The swinging pendulum of national politics is temporary. It swings to the left, then it swings to the right and then before you know it, it’s swinging back to the left. This is why we cannot depend on what a president can do for America exclusively. It’s a bandaid that will get ripped off before you can pay off your latest car loan.
The changes we need must happen at the level of the U.S. Constitution through amendments covering three objectives that you support: limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, imposing fiscal restraints on the federal government (including a balanced budget) and limiting the terms of office for its officials (including the U.S. Congress).
The United States hasn’t ratified an amendment to the U.S. Congress since 1992 and only 27 amendments have been ratified in the last 233 years. Article V is the reason it’s so difficult to ratify an amendment. Intentionally difficult because if it was easy, we’d have thousands of amendments and we would have no rights.
The amendment that took away a right from the American People was the 18th Amendment, Prohibition. That was the first and only amendment that was repealed nearly 15 years later in December 1933 by the 21st Amendment. So currently, all Constitutional Amendments are securing rights of U.S. Citizens. That being said, the objectives of Convention of States seeks to use Article V to propose amendments that secure the rights of citizens that are currently being manipulated, exploited and abused by political and government powers.
Those rights include our taxpayer rights. We need to be protected by the Constitution to ensure that all three branches of the federal government can no longer spend our money or approve spending our money without accountability to the U.S. Constitution.
Those rights also include the authority of the People over the federal government. Federal bureaus, departments, and agencies have too much power over the American People. I like to think of the FBI as the Fourth Branch Institution. Its current authority over U.S. Citizens and its participation in partisan politics needs to be permanently bridled by a constitutional amendment. That’s just one example of government overreach that is taking away the rights of the American people.
Those rights also include putting a limit on the terms of Congress and other government officials that have too much unlimited power. They abuse their celebrity status to get re-elected and retain their authority. This authority compounds on itself, term after term after term. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to remove these slimy swamp things (and I mean that in the most non-partisan way).
These permanent incumbents acquire so much power to conceal their vices and incompetencies from the American People that citizens have lost more than one of their rights: one is the right to transparency of the officials that represent them and two is the right to have an equal opportunity to run for office without the same incumbent sucking up all of the oxygen in the room after decades of controlled public exposure.
These rights must be permanently secured through amendments in the U.S. Constitution. Convention of States Action has spent more than eleven years working on this massive grassroots project that requires the states to unite. Unfortunately, partisanship has speed-bumped our efforts, even though polling shows overwhelmingly that the majority of U.S. Citizens support all of our objectives. If it wasn’t for the partisanship of special interests and their false accusations, we would get this done much faster.
19 States have passed our resolution. 34 states are required and it's very possible that COS might add one or two more states before the end of this legislative season. In the next few years, citizens in Colorado and the other states that have not yet passed the resolution in their capitol buildings need to seek out candidates on the state legislature level who support the COS objectives and it must be demanded in both parties.
COS does not endorse candidates running for office because we must protect our non-profit status but you as a citizen and Colorado constituent can and must endorse politicians that support the COS Resolution. This is our greatest chance at securing our rights that are currently being exploited and abused.
You must get active and get loud about an Article V Convention of States and educate the people around you about our objectives and how we’re engaging with our State Legislature by using Article V in the Constitution.
You can educate yourself first by checking out our State Page and our Colorado Page for Beginners.
You are the power behind Article V and you must get involved to stop this pendulum of extremism that never seeks to secure our rights.
