Let's talk about a fix-it plan...

Had a very interesting conversation with Jambo already this morning. Seems he got a text from Ryan that shared insight into the scope of the nation's concern about both what this legislation means to America and how it was brought about.

This morning, I read article after article about the historic signing of this legislation into law by Obama. I also read quite a few articles about how the Governors of the States of Virginia, Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi (and more to come, no doubt) are calling for their AGs to file suit with the legislative branch the MINUTE this bill is signed. This leads me to my point... what can be done to fix this problem?

As Ryan is always so quick to point out, Federal entitlement programs do not go away unless forced to do so... and that doesn't happen very often. There were a few Great Society programs that have been forced off the books by the SCOTUS... but probably not enough of them, and years after they went into effect, meaning that some other agency or program simply picked up the slack (a real and measurable result of the precedents set by the New Deal Presidents). With the long-term nature of this bill's implementation firmly carved into its very bones, no serious consideration is going to be given to critics of the bill's success until as late as 2019, when it all falls into place... and I think the detrimental effects will be felt far sooner than that. Add to that the FACT that gaps in the scope and reach of this bill are not denied within it, and are still only a sweep of the pen away from an executive order as being part of the law (Federal funding for abortions, for example, are not DENIED in the bill, so Obama would only have to sign the order to make it a reality), and what we have here is an open-ended equation for more and more wasted money and effort on the part of the Fed for less and less measurable benefits to society.

So, what is the quickest and surest means to fix this problem, once and for all, and to put this nation back on track in regards to the size and scope of the Federal authority and control it exercises in our lives?

We already have four States promising to fight the legislation the second it becomes law (I predict that this number will TRIPLE by this time next week). Is it out of the realm of possibility that the number of States that fight this movement could reach 34? Because if it isn't, then those States could, without interference from Congress or the White House, hold an Article V Convention to amend the Constitution. All that would be needed then is a total of 38 States to ratify the amendments to make them permanent and untouchable across the land.

Can you imagine the blow-back such an event would have? There hasn't been a Constitutional Convention since 1787, and we've never seen the Article V option employed in this country since (not even in our most trying and divided moments), but I think this option is finally beginning to make sense to many people in this land.

The longer unjust or immoral rules and laws remain in place, the more difficult they are to remove... this is a very painful lesson that American simply has not learned in her 230 year history. It took 87 years and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans to finally remove the stain of slavery from our national government... and nothing within those decades of compromise politics is justified in light of the crimes committed under slavery. To recover from the injustice of slavery and the war that resulted from it, we find another 12 years of Reconstruction, which wasn't ended until the scandalous Compromise of 1877... itself a model of governmental injustice and total failure to follow Constitutional procedure. Nearly 100 years of compromise and hidden agendas to fix what the entire nation knew to be a problem, one way or another.

Another example is the 17th Amendment. No one here could possibly NOT see the failings of a system of gubernatorial appointments for vacancies in the Senate when you have the appointments by Blagojevich and Patterson in just the last few years, and I still think the case can be made that the 17th Amendment gave TOO much power and authority to special interests within the Congress.

Congressional amendments to the Constitution are hard to come by... but I really think we are coming to a point where an Article V amendment opportunity is going to be seen by many as the only viable option to curb our nation's increasing movement to a leftist, soft-socialist, "European-style" system of public welfare and forced economics.

I admit to not knowing a whole lot about the process, but I can tell you that my free time over the next few days will center on learning what this process entails and how it can be employed to fix what is so OBVIOUSLY not working right now.