This photo is from a fundraiser I attended here in Santa Barbara, California (a sculpture on the lawn, overlooking the channel). It was for Barbara Boxer, and singer Bonnie Raitt was playing.
The sun setting, and everyone had taken their seats to listen to Bonnie play.
Bonnie Raitt playing
I caught up with Rep Capps first, as some local Dems were on the stage and she was getting something to eat. She knows me in the sense that I've approached her two or three times over the past several years about the convention clause of Article V. She told me to send some information, which I said I have, and then said she really had to get back to her seat. I'll send another letter I said, she said OK, and ran away.
Then after the event was over, I caught up with Bonnie Raitt. I mentioned to her how when she had done Farm Aid that it was in a sense adressing a symptom, how corporate interests were really at the root of the problem. I said the Costitution has a convention clause, that it's currently mandated and if she and some of her friends did something like Farm Aid today, but instead a tour centered on the idea that it's time for a national convention.... I gave her a link to look at and thanked her.
Then I caught Barbara Boxer on the way to her car, she told me a convention is dangerous, and when I explained it's simply a deliberative assembly, and that nothing's dangerous about that, she said she was going to focus and what she was going to focus on, and then told one of her aids speak with me, before getting into her car and leaving.
Here are some of the choice words from a diary on the Rec List Monday:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
....whereby we as country have yet to figure out the handwriting on the wall, that both parties are playing us for the fools...using the same divisive decoys--racism, religion, class warfare, fear... [while] protecting Wall Street/the Banks and the top 1 percent of the elite who now own 90 percent of our nation's wealth..... It is like watching a really really stupid never ending ping pong game... [and] this same Idiocracy we are now living, as both parties, continue to suck the citizens into this black hole vortex, where instead of realizing finally (Duhhhhhhhhhh) that the only ones that are making out in this deal we call a Democracy are the ones that rule our nation.... And as Mr. Greenwald points out, it is not just Fox News, or Glen Beck, or Rush, or the Republicans that are using race and economic class warfare as the decoys that our corrupt leaders hope to hell that above all we keep fighting about, instead of noticing what is really going on.... Both parties, throwing on, day in and day out, every single scuzzy decoy in order to keep We the People from actually seeing the truth and demanding that both parties deal with the nation's top priorities...the Corporate takeover of our government and nation, the Regulatory Capture and total destruction and corruption of our key financial sectors (with no meaningful prosecutions to date),...financial campaign reform...the Endless Wars, and the growing homelessness spurred on by the insane amount of foreclosures and job loses, which of course comes right back to the Economic Pearl Harbor, that was nothing more that a coup de etat.... Before anyone goes on one of those "you're just a hater rants" or "you just don't understand what Poor President Obama was up against," or "Obama is just getting bad advice," or "It's all the Republican's fault for their obstructionist actions," spare me that bebop would you please? ...We are truly living in a state of Idiocracy if we don't wise up pretty damn quickly and stop discussing the decoys, and demand day in and day out, that our Senators, House Members, and our President concentrate on those issues that are and should be the only top priorities in our nation.
Here's an e-mail I sent off the other night that's almost a direct reply:
Hi Joe, as you may or may not know, voting and the electoral process have become privatized in the sense that a single corporation (ES&S) now tallies 80%+ of all votes cast nationwide (on proprietary source), and corporate interests are now able to spend unlimited amounts on political speech. These two things combined will result in an inevitable conclusion. All laws are meant to prevent harm and the guys who wrote our high law knew what we know today--that power corrupts. They knew that at some point a group or interest would move to replace government for the people by the people, with government for the few by the few.
The Constitution has a convention clause in Article V. It's actually a right of the people to come together in a deliberative assembly in order to build consensus about what a corrupt legislature never will. I've been advocating for the Article V Convention for some time and a number of developments have occurred in the past couple years. I was co-founder of a group with former Michigan State Chief Justice Tom Brennan (also founder of the Cooley School of law, largest accredited law school in the US), and over the last two years an audit of the Congressional Record has found all fifty states have cast applications for a convention and one session of Congress after another ignores its constitutional obligation to issue the call. In other words a federal convention is currently mandated. Unfortunately Americans have been scared off the idea, led to believe such a thing might tamper with or utterly destroy the Constitution. But the Framers did not place a self-destruct button into their masterwork. The convention can only propose ideas for amendments to the Constitution we have but cannot ratify them. Ratification requires the approval of 38 states, so a convention isn't dangerous at all, except to those forces in power--those currently doing away with transparent elections and a free humanity. Whether 38 states could agree to any one idea today is not certain (although electoral reform consistently polls at 90%+ approval, and I believe would be the only thing to be ratified in America at this time), what's more important is the process itself. To hold a convention means there will have to be special elections for delegates. These elections will not be time-worn Dem/Repub affairs of 'It's time to clean up DC,' but will be issue specific, actually aimed at cleaning up DC. In essence holding a convention today would be a national referendum on corporate governance and in essence a peaceable reformation of a status quo which has an inevitable conclusion if something isn't done.
Two years ago I had lunch with Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig. I put the idea of calling for a convention to him and he wanted to wait and see how the Obama Administration would fare. He isn't pleased, understands well how corporate interests have members of Congress hostage to campaign funding, and is now openly calling for a convention. He put me in touch with University of Texas professor Sandford Levinson and we're hoping to make a documentary next Spring which will help show, rather than tell, what a convention is and how it isn't dangerous to the Constitution or the people at all, but exactly what should take place at this time.
For now, I leave some links to review if you're so moved, and perhaps we can talk about an idea I have in mind in regards to the folks you know. In regards to the de Chardin quote, the convention clause, and the recent particulars surrounding it, is the thing that's arrived at this peak in time, not only for our hope of escape but our expectation of revelation.
This link is put up by Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig: http://www.callaconvention.org
This one by former Michigan State Chief Justice Tom Brennan: http://www.conventionusa.org
This site is a national group: http://www.foavc.org
The database of state applications for the Article V Convention, all fifty applying, thus mandating a convention: http://foavc.org/...
Here are articles by Justices Van Sickle and Brennan for an overview on the subject:
http://www.foa5c.org/...
http://www.foa5c.org/...
http://www.foa5c.org/...
Let me know your thoughts when you get a chance, OK?
John
This photo was from a diary by Eddie C posted some months ago, from a rally held in NYC