No Constitutional convention, no amendment
Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:04 pm
I am an annoying, fat, unrelenting promoter of enlarging the number of members in our House of Rep's. I offer this solution to regain our democracy to anyone willing to listen and a few that don't. I believe that the most important point that I stress is that this can (not too easily) be done just by repealing one law and replacing it with another. No convention, no amendment. And it can. We got into the 435 number with merely a law, we can change it.
I've tried to promote this, but no one will print my message. I called Thom Hartman, he led my astray and asked while we're at it, why not enlarge the Senate and then went off on a tangent, ending my call. I believe this was just a way to shut me down. I've written to every entity that I thought could help, Michael Moore, Moveon, WhatReallyHappened, etc. Even made the mistake of phoning my Congressman. What a ruckus I made! You should have heard his staff! Where did you hear about that! It would take an amendment to do that! (Which later he declared in person, that, of course, it wouldn't.)
If anyone promotes a convention, they risk all he__ to break loose. Once a convention is convened there is no way to limit the discussion to representation. We would get all sorts of crazy notions put up for consideration (all and/or any crazy insane ideas Glen Beck and the corporations that feed him can think up). That is much too dangerous of an approach.
An amendment takes forever. Take the ERA. Equal Rights Amendment. You would think that would be a no brainer, but it hasn't passed yet.
Yet, there has been people who I've spoken to that have embraced the idea, all intelligent, but that doesn't mean that all intelligent people can grasp or even want to grasp the seriousness of the problem and promote its solution, namely a repeal of the law that put it in place and a law that would replace it. My daughter brought home a date, a computer programmer who either had a Phd in his field or was a candidate, and he didn't even know how a bill was passed, although he could sing a little of "I'm just a Bill" cartoon. But with George Bush, I guess all you need are executive orders and signing statements.
I was really thrilled to read about the effort to push this using the courts. I can't see one man, one vote with a Montana resident representing only 1/1,000,000 of his Representative's constituency and a Wyoming resident representing 1/500,000. But we all know that one person cannot represent a constituency as large as either one.
My representative is arrogant beyond belief. He voted for the FISA bill, when the telecorporation that dominates his district refused to abide with the government's demands to easedrop and was financially punished for it. He promotes every "fair trade" bill that comes along. You know that nice design center that Secy of State Clinton visited in Russia, well, that's where my husband's job was outsourced, but my representative said that no white collar jobs were affected by outsourcing because the GAO report about outsourcing concerned only blue collar jobs. I asked him how many signatures it would take on a petition to back Kucinich in impeaching Bush, he laughed and said if I thought 100 was a lot (which is the exact number that a veterans group had just delivered to him, so in fact, he was laughing at veterans who wanted a change and had risked signing their names to whatever may befall them for doing so), and laughed that he represented over 700,000 people and of course, any efforts I would make would be paltry. In the end, he said his mind was made up and nothing could change it. Now that is representation!
Prior to this meeting, I had gone to a Democratic get together, meet up, a chance for representatives to meet their constituency in an casual setting. I was misled by the afterdowningstreet site that Pelosi would put impeachment back on the table if she received enough correspondence to warrant it, when I bought 25 prepaid postage postcards that had her address on it, a message saying thanking her for putting impeachment back on the table and had people write personal messages on them and sign them with their addresses, I then offered to mail them in for them. Although I didn't get all of them to mail myself, I used all my postcards that one night. I don't know if it would have taken me much time to get a tremendous amount of postcards or say, signatures on a petition to support the impeachment of this criminal.
I must say, I didn't form my ideas by coming to this page. I came to them after the horrendous election of 2004. I found all the population counts of all the states and then the number of representatives in each. I surmised (but I may be mistaken), that the electoral college count would remain the same whether this scheme comes to pass or not, but I figured that if in the minority districts that were in the recent past protected from gerrymandering, more progressive representation could be achieved, but that time frame has come and gone. I also found out that Alcee Hastings had promoted enlarging the House, along with George Will.
In my efforts to sway opinion, I've found the internet (save the site here) has not been of much use. Of all my blog entries, very few have ever been seen. Maybe some entertaining youtube videos could work (do any exists?). But perhaps, as with the postcards above, personal connections is the answer.
I have tried to keep my blog entries shorter since finding this site (I may have been the one promoting the additional Congressional meeting sites), by just referring people here, but I don't agree with a Constitutional convention or amendment. It's just a law. Let's just see if we can change it! Ask candidates as they run and bring the message back here! Try to get on local radio call ins! Maybe this site could create a legal petition that could be circulated. People need hope. This is the only one we have!
As for state governments, I would think that perhaps some see the state legislatures as the training grounds for federal positions in Congress and the largess that that provides. I don't think they would be interested in diluting the payoffs. We need to pressure those in Congress now.
I've tried to promote this, but no one will print my message. I called Thom Hartman, he led my astray and asked while we're at it, why not enlarge the Senate and then went off on a tangent, ending my call. I believe this was just a way to shut me down. I've written to every entity that I thought could help, Michael Moore, Moveon, WhatReallyHappened, etc. Even made the mistake of phoning my Congressman. What a ruckus I made! You should have heard his staff! Where did you hear about that! It would take an amendment to do that! (Which later he declared in person, that, of course, it wouldn't.)
If anyone promotes a convention, they risk all he__ to break loose. Once a convention is convened there is no way to limit the discussion to representation. We would get all sorts of crazy notions put up for consideration (all and/or any crazy insane ideas Glen Beck and the corporations that feed him can think up). That is much too dangerous of an approach.
An amendment takes forever. Take the ERA. Equal Rights Amendment. You would think that would be a no brainer, but it hasn't passed yet.
Yet, there has been people who I've spoken to that have embraced the idea, all intelligent, but that doesn't mean that all intelligent people can grasp or even want to grasp the seriousness of the problem and promote its solution, namely a repeal of the law that put it in place and a law that would replace it. My daughter brought home a date, a computer programmer who either had a Phd in his field or was a candidate, and he didn't even know how a bill was passed, although he could sing a little of "I'm just a Bill" cartoon. But with George Bush, I guess all you need are executive orders and signing statements.
I was really thrilled to read about the effort to push this using the courts. I can't see one man, one vote with a Montana resident representing only 1/1,000,000 of his Representative's constituency and a Wyoming resident representing 1/500,000. But we all know that one person cannot represent a constituency as large as either one.
My representative is arrogant beyond belief. He voted for the FISA bill, when the telecorporation that dominates his district refused to abide with the government's demands to easedrop and was financially punished for it. He promotes every "fair trade" bill that comes along. You know that nice design center that Secy of State Clinton visited in Russia, well, that's where my husband's job was outsourced, but my representative said that no white collar jobs were affected by outsourcing because the GAO report about outsourcing concerned only blue collar jobs. I asked him how many signatures it would take on a petition to back Kucinich in impeaching Bush, he laughed and said if I thought 100 was a lot (which is the exact number that a veterans group had just delivered to him, so in fact, he was laughing at veterans who wanted a change and had risked signing their names to whatever may befall them for doing so), and laughed that he represented over 700,000 people and of course, any efforts I would make would be paltry. In the end, he said his mind was made up and nothing could change it. Now that is representation!
Prior to this meeting, I had gone to a Democratic get together, meet up, a chance for representatives to meet their constituency in an casual setting. I was misled by the afterdowningstreet site that Pelosi would put impeachment back on the table if she received enough correspondence to warrant it, when I bought 25 prepaid postage postcards that had her address on it, a message saying thanking her for putting impeachment back on the table and had people write personal messages on them and sign them with their addresses, I then offered to mail them in for them. Although I didn't get all of them to mail myself, I used all my postcards that one night. I don't know if it would have taken me much time to get a tremendous amount of postcards or say, signatures on a petition to support the impeachment of this criminal.
I must say, I didn't form my ideas by coming to this page. I came to them after the horrendous election of 2004. I found all the population counts of all the states and then the number of representatives in each. I surmised (but I may be mistaken), that the electoral college count would remain the same whether this scheme comes to pass or not, but I figured that if in the minority districts that were in the recent past protected from gerrymandering, more progressive representation could be achieved, but that time frame has come and gone. I also found out that Alcee Hastings had promoted enlarging the House, along with George Will.
In my efforts to sway opinion, I've found the internet (save the site here) has not been of much use. Of all my blog entries, very few have ever been seen. Maybe some entertaining youtube videos could work (do any exists?). But perhaps, as with the postcards above, personal connections is the answer.
I have tried to keep my blog entries shorter since finding this site (I may have been the one promoting the additional Congressional meeting sites), by just referring people here, but I don't agree with a Constitutional convention or amendment. It's just a law. Let's just see if we can change it! Ask candidates as they run and bring the message back here! Try to get on local radio call ins! Maybe this site could create a legal petition that could be circulated. People need hope. This is the only one we have!
As for state governments, I would think that perhaps some see the state legislatures as the training grounds for federal positions in Congress and the largess that that provides. I don't think they would be interested in diluting the payoffs. We need to pressure those in Congress now.