There has to be some sort of mass mind control going on: a whole people do not take abuse after abuse and simply stand there and accept defeat.
Some claim the banking crisis of 2008 was premeditated, an Internet search finds references, including Dylan Rattigan's widely viewed exposes on CNBC and elsewhere. The banks were overextended on derivatives trades, and knowingly foisted AAA-rated toxic debt, certain to blowup, onto European banks and American pension funds. Plus, the privatization of Social Security, which the Bush Administration pushed for, was intended to pull in billions to Wall Street investment banks that would have papered over the losses. When that failed in Congress, the writing was on the wall. Was the financial meltdown calculated to force working people to pay off the debts of Wall Street gamblers and cover bond losses of the top one percent? Congressional investigations would have resulted in prosecutions--but of course Wall Street dumps millions in campaign donations every year.
More shocking still is a recent revelation by Lee Adler, founder and editor of The Wall Street Examiner. His chart of the SOMA (System Open Market Account) shows the Fed caused the recession, and probably the global financial meltdown that preceded it. The Fed withdrew liquidity at the precise moment it was needed. If true, we can only conclude the Fed, investment banks, The White House and the Congress are colluding.
The Fed Caused the Recession by Lee Adler: http://forums.wallstreetexaminer.com...
Albert Edwards, Head of Global Strategy at Societe Generale, maintains that the central banks of the U.S. and U.K. colluded with legislators to impoverish the middle classes and redistribute their wealth to the top one percent. He ponders whether US and UK central banks were actively complicit in an aggressive re-distributive policy. Did central banks, in creating housing bubbles, help distract attention from this re-distributive policy by allowing them to keep consuming via equity extraction? The emergence of extreme inequality might never have been tolerated otherwise.
http://www.zerohedge.com/...
President Obama's recent deal to extend tax cuts to the wealthiest--a deal he cut with Republicans without even consulting his own party's Congressional leaders--would seem to lend credence to Edwards' argument. We know who suffered from the banking collapse and bailout: the middle class (who lost jobs, homes, savings). And we know who gained: bondholders who lost nothing and were, coincidentally, members of that top 1% of income earners. For a nation trillions of dollars in debt to tell its wealthiest taxpayers they need not contribute to society, and that when they die they can keep their billions in the family is neither rational nor workable in a democratic society. We have to wonder if Obama has any interest in sustaining the republic or if he ever did. (For a macro view of what the global financial elite have to gain from staging market crashes, see Giordano Bruno's provocative article, "The purpose behind engineered market collapse". Bruno maintains that what the elite have in mind for us in shifting wealth to the top .1% looks a lot like slavery, although he also believes they'll fail to achieve their goal).
The recent scandals over foreclosure abuses give us a clue as to just how rapacious banks are to acquire the people's assets. Homeowners not even in foreclosure and some who had no mortgage at all were evicted from their homes and dispossessed of belongings by bank-hired agents. Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase have taken the position they're entitled to repossess all homes where the homeowner is delinquent, whether they hold legal title or not.
The Federal Reserve is not Federal, but composed of private banks, notably J.P.Morgan Chase, and loans money to the government, charging interest. The Fed was enacted by a late-night vote of the U.S. Senate on December 23, 1913 when 27 senators had already left for Christmas recess. The purchasing power of the dollar, which had remained constant for decades since the Civil War, soon began a slow and unrelenting decline, which has lasted until the present day.
The wealthiest Americans keep their savings off-shore. So even the outright demise of the dollar won't affect them much. As for the rest, the 99% who struggle to stay afloat, feed and educate children, we can only assume the Federal Reserve, the President and a majority of the Congress do not care about any of us other than as potential slaves.
Peacable Revolution
Objectively there's no other way than the Article V Convention. It would elevate political discourse by raising it above soundbites and partisan politics. We'd be looking at possible amendments to the Constitution, a profound task, so vague rhetoric and insincerity would be exposed. The process of the convention itself is a dynamic that corporate interests will not be able to control. It's their greatest fear--a runaway convention of the people, by the people, for the people.
It will awaken a sense of confidence and participation in We The People, this will flow back into and reinvigorate the regular political process. It would provide an opportunity to expose and reign in the effects of money on the political process. Can you imagine even questioning corporate personhood in the mainstream national discourse? Where else would this issue be raised? In the corporate media? By corporate politicians? It would call the bluff on those who only talk about the Constitution, and there are many folks of many different political persuasions who are sincere in their concern about the direction of our country. Do you think Tea Party folks want to let the banks run roughshod over everyone?
Slowly enslaved by institutionalized corruption, for fear of a non-binding referendum (the Article V Convention)? Of course I can't tell the future--but the common refrain against the Article V Convention is: A Constitutional Convention would be Co-opted by Corrupt Corporatists and Crazy Christians.
The talking points of Anti-Conventionists:
- Once called, a Constitutional Convention becomes its own authority and cannot be limited;
- A corollary to the point above is that a Con-Con may become a "runaway convention" that drastically alters our form of government, or throws out the Constitution altogether and establishes an entirely new system of governance.
- It is absurd to believe that a majority (or even a sizable minority) of the individuals likely to be delegates to a Con-Con today would compare favorably with our nation’s Founders or share their commitment to liberty and limited government.
- The general public’s understanding of our Constitution has deteriorated greatly, while dependence on government programs has dramatically escalated since our founding, with both of these factors militating for bigger and bigger government.
The Framers did not place a self-destruct button in their masterwork. The Article V Convention does not become its own authority, in fact it’s strictly limited to proposing amendments "...to this Constitution...." If a delegate or group of delegates wanted to re-write the Constitution (the Seven Articles), they’d first have to propose an amendment allowing for that, go out and get it ratified by 38 states, then come back to draft a new constitution (and then get that ratified).
Does anyone believe an amendment allowing for the re-writing of the Constitution would be ratified today? Unlike most political situations the minority controls the process: to stop any amendment is a nay in 13 state legislatures, or more specifically, a nay vote in one house of each of those legislatures, or even more specifically, a nay vote in a committee of one of the houses. As those committees are run by chairs, a nay vote can be obtained with no more than 13 people, and the constitutional proposal will await ratification in vain.
In addition to that safety--consider this: a federal convention convened would contrast sharply with the modus operandi within Congress. It would be a unicameral assembly, with no conference committees required to reconcile divergent House/Senate bills. Nor would a supermajority of two-thirds be required: rather a simple majority to propose an Amendment to the States for ratification. There would be no labyrinth of autonomous standing committees, with autocratic chairmen, to pass through; and no Filibuster to overcome. Salutary checks and balances would be deferred until proposals reach the States, and again, where three-fourths 38 States would have to ratify anything emerging from "...a convention for proposing Amendments...."
Convoking a federal convention and carrying out that constitutional process is what will re-educate us all about what the Constitution means, and what our origins are. Delegates don't need to be Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, they don't need to reinvent the wheel, they simply need to have common sense.
Then consider the process of electing delegates:
Delegates will be elected to their positions of office. In Hawke v Smith (253 U.S. 221 (1920)) the Supreme Court addressed the issue when it discussed ratification conventions saying: "Both method of ratification, by Legislatures or conventions, call for action by deliberative assemblages representative of the people...." The court thus defined what the word "conventions" meant in the text of the Constitution: deliberative assemblages representative of the people, and equates that with legislatures, all of whom are representatives elected by the people of the state.
Beyond this, the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause as well as Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution make it clear that all citizens are entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. The Constitution requires that all members of Congress must be citizens of the United States and that they must be elected to that office. The Fourteenth Amendment creates two citizenships for all citizens of the United States: citizens of the United States and citizens of the state in which they reside or, state citizenship. Citizens, whether elected to Congress or to an Article V Convention receive, as a result of that election, the privilege to offer amendments to the Constitution and therefore the 14th Amendment requires that both sets of citizens, members of Congress and delegates to a convention must receive equal protection under the law. This means as members of Congress are elected and receive the privilege to offer amendment proposals, delegates who are given the same privilege to offer amendment proposals, must also be elected.
The Article V Convention is how we build consensus as a nation and address the problem, instead of symptoms.
Read these articles, prepare yourself for this New Year, know how to talk about it.
http://www.foa5c.org/...
http://www.foa5c.org/...
http://www.foa5c.org/...
As far as this forum which has been set up, it looks like I have to find a new webhost, so hopefully it will be set up and properly secured within the next week or so. Of course I'll be posting about it then: http://www.articlevconvention.org