I don’t often delve into politics here, partly because I find them distasteful and partly because I know that, realistically, any amount of good I could do would be minuscule. But I have to make an exception today.
The government of the United States is broken. Just about everyone agrees with that. And just about everyone agrees on the source of the problem: the “golden rule” (i.e. “he who has the gold, makes the rules”). Special interests: groups that push things that are in their own interests at the expense of the public good. A couple recent and particularly disgusting examples are the health insurance industry successfully preventing most health care reforms, and the banking industry fighting much-needed changes to the banking rules that got us into the current financial mess.
It has become a government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations.
What can be done about it? Individuals can’t sway congressmen, they don’t have the money to match the bribes contributions of the special interests. And groups — even large groups — can’t either, not when their opposition is fighting for its profits and possibly its corporate life. But Lawrence Lessig thinks he’s found a solution: a Constitutional Convention.
Will it work? I don’t know. But it’s about the only way I can see that stands any chance whatsoever.
The state legislatures are just as special-interest-ridden and are even more conservative than the Congress, it ain’t going to happen.
But there are fifty times as many of them, making them fifty times harder and more expensive to influence. And who says conservatives won’t go for the idea — after all, it’s a chance for them to propose Constitutional amendments too.
Yeah, several states during the Reagan era passed legislation to make a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion, for example….
Sorry, that was before I paid any attention to politics, so I know nothing about it. But if I remember my high school governance class, state legislatures don’t have any say over the US constitution, other than that of calling for a Constitutional Convention. If you’re correct, they could only have been amending their state constitutions, which are overridden by the federal one.
That was a long time ago, true, maybe my memory is getting faulty in my old age. 😉