A grassroots movement is spreading across our country, but you may not have heard of it yet. It is called Convention of States, launched in 2013, and it aims to return power from the national government back to the states, as our founders in their wisdom planned.
As the government in D.C. has expanded, it has taken authority over education, health, term limits and unrestrained federal spending.
Our wise founding fathers included Article 5 in the Constitution, which states that when 34 states deem it necessary, they may call a convention to prepare amendments. If amendments are proposed, it takes a yes vote from 38 states to enact them.
We can see that the “swamp” in D.C. has become so deep that it swallows up most of the new representatives and senators who have been elected to serve our citizens.
In the beginning, senators in each state were chosen by the state legislatures, ensuring that their allegiance was to the citizens in their own jurisdiction. As they now have been voted in as representatives of D.C., they became subject to the national power machine. Also the undercover bureaucracy has become all powerful and has no accountability because they were not voted into office.
Because it’s so easy to give away the taxpayers’ money to buy future votes, our representatives have no fiscal restraint. So here we are $31 trillion in debt, and paying interest forever into the future, for which we receive nothing.
In spite of most voters being in favor of term limits, Congress has been able to ignore that and continue on forever, as can be seen by how many members have made it a lifetime career and become very wealthy in the process.
The Founding Fathers who wrote our Constitution were inspired by ancient
Greek and Roman scholars, who recognized the fallibility of man, and as the saying goes, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” They gave us this loophole of Article V of the Constitution, so the states could redeem the power which belongs to we the people.
Convention of States has a website (conventionofstates.com) where you may learn more. It is meant to give the power of the vote back to each of us where it belongs.
Gretchen Kieding
Solvang
