Author: statusquobuster

Finding Hope In A Dismal World

Joel S. Hirschhorn

For so many, hope is down the drain.  Hard to fault them.  Abundant evidence shows our insane world sliding down a global cheese grater.
Fish are dying in the Great Lakes.  Bees have disappeared.  Polar ice caps and glaciers worldwide are melting faster than ever.  A global pandemic of a drug-resistant strain of TB is coming at us.  Much of the U.S. food supply is highly vulnerable because of imports and totally inadequate government scrutiny.  Politicians keep lying.  Americans keep dying.  Too many senselessly in the insane Iraq war that our delusional president cherishes and our cowardly Congress refuses to stop.  Others die because of lax gun laws.  Even more because they can’t get quality medical care.  And the icing on the fungus-infested cake: the richest one percent of Americans captures 19 percent of the nation’s income.  As the rich become super-rich, economic injustice and inequality punish most debt-loaded Americans, with millions facing bankruptcy and home foreclosure.

Our crisis-filled, threatening world offers these existential choices.

Distraction: Pay little attention to bad news.  Escapism prevents pain, such as compulsive consumerism, Internet surfing, gambling, drugs, cell phone and iPod oblivion, religion, etc.  Stay politically disinterested and disengaged.  Selfishness prevails.

Denial: Psychologically block out awful, disturbing information.  Stay focused on personal needs and pleasures in a socially and politically disconnected world.  Why bother voting?  Why think about a world tumbling into the toilet?  Why keep up with all the shitty news?  Better to watch American Idol.  Don’t pay attention to doomsayers.

Devotion: Actively stay informed.  Eat up the bad news and suffer despair, depression, cynicism.  Cope by finding some basis for hope – something that just might stop some of the madness.  Devote time, energy and commitment to it.  Something worth fighting for is the noble way to remain sane in a crazy world.

These days, hope often lies with the successful climb to the presidency for whoever is believed will turn things around, take us in a new, better direction.  Such is mainstream delusional political hope.  Why delusional?  Because only a fool trusts politicians.  None of the Democrat’s promised major legislative priorities for the new Congress have been enacted.  Not one!  Impeachment of President Bush has not been pursued.  Transgressions of Republicans in Congress and the Executive Branch – criminal, legislative and ethical – are so commonplace they barely get attention anymore.  Our delusional democracy thrives on lesser-evil voting that sustains the two-party stranglehold.

Others make a commitment to some cause or movement: like fighting global warming, stopping the Iraq war, finding a cure to some terrible disease, supporting a third party, etc.

Here is the hope I have discovered.  It is not mainstream.  It goes against the grain.  It is not politically correct.  It rejects historical precedence.  And yet it is the epitome of true patriotism for Americans that trust the U.S. Constitution, and for those who see all three branches of government unable and unwilling to work in the interest of “we the people.”

My hope is that we can successfully pressure Congress and state legislatures to give us what our prescient Founders and Framers gave us in Article V of the Constitution: a national convention to consider proposals for amending the Constitution.  An Article V convention would operate outside the control of Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court.  The wise Framers foresaw that ultimately Americans would confront a government that was not serving them effectively.  So they created two routes to propose constitutional amendments, the highest level of lawmaking.

For over 200 years only one method has been used: Congress has proposed all of our constitutional amendments.  No Article V convention has ever been allowed.  The one flaw in Article V was that only Congress can call a convention when two-thirds of state legislatures ask for one.  The word “shall” made clear Congress’ constitutional mandate to call a convention when that one and only constitutional requirement was met.  Have 34 state legislatures asked for an Article V convention?  You bet.  In fact, there have been over 500 state applications from all 50 states over our nation’s history.  Unsurprisingly, Congress has never wanted to share power and allow an Article V convention to operate independently, even though whatever proposals for amendments resulted would face exactly the same constitutional requirement for ratification by states that proposals made by Congress face.

Have Americans risen up in rage and rebellion over the stubborn refusal by Congress to obey the Constitution?  Hell no.  Has the Supreme Court made Congress obey the Constitution?  Hell no.  In fact, a miniscule number of Americans even know about our right to an Article V convention, even among the most politically engaged.

Have there been many organized attempts to get an Article V convention?  You bet.  And not one has succeeded.  They all failed for two reasons.  First, they all were associated with efforts to get a specific constitutional amendment.  This always mobilized groups that opposed the amendment.  ANY amendment will bring out opposition, and when it emerges it produces fierce opposition to an Article V convention.

Second, a wide array of organized interests, on the political left and right, have forcefully opposed the Article V convention.  Those with influence over the political system do not want an independent convention to propose ways to fix the many political, government and social problems plaguing the nation.  They would rather use their muscle and money to corrupt politicians.  They have employed the scare tactic that an Article V convention would be a “runaway” convention that would threaten national stability. They lie that an Article V convention could by itself create a new constitution – ignoring the ratification requirement and all the public and media scrutiny that would inevitably envelope America’s first Article V convention and prevent delegates from pursuing nutty objectives.  They also ignore countless state conventions that have changed constitutions without disastrous effects.

Sadly, no presidential candidate has come out in favor of an Article V convention, not even the mavericks.  Nor have any of the cuttingly honest political commentators of our age, including Gore Vidal, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart and Lou Dobbs.

I believe a convention is the best way to restore the quality of American government, politics and society.  And also inspire a new era of political engagement among much of the public so fed up with politics as usual.  Conventions do not threaten democracy – they strengthen it.  My hope rests with the new national group – Friends of the Article V Convention.  It can succeed in creating the forces necessary to give us what the Framers said we have a right to.  FOAVC will not back any specific amendment.  Like members of Congress, convention delegates have the right to consider whatever they deem necessary.  FOAVC will also fight the lies of anti-conventionists.

You too can find hope.  It is located at www.foavc.org.  Then let that hope channel your moral energy by becoming a member.  The Friends of the Article V Convention need you.  America needs you.  Now.

[Joel S. Hirschhorn co-founded Friends of the Article V Convention; his latest book is described at www.delusionaldemocaracy.com.]

Stop being a compliant consumer.  Face the ugly truth.  Don’t get fooled by the stock market.  Accept the need for the mistreated middle class to become the revolutionary class.  The British military establishment’s most prestigious think tank sees what too few over-consuming Americans are willing to anticipate.  Unjustified and mounting economic inequality is planting the seeds for global economic conflict.  

Here is what the new report from the UK Defense Ministry’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre warned might happen by 2035.  “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat…Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.”

Consider the wisdom of economist John Maynard Keynes: The rich are tolerable only so long as their gains appear to bear some relation to roughly what they have contributed to society.  Think of it as proportional and justified economic success.  This can be tolerated by poor and middle class people if they believe the economic system is fair and properly rewards those who work harder or have better capabilities.  But truly obscene economic rewards angers people.  When most prosperity and wealth is unfairly channeled to relatively few Upper Class people, it is only a matter of time until fuming, resentful people in the Lower Class decide enough is enough and revolt.  Perhaps violently, if the political system remains controlled by the Upper Class.  

A ton of data demonstrate how crazy our economic system has become where a relatively few receive astronomical gains that no rational person could see as justified.  One study tracked down home ownership data for 488 CEOs in the S&P 500 Index set of companies. The typical home of the CEOs has 12 rooms, sits on 5.37 acres, and carries a $3.1 million price-tag.  Companies big enough to rate S&P 500 status hiked their median CEO pay by 23.78 percent in 2006 to $14.8 million.  In comparison, U.S. worker weekly wages rose just 3.5 percent in 2006.

Despite what you hear about the sagging housing market and the many people facing foreclosure, business at the top end of the U.S. housing market is booming.  Sales of homes in the $5 million-and-up price range rose 11 percent last year, reports the Dallas-based Institute for Luxury Home Marketing. Ten residential properties sold for over $28 million in 2006. The most expensive in New Jersey sold for $58 million; it went to Richard Kurtz, the CEO of Advanced Photonix, a telecom supplier.  In the “ultra-luxury market” a set of suites in New York’s fabled Plaza Hotel was converted last year into one-bedroom condos that start at $6.9 million.

From another study we learn that pay for American college presidents over the past decade has jumped seven times faster than pay for college faculty.  In 1996, only one college president took home over $500,000. In 2006, 112 college presidents hit that mark. Meanwhile, after inflation, compensation for college professors increased just 5 percent since 1996.  And college students have faced rapidly mounting tuition far higher than inflation rates.

CEOs are getting away with economic murder.  Bob Nardelli, the CEO who departed Home Depot early this year, had an exit package worth $210 million.  IBM CEO Sam Palmisano took home $18.8 million in 2006 and will receive $34.9 million in deferred pay and $33.1 million in retirement benefits when he leaves IBM.  Even more extreme is the case of Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray Irani. The interest income alone on the $124 million that ended the year in Irani’s deferred-pay account totaled $679,396.  The Los Angeles Times estimated Irani’s total payoff for 2006 at $460 million.  Leslie Blodgett, the top exec at cosmetics giant Bare Escentuals, collected $118.9 million in 2006, with most of that coming from the $117.7 million she cleared cashing out stock options.  She received 4 million additional stock options before 2006 ended.

Economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics found that the richest 10 percent of the U.S. population received 44 percent of the pretax income in 2005. This was the highest since the 1920s and 1930s (average: 44 percent) and much higher than from 1945 to 1980 (average: 32 percent).  With more than 140 million U.S. workers, that top 10 percent equals 14 million workers.  The bottom half of that top 10 percent had incomes of about $110,000.  That may not seem all that high, except that the overwhelming majority of Americans can never expect such income.  And remember that many of these top 10 percent Americans are married to or living with equally highly paid people.  

When it comes to obscene economic inequality, however, you must focus on the huge gains received by the richest 1 percent – some 1.4 million people. Their share of pretax income has gradually climbed from 8 percent in 1980 to 17 percent in 2005.  Their average income was $371,000.  Who is in the top sliver of richness?  Economists Steven Kaplan and Joshua Rauh of the University of Chicago estimate that there were about 18,000 lawyers, 15,000 corporate executives, 33,000 investment bankers (including hedge fund managers, venture capitalists and private-equity investors) and 2,000 athletes who made roughly $500,000 or more in 2004.  

Do those at the top pay their fair share of taxes?  Middle class Americans, after nearly 30 years of tax-cutting, are now paying about the same share of their incomes in federal taxes that they paid before Ronald Reagan entered politics.  In contrast, America’s richest have seen the share of their incomes that goes to federal taxes cut by over half.  That’s what happens in a failed democracy and the rich control the political system.

What the future holds for the victimized middle class will not only depend on the uncontrolled greed of the wealthy Upper Class and its control of the political system.  It will also be linked to the coming tsunami of global warming impacts on climate, sea level, water supplies, crops and disease.  There will be devastating impacts on hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of people worldwide.  Lower Class people will be sacrificed – left to suffer the consequences.  The rich will retreat to their walled, protected and well stocked havens.

Add to this scenario the inevitable collapse of the entire economic system.  At some point it will not be controllable as it is now by those in banking and finance, able to manipulate it to sustain economic injustice.  Eventually the inherent fundamental absurdities of the global economic system will prove unsustainable.  The wealthy Upper Class will have siphoned off most of the world’s wealth and hoarded resources to maintain a luxury lifestyle.

Gallup News Service recently reported on how the American public’s views on the need for government to redistribute wealth by more heavily taxing the rich.  In 1939, 35 percent agreed with that policy.  In 1998, it was 45 percent.  In 2007 it rose to 49 percent.  On whether upper income people pay too little taxes, 66 percent this year agreed.  Also, this year, people were asked: Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country today is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?  Again, 66 percent agreed that a more even distribution is needed.  Economic revolt in the USA will happen when Lower Class people stop believing in upward mobility, because they finally have first hand knowledge that joining the Upper Class is out of reach, no matter how hard they work or how much education they obtain.

What the future holds: Lower Class economic slaves fighting to survive in a medieval, ugly and bleak world that so many science fiction stories have portrayed.  In that hell their best option will be to rise up and revolt against the rich and powerful Upper Class.  With such a prospect, global class war on a sick planet, prevention is a priority.  For us, that requires paying much more attention now to economic inequality, economic injustice, economic apartheid and the many attacks on the middle class.  If not, we get Economic Armageddon along with environmental disaster.

[See www.delusionaldemocracy.com to learn about the author’s new book.]

Americans have always accepted a certain level of economic inequality as the inevitable consequence of an open capitalist society where some people through their own efforts do better than others.  The presumption is that there is fairness in the marketplace and economic system.  What a quaint, outdated belief.  

Do most Americans really believe that the game is not rigged by rich powerful elites to preferentially benefit them?  As certain as the law of gravity, the game IS rigged, and more than ever.

We have a plutocratic corporate state that now has taken economic inequality to new levels – in fact to what now is a sick and shameful condition of economic apartheid.  To a society that increasingly separates Americans into two classes: the wealthy Upper Class and the Lower Class.  The Upper Class has protected and gated mansions, private vacation spots and spas, special access shopping venues, private schools, lavish entertainment options, luxurious hospital accommodations, and private jets and stretch limos.  The Upper Class does everything possible to PHYSICALLY separate itself from the poor, repugnant and uncouth members of the Lower Class.  This physical separation is the hallmark of economic apartheid.  The only contact the wealthy have and want with Lower Class people is when the latter serve, protect and pamper them.  And of course they expect the hugely larger Lower Class to keep spending and borrowing their way into economic despair and to keep sustaining the two-party mafia.  Voting for Democrats and Republicans is as meaningful as voting for American Idol contestants.  Nothing more than a self-destructive distraction.

In Las Vegas the truly rich have their private gambling rooms and clubs, and occupy special access suites.  In sports stadiums they luxuriate in their glass boxes high above the masses.  In the Pacific and Caribbean they have their private island hideaways.  On the oceans they travel in self-indulgent yachts.  They eat in private rooms in the most expensive restaurants.  The biggest entertainment stars come to them in their private social functions.  And, yes, they have all the access they want to high government officials in both major parties because they provide them with all the campaign money they need.  And hidden from public view they – and only they – have incredible opportunities to invest their riches to easily receive 30 percent annual gains with little taxation.  As they get ever richer they find it increasingly difficult to spend all their wealth – but they handle the chore with alacrity.

What is remarkable about this new society is that there are MILLIONS of these super-rich, physically isolated Americans.  They mingle with millions more throughout the world.  As globalization has devastated the once proud middle class it has expanded this elitist wealthy class worldwide, even in the poorest nations.

Economic statistics keep solidly documenting growing economic inequality.  But I fear that the most economically oppressed and barely surviving peasants have neither the time nor energy to ponder and fret over these data.  Here are some new data that reveal an important historic reality.

Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have recently revealed just how horrendous the inequality gap has become.  Way back in 1928, the last full year before the Great Depression began, the families that made up America’s richest top hundredth of 1 percent had incomes that averaged $8.2 million, as measured in dollars inflation-adjusted to 2005 levels.  That is one per 10,000 households.  In 1928 that amounted to some 5,000 households.  These super-rich averaged 891 times more income than families in the bottom 90 percent averaged.  By 1955, in the midst of post-World War II prosperity, families in the top hundredth of 1 percent took home only $3.8 million, in inflation-adjusted dollars. They made just 179 times the average bottom 90 percent income.  There was much more economic equality because of shared prosperity.  Even in 1980, the richest of the rich took home 175 times more than Americans in the bottom 90 percent – still relatively good economic equality.  Then things changed.

Consider the figures for 2005: the top hundredth of 1 percent, about 10,000 households, averaged $25.7 million in income, three times the money in 1928.  This amounted to 882 times more than the bottom 90 percent average — an economic inequality gap in 2005 that’s almost identical to the 891-to-1 divide in 1928!  Welcome to the modern billionaire world of the rich getting much, much richer, while everyone else stagnates.  Of course, the top 1 percent of households are also extremely rich – some 1 million families or 3 million people – relatively to the bottom, majority 90 percent.

Married couples with children now account for fewer than one-quarter of American households – the lowest in history.  It is the Upper Class that now emphasizes marriage with children.  Married households with children are twice as likely to be in the top 20 percent of income.  Some 13 percent of the increase in the nation’s income inequality since the 1970s results from the marriage of high income earners.  Marriage is now for the rich.  What does that say about American democracy and culture?  That the Upper Class is like an inbred aristocracy.  Children of the rich will marry other children of the rich.

Another critically important change in the real (ugly) America is the bursting of the traditional fantasy-belief that people can educate themselves into wealth.  Is getting more Americans educated and trained all we need to do to attack economic inequality?  If so, then inequality should fall over periods of time when people become more educated.  Right?  Americans have become more educated over the last three decades.  In 1970, only three out of four Americans aged 25-29 had completed high school. In 2004, nearly nine of ten Americans that age had a high school education.  In 1970, only 16 percent of Americans in their late 20s held a four-year college degree. By 2004, that had nearly doubled to 29 percent.  Something else has nearly doubled since 1970: the share of national income that goes to America’s richest 1 percent.

That means that the share going to average Americans has dropped. Lower Class Americans in the bottom 90 percent of the nation’s income distribution took home 67 percent of U.S. income in 1970, but only 53 percent in 2004, despite their greater education and productivity.  American reality: We’ve become more unequal at the same time we’ve become more educated. Why? Education doesn’t determine how income and wealth – or macro domestic and global prosperity – are distributed in our unfair system.  The Upper Class ensures that increasing fractions of income and wealth go to them.

Here is more painful statistical truth: In 2004, the most recent year with IRS data just about 25,000 taxpayers took home over $5 million.  After exploiting every loophole they paid an average 21.9 percent of their incomes in federal income tax.  Back in 1952, at the height of the Korean War, the comparable federal tax bite on America’s richest 25,000 averaged 51.9 percent.  About a decade earlier, in the middle of World War II, the 25,000 highest-income taxpayers in the United States paid 68.4 percent of their incomes in federal income tax.  How things have changed for the wealthy.  A greater fraction of the nation’s prosperity has gone to the Upper Class AND they pay less tax!  Economic power produces political power.

This is worth pondering: When will the economic inequality that has morphed into two-class economic apartheid provide sufficient pain and disgust for a few hundred million Americans to fuel political revolution?

When will the stranglehold of the Upper Class on the political system that criminally distorts the economic system be busted?  When will Lower Class consumers that drive the economy take back their sovereign power?  When will they understand they are losing the class war and revolt?

It will take historically unique action, not electing different Democrats or Republicans.  Our Constitution provides the tool – not used for over 200 years because the power elites do not want it used – an Article V convention outside the control of the White House and Congress to consider political and government reforms.  Learn more about it at www.foavc.org.

[Learn about the author’s new book at www.delusionaldemocracy.com.]

Democracy Dreaming

Joel S. Hirschhorn

What is this thing called democracy?  So easy to talk about, so difficult to make real.  Pure democracy is not what our Founders gave us.  Who would want a simple majority to control the minority?  Instead, America was given a representative democracy within a constitutional republic where laws that protect all people trump majority rule.  Standing between majority-won elections and government power are elected representatives: writing, overseeing and implementing laws.  But when you can no longer trust the elected representatives what happens to American democracy?  It becomes an oxymoron.

We have arrived at a delusional democracy.  Delusional because Americans overwhelmingly cannot admit the painful truth that their limited democracy no longer works for the good of most citizens.  Instead, through corruption and dishonesty, our representative democracy has morphed into a plutocracy that serves the wealthy, power elites and corporate masters that control the political system and through that the economic system.

The Framers of the Constitution had deep concerns about the long-term viability of the government structure they created.  Some think that the checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government preserve its integrity.  Really?  The money that controls the legislative branch also controls the executive branch, and both of those control the judicial branch.  Even worse, it has become clearer to increasing numbers of Americans that many parts of the Constitution – the supreme law of the land – have been directly or more deviously disobeyed or distorted.  Constitutional rule is a myth.

We have a Congress that gives its constitutional power to declare war to the President and refuses to impeach him for his many violations of laws.  We have a President that openly signs laws but says he will not honor them.  We have a Supreme Court that decides who becomes President rather than the voters and often amends the Constitution unconstitutionally.  We have elections that are not to be trusted.  We have a government using free trade globalization hogwash to sell out the middle class.  We have rising economic inequality that is creating a two-class society: the wealthy Upper Class and the Lower Class for everyone else.

Overlaid on this delusional system is the myth that having just two major political parties somehow is right and necessary for our representative democracy.  In reality, partisan differences are just another layer of corruption, dishonesty and deceit.  Artificial political competition distracts.  Big money from the wealthy and corporate and other special interests controls both parties, producing mutually assured corruption.  They are two faces of the same coin, two heads of the same monster, two puppets controlled by the same masters.  Of course the two-party system provides stability.  It has stabilized a criminally corrupt government.

Delusional political competition supports a delusional democracy based on a set of delusional checks and balances.  The whole system that once worked has become a sham.

Did the Framers anticipate that their system could become such a travesty?  They did.

So, in addition to the better known parts of the Constitution, they imbedded what might be called a legal loophole – a kind of escape clause, just in case things went terribly wrong.  They have.

The public is largely ignorant of Article V’s option for a convention, when asked for by two-thirds of states, to propose amendments to the Constitution.   Worse, nearly all people with political power have opposed using it.  Even worse, despite Article V explicitly saying that Congress “shall” call such a convention when a sufficient number of states have asked for one – and that is the ONLY specified constitutional requirement – for over 200 years Congress has willfully disobeyed the constitution and NOT granted a convention.  In fact, Congress never had the integrity and constitutional respect to even set up a system of any kind to collect state requests for an Article V convention.  Still, we know from the hard work of many that there have been well over 500 such state requests.

People with power in the present corrupt political system fear an Article V convention.  Operating independently of Congress and the White House, it might reduce their power and ignite widespread public interest in deep reforms.  One trick of the power elites has been to fool people that an Article V convention would inevitably become “runaway” and threaten all that Americans hold dear – especially their freedom.  Nonsense.  A convention can only propose amendments that, just like proposals made by Congress, must be ratified by three-quarters of the states.  Most absurd are the anti-convention right-wingers who profess total allegiance to the Constitution, except for Article V.  John T. Noonan, Jr., observed in 1985: “RESPECT, indeed reverence, for the Constitution is a proper attitude for conservatives to cultivate. Is it respectful to the Constitution to maintain that of the two methods of amendment specified by Article V one is too dangerous to be put to use?”

Exactly why did the Framers give us the option of an Article V convention?  Listen to the wise words of one of the nation’s foremost legal scholars.  Professor Paul Bator wrote this in 1980:

I think the Article V convention represents a profound political protection for us, as a people, against the tyranny of central government. And whatever we say about Article V, I think it is very, very wrong, just because we may disagree with the content of any particular constitutional amendment that is now being proposed, to interpret Article V in such a way as to clip its wings as a protection for the liberties of the people. That is why I think it is profoundly important, particularly for constitutional scholars, to be hospitable toward the concern that Article V represents, which is that there be a way out for the states and the people if a willful and intransigent central authority governs us in a way we find unacceptable.

We definitely need a way out.  Two of our best presidents explicitly supported using the Article V convention option – Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower.  

Have any recent presidential candidates expressed support for an Article V convention, even mavericks like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, and Pat Buchanan?  They have not.  Have any third parties demanded an Article V convention?  They have not.  Have any mainstream media exposed Congress’ failure to obey the Constitution’s Article V?  They have not.  Has the Supreme Court or any elected official that swore to obey the Constitution faulted Congress for disobeying the Constitution?  They have not.

If you are not a rich and powerful American, ask yourself: Has your government become so untrustworthy, dysfunctional and unacceptable that you should demand what our Constitution gives you a right to – an Article V convention?  

Thomas Jefferson said “a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical.”  Have many Americans concluded that rebellion has become necessary?  They have not.

But some of us want to pursue political rebellion, not by using violence and not hoping against reality that necessary reforms will come from within the two-party controlled political system.  No, we want to use what the Constitution grants us.  We have created Friends of the Article V Convention to inform the public about this constitutional option and also to prod the states to demand a convention and the Congress to finally obey the Constitution and give us one.  Check the group out at www.foavc.org to learn much more, and seriously consider becoming a member.  

What do they say about insanity?  Repeating what has not worked in the past?  As in the past, no Democrats, no Republicans and no elections will give us what we truly need.  Whatever risks an Article V convention pose, they are worth taking.  Every rebellion is waged because the benefits sought outweigh the risks taken.  Jefferson and the other Founders knew that.  Not fixing the government they gave us dishonors them and all the Americans that have died and sacrificed for their country.  And it makes our lives miserable and penalizes future generations.  Has time run out for restoring American democracy?  It has not.

[The author’s new book is Delusional Democracy – Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government: www.delusionaldemocracy.com.]

American: So you mean that if you Australians don’t vote, you get a fine?  
Australian: Yeah, and when you Americans don’t vote you get George W. Bush.

As surely as politicians lie, citizen apathy produces democracy atrophy.  Much more than a right – in a democracy voting is an irrevocable civic duty.  No mental gymnastics can help you jump over this ugly reality: Voter turnout over all American elections averages markedly less than half of eligible voters.  This disgrace must be fixed.

These are my proposed solutions: We should make voting mandatory, give voters the option of “none of the above,” make Election Day a national holiday, provide same day registration everywhere, and lower the voting age to 16.  

No one reform is a panacea.  But together these five reforms can dramatically re-energize voting in America.  They could be placed in one constitutional amendment and ratified by the states in time for the 2008 presidential election.  Limiting public support, however, is an elitist mindset among people with political power, wealth and intellectual arrogance.  They wrongly dismiss large numbers of citizens for their lack of education or political involvement.  Electoral reforms can create a culture of voting that ultimately produces a more informed public.

Mandatory Voting

This is not a crazy, radical idea.  Hold your reaction on what probably is a new idea for you.  Over 30 countries have compulsory voting.  Violating the law usually merits something akin to a parking fine, but it still works.  When Australia adopted it in 1924 turnouts increased from under 50 percent to a consistent 90-plus percent.  Conversely, when the Netherlands eliminated compulsory voting in 1970 voting turnouts plunged from 90 percent to less than 50 percent.   Polls regularly show 70 percent to 80 percent of Australians support mandatory voting.  Research found that people living in countries with compulsory voting are roughly twice as likely to believe that their government is responsive to the public’s needs and 2.8 times as likely to vote as compared to citizens in countries without compulsory voting.  Is compulsory voting inconsistent with personal freedom?  No!  We have compulsory education, jury duty, and taxes that are more onerous than voting periodically.  And all people have to do is turn out to vote.  What they do with their secret ballot is up to them.

Counting Dissatisfaction

When people can officially say with their ballot that none of the candidates is acceptable, it makes compulsory voting more palatable.  In turn, it can increase voting for ballot initiatives and measures.  And it is better than lesser-evil voting that has become all too common, because of the two-party duopoly’s stranglehold on our political system.  It is beats so-called “Mickey Mouse” voting, whereby people write in frivolous names.  Nevada offers the None of the Above option, though the candidate with the greatest number of votes wins. Yet protest votes are counted, sending a message to parties and politicians.

Election Day Holiday

Standing in a long line to vote often loses out to being at work or doing other things typical of work and school days.  Long commute times add to peoples’ time poverty.  On a holiday, voting would be more evenly spread out throughout the day and could be held at more places.  It would be easier to recruit the best qualified poll workers and government costs would be reduced because of shorter hours.  A national holiday also sends an important message: Voting is critically important and something to be celebrated.  Opinion surveys have found that 60 percent or more favor making Election Day a holiday.  The National Commission on Federal Election Reform made a strong case for this action.  Like others, the commission backed moving Veterans’ Day to coincide with Election Day.  The holiday might be called Veterans’ Democracy Election Day.  Most Western democracies hold elections on either holidays or weekends.  In Puerto Rico people are given the day off and voter turnouts are typically over 80 percent.  Early and absentee voting attack some problems.  But a national holiday that celebrates the sacred duty of voting by all eligible voters makes more sense.  Voting should become more of a social, community activity, bringing Americans together, rather than something done as quickly as possible to get it over with.

Same Day Registration

At least 30 percent of eligible voters do not vote because they are not registered.  It makes no sense to make registration onerous.  It should be done automatically once voter rolls are established and once citizens show up the first time to vote and present residence and citizenship qualifications, as required.  Same day registration has been used successfully in some states for about 30 years.  Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, Idaho, Wisconsin, Montana, Connecticut, and Wyoming use this approach. North Dakota abandoned registration entirely in 1951.  Five of these states have the highest voter turnout in the country.  When Montana used it for the first time in 2006, voter turnout jumped from the usual 50 percent to 70 percent.  With more same day registration it is appropriate to have more safeguards against all forms of voter fraud, especially registering non-citizens.

Youthful Citizens

We place no upper age restriction on voting, even though some elderly people have reduced mental capabilities, and are often taken advantage of by get-out-the-vote efforts of the two major parties.  Our political system is deciding the future for our younger citizens.  On fairness alone, balancing a large over-50 voting bloc with younger citizens is justified.  Youths age 16 to 18 pay substantial taxes, are often treated as adults in criminal cases, have definite interests impacted by public policy, and in some states can marry and obtain a driver’s license.  Being in high school is an advantage, because there is more stability and time to build a habit of voting.  Considering our Information Age, lowering the age to 16 makes perfect sense.  What happens between ages 16 and 18 to make younger citizens more qualified to vote?  Nothing.  There is a movement to register 16 year olds, but making them wait until 18 to vote is plain silly.  New, younger voters can help make voting a patriotic family activity on the new national holiday.

Countries using this lower age include Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Isle of Man, and movements for doing so are strong in Britain, Canada and many more.  In Germany, a greater proportion of 16 and 17 year-olds voted than those aged 18 to 35 – and twice as many as those in their later 20s – in municipal elections in Hanover.  In local elections in Vienna, Austria, 59 percent of 16- to 18-year-olds cast a ballot, about the same as other age groups.  Rather than starting wars to spread democracy, America could lead a global surge in voter entitlement.  This is what populism is all about.

A Constitutional Necessity

Voting is the heart of a healthy democracy.  With our persistent low voter turnout, the heart of American democracy is barely beating.  The decline of American democracy is both a cause and consequence of low voter turnout.  Low voter turnout makes a mockery of representative democracy.  Most politicians get elected with – at best – not much more than 25 percent of eligible voters.  This may explain why bought-and-paid-for politicians mostly represent corporate and other special interests.  Hefty political contributions by less than 1 percent of adults trump voting.

Face facts.  Incremental and piecemeal attempts at electoral reforms have failed.  Why?  Because those in power do not want across-the-board high voter turnout.  Shame on them.  And shame on us for letting Democrats and Republicans get away with using costly means to get out their base supporters.  This perpetuates divisive partisan politics that entertain and anger Americans rather than serve them – 70 percent of whom are centrists.

Now is the time for one bold constitutional amendment that can grab public attention and move the nation forward.  If Congress is too cowardly to propose the amendment, then we need two-thirds of state legislatures to request an Article V Convention for this purpose; to learn more about this never-used constitutional right go to www.foavc.org.

Let us begin by urging members of Congress and 2008 presidential candidates to take a public stand on electoral reforms.  Will Democrats and Republicans walk the talk of cooperation for the good of the nation?

Abraham Lincoln spoke of government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”  If you really believe in these words, then speak out to increase voter turnout to resuscitate America’s half-dead democracy.

[Check out the author’s new book at www.delusionaldemocracy.com.]

Rising American economic inequality has received attention by Senator Jim Webb, presidential candidate John Edwards, CNN’s maverick Lou Dobbs, and others.  The middle class has not shared in rising national prosperity, because the nation’s wealth has been siphoned off to the richest Americans.  Some elites are nervous.  They have attacked what are pejoratively called “neopopulists” – people who say the middle class is under siege.

Surprisingly, the attack and economic propaganda have come from the relatively unknown Third Way group that is associated with the Democratic Leadership Council.  Why would self-proclaimed progressives and centrists put out a report that says the whole economic inequality story is bogus?

They favor continuation of the free trade globalization policies of recent Democratic and Republican administrations.  They want no restraints on international trade, despite mounting U.S. trade deficits and loss of manufacturing and many professional jobs to low wage nations.  Of Third Way’s 18 board members, 14 are current or former CEOs or investors, including several hedge fund managers and the co-head of global equity trading at Goldman Sachs.

Third Way’s report “The New Rules Economy” uses sleazy statistical tricks to create a false image of rising economic prosperity for middle class Americans.  You know the group is full of crap when the intellectually bankrupt New York Times columnist David Brooks praises its findings.  Anyone who believes this report’s data and conclusions is either in the Upper Class or is just plain gullible.  The report argues that the middle class is not stagnating, not drowning in debt, not being victimized by free trade.  Is this your reality?

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said recently that incomes at all levels are rising; it’s just that incomes at the upper end are rising much faster.  Minor increases for the many are not the same as staggering increases for the few.  And that’s what economic inequality and injustice are all about.

An expanding Upper Class does NOT mean that those below that class are doing equally well.  Between 1979 and 2005, the percentage of the prime wage-earners aged 25 to 59 earning more than $100,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars grew by nearly 13 percentage points.  But the overall population grew by more than 30 percent.  So the Lower Class is expanding more rapidly than the Upper Class and they are not getting the increases in wages and benefits that they deserve.

Third Way removed lower and higher age Americans and non-married households from their data to emphasize the median income of married-couple households at more than $72,000, up 22 percent from 1979 to 2005 when adjusted for inflation (and not that impressive for 25 years).  If both work outside the home it is $81,000.  Guess what?  Less than half of American households fit the married couple category, and even fewer in the prime wage-earner class.  If you include the many unmarried households in this age range the median drops to $61,000.  If all households are counted, the median drops sharply to just over $46,000.

Note that median wages for men are lower today than they were in 1973, and even total compensation, including benefits, is lower than it was in the late 1970s.  And median incomes of high school graduates in general have declined a lot.  For college graduates, median hourly real wages are up just 10 percent over thirty years!

The report dismisses the staggering increases in household debt by invoking higher home values.  This of course ignores the housing bubble effect that has created delusional home equity wealth.

There is another reality check.  Local geographic or regional economies determine whether a $72,000 or even $81,000 household income is really that good.  Compared to 25 years ago, for example, there are incredibly higher housing costs in many places, high costs for two workers commuting long distances between jobs and affordable homes, much higher health insurance and medical costs, remarkably higher college costs, and other rising expenses that never seem to be captured by the government’s official inflation figures.  

Listen to Turley K. Hayes of Topeka, Kansas – a relatively low cost of living area: “I earn a gross income of $81,000 and support my disabled domestic partner.  My NET income from this (after taxes, insurance, Social Security, Medicare, Co-Pays for medical) is down to $46,435.  My partner and I live paycheck to paycheck, as prices have risen. The `money’ specialists say we haven’t had inflation. Tell that to me after I go to JC Penney and buy a new pair of workshoes, identical to the ones I bought last year and pay $21.34 more (and that was after a 10% discount coupon). There is inequality, those at the low end can get help, those at the high end don’t need it.  Those of us in the middle are suffering because we make too much to get help and not enough to save for anything.”  But that schmuck David Brooks tells the world that such household incomes are just fine.  How many households below the median can afford to send a child to even a state college and also save for retirement, because virtually no one gets a pension anymore?

As to economic inequality: Adjusted for inflation, wages rose about 11.5 percent from 1979 to 2006 for those at the median. Those near the bottom of the wage scale saw their pay rise just 4% during that time, while the incomes of those at the top rose 34%.  That’s unfair distributional economics.  If you are in the Upper Class, you could care less.  But most Americans feel economic anxiety, because direct experience tells them that they are close to – or moving closer to – economic disaster.  They are just one serious illness or job loss away from requiring government welfare assistance, losing their home, and going bankrupt.

It pays to be rich.  In 2004, just about 25,000 taxpayers took home over $5 million. They paid an average 21.9 percent of their incomes in federal income tax.  Back in 1952, at the height of the Korean War, the comparable federal tax bite on America’s richest 25,000 averaged 51.9 percent.  About a decade earlier, in the middle of World War II, the 25,000 highest-income taxpayers paid 68.4 percent of their incomes in federal income tax.  Public policy has helped the rich because the rich have shaped public policy.

True, Americans generally have many more possessions than in the past.  But that results from all household adults working – and usually longer hours on the job and at home – than in the past. Is this progress?  Economic data say little about quality of life.  American insanity is that people are driven by advertising, easy credit and pop culture to consume compulsively even if it means increasing personal risk through excessive borrowing.  The visibility of the Upper Class causes 80 percent of the population to fantasize that they too can become rich.  But the odds are against that.  More realistic is sinking into poverty during their work years or when they retire without a good pension and with uncertain Social Security.

The Third Way’s report and status quo power elites love to say that more education is the solution.  Is this another lie?  Americans have become more educated.  In 1970, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that only 75 percent aged 25-29 had completed high school.  In 2004, that increased to nearly 90 percent.   Similarly, in 1970, only 16 percent of Americans in their late 20s held a four-year college degree.  By 2004, that nearly doubled to 29 percent.

Something else doubled since 1970: the share of national income that goes to America’s richest 1 percent.  The share going to average Americans, by contrast, has dropped.  Average Americans in the bottom 90 percent of the nation’s income distribution took home 67 percent of U.S. income in 1970.  This dropped to only 53 percent in 2004, despite higher education levels!  It continues to drop.  Education does not necessarily work.  Why?

Education doesn’t determine how income and wealth get distributed.  What does?  Politics – or more correctly corrupt politics – does.  Many political decisions — taxes, trade, labor rights, health care, regulations, banking, privatization, farm subsidies — have tilted income and wealth to the top.  And not just during Republican administrations.  More Americans must understand the linkage between a delusional democracy based on corrupt politics and delusional prosperity for the masses.

The trends are clear.  There really is a war on the middle class.  “We’re creating tomorrow’s poor, people who once saw themselves as part of the middle class but financially can no longer make it there,” said Elizabeth Warren of the Harvard Law School.

The power elites running and ruining our country have no interest in closing the bipartisan economic inequality gap.  Want to do something?  Stop voting for Democrats and Republicans that support free trade globalization and illegal immigration.  Vote for anyone in favor of increasing taxes on the wealthy and eliminating corporate handouts and welfare.  Trust true populists.  Use your consumer power: Stop pissing away your money on consuming more unnecessary “must have” (and probably imported) crap that keeps our debt ridden economy afloat and makes the rich richer.  Start saving for that rainy day.  It’s coming for most of us.  Because national prosperity is not personal prosperity for most of us.

[For details on the author’s new book and political reforms see www.delusionaldemocracy.com.]

Will Americans learn to trust their fellow citizens or stay stuck on stupidly backing serial political betrayers?

I have been watching films from the 1940s and 1950s about World War II.  It was well known that Adolph Hitler was truly delusional.  His delusions prevented him from accepting wisdom and facts from experienced military officers and others, and caused millions to suffer and die.  Surely George W. Bush resembles Hitler psychologically.  His obsessive delusions about his Iraq war are also causing incredible suffering and death, as well as squandering our nation’s wealth.

Our constitutional democracy makes it nearly impossible to free the nation from the grip of a seemingly sane but deeply delusional president.  The present constitutional provision for impeachment is clearly inadequate.  As with Hitler and other delusional tyrants, Bush has surrounded himself with sycophants that share his delusions, and perhaps nurtured them, and refuse to tell the emperor that he has no clothes.  Congress, even under Democratic control, commits negligent cowardice.  And our mainstream press has not rallied the nation to free itself from misused presidential power.

Also clear to some of us is that the delusional Bush has survived because delusion runs rampant across the nation, blocking populist actions in the national interest.  Here are the main states of American delusion:

Millions of Americans persist in believing, contrary to all historical evidence, that changing control of Congress and the Executive Branch between Democrats and Republicans produces sorely needed reforms.  But mainstream politicians are serial betrayers.  Thus, people suffer from delusional political faith.

Millions of non-wealthy Americans believe that the economy works for them.  This persists despite reams of facts that show how working- and middle-class people are not receiving their fair share of national income and wealth.  They keep running on a debt treadmill that will not take them to the proverbial American dream.  What they get is economic insecurity, inequality and injustice.  Consumer confidence is an oxymoron.  This is delusional prosperity.

Viral delusional thinking is that America sets the gold standard for democracies.  The rest of the world, however, to its credit sees an arrogant nation with a government that uses its military strength foolishly and sees its policies rewarding the rich at the expense of all others.  People from Finland to New Zealand question why Americans do not receive universal health care, why its workers are sacrificed for global trade and corporate powers, why millions of its citizens go hungry and homeless, why so few people bother to vote, why so many politicians are convicted of crimes, and why there are more people in prisons than in all other countries combined.  Yet Americans by and large keep thinking that their constitutional republic gives them first class democracy.  This is delusional patriotism.

So, what are we to do?  Keep expressing dissent by marching and protesting in the streets?  Keep signing petitions on the Internet?  Keep demanding impeachment of Bush?  Keep reading and writing angry diatribes on progressive websites?  Keep voting for mainstream politicians from the two major parties, hoping for a political messiah?  Keep obeying Bush by borrowing, spending, shopping and consuming to keep our debt-ridden nation afloat?

Such activities release anger, but are largely placebo self-medications, unlikely to provide the permanent solutions our nation needs.  Protests serve more as entertainment for the nation than a force to tear down the rotten system.  Scale is a problem.  Maybe if one million angry Americans sat down peacefully in the streets all around the White House, defying police action for many days, just maybe the system would crack.  Protests must have a revolutionary character.  They must induce fear into the hearts of smug and delusional power elites – like Dick Cheney.

The real needs are structural reforms that combat the major societal delusions that are driving America downhill.  We must attack the root causes of problems rather than provide temporary relief or cover-up of symptoms.

Delusional political faith and delusional prosperity require profound reforms in our political system.  A new competitive political party is needed.  One that is guided by a set of principles that both mainstream Democrats and Republicans can not opportunistically accept, because the principles clearly conflict with their rotten behavior.  A recent New America Foundation survey of Californians found that “seven in 10 voters say they often feel they must choose the lesser of two evils; more than half the voters say California needs another major political party.”

Delusional patriotism is tougher to remedy.  To revitalize American democracy we must have a national dialogue.  Heed the words of the great John Marshall: “The people made the constitution, and the people can unmake it.  It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.”  And James Madison: “the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their Government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution.”  Thomas Jefferson believed that the constitution-drafting process should be repeated by each generation of Americans.  That’s what real freedom is all about.  A great democracy must be much more than stable – it must be self-correcting.

When a political system no longer deserves trust, citizens must trust themselves.  Considering how doggedly our unrepresentative democracy stays under the grip of moneyed special interests and fails large fractions of Americans, more direct democracy aimed squarely at major reforms is desperately needed.  That requires a lot more than protesting and ranting.  Some urge citizens’ assemblies (see http://www.cusdi.org/ and http://www.healthydemocracy.org/), or national initiative elections (see https:/votep2.us).  I and others believe that we have a constitutional right to Article V Conventions (see http://www.foavc.org).  However, elitist status quo forces have made the population afraid of such activities – a sick delusional, status quo bias belief.  If it persists, Americans will not set themselves free of the oppressive forces that have hijacked their nation.  They will keep venting their anger as dissenters or stay distractive consumers rather than work to return power to the people.

LET’S NOT DELUDE OURSELVES THAT ALL WILL BE WELL AFTER BUSH IS GONE.  AS AWFUL AS BUSH IS, HE IS A SYMPTOM OF WHAT AILS OUR NATION.  Our nation will remain in need of deep reforms.  Millions of dissidents must wake up to what is really needed and rally around a revolutionary strategy.

[Check out the author’s solutions for fixing the nation at www.delusionaldemocracy.com; for information on the Article V Convention concept contact him at articlevATgmailDOTcom.]

It’s hard to avoid labels.  I am a proud political dissident.  Could the majority of Americans be dissidents?  Think of the two-thirds of the country that believe the nation is on the wrong track, the 52 percent that believe politicians are dishonest, the majority that do not vote, and the vast majority that think of themselves as centrists, libertarians, moderates or independents, rather than liberals, Democrats, conservatives or Republicans.  And definitely think of the many thousands of Americans out in the streets in recent months to protest the Iraq war, and the larger numbers reading Internet sites to sidestep the mainstream corporate media.  Dissidents exist because placing faith in mainstream politicians is as delusional as George W. Bush believing that sending more American soldiers into the Iraq cauldron is justified.  It flies in the face of reality, experience and sanity.
The great paradox is that so many people still desperately place faith in politicians.  It’s as if through magic or divine intervention some super-honest, non-corruptible, brilliant and charming Democrat or Republican can reform the system.  And make us feel good again, restore quality to American democracy, and fight economic inequality by rejecting and stomping on all the evil corporate and other special interests that have robbed we the people of our country.  Someone that will actually put the interests of working- and middle-class Americans above those of rich and powerful elites.

So what should American dissidents put their faith in?

I have long sought the answer to that question to avoid existential depression and despair.  And also to avoid doing what most Americans do to dull the pain: compulsive and distractive consumerism.  This is just fine with mainstream politicians.  Debt-ridden consumers are so much easier to govern than active dissidents.  As George W. Bush has preached on many occasions, neo-patriotism equates to personal borrowing, spending, shopping and consumption.

Other than protesting, I have arrived at two things worth putting my political faith in.  And faith is exactly the right word.  They require devotion and commitment as an act of faith.  There is no way to prove that they will materialize or, if they did, that they would deliver all that is needed.  Yet, to keep putting faith in glib, power-hungry politicians is plain nuts, based strictly on actual history.

My first answer is third parties.  At critical times in American history third parties have come to the rescue and greatly improved our nation.  We need more political competition.  We need some third party to become competitive to Democrats and Republicans in local, state and federal elections.  Some party that does not advocate fractious issues that divide, but rather presents a set of principles that bring American dissenters together to collectively pursue substantial changes in our political and governmental system.

Yet, third parties have not done well in recent decades, despite having highly committed members, albeit in relatively small numbers.  The two-party duopoly has convinced most people to think of votes for third-party candidates as wasted.  And so in every election many – and perhaps most – voters end up voting for the lesser evil Democrat or Republican, and eventually regretting it.  Many others reject placebo voting.  They have properly lost political faith.

My second answer is less understood and just as undermined and sullied by the two-party duopoly and other status quo defenders.  It is to compel Congress to obey Article V of the Constitution that says it “shall call a convention for proposing Amendments” if two-thirds of state legislatures apply for one.  That numeric requirement is the ONLY constitutional requirement for an Article V convention.  Now, here is an absolute truthful fact.  Applications have been submitted from 50 states – actually over 500 applications.  An official with The John Birch Society – one of the nations’s far, far right-wing groups – when confronted with that fact said: “had we ever reached the requisite number of state applications, a convention would indeed have been called.”  I could not believe that this anti-government, pro-constitution group could actually have such faith in Congress.  Or was that just a fanciful excuse for opposing a convention?

Still, we must ask: Why has Congress not called an Article V convention?  The answer is simple.  

Both Democratic and Republican members of Congress have not wanted to share the constitutional power to propose amendments with the states.  Institutionally, Congress has defied Article V to keep power.  As Russell L. Caplan noted in Constitutional Brinkmanship: “Congress has never kept regular track of incoming convention applications, and there exists no official catalogue of the applications adopted by the states since 1789.”  Researchers have had to dig through many documents to build an inventory of state applications (see www.article5.org).

While Congress has acted surreptitiously, many people and organizations on the left and right have steadfastly and openly opposed an Article V convention.  What do they have in common with Congress?  They want to maintain the status quo that gives them ample opportunities to control government.  For decades they have successfully implanted fear into the public consciousness.  They especially like to talk about a “runaway convention,” able to overturn our Constitution, destroy our democracy, and rob us of our civil liberties and freedoms.  

Indeed, at a 1998 House hearing on a bill to amend the Constitution, Republican Charles T. Canady said: “The specter of a `runaway convention’ seems to have been accepted by many as a convincing political argument.”  In 1995, when both houses of the Virginia legislature passed a resolution to limit Article V conventions, one reason cited was “many states are reluctant to ask Congress to call a national convention for fear of creating a `runaway convention’ that might undermine the delicate constitutional framework the forefathers worked so hard to establish.”

Yet some people see the truth.  Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 1997, Roger Pilon of the libertarian CATO Institute made these salient points about an Article V convention: “With Nebraska as the only state with a unicameral legislature, it takes majorities in 75 of the 99 state legislative bodies in America to ratify any change in the Constitution.  Looked at from the other direction, it takes only 13 such bodies to block any change.  …Are we really to believe that a runaway convention could get its schemes past the public?  Are there not 13 bodies in this land that would rise to block all but the most popular of proposals?  …By overwhelming majorities, averaging 75 percent, Americans of every creed and color have come to understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with a system that has resulted, under modern conditions, in our being ruled year in and year out by a class of professional politicians.  That situation is neither healthy nor right in a limited, constitutional democracy.  Fortunately, the Framers provided a way to do something about it, a way to make substantial change while ensuring that our fundamental principles remain in place.”

And Wendell Cox, speaking before the right wing American Legislative Exchange Council in 1995, asserted that “concerns about a `runaway’ convention are entirely unfounded.”  At the conservative Heritage Foundation James L. Gattuso concluded in 1988 that “there are numerous political and restraints which make it virtually impossible for a `runaway’ convention to rewrite the Constitution against the wishes of the American people.”

The Framers gave us the Article V convention option because they anticipated that the federal government could become too powerful or just plain incompetent and ineffective.  Dissidents know this has happened.  The government has already been hijacked by all kinds of moneyed special interests and corrupt politicians.  An Article V convention is like a fourth, temporary branch of the federal government – except that it is really a production of the states aimed at improving the federal Constitution.  With enormous public and media attention its delegates would be far more difficult to corrupt by special interests.

What must be emphasized is that an Article V convention would have NO power to change the Constitution or do anything else other than to propose amendments that would have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.  

John de Herrera recently summed it up nicely: “Americans have been conditioned like Pavlov’s dog to fear a convention because of what might happen–that it would be some kind of Pandora’s box. But what the newspapers and politicians failed to mention is the ratification process. They only told us half the truth, and as the late great Ben Franklin mentioned, half the truth is often a great lie.”

All kinds of people say totally stupid and wrong things to keep the public afraid of a convention.  Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, a Democrat, wrote in 1986 that “one of the most serious problems Article V poses is a runaway convention. There is no enforceable mechanism to prevent a convention from reporting out wholesale changes to our Constitution and Bill of Rights.”  Wait a second!  An Article V convention can only make PROPOSALS.

In 1987 arch-conservative Phyllis Schlafly said: “If a constitutional Convention can change our structure of government as defined in Articles I, II, and III, it can also change the Article V requirement that three-fourths of the states are needed to ratify any changes. The Convention of 1787 reduced the number of states required to ratify a change from 100% of the states to 75%, and a Convention in the 1980s could `follow their example’ and reduce it further, to 66%, or 60%, or even 51%.”  Just that one stubborn problem: An Article V convention can only make PROPOSALS!

On the positive side is how former Attorney General Griffin Bell saw things: “Those who wring their hands over the prospects of a convention run the risk of exposing their elitism, implying that the average citizen cannot be trusted.”  This resonates with me.  As certain as the law of gravity is, is that elitist politicians cannot be trusted.

Another favorable view was that “the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others [Congress] not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse.”   Abraham Lincoln said that in his first inaugural address.

It comes to this: Be a proud dissident.  Find a third party to believe in.  Take a good look at some new efforts: the Centrist Party (www.uscentrist.org), the Populist Party of America (www.populistamerica.com), and the Whig Party (www.thephoenixchronicles.org).  Join the movement to make Congress obey the Constitution and call an Article V convention that could safely re-energize and engage Americans politically.  The only thing to fear is that bipartisan lies about an Article V convention will triumph.  The job of making American democracy is not done.   Doing what our Founders anticipated we would have to do, through a convention, is not the same as undoing what they did.  They had faith in us.

Thomas Jefferson was correct.  A free people have the right to alter or amend their government when they see fit.  Everyone believes in freedom, yet too many fall victim to phony political faith healers.  Dissidents keep the faith and want to practice freedom themselves.  Just like the people who created our nation.

[Check out the author’s new book: www.delusionaldemocracy.com, and for more information on fighting for an Article V convention contact him at articlev at gmail at the usual dot com.]

What a wonderful political distraction is Senator Barack Hussein Obama.  Perhaps a good part of his attractiveness is that he is in so many ways the complete opposite of George W. Bush.  
Yet, what amazes me is how our bipartisan obstacle to true political competition continually creates illusions of change and reform.  Thus it keeps a grip on Americans’ hope for the future, and preempts public support for more profound political change.  Is Obama just another example of how our corrupt political system ingeniously creates candidates to keep hope alive?  Is the self-professed progressive Obama the real thing?  Is he something other than a conventional politician?  I have read many of his speeches and other statements.  I applaud his upbeat rhetoric, but few policy details are given.

Joseph Sobran opined that “the Democrats are looking for a political messiah, and many of them think they’ve found one in Illinois’s junior senator, Barack Obama. And Obama is, without question, a very charming, intelligent, and impressive young man who is, moreover, catnip to the press corps.”  Cal Thomas made the good point that many Americans look at presidential candidates as political messiahs.  He said Obama “can also play dual roles of messiah figure and one of the Wise Men.”  And he astutely asked: “Have political `messiah figures’ become false gods?”

In truth, none of the current presidential hopefuls have obtained the political messiah mantle as much as Obama has.

Yet I remain skeptical.  Is he a true populist?  Is he willing to do whatever it takes to become President?  In our diseased political system, whatever-it-takes-candidacy produces screw-the-public-politics-as-usual.  Here are some things that would truly impress me about Obama’s uniqueness, and that would support viewing him as something other than just another opportunistic politician – albeit with a race, good looks, anti-Iraq war, and intelligence advantage.  

First and foremost, I would be deeply impressed if Obama soon committed to taking campaign contributions only from individuals and only in small amounts, say no greater than $50.  Because if he raised the huge amount of money necessary for a competitive presidential campaign – say $100 million – from the usual sources, then he will inevitably become (assuming he is not already) corrupted.

Second, his voting record in the Senate shows a strong allegiance to labor and teacher unions, according to data from Project Vote Smart.  These groups can be hugely important sources of big campaign money.  I would like to hear Obama explicitly pronounce policy positions that show he is not a lackey of organized labor.

Third, he has supported the views of the Population Connection, better known by its former name: Zero Population Growth..  One of its core positions is: “The only acceptable solution to the population problem is through expanding educational, advocacy and service efforts that lower birth rates.”  Additionally, for the United States it advocates “efforts to conserve energy and natural resources and improve efficiency, eliminate our `disposable society’ lifestyle, and use the best possible technology to protect the natural and human environment.”  I would be impressed if Obama spoke out about the compulsive consumerism hallmarking U.S. culture.  And if he solidly supported higher gasoline taxes and stricter vehicle mileage standards to promote less driving and gasoline use.  Besides favoring abortion rights and backing the interests of Planned Parenthood, what else does he support to cut global population growth?  

Forth, he has demonstrated little support for the policy goals of the National Taxpayers Union, that lobbies for “the merits of limited government and low taxes,” fights corporate welfare and tax advantages for the wealthy, and advocates for a balanced budget amendment to the constitution.  Similarly, his record shows little support for what the Americans for Tax Reform groups advocates.  A core position of this group is: “Politicians often run for office saying they won’t raise taxes, but then quickly turn their backs on the taxpayer. The idea of the Pledge is simple enough: Make them put their no-new-taxes rhetoric in writing.”  So, this is what I would like to hear from Obama: tell us you are not a free-spending liberal that will easily justify raising taxes to increase funding for social programs.  And that you will fight for a balanced budget constitutional amendment – in fact, be the first presidential candidate ever to advocate for an Article V convention of state delegates to consider this and other possible amendments!

Fifth, his views on illegal immigration are very consistent with those of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and opposite to those of groups working to stop the massive influx of illegal immigration.  Has he bought into labor union’s desire for more members, despite illegals lowering wages for working-class American citizens, just what corporate interests want?  Does he favor ANY strict measures to stop the invasion of illegal immigrants, including stiffer penalties for illegal employers?  What would he do to combat the plight of local governments facing high costs from illegal immigrants?

Obama says “America is a land of big dreamers and big hopes.”  Then please tell us – exactly and soon – what are YOUR big dreams and big hopes for America that you intend to pursue if you become President.  Give us details that differentiate you not just from the other presidential candidates, but from all conventional politicians that have lost the trust and confidence of most Americans.  You say “we need the political will.”  For what exactly?  Not just the big, broad goals, but tell us the “how” – the policy paths that you will fight for to reach lofty goals.  

I don’t care that he has little government and no executive experience, not if he is willing to boldly speak out with specifics about exactly what he would try to accomplish as President.  

Cynic though I am, if he really is the Democratic messiah, then as an American I would be very happy.  But I share Cal Thomas’ skepticism: “What puzzles me is why so many people put their hopes in politicians, when politicians (and politics) repeatedly let them down.”  

I want Obama to speak with such clarity that he either earns the messiah label, or makes realists of even his strongest supporters.  We do not need another political false idol, from the left or the right.

You may not want to know this.  Americans have been successfully brainwashed to fear exactly what their revered Constitution gives them the right to have.  Those smart Framers of the Constitution decided that we needed exactly what the establishment, pro-status quo elitists who run our plutocracy do NOT want us to have.  There is even a well funded semi-secret group organized to prevent what we the people have a right to.  

Has the brainwashing worked?  You bet it has.  In the absence of public furor, for over 200 years Congress has not done what Article V of the Constitution says it “shall” do.  Congress has never issued a call for an Article V convention of state delegates to consider constitutional amendments, in response to two-thirds of state legislatures asking for one.  That numeric requirement – the only specified requirement in Article V – has been satisfied, with 50 states submitting over 500 requests.  Such a convention operating under authority of the Constitution would be a fourth, impermanent branch of the federal system, not beholding to the three permanent branches.  Such independence has been cartooned into a frightening monster.

There is no uncertainty about what the Framers thought the nation needed.  They wrote in crystal clear language a two-step process for amending the Constitution.  First, craft proposals for possible amendments.    Either Congress can do it or an Article V convention of state delegates can.  Second, ratify proposed amendments by three-quarters of the states, either through their legislatures or state conventions, as Congress chooses.  The Framers believed that Americans, acting through large numbers of state legislators, deserved a way to circumvent the excessive power of Congress or its refusal or inability to satisfy sovereign citizens – their bosses.  No role was given to the federal judiciary and executive branch in amending the Constitution.

An Article V convention is a clear threat to the political, social and economic establishment exerting self-serving influence on Congress.  It can put into public debate ideas for amending the Constitution that threaten established political forces, both liberal and conservative.  Acting independently, it can courageously propose amendments without interference from status quo defenders.

So, not surprisingly, many persons and groups holding power oppose an Article V convention.  How have they brainwashed Americans to fear such a convention?  They fostered the image of a “runaway convention” – something to fear on a par with fears of a physical attack on the nation by foreign enemies or terrorists.  How could something placed into our Constitution to thwart an ineffective federal government be turned on its head to become such a feared threat?

Clever people grasped onto a historical fact and extrapolated it into a phantasy nightmare.  In fact, the nation’s first and only constitutional convention was a runaway.  Rather than do what had been planned for it – namely to modify the Articles of Confederation that first tied the states together – the state delegates constructed what we have for over two hundred years worshipped: the U.S. Constitution.  Those rascal Framers created a strong federal government that not everyone at the time wanted.  The anti-status quo guys won.

Backstage power brokers have never wanted another convention that might change the political system they expertly corrupt and control.  They made people believe that a convention could destroy their cherished, constitutionally protected rights and freedoms.  Or, equally bad, strange amendments would overturn the structure of our federal government and throw the nation into chaos and destroy our lauded political and governmental stability.

Is there any supporting evidence for fearing an Article V convention?  No.  To the contrary, there are solid reasons for demanding it.  

First, there have been many state constitutional conventions and a huge number of amendments to state constitutions.  Look around.  Our states and their governments have not been ruined.  Conventions were not hijacked and turned into weapons.  And the first national constitution convention was hugely successful, even if it was a runaway, telling us that the good is the enemy of the better.

Second, the requirement that three-quarters of the states must ratify any specific amendments produced by an Article V convention provides a safety net.  This is such a high hurdle that it is crazy to believe that truly awful amendments could ever become permanent changes to our Constitution.  Anyway, when an amendment not worthy of retaining has happened, it was fixed through another amendment.

Third, the nation’s first Article V convention would be so unique and of such historical significance that in our modern age of media and Internet communication there would be a solar-bright light on all its activities, from the election of state delegates to their debates and final amendment proposals.  In fact, this temporary fourth branch of our federal system would be under more public scrutiny and less susceptible to corruption than our present, permanent branches of government.

Fourth, we should reject the indirect way of changing our constitution, namely through interpretations and judgments by those few non-elected, political appointees that serve on the Supreme Court.  Plus, as President George W. Bush has demonstrated, a runaway CEO of our nation along with an ineffective Congress can take big bites out of our constitutional rights and protections and suffer no consequences.  

Fifth, while it is true that we have had considerable political and governmental stability, we have paid a heavy price for it: namely a permanent culture of corruption, lying and deception that have danced around our constitutional protections and riddled American democracy with hypocrisy.  Too much stability has turned our democracy into a plutocracy and a convention could consider remedies.

Sixth, the majority of Americans are independents, not loyal Democrats or Republicans, and only an Article V convention offers a truly independent route to addressing intransigent root problems that the political system under two-party control has allowed to fester.

Seventh, the congressional experience with proposing amendments has shown that though many may be considered, few survive.  Over 11,000 have been considered by Congress, but only 33 reached the ratification phase, and only 27 were ratified – very few in the last 100 years.  [The last amendment was finally ratified in 1992 – 203 years after it was first proposed by Congress!]  Why should we think that a convention would agree on a huge number of amendments?  With all America watching, delegates that know their states would focus on a few critical amendments likely to be ratified.

Lastly, what about that semi-secret group that was created to block attempts to amend our Constitution?  Few know about The Constitution Project (www.constitutionproject.org), “that urges restraint in the constitutional amendment process.”  It was formed in 1997 to “oppose the facile rewriting of the U.S. Constitution.”  They fear “unthinking tinkering with fundamental rights and liberties” – actually, amendments on social and fiscal issues from conservatives.  It has been funded by The Century Fund, a liberal group.  The nearly 70 members in the constitutional amendments initiative are true status quo elites.  Many were members of Congress or presidential appointees.  They produced guidelines for evaluating possible amendments that, as discussed in “The Second Constitutional Convention” by Richard Labunski, were formulated to defeat attempts to amend the Constitution.

On the political right, the John Birch Society has consistently pushed the Big Runaway Lie and said the “prospect [of a convention] is ominous.”   “We do not believe that, under today’s mentality and morality, the nation can handle that much sovereignty in one place.”  To support their position, they cite elites: Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger said “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.”  Liberal Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg said “one of the most serious problems Article V poses is a runaway convention. There is no enforceable mechanism to prevent a convention from reporting out wholesale changes to our Constitution and Bill of Rights.   …delegates could put a runaway convention in the hands of single-issue groups whose self-interest may be contrary to our national well-being.”  Ardent right-wingers admire what a joint congressional resolution said in 1935: “The government of the United States is not a concession to the people from some one higher up. It is the creation and the creature of the people themselves, as absolute sovereigns.”  Yet, they do NOT trust we the people to exercise our sovereignty and be smart enough to make a convention work in the public interest!

There are, luckily, pro-convention advocates.  Listen to the wise words of Judge Thomas Brennan, former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and Dean Emeritus and President of Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan: “There is no danger of a runaway convention. That phrase, `runaway convention’, and all the accompanying horror stories about repealing the Bill of Rights are utterly without substance. They are myths, harmful to democracy, invented by those who are afraid to let the people exercise their historic and God-given right to self government.”  Amen.

Despite the truth, opponents to an Article V convention have successfully framed the issue in the public consciousness.  A highly negative status quo bias belief has been cemented into many minds – but not everyone.  Even when confronted with pro-convention information, brainwashed people fall victim to the pain of cognitive dissonance.  The truth is blocked out to minimize discomfort.  They stay fixated with the implanted Big Runaway Lie that a convention will harm the nation.  For those that let in objective reality, angry dissent must fuel demand for one.

Where do we go from here?  If respect for our Constitution and our sovereign selves prevails, pro-convention patriots must work extra hard to move the nation towards an Article V convention.  The first battle is to get a convention.  The second challenging battle is to prevent a convention from being abused and co-opted by the power elites that would be out for blood after failing to prevent a convention.  A high level of public support is critically needed to win both battles.  To win the first battle, the smart strategy is not to let people become sidetracked about specific possible amendments.  Those who have fostered the Big Runaway Lie will surely posit some terrible possible amendments – ones that would immediately frighten and alienate huge numbers of Americans.  Public fear is their weapon.

Back to reality: What we now have, along with runaway public distrust of government, is runaway political disengagement as evidenced by low voter turnout, runaway disgust with both the Republican and Democratic Parties, runaway economic inequality, runaway corruption of government by corporate and other special interests, and runaway mainstream media dysfunction – a corporate press more than a free press.  The only thing Americans should fear is more of the same.

Can people purge their brainwashing?  Only if they confront the false status quo bias belief and acknowledge that power elites did it to maintain a system they manipulate.  To be against a convention is to stay a victim.  Let the truth set you free.  Do not fear the second American constitutional convention.  Embrace it.  Do not worry about a convention being hijacked.  Instead, stay focused on this ugly truth: America has already been hijacked by corporate and other special interests on the left and right, along with their sycophant corrupt politicians.  Stay vigilant!  Because power elites will use every dirty trick imaginable to instill fear about a convention and then to undermine it, should they lose the first battle.

Come work for an Article V convention to reboot American democracy and provide a transfusion into the body politic through a heavy dose of transparent direct democracy.   Help the USA remain committed to the rule of law.  Compel Congress to respect what is clearly stated in the Constitution, and the meaning of “shall.”  

The Supreme Court decides whether laws passed by Congress are or are not constitutional.  But it refuses to tell Congress and the nation that Congress’ refusal to call an Article V convention is unconstitutional.  What happened to checks and balances?  Maybe Supreme Court Justices have also been brainwashed, or like members of Congress don’t want to risk losing their power.

The bitter truth is that literally every individual, group and institution now holding real power opposes a second national constitutional convention.  Does that make the quest for a convention futile?  Only if one gives up on the supermajority of Americans that should, for their own sake and the sake of future generations, want a convention.  Elitists have much to lose.  Everyone else has much to gain.

The fight for American democracy is not over.  Our Founders fought British oppression and now we must fight congressional oppression.  Can nonviolent collective action produce an Article V convention?  Only if each of us says “yes!”  And then help spread an idea virus to reach a tipping point among we the people: Millions of Americans must tell state legislatures and congressional delegations they demand a convention.  Tools may include citizen state petitions on the Internet and thousands of community meetings arranged through meetup.com.  Such activities and a convention itself would provide what many believe the Framers intended to create: a deliberative democracy.

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Constitution, esteemed political scientist James MacGregor Burns, warned that “major changes will not be made until there is a severe crisis – at which time we might open the floodgates to reckless constitutional change.”  Instead, he advised taking thoughtful action now.  “We must all become framers,” he advised.

To keep working on the goal of forming “a more perfect Union,’ and as a political necessity and a moral obligation, we OUGHT to have a second national constitutional convention – which means we the people CAN have one.  Simply put, an Article V convention is all about “power to the people.”  Either you believe in it or you don’t.  The people who created our nation and Constitution believed in it.  They gave us Article V.  Our elected MISrepresentatives in Congress and their masters don’t believe in it.  They won’t willingly give us a convention.  We have a runaway Congress.  That’s what’s frightening.  And that’s why we must fight for a convention.

[The author’s new book Delusional Democracy – Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government supports constitutional conventions and other peaceful ways to restore American democracy: www.delusionaldemocracy.com.  To join the pro-convention effort or discuss issues write the author: articlev at gmail dot com]