Oligarchs for Austerity and the CNP Have a Big New Scheme: Suing their Way to a New Constitution

Did you hear? Pres­i­dent Trump is going to be run­ning for a third term in office. And he’s not jok­ing. Who knows how seri­ous he is, but as we’re going to see, the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of third pres­i­den­tial term may not be as set in stone as many sus­pect. Along with the rest of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. A con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion could be just around the cor­ner. Just a law­suit away. And we can thank the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and their fel­low trav­el­ers at the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Com­mit­tee (ALEC) for this loom­ing threat. The same aus­ter­i­ty lob­by that has spent years try­ing to roll back Oba­macare, evis­cer­ate Medicare and Med­ic­aid through block-grants, and gen­er­al­ly erode what’s left of the US’s social safe­ty-nets as more and more Amer­i­cans are forced to take any work avail­able just to qual­i­fy for increas­ing­ly mea­ger gov­ern­ment assis­tance. That aus­ter­i­ty lob­by. It’s back with a big sneaky plan: a law­suit pur­port­ing to prove that the 34 state thresh­old for an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion has already been met. David M. Walk­er — the for­mer US Comp­trol­ler for both Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush — is lead­ing the legal effort, with legal sup­port from NRA lawyer (and CNP mem­ber) Charles “Chuck” Coop­er. If the law­suit suc­ceeds, get ready for a new con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten by and for the oli­garchy.

But this sto­ry isn’t just about this new law­suit. It’s also about how the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by has been work­ing with CNP to push these con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion ambi­tions since at least 2013, which is right around the same time it become clear that the last major round of DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing had failed in achiev­ing a “grand bar­gain” of slashed enti­tle­ments. A round of lob­by­ing that began in earnest as the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was still play­ing out with David Walk­er — then Pres­i­dent and CEO of the new­ly formed aus­ter­i­ty-cen­tric Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion — tak­ing on a lead role as pub­lic aus­ter­i­ty advo­cate. The Great Reces­sion was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for a “grand bar­gain”. And it almost worked. But did­n’t work, at least not entire­ly, and it was­n’t long after that fail­ure became clear that we saw the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and the CNP begin hatch­ing far more ambi­tious plans. Plans that just might be about come to fruition. Because as we’re also going to see, if a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion does hap­pen, the forces behind this plan are the ones who will be run­ning it. The DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by real­ly is just a law­suit away from win­ning every­thing.

John Roberts Gives Bad Faith Blessing to Hyper-Partisan Gerrymandering, Paving Way for the Kochstitution.

There was an omi­nous warn­ing about the direc­tion Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy was head­ing When David Frum warned, “If con­ser­v­a­tives become con­vinced that they can­not win demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, they will not aban­don con­ser­vatism. They will reject democ­ra­cy.” It was a warn­ing about what might hap­pen, but as we’re going to see, the corporate/billionaire wing com­po­nent of the Repub­li­can par­ty has already con­clud­ed that it can’t get the pub­lic behind its agen­da and has already turned against democ­ra­cy. And John Roberts just hand­ed this bil­lion­aire fac­tion a mas­sive legal vic­to­ry in Rucho vs Com­mon Cause: fed­er­al courts can’t rule on whether or not dis­trict lines are drawn in an over­ly-par­ti­san man­ner. It’s up to each state on its own. And as we’re going to see, Repub­li­cans already dom­i­nate the con­trol of state gov­ern­ments and now state leg­is­la­tures can ger­ry­man­der their own dis­tricts with­out fear of fed­er­al med­dling. Beyond that, the Kochs and ALEC are work­ing on remov­ing state courts from over­see­ing redis­trict­ing maps too. And to top it off, the Kochs are aggres­sive­ly push­ing for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion that could eas­i­ly turn into a ‘run­away’ con­ven­tion. And if there’s a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion, whichev­er par­ty con­trols the most states is going to con­trol the out­come of the con­ven­tion. So the Supreme Court just tur­bocharged the Kochs’ cap­ture of state assem­blies, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and even­tu­al­ly the Con­sti­tu­tion.