Enough

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Abraham Lincoln - The Gettysburg Address

The civil war this time is being fought on the political front. It has already gone on for eight years. And it is once again over the rights of black citizens. A whole group, the GOP, do not believe a black man has the right to be president. And step by step politicians have handicapped the country so nothing has gotten, or can ever, get done again for the good of the people.

Because the politicians involved do not care about the good of the people. They care only about continuing to hold office so they can get supported by lobbyists. Oh, some may care about turning our country into a theocracy.  And a few more want to legislate women back to the days of caves and slavery. The ideal of Hobby Lobby.

BUT nobody cares about the people of this country. No, it is not a democracy any more. I have doubts it ever was. It is now clearly a corporacy. All for the good of the corporations and 1% of the "citizens united" who have moved all their corporations to tax shelters in foreign countries.

I find myself on the eve of this latest election wondering how this country would have looked if we had lost the Civil war. Or if upon winning we had refused to let the south (home of the Tea Party GOP) re-entry into our fragile federation.

I, like so many of my friends, find myself wondering what would it be like if we broke the US (too big to fail?) into five smaller countries. And we all kept our resources and water and politics to ourselves.

Yes, I will vote Tuesday. But, I do not believe in this country any more. I think we are losing this test and this nation will not long endure unless we hold a constitutional convention and change all that is horridly wrong.

One citizen and one vote no longer counts for anything in this country.

Call for an Article V Convention

Last Friday a friend and I headed east to Raton, New Mexico to cast our ballots in the 2012 United States Presidential election. The two hour drive across the plains gives you a lot of time to think and talk. We did not have to think about our vote because our minds were firmly made up. But we talked about how deeply divided our country has become. This great experiment of ours is not working. Something has to change.

I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln's Springfield, Illinois speech of June 18, 1858 in which he addressed the issue of slave vs. free: "A house divided divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." It took the bloodiest war in the history of the world to resolve that issue. And the years I lived in the south made me doubt that the wounds of that war were ever going to heal.

Now we are divided Red and Blue, Republican and Democrat, Christian and freedom to believe as you will. Politicians have played on the differences and erected fences against either side talking to each other. Such must have been the tension along the Mason Dixon line in the days before war broke out with brother fighting against brother. To avoid another civil war I think we need to call a Constitutional Convention as provided for in Article V of the Constitution. Our system is broken and it needs fixed.

 "Even though the Article V convention process has never been used to amend the Constitution, the number of states applying for a convention has nearly reached the required threshold several times. Congress has proposed amendments to the Constitution on several occasions, at least in part, because of the threat of an Article V Convention. Rather than risk such a convention taking control of the amendment process away from it, Congress acted pre-emptively to propose the amendments instead. At least four amendments (the Seventeenth, Twenty-First, Twenty-Second and Twenty-Fifth) have been identified as being proposed by congress at least partly in response to the threat of an Article V convention."

What is clearly broken is the election process, including but not limited to the Electoral College. At the time our constitution was written maybe we needed two years to campaign for office. Not so today in this age of rapid communication. And maybe we needed the safeguard of the Electoral College procedure to prevent a do over of the election should a candidate die between election and swearing into office. But not so today. Nor should candidates be allowed to buy an office. Or buy the voting machines that will tally his votes for that office.

We need to put a sense of power back into the hands of the people and that means taking that power from the millionaires and billionaires and mega corporations and lobby groups. "Government of the people, by the people and for the people . . ." Enough already! This election has shown just how bad it can get. And there is a real danger of a popular vote for one candidate and election of the other by unfairly distributed Electoral College numbers.

At the county court house in Raton a 91 year old couple, the Romeros of Raton, were voting early. And a young woman came in with her daughter to vote. The court house staff gave the little girl a sample ballot and pencil to fill out. I hope when she is old enough to vote voting will still mean something. And that it will continue to mean something until she is 91 or older. But if that is going to be true we have to do something decisive and we have to do it soon.

After you cast your vote connect up with others in your state to begin the process of calling for an Article V convention. Save our noble experiment.

I Have Voted

In part because New Mexico was one of the states investigated in 2004 by the BBC for voting and registration irregularities I drove the three hour round trip to my county seat to vote early.

I drove through the ranch land dominated by McCain/Palin signs on fences to vote for Obama. I had two Democratic candidates I wanted to support and one I decidedly wanted to vote against. I wanted my vote to count. I did not want problems on election day and have to cast a provisional ballot.

I am a registered Democrat but mostly because in this state the Democrats seem to have more people running in the primaries to vote for. If the Republicans have one for every office in the primaries they are doing well. In my youth I even was on the staff of a Republican Senator who was working to end the war in Vietnam. I vote issues and people. Not parties.

Well, until this whole Red State/Blue State crap. I wore blue to vote but I refuse to be so branded. And I think we need serious reform with the Electoral College. States should be able to divide their electors on the basis of percentage of vote. We can divide our Senators and our Congressmen. I voted for Democratic Senator Udall. He has been my US Representative for a good many years and I like his approach to issues and his response to his constituency. His vacated congressional seat is being hotly contested. I don't like the Democrat Lujan or the Republican so I voted Independent. I don't think he has a snowball's chance in the Bahamas but at least I can say I did not vote and am not responsible for either of the other two.

I wish there had been, like on the multiple choice tests of college, a "none of the above" option. There were a couple instances when I would have opted for that. As it was I chose to not vote for a couple choices merely because I wanted it known that I did not approve of any choice offered me.

If either party learns anything from this election it should be that we do not like the electoral college as it stands today. I makes it so possible, as in 2000, for a person not liked by the majority of the people to be made president, and it leads to sharp divisions at a time when we should unite to solve our problems. And negative campaigning just makes it harder and harder to come together after the election.

If the parties are not going to work together for reform on elections, the electoral college, and campaign financing then we need to start a movement for a Constitutional Convention to change it ourselves.

Been There, Done That

Real Clear Politics had the following quote:

"I went through this hatred that so many of the American people are going through now, but fortunately I got over it. I had all this anger for this loss for our country, a serious eight-year loss, and now I just want to say you've got to laugh, a little bit, about this whole thing. It gets so painful that humour is the only antidote. If you didn't, you'd go bonkers. You'd become a raging lunatic on a blogosphere, writing anti-Bush screeds." - Oliver Stone, in an interview with The Guardian explaining why his new movie "W." isn't "angry."

I am not sure I can say that I have gone beyond my anger at GW. And that he cheated his way into office to do this. I personally think he will rank beside Hitler and Stalin in my list of world leaders that have done the most harm. And if you argue that he did not foster the mass murder of thousands to millions I give you the Iraq War: the illegal invasion and occupation of an independent nation. We list our dead on a daily basis but seem to ignore those we have killed. Or would that seem more like a score card?

Had anyone but a United States President invaded Iraq the United Nations would have been there with troops to expel them. And if you doubt that just look at how we reacted to Russia going into Georgia.

In the eight years GW has been in office he has totally turned off all our once allies in the world, invaded an independent nation, made us a nation that tortures, thrown out all our civil liberties and rights to privacy, and gotten us into the worst financial crisis since the great depression. Yes, I said it, the Great Depression. Notice how everyone is dancing around that with other phrases?

And every single act since the Supreme Court put him in office has been illegal in the World Court or illegal in regards to the United States Constitution. But to even act like we wanted to impeach him has invited the worlds unpatriotic or traitor and the not so subtle but unspoken threat of Gitmo detention. I was Googling some aspects of the constitution the other day (can I get a law degree through Google) and discovered that who should have decided the problem of the hanging chads in 2000 was the House of Representatives. But that legal body was controlled by the Democrats. The would have sided with Gore.

So not only am I still angry with Bush and all that have conspired with him to bring us to this place in history. I am a bit disappointed in my fellow citizens. Why didn't we riot in the streets? Call for a constitutional convention? Demand his impeachment? Only one reason - 9/11. Did he allow that to happen in order to forestall all he could see happening because of his illegal occupation of the White House?