There are very few issues on which I can agree with most Republicans. They want less government interference; I want more government oversight. They believe that everyone should be able to “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” I believe more in the “I am my brother’s keeper” socialist philosophy of Jesus Christ (even though I am an atheist).
“Government of the people, for the people, and by the people” is what our country’s founders intended, with “people” meaning ALL citizens or the representatives thereof. That means a strong federal government that serves the interests of ALL of its people, not just the rich and powerful.
Unfortunately, these days the richest and most powerful people are those who are supposed to represent us, with their closest financial friends backing them up.
So, when Virginia’s Republican James. M. LeMunyon wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal, I had to agree:
The U.S. Congress is in a state of serious disrepair and cannot fix itself. It has reached this point over the course of many years — in fact over decades. Regardless of the party in power, Congress has demonstrated a growing inability to effectively address the major issues of our time, including soaring federal debt and the extension of federal authority to states and localities.”
(I had to agree on the statement, but I probably wouldn’t agree on his interest in extending “federal authority to states and localities.)
LeMunyon calls for a Constitutional Convention, more specifically, an “Article V Constitutional Convention,” which is a process for delineating and submitting to Congress requests for changes to the Constitution that a majority of citizens support.
As a matter of fact, there is already, online, a petition to hold an Article V Convention, which
…is simply a deliberative assembly of state delegates discussing what might garner the approval from an overwhelming amount of citizens from across the political spectrum.
As one might expect, there is a lot of discussion going on about the value of having an Article V Convention.
Of course, I support such a move, especially because the technology enabled by the Internet can be used to draw out the actual desires of individual citizens. We, the people, telling our government what we need from it.
And one of the major things we need is the reform expressed in what I got as a forwarded email with no attribution. But it makes a good case, so I reprint it here:
Subject: Let’s NOT be sheep!
Take a minute and read this please
No one has been able to explain to me why young men and women serve in the U.S. Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get 50% of their pay. While politicians hold their political positions in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men and women, and receive full pay retirement after serving one term. It just does not make any sense.
Monday on Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?
Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention.
This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.
This is an idea that we should address.
For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform… in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn’t seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don’t care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.
If each person that receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.
Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States .”
Please pass this on!
The front of our house, with its minimal stone stoop, faces south, so it’s the best place to sit and have a cup of tea in the morning or relax after dinner. In a few weeks it will have plants on and around it, but it’s still too cold to get the plants in. But we all sat out there in the sun for a while today — the only family in the neighborhood who stoop sits.