Constitutional Convention

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The GOP's dangerous plan to rewrite the Constitution

Thom Hartmann

December 15, 2023

One of the right’s favorite fever dreams over the years has been to gut the US Constitution of many of its checks and balances and officially turn America into a legal oligarchy with a strongman presidency, nearly bulletproof legal immunity for the morbidly rich, and full personhood for corporations.

As of this month, it’s no longer just a dream.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) completed their winter “National Policy Summit” get-together in Scottsdale, Arizona last week with Speaker Mike Johnson as its keynote speaker. This is the group that’s brought “Stand Your Ground” and voter suppression “model legislation” to Red states across America and, for fifty years now, has been bringing together corporate lobbyists and Republican state-level politicians to make state after state more corporate- and billionaire-friendly.

At this recent meeting they rolled out a new strategy to convene a Constitutional Convention, so they can finally remake America in their own image: they’re going to try to get the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court — who all have direct or indirect ties back to ALEC, its related/affiliated organizations, and/or its funders — to go along with it.

Former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold (now a professor of law and president of the American Constitution Society) is not prone to hyperbole; he’s always been a thoughtful and measured speaker and writer. So, it’s worth taking him seriously when he recently said of MAGA Mike Johnson:

“It is alarming to have a speaker of the House who supports the extremist Convention of States movement, which is striving to radically rewrite the U.S. Constitution.”

— Imagine if most public schools in the country closed and were replaced by for-profit charter and private academies — often racially segregated and only serving families who could afford their tuition — because the Constitution forbade state-level compulsory education laws and taxpayer funding for education (at all levels).

— Imagine if the U.S. Constitution required the EPA, FDA, USDA, DOT, Department of Education, and Department of Labor to shut down. All union protections are dead, there are no more federal workplace safety standards, and even child-labor laws are struck down, along with an end to the national minimum wage and the income tax, both individual and corporate.

— Imagine that the new billionaire-written Constitution makes it illegal for the federal government to protect you from big polluters, big banks, and even big food and pharma — all are free to rip you off or poison you all they want, and your only remedy is in state courts and legislatures — because the Constitution now prevents Congress from doing anything about any of it. The federal government can no longer even enforce voting or civil rights laws.

— Imagine if Citizens United and its position that political bribery is merely a First Amendment exercise of “free speech” were put into the US Constitution so it can never be overturned by Congress or a future court, meaning that whichever political candidates have the backing of the wealthiest donors pretty much win every election for the rest of American history.

— Imagine if the free and independent press protections of the First Amendment are gone and, like in today’s Hungary and Russia, politicians can sue anybody who writes anything about them for defamation or slander, effectively putting any kind of opposition media or even honest news operations out of business.

— Imagine, to add injury to insult, that the federal government has shut down Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, because all of these programs (along with food stamps, Pell grants, housing supports, and any programs that help the middle class, the less fortunate, or disabled) are “beyond the reach” of what the federal government can do because they’re now unconstitutional.

Morbidly rich billionaires and the groups they fund are working to rewrite our Constitution to do all this and more.

They want to provide corporations and the rich with more and more protections and benefits while chopping away at anything smelling of “socialism” like Social Security, child labor laws, or inheritance, income, and wealth taxes.

The Constitution provides for three ways to change or amend itself. The first is that Congress can propose a constitutional amendment, pass it with a supermajority in both houses, and have three-quarters of the states ratify it. This is the way it’s been done for every one of the existing 27 amendments.

The second strategy is done by using Article V of the Constitution and driving the process up from the states. The easiest way to do this is for three-quarters of the states to legislatively approve (with simple majority votes in the legislatures of each state) an amendment, in which case Congress is unnecessary and upon ratification by the 38th state, it becomes a permanent amendment to the Constitution.

While this strategy has never been used, it’s one process many of the good-government groups like Move To Amend and Public Citizen are pushing for a “Corporations are not people, and money is not speech” amendment to reverse Citizens United.

The third — and incredibly dangerous — strategy to amend the Constitution is to simply call a “Convention of the States,” again using Article V, and open the entire document itself up to rewriting and tinkering.

This third strategy is the one ALEC was pushing this month. If they can pull it off in the states (where it’s cheaper to buy politicians), then Congress, state governors, the president, and even the courts would have no say over it. And ALEC has spent the past 50 years becoming a major — some would say controlling — factor in Republican-controlled state legislatures.

Their barrier has been that it takes 34 states to call for a convention, and there have never been that many states call for one at the same time since the founding of our republic. However, as was pointed out at ALEC last week, every state except Hawaii has — at one time or another, starting with Virginia in 1788 — passed a resolution proposing a constitutional convention (there have been 400 such resolutions since the founding of our nation).

While most of history’s resolutions for a convention have been specific to one issue or another (New York’s 1789 resolution called for a Bill of Rights to be added to the Constitution, for example, something that Congress and the states did in 1791), a half-dozen were simply calls for a convention without specifics. These are sometimes referred to as “generic” convention resolutions.

The theory pushed at ALEC, first rolled out three years ago at an ALEC workshop by conservative activist David Biddulph but now apparently fully endorsed, is to combine the existing 28 Red state resolutions along with the six “generic” ones (going all the way back to 1789) to hit the magic number of 34 states to open the convention.

The key to the strategy is to get it before the Supreme Court and let the billionaire-owned Republican justices do ALEC’s work for it by ruling that those old resolutions are still valid, even though the people who proposed and passed them are all long dead.

Utah Republican State Rep. Ken Ivory told ALEC lawmakers it was imperative to get the issue before the Supreme Court:

“Please join us in the state of Utah as we look into the legal mechanisms that we have under the Constitution… to [get the Court to] declare that Congress must count the [old] applications. … And if, as we believe, we’ve already achieved 34 applications to Congress for a fiscal responsibility convention, call [it]… and hold a Convention of States.”

If their plan works, these Republican toadies of the billionaires who fund and own them will rewrite our Constitution and state governors, the US Congress, and the President will have no say whatsoever in the process. Only state legislatures are necessary for rewriting the Constitution and then ratifying their own work, according to Article V of the Constitution, and governors can’t veto their actions.

Much like the many cases that have suddenly burst onto the scene and then been used by the six corrupt Republicans on the Court to alter American law and take away citizens’ rights, this one could move quickly. Now that the ALEC meeting is over, expect to see states begin putting together the lawsuits or other legal actions necessary to get this proposal before the Court.

Alexander Hamilton was prescient: in the last sentence of Federalist 85, he warns us of efforts to re-write or replace our Constitution:

“I dread the more the consequences of new attempts, because I know that powerful individuals, in this and in other States, are enemies to a general national government in every possible shape.”

Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy have been at the forefront of sounding the alarm and I’ve hot-linked their names to their most recent articles about the work they’re doing to try to stop the billionaire machine devoted to rewriting our Constitution.

Please check them out, get on their mailing lists, and spread the word. This is one of those things that Republicans on the Court could use to seemingly spring out of nowhere and bring down our

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Geoff Dembicki @ DeSmog: Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn Has a Plan More Extreme Than Project 2025

The Texas fracking billionaire wants to rewrite the U.S. Constitution to advance climate denial and other far-right priorities.

ref

for months top Democrats have fixated on Project 2025, the radical blueprint of policy and personnel recommendations for a Donald Trump administration published by The Heritage Foundation and its allies, with Kamala Harris’ campaign calling it “a sweeping takeover of the federal government.”

But one of Trump’s most prominent donors, the Texas fracking billionaire and pastor Tim Dunn, has for years been backing what critics refer to as a conservative Christian Nationalist plan for America. Some experts in right-wing politics think it has the potential to be more extreme than Project 2025.

Dunn is among the top 10 individual donors to the Trump campaign, having contributed $5 million through his fracking company CrownQuest Operating to a Super PAC called Make America Great Again. He is also director of a political nonprofit known as the Convention of States, which is leading an effort to rewrite the U.S. Constitution in ways that it says would “limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.” The Bible, according to Dunn, “should profoundly affect” politics.

The group has the backing of conservative media superstars including Fox News anchor Sean Hannity and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro; religious right leaders such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Wallbuilders founder David Barton; political operatives like Vivek Ramaswamy and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Republican Congressmember Rand Paul; and the Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts, one of the lead architects of Project 2025.

Among the Convention of States’ priorities is to “resist top down planning by our federal government” when it comes to limiting the fossil fuels at the heart of the climate emergency. It describes global heating as a “hoax,” erroneously stating on its website that “the claim that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is man-made is patently false.”

Dismissal of the climate emergency is also central to Project 2025, which calls for a Republican administration to aggressively advance climate obstruction along with a cavalcade of other conservative policies, including a national ban on medication abortion. Project 2025’s proponents would do so by taking a “dictatorial view of the presidential powers,” explained Peter Montgomery, research director at the progressive nonprofit organization People for the American Way. They’re advising Trump to replace thousands of career government employees with political appointees and concentrate decision-making power in the White House.

But Dunn’s plan for a theocratic petrostate goes one step further. “The Convention of States wants to put that vision into the Constitution,” Montgomery told DeSmog. As unlikely as that scenario might seem, he argues that this project goes far beyond mere political rhetoric or posturing.

Dunn has a long track record of successfully backing far-right policies and state representatives in his home state of Texas. He and his allies are now reportedly looking to take that strategy national. “They’re spending a lot of money organizing in states and they’ve got a long-term plan,” Montgomery claimed. “They are deadly serious.”

DeSmog sent a list of questions to the Convention of States and to Dunn via his nonprofit Citizens for Self-Governance but didn’t receive a response.

‘Politics and religion’

Dunn is currently one of the richest people in Texas, having amassed a net worth of $2.2 billion through his family fracking company CrownQuest, which pumps 140,000 barrels of oil per day from the Permian basin in West Texas.

New houses for sale next to an active oilfield in Midland, Texas. May 26, 2020. Credit: Justin Hamel for DeSmog

In addition to running one of the country’s biggest privately-owned oil companies, Dunn is a pastor in Midland, the Texas oil town where he lives along with five of his six grown children on a 20-acre compound. He believes that “politics and religion are inseparable,” telling a Convention of States gathering in 2022 that “you can’t have one without the other.”

Dunn and his wife have reportedly given $29 million since 2000 to conservative candidates and PACs in Texas, making him one of the state’s top political donors. He works closely with Farris Wilks, a fellow Texas fracking billionaire who is a co-owner of The Daily Wire, the right-wing media outlet whose stars include Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. Dunn and Wilks recently put $6.8 million into a new PAC called Texans United for a Conservative Majority, whose logo depicts Austin’s Capitol building with a Christian cross on top.

Though Dunn’s political base is in Texas, he’s involved with groups that have a national focus. Tax forms show that for over two decades he’s been on the board of a conservative think tank called the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has received millions of dollars from charities linked to the Koch brothers and as recently as 2015 was disputing whether humans cause climate change.

And in 2015, the Convention of States filed its first tax form with Dunn listed as a board member. A key goal is to make the U.S. a more explicitly Christian nation. “When we started the Convention of States — and I was there at the beginning — I knew we had to have a spiritual revival, a Great Awakening and a political restoration for our country to come back to its roots,” Dunn said while addressing a summit for the group.

The Convention of States pushes a conservative economic agenda, advocating against the thousands of regulations created by an “out-of-control Washington.” The group wants to remove “federal interference” from the oil and gas industry, claiming that fracking “can only be a good thing for our living conditions and geopolitical considerations” and arguing that any attempt to ban fossil fuels “is both impossible to achieve and dangerous to attempt.”

This fusion of religion and economic libertarianism “is supported by people on the corporate right, and people on the Christian right,” Montgomery said. It aims to impose that agenda on Americans by altering the country’s foundational documents. “They are very committed to rewriting the U.S. Constitution,” he said.

Allies in the Trump Campaign

The process by which Dunn and his allies hope to do that is called an Article V convention. Their goal is to convince 34 U.S. state legislatures to pass resolutions supporting a constitutional convention. That is the threshold required for Congress to take up the matter. If 38 states then approve the proposed amendment, it becomes part of the Constitution.

Numerous groups since the 1960s have mounted Article V campaigns on issues including abortion bans and federal fiscal restrictions, yet none have been successful. The Convention of States claims to be working “across every legislative district in the nation,” saying that 19 states “have successfully passed the Convention of States Resolution.”

The group gained a powerful potential supporter this summer when Trump named as his running mate Ohio Senator JD Vance, a major recipient of oil and gas donations who previously endorsed the project. “Super excited we have a vice presidential candidate that is an official supporter of the Convention of States,” the group’s president Mark Meckler said in a video in July.

Dunn himself is attempting to make inroads with powerful Republicans. He’s given $250,000 to High Plains PAC, which is supporting the re-election of Senator John Borrasso in Wyoming, currently the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Dunn’s poured $2 million into the Jefferson Rising Fund, which is supporting the Senate bid of Trump ally Kari Lake in Arizona and advocating against Democratic Senate contenders in states such as Wisconsin, Montana, and Nevada.

The Texas fracking billionaire has become a central behind-the-scenes figure in a constellation of Trump-aligned nonprofits. Dunn is on the board of directors of the America First Policy Institute. That group is co-sponsoring the Courage Tour led by Christian right influencer and Trump ally Lance Wallnau, which is holding a series of rallies in swing states. The Courage Tour recently partnered for an event with vice presidential candidate Vance.

Dunn is reportedly a significant funder of the conservative nonprofit Center for Renewing America, as well as the Conservative Partnership Institute. All this could help give Dunn policy leverage should Trump win the presidential election. “He’s definitely seeking a national impact,” Montgomery said.

A second Trump administration could be useful to Dunn’s business interests. He signed a deal late last year to sell a major part of his fracking company CrownQuest to Occidental Petroleum for $12.4 billion, a transaction in which he’s set to personally collect almost $2.2 billion. Less than a month later, Dunn donated $5 million to Trump.

Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub complained last spring during a Houston fundraiser with Trump that federal regulators were delaying the sale. According to sources quoted in the Washington Post, Trump voiced his dismay, saying, “Can you just wait a few months?”

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2023/05/23/alec-is-using-wolf-pac-to-help-the-right-rewrite-the-constitution/

yikes cmd y mail

in spearheading far-right efforts to rewrite the U.S. Constitution, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is increasingly counting on an unexpected ally: a campaign finance reform group founded during the Occupy Wall Street protests more than a decade ago.

ALEC, a pay-to-play operation in which state legislators and corporate lobbyists meet behind closed doors to advance a right-wing agenda, has long advocated for an Article V constitutional convention in order to win a balanced budget amendment and radically curtail federal powers.

Given ALEC’s blunt efforts to restrict voting rights, quash organized labor, gut environmental regulations, and promote the Big Lie of 2020 election fraud, association with the organization is considered politically radioactive for liberal Democrats, let alone those further to the Left.

Yet one progressive organization seems to have missed the memo.

Wolf-PAC, a group focused on overturning the Supreme Court’s 2010:{**Citizens United**:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}: decision that opened the door to unlimited corporate spending on elections, has been pressing for a constitutional convention since its founding in 2011. And although the group’s sole goal is curtailing corporate political spending, in recent years it has joined ALEC’s Article V gatherings, collaborated with ALEC allies on delegate selection issues, and testified alongside right-wing groups seeking a constitutional convention at state legislative hearings.

“We want an army to fight for an amendment to declare corporations are not people,” founder Cenk Uygur }:{:{ in establishing Wolf-PAC during the 2011 Occupy Wall }::{Street protests at New York’s Zuccotti Park. }:

Instead, Wolf-PAC has chosen to team up with the nation’s biggest corporate lobby group to pursue its goal—and is helping to advance ALEC’s right-wing plans for revising the Constitution in the process.

The Road to a Convention is Paved with Fuzzy Math

Despite their disparate goals, ALEC and Wolf-PAC are pursuing the same agenda, attempting to get 34 states to submit convention resolutions in order to trigger an Article V constitutional convention.

Although all 27 constitutional amendments passed since the document was first ratified in 1788 have been initiated by Congress, Article V of the Constitution lays out an alternate procedure for proposing amendments: convening a constitutional convention, which requires two-thirds of state legislatures (currently 34) to pass convention resolutions. Both methods, whether initiated by Congress or through the states, require amendments to be ratified by three-fourths of the states before becoming part of the Constitution.

The push to get 34 states to request a constitutional convention has been slow going for Wolf-PAC. Only California, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont have passed its resolutions so far, and the group hasn’t scored any new victories since 2016. Two of those states have since walked back their Wolf-PAC resolutions—New Jersey in December 2021 and Illinois in April 2022—when their legislatures voted to rescind all past state calls for a constitutional convention (a setback Wolf-PAC only partially acknowledges on its progress map).

It’s not just Wolf-PAC that has faced defeat on this front. David Super, a Georgetown legal scholar who closely follows the issue, points out that “the momentum is in the other direction: over the past few years, five [additional] states (Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, and New Mexico) have rescinded Article V applications submitted decades earlier.”

In response, conservative proponents of a convention have proposed increasingly more eccentric accounting methods to accelerate states’ calls for a convention.

In the summer of 2020, constitutional convention advocates led by anti-labor firebrand and former Republican governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker and conservative activist David Biddulph, co-founder of ALEC’s Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, embraced a new legal strategy aimed at forcing a convention by counting a half dozen historic “plenary” (or generic) convention resolutions in order to reach the 34 states needed.

Critics such as the progressive group Common Cause refer to this as the “fuzzy math theory,” pointing out that this accounting method incorporates arcane resolutions that have remained on the books even though the issues in question have become moot—such as New York State’s call from 1789 that sought a convention in order to draft a Bill of Rights.

Despite Wolf-PAC denying that it favors aggregating convention calls in this way, right-wing groups are happily lining up its proposed campaign finance reform resolutions alongside ones proposed by the right-wing group Convention of States Action (COSA), founded by Tea Party organizer Mark Meckler.

Path to Reform, an ALEC-affiliated coalition that organizes pro-convention gatherings called Academy of States, specifically counts Wolf-PAC’s three remaining convention resolutions in a handful of scenarios that they say could help them reach the 34-state threshold. At an Academy presentation last July, Path to Reform’s Director of Education Vickie Deppe argued that Wolf-PAC’s three convention resolutions can be counted with 19 COSA resolutions because they all address issues of money in politics.

:{“The Convention of States Project application includes fiscal controls and placing limits on the federal government,” Deppe said in a related }:{ called }:Fact Check: Article V Convention in less than 24 months?:{ “These are concepts that could certainly be brought to bear on the problem of money in politics.” By adding together Wolf-PAC and COSA applications, along with a handful of generic resolutions, Deppe claims that Wolf-PAC already has convention calls from 30 states.}:

Strange Bedfellows

This unusual partnership between Wolf-PAC and right-wing groups has only strengthened since December 2021, when the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) first revealed that the group was participating in one of ALEC’s Academy sessions.

[doc: co-Sponsors of this innovative event include ALEC, AMAC, American Promise, Bill of Financial Responsibilities, Path to Reform,Reason Foundation, State Legislatures Article V Caucus, US Term Limits, Vote Americans’ Prosperity First Amendment and Wolf-PAC.]

:{At the July 2022 session— known as Academy 3.0 and held in Denver—Wolf-PAC’s National Counsel Samuel Fieldman }:{ on possible procedures for convention delegate selection, an issue ALEC is also trying to address through state legislation. }:

“Feedback on the presentations was overwhelmingly positive,” according to a recap email from Path to Reform and the State Legislators Article V Caucus, “thanks to the efforts [of] Sam Fieldman of Wolf-PAC,” among others.

In his presentation, Fieldman cited ALEC’s 2011Article V Handbook by Rob Natelson—a conservative constitutional theorist whose work underpins the fuzzy-math theory of convention applications—though later in the session he noted that he doesn’t agree with everything Natelson argues.

Wolf-PAC’s inclusion in the Academy of States infuriated the far-right leaders of COSA, as CMD has previously reported. Meckler, who believes Citizens United was “one of the greatest free-speech decisions in American history,” considers collaborating with Wolf-PAC to be “extraordinarily dangerous” and refused to engage in a previous Academy presentation due to their presence along with other “leftists.”

Yet distinctions between the groups are becoming increasingly muddled. In addition to attending the ALEC-sponsored Academies, Wolf-PAC members have been teaming up with a former COSA staffer to push convention legislation in various states.

In New Hampshire, former Wolf-PAC volunteer-turned-state Representative Jodi Newell (D-4) has introduced a procedural bill (HB 392) specifying that, should a constitutional convention ever be called, delegates would be elected by popular vote, not appointed by the state legislature. Both Fieldman from Wolf-PAC and Ken Quinn, a former regional director for the Convention of States effort and current regional director of U.S. Term Limits, testified in favor of the bill.

And although Wolf-PAC testified as neutral in a New Hampshire hearing on COSA’s convention application, the testimony had the effect of normalizing the work and claims of Michael Farris, one of the original founders of the Convention of States Project and former president of Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian hate group.

Wolf-PAC built upon Farris’s testimony, which proffered the “theoretical tools” that would limit a convention, by offering the “practical tools” that would work hand-in-hand with them.

U.S. Term Limits (USTL), which advocates for term limits at all levels of government, was founded by **Eric O’Keefe**, a right-wing operative with deep ties to the Koch political network who also co-founded Citizens for Self Governance (CSG), the parent group of COSA, where he sits on the board.

Wolf-PAC currently has applications for a constitutional convention pending in three states: Oregon (HJM 1), Washington (SJM 8002), and Maine (SJR 705). Only the Maine resolution—a joint product of Wolf-PAC and USTL that advocates for amendments addressing congressional term limits as well as political spending—specifies that the application “may not be aggregated with any other applications on any other subject.” The wording of the Oregon resolution indicates that the application only “intends” to be aggregated with those on a similar subject.

Big Picture

Legal experts note that there is nothing in the Constitution that limits the scope of a constitutional convention once called. They warn that a runaway convention could generate major changes to the balance of power between states and the federal government, and may end up undermining many rights and protections currently afforded under federal law. Scores of progressive and good-government organizations, including CMD, have joined together to oppose an Article V convention on those grounds.

After ALEC and its allies spent more than a decade arguing that fears of a runaway convention are baseless, it adopted a model No Runaway Article V Conventions Act in December 2021 to try to quell those fears. Wolf-PAC’s Fieldman teamed up with ALEC’s Biddulph at the Academy 2.0 that month to present on the bill, which would limit the types of amendments delegates could introduce at a convention to those that were included in its initial application.

Either way, any constitutional convention under the rules envisioned by ALEC and COSA would make it virtually impossible for Wolf-PAC’s anti-Citizens United amendment to succeed.

Most of the constitutional convention measures passed in recent years specify that each state would give legislative leaders the power to handpick its delegates and would get one vote, regardless of size, according to CMD’s research report titled *Convention of State Politicians*. Under those rules, Republicans would have “control over a nearly three-fifths supermajority of state delegations, enabling red states representing only a third of the U.S. population to determine what amendments get sent out to the states for ratification,” the report found.

Audio obtained by CMD confirms that this is the Right’s strategy. At an ALEC event, former Pennsylvania senator and current COS Senior Advisor Rick Santorum stated that, “We have the opportunity as a result of that to have a supermajority, even though…we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”

“I think we are on the cusp of a supermajority moment,” Meckler added. To emphasize that progressives will have no say at a contemporary constitutional convention, Meckler pointed out that Tories had no role in the crafting of the Constitution and that Confederates had no choice in the adoption of post-Civil War amendments.

Wittingly or unwittingly, Wolf-PAC’s collaboration with ALEC helps right-wing dark money groups move closer to that objective. According to internal ALEC documents obtained by CMD, the organization is pushing for a constitutional convention as soon as summer 2024.

"con con"

12 22 mail

this year, CMD exposed how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and right-wing groups like Convention of State Action are spending close to $25 million annually to push their stealth plan to rewrite the U.S. Constitution in order to lock in minority control and cripple the ability of the federal government to protect our rights, regulate big corporations, and deal with climate change.

Their goal? Forcing Congress to convene a constitutional convention that gives GOP leaders supermajority control over any amendments that get sent out to the states for ratification. And CMD released a report this year, “Convention of State Politicians,” documenting how voters would have zero say in the process.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

CMD obtained audio from an ALEC meeting where former PennsylvaniaSenator Rick Santorum actually said, “We have the opportunity, [through a constitutional convention], to have a supermajority, even though we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/constitutional-convention-conservatives-republicans-constitution-supreme-court-2022-7

simulation: COSAction (conventionofstates.com)

vids:

We know you are anxious to see the complete results, and we appreciate your patience. As an independent assembly, the statement about the final results from the Convention must come from the body, and not our organization. We will circulate it on behalf of the Convention.

Here's a quick preview. The Convention passed amendment proposals on the following six ideas:

The public debt shall not be increased except upon a recorded vote of two-thirds of each house of Congress.
Term limits on Congress
Limiting federal overreach by returning the Commerce Clause to its original meaning
Limiting the power of federal regulations by giving an easy congressional override
Require a super majority for federal taxes and repeal the 16th Amendment [fed income tax?]
Give the states (by a 3/5ths vote) the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation or executive order.

The events at Williamsburg will be remembered as a turning point in history. The spirit of liberty and self government has been reignited." Michael Farris - Co-Founder, Convention of States Project.

not complete but most links

biz insider

common cause : ConCon-Opposition-Letter-March-2019.pdf (commoncause.org)

A convention is gaining momentum but still far away

So far, 19 GOP-controlled states, including four in 2022 alone (Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin), have passed applications and calls for a constitutional convention under the model pushed by the conservative nonprofit group Convention of States, an offshoot of Citizens for Self Governance.

because of their efforts, "it's the first time any of these applications have had this much movement in quite some time," Viki Harrison, director of Constitutional Convention and Protecting Dissent Programs at Common Cause, told Insider. She called the passage of four new convention calls in states including South Carolina "a brutal loss."

Citizens for Self Governance and Convention of States, led by former Tea Party activist and ex-Parler CEO Mark Meckler, are relatively newer and well-funded players on the scene with connections to wealthy and powerful conservative interests.

Tax filings obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy reveal the groups, which are not required to disclose their donors, have received millions from the Koch-connected DonorsTrust, the Mercer family, and groups linked to powerful conservative lawyer Leonard Leo. A 2020 internal audit of Convention of States obtained by the group revealed that a $1.3 million donation made in Bitcoin made up 16% of the group's budget in 2019. Two donations totaling $2.5 million accounted for 36% of the group's 2020 budget....

so does Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, a staunch Trump defender who wrote an entire book, "The Con of the Con-Con," about the dangers of conventions.

"In states where you would have expected this to pass because they have Republican leadership, they're firmly on our side because they're scared about losing guns," Harrison said.

Natelson, who has published numerous writings and academic articles on Article V, charged that people who fear a runaway convention "don't know what they're talking about" and GOP legislatures that have resisted calling a convention out of those worries "have been sold a bill of goods."

"Those academics who go before the legislature and say things like, 'we don't know anything about the process, it could be a runaway convention' without exception, are people who have never published any scholarship on the subject," he said....

at the Convention of the States' 2016 mock convention in Williamsburg, Virginia, delegates, including Eastman, voted out six amendments, including a proposal that would eviscerate the 16th Amendment, which grants Congress the ability to impose an income tax.

The resolution the group is pushing would limit a convention to amendments that "impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit its power and jurisdiction, and impose term limits on its officials and members of Congress."

But limiting "the power and jurisdiction" of the federal government is an expansive mandate that could encompass virtually anything and enable delegates to pass extreme amendments while technically staying within the bounds of the convention....

Recent blog posts on the Convention of States' website explicitly reference the need for a convention to limit federal overreach on abortion, guns, and immigration.

"The Supreme Court has said that amending the Constitution is a political question in which the federal courts cannot get involved," Super said. "The president has no role at all in the process. And the whole point of the convention route is to sideline Congress. So Congress can't overrule the convention … there's no one to intervene. There's no one to stop a convention from doing whatever they want to do."

States have the flexibility to caveat their calls for a convention, and some have included penalties to keep delegates in line. Indiana and Florida have even made it a felony for convention delegates to defy the legislature's intent, measures they passed alongside their pro-convention resolutions....

Behind closed doors, Meckler, Santorum, and Natelson pitched a convention to GOP lawmakers gathered at a December 2021 ALEC workshop as a way for ordinary citizens to force sweeping changes to every facet of government.

"We would be aiming at the Deep State and potentially the federal judiciary as well," Meckler told lawmakers in the closed-door session, a recording of which was obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and shared with Insider. ...

moments later, Meckler said his effort could be judged by its "enemies," railing against a slew of "leftist" advocacy groups who oppose a convention.

"It's every leftist group in America, radical leftist group in America that stands for, I would argue, the destruction of America, the destruction of babies in the womb, the destruction of life itself," he said. "They hate America, they want to destroy America, and they're against Convention of States."

Santorum also assured lawmakers that conservative interests would be strongly represented in a one-vote-per-state convention due to the outsize influence of lower-population states, saying, "we have the opportunity, as a result of that, to have a supermajority, even though…we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who we agree with."....

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/constitutional-convention/

Paul Krugman, liberal economist and long-time columnist for the New York Times, has argued that Republicans have long since ceased to view Democrats as the loyal opposition — and that they don't believe that Democrats even have "the right to govern." Journalist Travis Waldron, in an article published by HuffPost this week, examines the type of changes that far-right Republicans would make to the U.S. Constitution if a constitutional convention were to come about. And according to Waldron, "The project to overhaul the Constitution is much closer to fruition than most people realize."

"Since 2014, the Convention of States Project and other conservative groups, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), have helped persuade lawmakers in 15 states to pass resolutions that call for a new constitutional convention," Waldron explains. "Led by a prominent right-wing activist ― former Tea Party Patriots founder Mark Meckler, who is also the current acting CEO of Parler, a social media platform popular on the right ― the Convention of States Project has spread the gospel of a convention to an increasingly radical audience.This year, lawmakers proposed 42 Convention of States resolutions in at least**24 new states**, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, which has long monitored the convention push."

Article V of the U.S. Constitution allows a constitutional convention to be called if two-thirds of the states called for one, which means that34 states would be needed.

Dave Super, a law professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., believes that a constitutional convention is a strong possibility if Republicans perform well in the 2022 midterms.

Super told HuffPost, "I think if (Republicans) win the midterm elections, if they take the House and Senate, they will try to call an Article V convention immediately. It's not a foregone conclusion that the simple Republican majority would get there, but if they get big majorities, I think they'll try."

Some civil libertarians, Waldron warns, fear the type of changes far-right Republicans would make to the U.S. Constitution if a constitutional convention were held.

According to Waldron, "Opponents…. see a far more nefarious plot: a master class in astroturfing that could open the entire document up to a radical rewrite meant to serve the right-wing corporate interests that already dominate our politics, especially at the state level. The convention, they argue, could lead to the demolition of everything from the social safety net and environmental protections to civil rights laws. Or maybe even the Constitution itself."

Both liberals and right-wing libertarians who spoke to HuffPost are worried about what Republicans would do at a constitutional convention.

Jay Riestenberg of the liberal group Common Cause told HuffPost, "The 1st Amendment, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment — any civil rights, any constitutional protection in the Constitution could be up for grabs in this constitutional convention." And Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, told HuffPost, "We shouldn't want to go down that road, especially now that we've just had an experience of how dangerous and unpleasant it is to get close to a constitutional legitimacy crisis."

Although the Cato Instituteis quite conservative on economic issues, the libertarian think tank has been highly critical of the more authoritarian ideas pushed by some Republicans and social conservatives.

Waldron notes that because an "an Article V convention has never been called," the "legal limits haven't yet been meaningfully tested."

Some liberals like the idea of a constitutional convention, but Super fears that if one were held, it would be the far-right — not liberals or progressives — calling the shots.

Super told HuffPost, "My fears are basically that the oil and gas industry makes sure that we can ever have cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, and makes it very easy for a single friendly administration to give them irrevocable rights to public lands that the Takings Clause would prevent anyone from ever taking from them — so basically, crippling environmental enforcement."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

radical Resolution Calling for a Constitutional Rewrite Passes Wisconsin Assembly

By :{David Armiak:(style="font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;white-space:pre-wrap"):}: | February 25th, 2020 at 10:24 AM (CST)

If passed, Wisconsin would become the 16th state to back right-wing efforts to call for a constitutional convention to propose sweeping amendments to the Constitution to curtail the powers of the federal government.

const convention?!

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/17/how-trojan-horse-project-rewrite-our-constitution-could-actually-happen-if-trump

It’s often said that if Trump is reelected, it’ll be the end of democracy in America. But how could Trump get reelected, and how could democracy get wiped out in the USA?

Turns out, there’s an actual project to rewrite our Constitution, turning America into a corporate-run oligarchy.

They’d end the income tax, eliminate federal regulatory agencies like the EPA, end all labor protections (including laws against child labor), let states ignore anti-discrimination and other federal regulations, and impose term limits so the only “institutional memory” for legislatures will be the corporate lobbyists.

All it needs to succeed—within just a few short years—is for Trump and the GOP to win big in 2020. And the prospects of that happening are going up every day. With a big Trump win will come a rewrite of our Constitution itself, if the billionaires funding it have their way.

But how could he win? With another $2 billion worth of free publicity, just like in 2016.

One example is how Trump’s reelection campaign got a great boost recently when the media, just like in 2016, went all-Trump-all-the-time around his ICE raids, and when he told four congresswomen of color to “go home” to the countries of their ancestors—a racist trope for centuries.

The ICE raids were merely arrests of undocumented people who actually have committed crimes (beyond crossing the border) and currently have legal deportation orders already in place; they’re arrests like the ones Presidents Bush and Obama did daily.

There was nothing unique about them, and year over year, Trump has actually deported fewer people than Obama did.

Trump tweeted the media into a frenzy, and like obedient hounds, they frantically ran after the bits of hamburger he threw their way.

But Trump tweeted the media into a frenzy, and like obedient hounds, they frantically ran after the bits of hamburger he threw their way.

As Ayanna Pressley noted Monday, the media shouldn’t “take the bait.” Nonetheless, literally every week—virtually every day—since Trump was elected, he’s gotten the media to put his name on the front page of the nation’s newspapers and at the top of the TV news shows.

And in America, as P.T. Barnum (whom Trump has cited as a role model) said, it doesn’t matter if publicity is positive or negative, “As long as they spell my name right.” And they always spell Trump’s name right.

As we saw with the 2015–2016 Republican primary, that Barnum-like daily publicity was all he needed to take down an entire field of competent, professional, and well-financed Republicans. Taking down Democrats may be even easier if he can paint the Democrats with his “open borders” and “Soviet-style socialism” lies (among others).

NBC trained Trump well; they spent millions teaching him how to do a reality show, from cliff-hangers to pitting “heroes” against “goats.” It’s one of the few things he’s actually good at. And instead of his old “Apprentice” weekly show, he’s now producing a daily show from the White House.

But to what end?

It’s looking more and more like the endgame here for Trump—and the right-wing billionaires who support him and the GOP—is not just to get reelected, but to actually rewrite our Constitution and end the American experiment.

The group leading this charge for the billionaires is called Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), which SourceWatch.org says, “is a right-wing political organization ... that is campaigning for an Article V convention to amend the U.S. Constitution.”

SourceWatch notes that, “Through its ‘Convention of States’ project, CSG promotes an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution pursuant to Article V, which provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths).”

They add, CSG director Eric O’Keefe “has deep ties to Charles and David Koch and has been a founder and funder of numerous right-wing groups including Wisconsin Club for Growth,” and the CSG, “Through its Convention of States project, is pushing for a constitutional convention in order to severely restrict federal power, for example by redefining the Commerce Clause to prohibit Congress from enacting child labor or anti-discrimination laws, or by adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.”

And they’re actually doing it, complete with annual dress rehearsals in the Washington, D.C., area. As Wikipedia notes:

“In December 2013, nearly 100 legislators from 32 states met at Mount Vernon to talk about how to call a convention of states. … In February 2014, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn announced that after his retirement from Congress, he would focus on promoting the Convention of States to state legislatures.

“In December 2015, Marco Rubio endorsed CSG’s efforts to a call [for] an Article V Convention. In January 2016, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a Convention of States to restrict the power of the federal government.”

And their rehearsals now include delegates from every state in the union.

Wikipedia notes:

“In September 2016, CSG held a simulated convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution in Williamsburg, Virginia. An assembly of 137 delegates representing every state gathered to conduct a simulated convention. The simulated convention passed amendments relating to six topics, including requiring the states to approve any increase in the national debt, imposing term limits, restricting the scope of the Commerce Clause [to its original meaning], limiting the power of federal regulations, requiring a supermajority to impose federal taxes and repealing the 16th Amendment [end the income tax], and giving the states the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation, or executive order.”

The Convention of States website notes that as of 2019, 15 states have signed on, and enough to hit the critical 38 are lined up, just waiting for right-wing billionaire takeovers of their state legislatures.

And taking over state legislatures in 2020 just became a huge priority for those billionaires because of the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing radical gerrymandering. Expect hundreds of millions of dollars to pour into state legislative and gubernatorial races (thanks to Citizens United), with virtually no opposing funding from the handful of left-wing billionaires.

Progress to rewrite our Constitution was slow but steady when Georgia’s legislature was the first state to join, in March of 2014. States that signed on before Trump’s election included Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

Expect hundreds of millions of dollars to pour into state legislative and gubernatorial races (thanks to Citizens United), with virtually no opposing funding from the handful of left-wing billionaires.

Since Trump took over the White House, however, they’ve added Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, and, just in the first three months of 2019, Arkansas, Utah, and Mississippi.

As of now, the call for a Convention to rewrite the Constitution has also passed at least one chamberof the legislatures in New Mexico, Mississippi, Iowa, South Dakota, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and New Hampshire.

And with Trump in power, the Convention of States website notes that just this year (2019) they are working to bring in Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Illinois and Hawaii.

If Trump is as successful in manipulating the media as he was in 2016, and the GOP can ride his coattails (along with hundreds of millions from right-wing billionaires) to sweep the Democratic-controlled states they’re targeting, they could hit the 38 states needed to replace the Constitution in the first year or two after his reelection (there are 40 states in the lists above).

A probably apocryphal quote often attributed to Arnold Toynbee says, “When the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.”

Similarly, when the last American who remembers how quickly democratic constitutions were replaced in Europe in the 1930s dies, the replacement of democracy in America becomes inevitable.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-a-trojan-horse-project-to-rewrite-our-constitution-could-actually-happen-if-trump-wins-in-2020/

no lnx many

How a Trojan horse project to rewrite our Constitution could actually happen if Trump wins in 2020

[pix President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with the 44th President of the United States, Barack H. Obama during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2017. More than 5,000 military members from across all branches of the armed forces of the United States, including Reserve and National Guard components, provided ceremonial support and Defense Support of Civil Authorities during the inaugural period. (DoD photo by U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Cristian L. Ricardo)]

written by Thom Hartmann/ Independent Media Institute July 17, 2019

It’s often said that if Trump is reelected, it’ll be the end of democracy in America. But how could Trump get reelected, and how could democracy get wiped out in the USA?

Turns out, there’s an actual project to rewrite our Constitution, turning America into a corporate-run oligarchy.

But how could he win? With another $2 billion worth of free publicity, just like in 2016.

There was nothing unique about them, and year over year, Trump has actually deported fewer people than Obama did.

But Trump tweeted the media into a frenzy, and like obedient hounds, they frantically ran after the bits of hamburger he threw their way.

As we saw with the 2015–2016 Republican primary, that Barnum-like daily publicity was all he needed to take down an entire field of competent, professional, and well-financed Republicans. Taking down Democrats may be even easier if he can paint the Democrats with his “open borders” and “Soviet-style socialism” lies (among others).

But to what end?

The group leading this charge for the billionaires is calledCitizens for Self-Governance (CSG),which SourceWatch.org says, “is a right-wing political organization … that is campaigning for an Article V convention to amend the U.S. Constitution.”

They add, CSG director Eric O’Keefe “has deep ties to Charles and David Kochand has been a founder and funder of numerous right-wing groups including Wisconsin Club for Growth,” and the CSG, “Through its Convention of States project, is pushing for a constitutional convention in order to severely restrict federal power, for example by redefining the Commerce Clause to prohibit Congress from enacting child labor or anti-discrimination laws, or by adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.”

And they’re actually doing it, complete with annual dress rehearsals in the Washington, D.C., area. As Wikipedia notes:

“In December 2015, Marco Rubio endorsed CSG’s efforts to a call [for] an Article V Convention. In January 2016, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a Convention of States to restrict the power of the federal government.”

And their rehearsals now include delegates from every state in the union.

Wikipedia notes:

“In September 2016, CSG held a simulated convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution in Williamsburg, Virginia. An assembly of 137 delegates representing every state gathered to conduct a simulated convention. The simulated convention passed amendments relating to six topics, including requiring the states to approve any increase in the national debt, imposing term limits, restricting the scope of the Commerce Clause [to its original meaning], limiting the power of federal regulations, requiring a supermajority to impose federal taxes and repealing the 16th Amendment [end the income tax], and giving the states the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation, or executive order.”

Since Trump took over the White House, however, they’ve added Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, and, just in the first three months of 2019, Arkansas, Utah, and Mississippi.

As of now, the call for a Convention to rewrite the Constitution has also passed at least one chamber of the legislatures in New Mexico, Mississippi, Iowa, South Dakota, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and New Hampshire.

And with Trump in power, the Convention of States website notes that just this year (2019) they are working to bring in Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire,New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Illinois and Hawaii.

A probably apocryphal quote often attributed to Arnold Toynbee says, “When the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.”

Similarly, when the last American who remembers how quickly democratic constitutions were replaced in Europe in the 1930s dies, the replacement of democracy in America becomes inevitable.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/08/13/alec-in-disarray

It took about 10 minutes for a picture of Ronald Reagan to emerge on the screen at the opening ALEC lunch event I attended after my arrival in New Orleans for the 45th ALEC conference. I never did see a picture of President Donald Trump. As the hot mess of the Trump presidency unfolds, ALEC is struggling to both embrace the major things they love about him (deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy), while keeping a healthy distance from the chaos and corruption engulfing his presidency.

Trump certainly wasn’t ALEC’s first choice. Or second. Or third. During his campaign, Trump never came to kiss the golden ALEC ring, like ALEC acolytes Scott Walker and Mike Pence. As corruption charges continued to emerge against prominent Republicans, and the trial of Paul Manafort waged on, I didn’t hear one attendee legislator extoll the virtues of a Trump presidency. In fact, I heard almost nothing about Trump at all from the actual attendees.But the speakers and presenters were more representative of the Trump administration than last year.

Elaine Chow, the Secretary of Transportation came in and tried to give a speech but the ballroom lunch, sponsored by Marathon Petroleum, was so loud you could barely hear her. She did extoll the need to repeal California’s ability to set fuel emissions standards in favor of a weaker federal standard. Former Texas Policy Institute director Brooke Rollins, now a key Trump advisor, was next. She repeated the oft cited metaphor of Trump “draining the swamp” with the islands that emerge being the states, the “great laboratories of innovation.” Except Elaine Chow had just moments before argued to repeal a state’s right to set fuel emission standards.

And this revealed a major, continuing tension of ALEC. They want state’s rights, except when they don’t.The same contradiction is evident with their struggle with local control–sometimes they like it, sometimes they don’t. The defining factor is whether these levels of government promote the far-right ALEC agenda. It is getting harder and harder for ALEC to ignore these internal contradictions.

And there are visible cracks in ALEC world. Collectively, this was the messiest and least disciplined ALEC conference I have attended since 2013. In the energy task force, presentations were all over the place. A natural gas and electricity supplier went off script by openly discussing the billions in subsidies the oil and gas industry receives. There was silence in the crowded task force room, filled with fossil fuel producers and lobbyists.

Though some continued to insist that clean coal was possible and renewables unreliable and expensive, new ALEC members from renewable energy companies gave a compelling pitch about the declining price and high demand in the private market for wind and solar, especially in red, rural communities. After one of the renewable energy presenters mentioned that the wind energy sector was working with Congress to phase out subsidies (not something we would ever see from the fossil fuel industries), a skeptical executive asked if they would help get rid of states’ Renewable Portfolio Standards. The renewable energy guys had the perfect answer–it was up to the states. Remember, the laboratories of democracy? ALEC’s hostility to renewable energy and other green energy policies prompted infighting between industries and high-level departures, most recently by ALEC funder and board member ExxonMobil.

In the Health and Human Services task force, the Goldwater Institute and Buckeye Foundation were in a tizzy because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was still in existence and the left seemed to win that war, at least for now. How could it be, they moaned, when Republicans are in charge of EVERYTHING? They whined that the “debacle of last year was horrible” and that Congress wouldn’t touch another repeal with a 10-foot poll. So, 100 conservative groups came together to propose an alternative plan that guts the ACA, again. But the list was messy and confusing, and even the presenters seemed doubtful their plan would ever succeed.

But the biggest disaster I have ever seen at an ALEC conference was on a panel about the Convention of States (COS) project. COS is mobilizing in states to call an Article V Constitutional Convention for the purposes of amending the federal constitution by passing a balanced budget amendment, term-limits for federal judges, and who knows what else. One of the key speakers was right-wing provocateur David Horowitz, who has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of America’s most dangerous hatemongers” for his virulent anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant websites and speeches. After converting from being a Marxist decades ago, Horowitz now runs his own right-wing think tank, bankrolled to the tune of $3.4 million by the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. Horowitz gained recent fame as a key mentor of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, the “the architect” of Trump’s family separation policy according to the Atlantic....

e slow and steady march of conservatives to have states call for a constitutional convention seemed poised, after the November elections, to take major steps forward.

After all, Republicans emerged from the elections with control of both houses of state legislatures in 32 states and governor’s offices in 34 states, and having “trifectas” in 23 states. Democrats, by contrast, have legislative control in only 13 states, governors in 16, and full executive and legislative control in only six.

Since the days of Ronald Reagan, conservatives have hoped to win enough support to call a convention vested with the authority to amend and potentially remake the Constitution to their specifications. Their efforts commenced in the 1970s, in the wake of California’s enactment of Proposition 13, with their campaign for a balanced budget amendment and a constitutional convention to enact it. Article V of the Constitution creates this alternative means of amending the Constitution if two-thirds of the states (that is, today, 34 of them) issue a call for such a convention. A number of Republican state legislatures did just that in the 1970s, but the effort then slowed until the GOP won control of a large number of states in the 2010 election. Today, the total number of states that have open “applications” for a constitutional convention is 28, though that total includes states that passed such resolutions nearly 40 years ago.

Since the GOP’s 2010 victories, a number of right-wing power brokers have revved up the campaign for a constitutional convention. In just the past three years, the effort has received major funding from both the Koch Brothers’ Donors Capital and Robert and Rebekah Mercer. It has won organizational support from ALEC (the business-backed consortium that promotes right-wing legislation at the state level) and Citizens for Self-Government, the organization headed by former Tea Party founder Mark Meckler. Former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has been pursuing the convention as his holy grail.

There are currently seven states with Republican control of their legislatures that have not passed a call for a constitutional convention: Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia. (Three of those states have Democratic governors, but legislative calls for a constitutional convention aren’t subject to gubernatorial vetoes.) This alarming or alluring math has caught the attention of advocates as well as opponents of the convention, and in recent weeks there’s been a flurry of convention resolution activity.

On March 13, Arizona adopted the call for a constitutional convention without any specific issue references. Sponsored by Majority Whip Kelly Townsend and State Senator John Kavanagh, and promoted by Citizens for Self-Governance, HCR 2010 passed on a vote of 16–14.

Just two days later, however, on March 15, New Mexico rescinded its call, which legislators had adopted back in 1979. The New Mexico rescission, according to Viki Harrison, director of Common Cause New Mexico, came about as a result of a strong coalition effort with both labor and community organizations leading the way, coupled with new Democratic legislative leadership, particularly House Speaker Brian Egolf, who authored the bill, and Senate President Peter Wirth.

On April 4, the Maryland legislature, on a House vote of 93–47, joined the Maryland Senate in rescinding all previous calls for a constitutional convention. On the same day, the Vermont Senate rescinded its call (which now goes to the House), as did the Nevada Senate.

In three other states, legislative activity remains possible. A potential addition to the states calling for the convention is Wisconsin. Governor Scott Walker and his pliant majorities seem likely to add this to their string of ALEC-certified notches. But there is strong opposition from editorial boards and grassroots organizations, and Senate President Scott Fitzgerald has publicly expressed skepticism.

However, the other two likely state actions are the rescissions in Vermont and Nevada. If Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, and Vermont all rescind their votes this year, in addition to Delaware’s 2016 decision to rescind its call, this would be a major setback to the advocates for the convention.

One reason why a number of progressive organizations have been paying close attention to this issue is their conviction that such a convention could take away fundamental constitutional rights—both minority and majority—that Americans have long enjoyed. Opponents of the convention argue that once called, there is no way it could be held in check or its powers proscribed.

The convention would raise a host of basic questions for which there are no clear answers. First, how do we even tell when the requisite number of states have passed the call, since some did so 40 years ago, and the wording and issue bases of the applications vary significantly? How would delegates be allocated by states—equally, like the Senate, or proportionally, like the House? How would they be selected? Would there be any regulations on how much money would be spent to influence the outcome? Are there any limits to what could be discussed? Would the convention be confined to amending the constitution, or could it scrap it altogether and start anew, which is, of course, what happened the only other time such a convention was called, in 1787?

Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, one of the key organizations opposing the calls, says: “There is nothing to prevent a convention from being expanded to issues not raised in the original petitions calling the convention. Simply put, an Article V convention could lead to a constitutional crisis where everyone’s rights and liberties are on the auction block.”

One wrinkle in the debate is that a very small but vocal wing of the campaign-finance reform movement passionately favors calling an Article V convention, in order to repeal the Citizens United decision and clarify that unlimited campaign spending is not constitutionally protected free speech. These advocates have had some success as well. Five states, including California, Illinois, Vermont, New Jersey, and Rhode Island (which are not included in the 28), have passed calls with this explicit purpose. They argue that the convention can be limited to this topic, that there is precedent for orderly conventions at the state level, and that the ratification process would ensure that awful things won’t be written into the Constitution. But perhaps most significantly, they argue that things are so awful now with our democracy that there is really nothing to lose.

One exchange last year between Flynn and Ryan Clayton of Wolf PAC, a campaign-finance outfit strongly supporting a constitutional convention, at a conference of the State Information Exchange, was illustrative. In so many words, Flynn argued that such a convention would be tantamount to being asked to take medicine where there have been no clinical trials, no idea of its effectiveness, and not a clue about potential damaging side effects. Would you ask your mother to do this? Clayton replied: If my mother were dying from incurable cancer, of course I would; why wouldn’t I try anything?

If the number of states calling for the convention even gets close to 34, it’s a certainty that the court cases dealing with the myriad uncertainties about the convention would take years to resolve. But if this year’s likely legislative outcomes hold, and are a predictor of the future, the advocates for a constitutional convention of any kind and for any reason may have to wait an even longer time for those endgames to begin. On this issue, thanks to persistent organizing, the word on the street—that the 2016 election results in the states foretold disaster for opponents of the convention—turned out to be fake news.

http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/03/23/kochs-bankroll-movement-rewrite-constitution/

By Alex Kotch, CMD contributor

A constitutional convention, something thought impossible not long ago, is looking increasingly likely. Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, if 34 state legislatures “issue a call” for a constitutional convention, Congress must convene one. By some counts, the right-wing only needs six more states. Once called, delegates can propose and vote on changes and new amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which, if approved, are currently required to be ratified by 38 states.

There are two major legislative pushes for a convention at the state level. One would attempt to engineer a convention for a balanced budget amendment only, and the other tries to secure an open convention for the purpose of limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. But once a convention is underway, all bets are off. The convention can write its own rules, resulting in a wide-open or “runaway” convention that can make major changes to the constitution and even change the number of states required to ratify those changes.

If America gets saddled with a runaway convention, the Koch coterie of funders will be to blame. Most of the groups pushing the convention idea are being underwritten by one or more institutions tied to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

ATTEMPTS TO LIMIT TOPIC OF THE CONVENTION LIKELY TO FAIL

On Feb. 24, Wyoming became the 29th state to pass a resolution requesting a convention specifically to add a single balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Many of these legislative resolutions also attempt to set the rules for the convention and limit who can attend it to a select list of largely GOP state leaders.

Austerity advocates claim that they need only to convince five of seven targeted states—Arizona, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin—to get on board, and they will have enough states to convene a convention. As the Center for Media and Democracy has reported, three linked measures were just introduced in Wisconsin and were placed on a fast track to approval.

Another faction representing a broader “Convention of States” initiative is advocating an open constitutional convention to limit “the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.” Because this open convention format would be called on a particular subject rather than a particular amendment, representatives would likely vote on any number of measures.

Legislatures in nine states—Arizona, Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Louisiana—have signed on to the Convention of States resolution,.Texas appears likely to join in, as the state Senate approved a Convention of States bill in February. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is fiercely campaigning for a convention and has deemed it an “emergency issue.” In 2016, he published a 70-page plan that includes nine proposed amendments aimed at severely limiting federal authority, even allowing a two-thirds majority of the states to override a Supreme Court ruling or a federal law.

Groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Common Cause, and the Center for Media and Democracy have raised the alarm about these efforts. No convention has been called since 1787 in Philadelphia where George Washington presided.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains why any convention call, no matter how narrowly written, is likely to result in a “runaway” convention. A convention is empowered to write its own rules, including how delegates are chosen, how many delegates attend and whether a supermajority is required to approve amendments.

Nothing in the Constitution prevents a convention, once convened, from setting its own agenda, influenced by powerful special interests like the Koch groups. A convention could even choose an entirely new ratification process. “The 1787 convention ignored the ratification process under which it was established and created a new one, reducing the number of states needed to approve the new Constitution and removing Congress from the approval process,” writes CBPP.

Legal uncertainly surrounds the entire effort, which is sure to be litigated if successful. For instance, are states bound by resolutions passed many years ago? Will states withdraw their approval? Some states, like Delaware and New Mexico, have already moved to do so.

THE KOCH CONNECTION TO THE PUSH FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

Libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch have long opposed federal power and federal spending. Koch Industries is one of the nation’s biggest polluters and has been sanctioned and fined over and over again by both federal and state authorities. In response, the Kochs have launched a host of “limited government” advocacy organizations and have created a massive $400 million campaign finance network, fueled by their fortunes and those of their wealthy, right-wing allies, that rivals the two major political parties.

The Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity says it favors a balanced budget convention. Such an austerity amendment would drastically cut the size of the federal government, threatening critical programs like Social Security and Medicare and eviscerating the government’s ability to respond to economic downturns, major disasters and the climate crisis.

AFP has opposed an open convention, calling it “problematic.” But whatever qualms the Kochs might have, they continue to be a bedrock funder of the entire convention “movement.”

Running the “Convention of States initiative” is an Austin, Texas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG).CSG reported revenue of $5.7 million in 2015, more than double its haul from two years earlier, when it launched its Convention of States Project, according to Dallas News. It now boasts 115,000 “volunteers,” although that figure may represent the number of addresses on its email list.

The group is not required to disclose its donors, but research into other organizations’ tax records by the Center for Media and Democracy, Conservative Transparency and this author show a web of Koch-linked groups having provided nearly $5.4 million to CSG from the group’s founding in 2011 through 2015:

Donors Trust, a preferred secret money conduit for individuals and foundations in the Koch network of funders, has given CSG at least $790,000 since 2011.
The Greater Houston Community Foundation, which is funded by Donors Capital Fund (linked to Donors Trust) and the Kochs’ Knowledge and Progress Fund, has donated over $2 million since 2011.
The Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Donors Capital Fund, gave $2.5 million from 2012-2013.

Citizens for Self-Governance also has two Koch-connected board members.Eric O’Keefe is a director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a group which has taken in considerable funding from Koch-linked groups like the Center to Protect Patient Rights, and was at the center of the long-running “John Doe” criminal investigation of Scott Walker’s campaign coordination with dark money groups.

O’Keefe was thenational field coordinator for the Libertarian Party when David Koch ran for Vice President in 1979 on the Libertarian Party ticket. The party’s platform called for the end of campaign finance law, the minimum wage, “oppressive Social Security,” Medicaid, Medicare and federal deficit spending.

The Koch agenda has not changed much since.

Another board member is Tim Dunn, an oilman from Midland, Texas who is vice chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a right-wing think tank that’s raked in over $1 million from Koch family foundations, $160,000 from Koch Industries in 2012 alone and at least $1.8 million from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Dunn runs another political group, Empower Texans, which supports Republican candidates and has taken in funds from Donors Trust and “Americans for Job Security,” a Koch-tied dark money group that was slapped with a severe fine by the FEC for its involvement in a dark money shell game intended to disguise the origin of its funds.

Both TPPF and Empower Texans back the constitutional convention idea.

What’s more, a 501(c)4 nonprofit connected to CSG, the Alliance for Self-Governance (which does business as Convention of States Action), received $270,000 in 2012 from Americans for Limited Government, which has received funding not only by Donors Capital Fund but by two Koch-funded political groups, the Center to Protect Patient Rights and Americans for Job Security.

Those two groups exchanged millions of dollars in 2010 and 2012, illegally hiding the source of funding for political expenditures, lying to the Internal Revenue Service and making unlawful contributions to pass-through groups, prompting investigations and historic fines by the both the State of California and the Federal Elections Commission. Eric O’Keefe’s Wisconsin Club for Growth also funneled $450,000 to Alliance for Self-Governance in 2012, at a time when WCFG was battling the Walker recall.

Any time any organization is named “self-governance” or “limited government” you can be sure that Wisconsin’s Eric O’Keefe is either a founder or on the board, and indeed O’Keefe is tied to all three organizations: CSG, the Alliance for Self-Governance and Americans for Limited Government.

If the Kochs and their friends don’t want an open constitutional convention, they’ve sure done a lot to aid the effort.

AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL

CSG also has ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that unites conservative politicians with big-business lobbyists who develop cookie-cutter “model” legislation behind closed doors at ALEC meetings.

ALEC has long been funded by Koch Industries and a representative of Koch Industries sits on its executive board, while representatives from the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity groups fund and sit on various committees. ALEC has also received funding from Koch family foundations. CMD estimates this funding to be over $1 million, though the actual total could be much higher. In addition, ALEC gets funding from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

According to Common Cause, “no group has been more influential” in promoting an Article V convention than ALEC. In 2011, ALEC commissioned a handbook for state legislators on how to push for a constitutional convention. The group has produced at least three model balanced budget amendment bills and has endorsed several model bills calling for a convention to vote on constitutional amendments, such as requiring Congress to get approval by two-thirds of the states before imposing new taxes or increasing the federal debt or federal spending.

CSG has sponsored ALEC conferences and led sessions focused on a constitutional convention. In 2015, ALEC’s board of directors officially endorsed CSG’s open convention plan as a “model” bill. The group had previously endorsed a balanced-budget-only plan. ALEC’s Jeffersonian Project, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit formed in 2013, has been lobbying state legislators to propose such a convention, CMD reports.

MORE KOCH MONEY PUSHING AUSTERITY AMENDMENT

Another group, the Florida-based Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, is backing a balanced budget convention bill that 29 states have approved. In its effort, the group has lobbied for the bill and attended ALEC conferences and other similar events. On its website, the task force lists ALEC and the Heartland Institute as partner organizations.

“ALEC has been instrumental in providing us a forum within which to present our campaign, recruit sponsors, and approve model legislation that legislators can be confident in,” claims the site.

Another big backer of the balanced budget amendment approach is the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is also tied to the Koch brothers. A member of ALEC, it has received $5.6 million from the Donors Capital Fund since 2011 and tens of thousands of dollars each from the Charles Koch Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Foundation. Heartland publishes posts praising or defending the Kochs and even put out an annual environmental report from Koch Industries.

“The Heartland Institute has put the full weight of its influence behind the BBA Task Force as well as other campaigns in order to encourage the states to use their power to amend the U.S. Constitution,” reads the site.

Compact for America, formed by a former counsel with the conservative Goldwater Institute and staffed by more Goldwater alumni, has its own balanced budget convention proposal, which only four states have signed on to. The institute, which promotes many of ALEC’s model bills, has taken in big donations from Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund and the Charles Koch Foundation.

If America faces the madness of a runaway convention, voters of both parties will know whom to blame.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wisconsin-pin-hand-grenade-billionaire-and-corporate-funded-coup-rewrite

...

and yet a meeting scheduled next week in the Wisconsin legislature may possess even more terrifying ramifications for the future of the country.

According to Wisconsin.gov, Republican lawmakers will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, March 28, to determine whether Wisconsin will call for a constitutional convention. While a subject of legal debate, changes to America's governing document can be made in one of three ways: Three-quarters of the states can ratify an amendment that Congress has passed with supermajorities in both houses; three-quarters of the states, with majority votes in each, can bypass Congress by invoking Article 5 to approve an amendment; or two thirds of the states can simply use Article 5 to call a "Convention of the States" and rewrite the document as they see fit (three-quarters of the states would then need to approve their changes).

A "Convention of the States" has never been invoked before, but Republicans and Koch-backed organizations like Citizens for Self-Governance have been salivating over the possibility for years, even holding dress rehearsals in Washington, D.C., with representatives from across the country. With the federal deficit presently hovering just below $20 trillion, their ostensible plan is to add a balanced budget amendment. This alone would likely shred the country's meager social safety net, but as Assembly Minority Leader and Kenosha Democrat Peter Barca warns the Wisconsin State Journal, a constitutional convention could put citizen's very rights "up for grabs."

Scot Ross, executive director of liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now, puts it more bluntly: “The balanced budget talk is a fig leaf to let them change America into a right-wing alternative universe."

In an essay earlier this month, AlterNet's Thom Hartmann explored a few scenarios that were once the stuff of Federalist Society fever dreams and are now all too plausible:

Imagine if the U.S. Constitution barred the EPA and Department of Education from existing. All union protections are dead, there are no more federal workplace safety standards, and even child-labor laws are struck down, along with a national minimum wage.

Imagine that the Constitution makes it illegal for the federal government to protect you from big polluters, big banks and even big food and pharma—all are free to rip you off or poison you all they want, and your only remedy is in state courts and legislatures, because the Constitution prevents Congress from doing anything about any of it. The federal government can't even enforce voting or civil rights laws.

To add injury to insult, the federal government has to shut down Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, because all of these programs (along with food stamps, housing supports and any programs that help the middle class, the less fortunate or disabled) are “beyond the reach” of what the federal government can do.

State Senator Chris Kapenga of Delafieldintroduced the resolution earlier this month. A second resolution requires Wisconsin delegates confine their proposed amendments to the subject of the proceeding, in accordance with convention rules established by the Assembly of State Legislatures. Kapenga has also introduced a bill that would trigger the dismissal of delegates who vote on amendments that don't meet this standard. But as Peter Barca observes, "even if Wisconsin can control its delegates, there’s no guarantee other states will."

If passed, Wisconsin would become the 29th state to call for a constitutional convention; just 34 are needed for it to become a reality. The 2016 elections have left Republicans in control of 33 state legislatures. According to the Associated Press, the Democratic Party has lost more than 1000 governorships, state legislative and Congressional seats combined since 2008.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/right-wing-billionaires-have-project-going-rewrite-our-constitution-and-they-are

NEWS & POLITICS

Right-Wing Billionaires Have a Project Going to Rewrite Our Constitution, and They Are Shockingly Close to Pulling It Off

A few years ago, it would have been a thought experiment; now it's nearly reality.

By Thom Hartmann / AlterNet March 10, 2017

Imagine if the U.S. Constitution barred the EPA and Department of Education from existing. All union protections are dead, there are no more federal workplace safety standards, and even child-labor laws are struck down, along with a national minimum wage.

Imagine that the Constitution makes it illegal for the federal government to protect you from big polluters, big banks and even big food and pharma—all are free to rip you off or poison you all they want, and your only remedy is in state courts and legislatures, because the Constitution prevents Congress from doing anything about any of it. The federal government can't even enforce voting or civil rights laws.

To add injury to insult, the federal government has to shut down Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, because all of these programs (along with food stamps, housing supports and any programs that help the middle class, the less fortunate or disabled) are “beyond the reach” of what the federal government can do.

A few years ago, it would have been a thought experiment; now it's nearly reality. Billionaires and the groups they fund are working to rewrite our Constitution to provide corprations and the rich with more and more protections and benefits, and chop away at anything smelling of “socialism” like Social Security or child labor laws.

The fact is that they're just a few states away from meeting their goal, and have already held dress rehearsals in Washington D.C.—with representatives from all 50 states—for a Constitional Convention that would change America forever.

The Constitution (arguably) provides for three ways to change or amend itself. The first is that Congress can propose a constitutional amendment, pass it with a supermajority in both houses, and have three-quarters of the states ratify it. This is the way it's been done for every one of the existing 27 amendments.

The second strategy is done by using Article 5 of the Constitution and driving the process up from the states. The easiest way to do this is for three-quarters of the states to legislatively approve (with majority votes in each state) an amendment, in which case Congress is unnecessary and upon ratification by the 38th state, it becomes a permanent amendment to the Constitution.

While this strategy has never been used, it's why many of the good government groups like Move To Amend and Public Citizen are pushing for a “Corporations are not people, and money is not speech” amendment.

The third—and incredibly dangerous—strategy to amend the Constitution is to simply call a “Convention of the States,” again using Article 5, and open the entire document itself up to rewriting and tinkering.

This third strategy is the one being used right now, as you're reading these words, in a very well-funded effort by right-wing oligarchs. If they can pull it off in the states (where it's cheaper to buy politicians), then Congress, the president and even the courts would have no say over it.

Their goal appears to be to put into the Constitution specific prohibitions against any programs (from Social Security to Medicare to food stamps) that they've always viewed as “unconstitutional socialism,” and to permanently enshrine in the Constitution the “right” of corporations and billionaires to own politicians and spend unlimited monies to influence elections and ballot measures. It would effectively turn America into a feudal state owned by the people FDR called the "economic royalists."

The group leading this charge is called Citizens for Self-Governance, which SourceWatch.org says, "is a right-wing political organization tied to Eric O'Keefe that is campaigning for an Article V convention to amend the U.S. Constitution. Through its 'Convention of States' project, CSG promotes an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution pursuant to Article V, which provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths)."

They add, “CSG director Eric O'Keefe has deep ties to Charles and David Koch and has been a founder and funder of numerous right-wing groups including Wisconsin Club for Growth,” and the CSG, “through its Convention of States project, is pushing for a constitutional convention in order to severely restrict federal power, for example by redefining the Commerce Clause to prohibit Congress from enacting child labor or anti-discrimination laws, or by adding a balanced budget requirement.”

And they're actually doing it. As Wikipedia notes,

“In December 2013, nearly 100 legislators from 32 states met at Mount Vernon to talk about how to call a convention of states. … In February 2014,U.S. Senator Tom Coburn announced that after his retirement from Congress, he would focus on promoting the Convention of States to state legislatures.

“In December 2015, Marco Rubio endorsed CSG's efforts to a call an Article V Convention. In January 2016, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a Convention of States to restrict the power of the federal government.

"As of 2016, CSG's application for a Convention of States has been passed in eight states: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Alaska, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.”

Now that they have mobilized thousands of enthusiastic billionaire-supporting conservatives across the nation, with help from one of America's most widely heard right-wing talk-radio hosts, Wikipedia notes:

“The simulated convention passed amendments relating to six topics, including requiring the states to approve any increase in the national debt, imposing term limits, limiting the Commerce Clause to its original meaning [ending minimum wage, federal right-to-unionize, and child-labor laws], limiting the power of federal regulations [aka "consumer protections], requiring a supermajority to impose federal taxes and repealing the 16th Amendment [which legalized federal income taxes], and giving the states the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation, or executive order.”

We've discussed this movie before, although we've never seen it so close to us.

On April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against fascist Germany and Japan, the New York Times published an op-ed by Vice President Henry Wallace discussing explicitly the issue of very wealthy people setting out to take over our government.

Wallace spoke directly to the danger of multimillionaire and corporate power, defining right-wing industrialists as people “who in case of conflict put money and power ahead of human beings.” He added that “in their search for money and power [they] are ruthless and deceitful. ... They... follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

In his strongest indictment of that day's equivalent of today's billionaire class, Wallace wrote, "They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

As Wallace's president, Franklin D. Roosevelt said when accepting his party's re-nomination in 1936 in Philadelphia, "out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties.... It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction."

We stand at the same crossroads Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II, only this time the Supreme Court (in 1976 with Buckley, 1978 in Bellotti and in 2010 with Citizens United) has given American billionaires the power to spend virtually unlimited amounts of money to own politicians and demand behavior from them so outrageous that they'd even lie on live TV and deny science itself.

The billionaire right's behavior today eerily parallels the day in 1936 when Roosevelt said, "In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for."

President Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace's warnings have come full circle. It's critical that we call out these economic royalists for what they're doing, and not let them and their minions rewrite our Constitution.

Thom Hartmann is an author and nationally syndicated daily talk show host. His newest book is "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America — and What We Can Do to Stop It."

Joint Statement by the Brennan Center, Center for Media and Democracy, Common Cause, CREW, Democracy 21, and People For the American Way

Efforts are being undertaken in state legislatures to pass resolutions calling for a constitutional convention to send various constitutional amendments to the states for ratification.

If these efforts are successful, it would result in the nation’s first constitutional convention since the 1787 convention that adopted the Constitution. It also would create the opportunity for a runaway convention that could rewrite any constitutional right or protection currently available to American citizens.

One such effort to establish a constitutional convention involves passing a constitutional amendment to require a federal balanced budget. Another effort involves making sweeping changes in the constitutional structure of our government. Another effort involves passing a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

Our reform groups support various campaign finance reform measures to respond to the Citizens United decision. The groups include: the Brennan Center, Common Cause, Center for Media and Democracy, CREW, Democracy 21 and People For the American Way.

Some of our groups are working to have Congress approve a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Others are working to develop a new jurisprudence to serve as the basis for upholding campaign finance laws that could be adopted by a new Supreme Court majority.

All of our groups, however, are strongly opposed to a constitutional convention which would put at risk the constitutional rights and protections of all Americans.

The effort to call a constitutional convention to pass a balanced budget constitutional amendment is being led in part by the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC), an organization consisting of corporations and conservative state legislators. Advocates of such a balanced budget amendment claim that 27 states already have passed such calls. A major effort is underway in 2016 to obtain the seven more states they believe they need to reach two-thirds of the states, the number required by the constitution to call a constitutional convention.

The effort to call for a convention to overturn Citizens United has been approved in a handful of states. This effort, however, is providing support for the idea that a constitutional convention makes sense when the efforts to obtain a constitutional convention on the balanced budget amendment is within striking distance.

The Constitution provides that Congress “on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments.”

Regardless of any limits that are being placed in the state calls for a constitutional convention, it is widely believed that once a convention is called there is no way to limit the constitutional amendments that the convention can consider and on which they can act.

A USA TODAY editorial (January 6, 2016) has observed that a constitutional “convention is an invitation to constitutional mayhem.”

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, a leading constitutional scholar, has stated that a constitutional convention could not be limited to a single issue if convention delegates decided to pursue other agenda items. According to Tribe, a constitutional convention would put “the whole Constitution up for grabs.”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has said, “I certainly would not want a constitutional convention. Whoa! Who knows what would come out of it?”

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger stated, “[T]here is no way to effectively limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda.”

This means that any existing constitutional right and protection could be up for consideration and revision by a convention. This includes constitutional protections for civil rights, civil liberties, voting rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech and privacy, among others. The role of the courts in protecting the constitutional rights of individuals and minority interests would also be up for consideration and change.

Furthermore, there are no rules on what would happen if and when a convention is called: no rules on how delegates are chosen, how voting occurs at the convention, how money can be spent to choose and influence delegates, or how the convention would operate.

Supporters of a convention argue that any amendment adopted by the convention must be ratified by three-quarters of the states and that this will protect against a runaway convention. However, since 34 states already would have approved the creation of the constitutional convention, this would provide a strong base for obtaining the additional states necessary to reach the 38 states required to ratify any amendment approved by the convention.

Furthermore, if a duly constituted constitutional convention approves one or more constitutional amendments that take away basic constitutional rights or protections, even if the amendments are not ratified by 38 states, this would seriously undermine the legitimacy of these rights and protections.

A constitutional convention would put at risk the constitution our Founding Fathers created and the constitutional rights and protections that exist today. Our groups strongly urge state legislators to recognize the dangers that a constitutional convention poses for the constitutional rights of all citizens and to oppose a call for a constitutional convention.

on corp $: wolf pac says NJ and They are California, Illinois and Vermont. I believe there are 20 states who have introduced the resolution and now 4 have passed it. You need 2/3 of the states to pass the resolution (need 30 more now) in order to call for a constitutional amendment.

The United States could be on the verge of calling its first constitutional convention since 1787—and the American Legislative Exchange Council, or “ALEC,” has been working behind the scenes to make it happen, including through its new lobbying arm, the Jeffersonian Project.

ALEC is urging state legislators to pass state resolutions calling for a constitutional convention in order to pass a federal balanced budget amendment.

The campaign has attracted little media attention, but the legislation that could trigger a convention are moving forward much more quickly than many have anticipated. Although there are many unanswered legal questions about the constitutional convention strategy -- and fears on both the right and left of an out-of-control "runaway convention -- if a balanced budget amendment were eventually enacted it would cripple the federal government’s ability to spend, likely forcing steep cuts in earned benefit programs such as Social Security and blocking Congress from responding to economic downturns or natural disasters.

Article V Constitutional Convention Could be Nearing

Article V of the U.S. Constitution provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose amendments, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths).

According to some counts, resolutions calling for a constitutional convention to create a balanced budget amendment have been passed in at least 24 of the necessary 34 states. In just the past seven months, twelve states have proposed such resolutions – in most cases sponsored by ALEC members -- and six of those measures have passed.

Because a constitutional convention has never been triggered under Article V a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the effort. It is not clear whether a state’s resolution calling for a convention can expire, nor is it clear whether a state can rescind their demand after it is made. U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) has asked Congress to resolve these issues, although it is unclear whether House Speaker John Boehner will take up the effort.

ALEC Behind the Scenes of the Balanced Budget Push

ALEC has promoted a model resolution calling for such a convention for decades. But it has recently made the effort a top priority. In 2011, ALEC published a handbook for state legislatorson how to use Article V of the U.S. Constitution to push for a balanced budget amendment.

As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has previously reported, at its last two meetings ALEC has hosted workshops on the amendment strategy from the group “Citizens for Self Governance.” The group is led by Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, and its boardincludes Wisconsinite Eric O'Keefe, who was subpoenaed in the “John Doe” criminal probe into Scott Walker’s 2012 campaign activities. After ALEC’s meeting last December, around one hundred state legislators convened to discuss the Article V convention process.

Following that meeting, resolutions calling for an Article V convention have been proposed in sixteen states, in most cases by ALEC members; six have passed.

The sponsor in Louisiana, state Rep. Joe Harrison, was even named ALEC Legislator of the Year 2014 for "his efforts on Louisiana’s unanimous passage of the Balance[d] Budget Amendment."

When the resolution was introduced in Wisconsin, Rep. Chris Taylor, a Wisconsin Democrat who attended ALEC's summer 2013 meeting, said that the proposal "comes right out of the 'Convention of States' workshop and materials presented at ALEC where state legislators were promised bundled campaign contributions and grassroots support if they joined this effort to amend the federal constitution."

Two of the right-wing political advocacy groups lobbying for the bill in Wisconsin, Americans for Prosperity and the National Federation of Independent Business, are ALEC members with close ties to the Koch brothers: David Koch founded and funds AFP, and the NFIB has received millions from the Koch political network. The NFIB was recently added to ALEC’s corporate board, where it sits with a representative of Koch Industries.

Jeffersonian Project Used to Lobby for BBA

ALEC's new lobbying arm, the Jeffersonian Project, appears to have been used to lobby for the bills....http://www.prwatch.org/node/12554