What if individual states could ignore Supreme Court rulings and ban same-sex marriages, taxation, immigration, abortion and so forth? In other words, make their own set of rules without citizens having a voice in the matter? Sound ridiculous? I thought so too, until I came across such an amendment being passed in republican states across our country months ago.
Former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich addressed this alarming scheme on his Facebook blog.
Robert Reich -
“The right-wing coup d’etat continues. Conservative advocacy groups bankrolled by the Koch brothers are quietly marshaling support for a constitutional convention to get a balanced budget – amendment, among other nefarious right-wing goals.
The plan rests on Article 5 of the Constitution allowing states to draft their own constitutional amendments whenever two-thirds of their legislatures demand it.
With Republicans controlling so many state legislatures, 28 states have already adopted resolutions calling for a convention on a balanced-budget amendment, including 10 in the past three years, and two, Oklahoma and West Virginia, this spring. That’s just six states short of the 34 needed.
Not only would a balanced-budget amendment be bonkers – preventing government from being the purchaser of last resort when consumers and businesses aren’t spending enough to keep the economy going – but such a convention could easily spiral out of control.”
Continue Reading:
www.facebook.com/...
Note: *I wrote about this issue months ago after stumbling across the “American Legislative Exchange Council” (ALEC) handbook, the front group for large global corporations and commonly associated with the Koch Brothers, long after they distributed it to every republican state legislator with pre-written bills for them to follow - including the constitutional convention Robert Reich referenced in his article. To read the ALEC bill and see how the state of Michigan and others duplicated it, click on the link below:
ALEC:
www.donatidaily.com/...
*The ALEC handbook link: web.archive.org/...