligarchy works.

One girl stopped as she was leaving after class to ask about clerkships in the Supreme Court. Don’t they even take people from the University of Michigan? She asked.

You mean ‘the Harvard of the Midwest’?

Not hardly.

  

THE NEW CONGRESS

Megan Kelly is all atwitter. Bill O’Reilly gloats. The votes are in and the GOP controls both Houses of the Congress. Now the media is awash with commentary about the need for compromise, prospects of either progress or stalemate, predictions of deadlock, impeachment, vetoes and votes to override vetoes. Bottom line, politics as usual.

In 1866, Gideon Tucker, a lawyer and newspaper editor in New York, penned these immortal words: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe when the legislature is in session.”

It bears repeating. It has become common to judge the accomplishments of a legislative session by adding up the number of bills that have been passed before adjournment.

Before we start demanding that our newly elected Congressmen and Senators get to work and start passing laws, it might be well for them to give some thought to repealing some of the laws which have already been put on the books.

If freedom is defined as the right to do whatever we want to do, without restraint by the government, it would seem rather obvious that the more laws we have to obey, the less freedom we have.

Here is what Wikipedia says about the number of federal criminal laws:

There are conflicting opinions on the number of federal crimes, but many have argued that there has been explosive growth and it has become overwhelming. In 1982, the U.S. Justice Department could not come up with a number, but estimated 3,000 crimes in the United States Code. In 1998, the American Bar Association (ABA) said that it was likely much higher than 3,000, but didn't give a specific estimate. In 2008, the Heritage Foundation published a report that put the number at a minimum of 4,450. When staff for a task force of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee asked the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to update its 2008 calculation of criminal offenses in the U.S.C. in 2013, the CRS responded that they lack the manpower and resources to accomplish the task.

In short, there are so many federal crimes, we can’t afford even to count them!

Exactly how, pray tell, can the citizens of this great land be presumed to know and expected to obey laws that are too numerous even to be counted by the government?

George Mason, one of only three delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia who refused to sign the Constitution, expressed the fear that the national government would toggle between a monarchy and a corrupt oligarchy.

Oligarchy. That’s a system of government in which a few people rule. It may be hereditary, like the Mafia, where certain families are recognized as the rulers, or it may be merely like a continuous game of “King of the Castle” in which shear brute strength or military might determines who rules until the next challenger comes along.

Our national government has become a more subtle version of oligarchy. There is indeed a strain of hereditary leadership. Debbie Dingell was elected in 2014 to a seat in Congress held by her husband and his father for over eighty years. Hillary Clinton is expected to seek the position her husband held for eight years and there is talk of a candidacy by Jeb Bush whose father and brother both served as President of the United States.

Beyond these rather obvious examples of a leadership class, there are more subtle classifications.  There is a plethora of evidence that residents of certain cities, graduates of certain universities, members of certain organizations and ethnic or economic groups have a disproportionate share of the decision making in the United States.

The people of the United States are pitifully underrepresented in the Congress. If the original House of Representatives had been based on the proportions of the present one, it would have consisted of four people. That would certainly have been considered an oligarchy.

And when two of the three branches of the federal government consist entirely of  graduates of three Eastern universities, what do you call that?  

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PUZZLING DAY

I don’t know where it came from. Probably a Christmas or birthday gift from some thoughtful, generous and underappreciated member of my family.

Somewhere around 1,000 pieces, it was a jigsaw puzzle of the famous painting by Howard Chandler Christy depicting the signing of the Constitution of the United States. The original, thirty feet wide and twenty feet tall, with life size portraits of all fifty five delegates to the Philadelphia convention, adorns the East stairway of the House of Representatives wing of the United States Capital Building.

It was a labor of love, patriotism and dogged determination. The love of my life doesn’t do jigsaw puzzles. Especially when the pieces are spread out on the table in the basement man cave of our home.

So it sat there months on end while I nibbled away at it. Two or three pieces at a time. Or sometimes burning the midnight oil to make noticeable progress at the price of pushing bedtime back to the wee hours of the morning.

And of course there were a few spurts when the higb-spirited daughter-in -law came to visit and wave her magic wand at the reluctant monocolored pieces.

But finally it was done. A magnificent reproduction twenty-seven inches wide and nineteen and a half inches high. In a spate of unbridled euphoria I determined to keep it. I would do whatever it is that people do to turn a mundane jigsaw puzzle into a truly decorative work of art.

First, I managed to slide the puzzle off the table and onto a piece of plywood. Then I shellacked it. That was supposed to make it hang together. No such luck.

Then I decided that I had to turn the puzzle upside down, so that I could glue a backing on it. That involved covering the puzzle with a piece of poster board and taping the poster board to the plywood. It worked and shortly I had the puzzle upside down and back on the table.

Then came a trip to Home Depot where I acquired backing board, framing trim, and a diabolical form of merger called Wildwood Contact Cement.

Today was the Day. I cut four pieces of the trim in forty-five degree angles and produced a creditable picture frame.

Then I set about the fussy business of gluing a backing onto the puzzle. The directions required that I coat both the backing and the puzzle and let them sit for forty minutes. They also warned that if one of the surfaces was porous, it might take two coats. Since I was coating the backside of the puzzle, it was indeed porous and I obediently gave it two coats.

Now came the hard part. How to get he sticky backing onto the sticky back of the puzzle, exactly where I wanted it. The directions had carried the dire warning that once the two surfaces touched each other, no power on earth could separate them.

So make sure it’s a bull’s eye.

There are many times in a man’s life when getting the job done ushers in a blast of adrenaline. Making a speech. Getting married. Walking your daughter down the aisle.

Gluing the backing on a 27 by 19 jigsaw puzzle rates right up there. It was a challenge, but I did it. Hooray!

All that was left was to remove the poster board on the other side of the puzzle. It wasn’t glued on. Just flip the thing over and pull it off.

Not so easy. Here is where Murphy’s Law comes into play. Unbeknownst to me, some of the Wildwood miracle Contact Cement had seeped between the pieces of the puzzle and taken hold of the innocent poster board.

After a fruitless half hour of trying to separate the inseparable, I gathered up the puzzle and delivered it to the trash bin in the garage.

Some days s—t happens. Probably no one will read this blog, either. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

HOUSTON HUBBUB

         It’s funny how stories get garbled in the retelling. Someone asked me the other day if  I had heard the news about the City of Houston passing an ordinance requiring all clergy in the city to file copies of their sermons with City Hall.

         That sounded pretty preposterous to me. Certainly it would be an ordinance which would be challenged by the ACLU.  And by just about everyone else. If there is any place where freedom of speech should be sacrosanct, it would be in the pulpit.

         It turns out that the facts are not quite so far off the wall. Here’s what happened: The Houston City Council passed an ordinance they call the HERO – an acronym or Human Equal Rights Ordinance. It contains a long list of categories which may not be discriminated against in places of public accommodation. Included on the list is a category called ‘gender identity.’

         The ordinance bans discrimination in the use of public toilets, showers, dressing rooms and the like. Needless to say a number of the folks in Houston took issue with the wisdom of HERO in that regard, and they promptly circulated petitions asking for a referendum to revoke the ordinance.

         The City fathers, and mothers, pushed back and refused to put the issue on the ballot, claiming that the petitions were irregular for various reasons.  In essence, they claimed that the petitions were forgeries, or were not properly certified by the people who circulated them.

         Predictably, the petition circulators started a lawsuit asking the court to require the city clerk to put their issue on the ballot. This is where the story gets garbled. The city attorney apparently believes that the petitions were fraudulent, that they were manufactured by a few dissidents who signed multiple voters’ names illegally. He also believes, so it seems, that a number of local pastors not only preached against HERO, but actively encouraged their congregations to circulate petitions and perhaps to manufacture illegal petitions.

         And so the City subpoenaed the sermons, writings, letters, notes, etc. of number of activist pastors, in the hopes of turning up evidence that the petitions were forged.

         Frankly, that was not a wise or even practical thing to do. Checking the validity of petitions is essentially footwork or clerical work. It involves comparing the signatures on the petitions with the signatures of the voters in the City Clerk’s office. If they don’t match, you go out and ask the voter if he or she signed the petition. If they didn’t, you get an affidavit and take it to court.  

          Anyway, the demand to hand over the text of their sermons gave the opponents of the HERO a First Amendment issue which quickly went viral as conservatives delighted in telling how liberals were thwarting the First Amendment.

         It seems that, in these partisan times, there is an oversupply of credulity toward anything that, if true, would embarrass or diminish the other side.

         I recently received an email asking whether a story published by the Daily Currant to the effect that a Muslim shopkeeper in Dearborn was requiring his employees to wear hijabs and threatening to cut off their hands if they steal any of his merchandise, was actually true.

         I had never heard of the Daily Currant, but the story seemed so egregious that I looked it up. Turns out the Daily Currant is a satirical newspaper that delights in making conservatives look foolish.

         I should have known.  The word “Current” is often connected with newspapers, since they report current events. A currAnt, however, is just a kind of fruit.

         The latest fruity offering from the Daily Currant is a satire describing an executive order by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie imposing a “Holloween Quarantine” based in the ebola scare, threatening to arrest kids who go begging tonight.

         Funny stuff, especially if you are a Democrat. Funnier yet when some of your Republican friends believe it.