Does anyone have any residual doubt that a Constitutional Convention would allow all sorts of crazy ideas to pop up?
There was a good reason for direct popular election of US Senators -- and the Tea Party election of 2010 shows what sorts of politicians are possible in the Senate if some fad takes over a bunch of state legislatures. Cranky state legislatures (and many of our State legislatures are that) would appoint cranky pols to the US Senate.
Maybe elections could be limited to white male property owners. We would probably end up with government of the Wealthy, by the Wealthy, and for the Wealthy. Sure, the poor would survive -- as serfs. That's how things were in the Jim Crow South, and things weren't good for the poor white people of the South, either.
We need to go sane before we even contemplate radical reforms to our political system.
Any amendments drafted by the convention would have to be ratified by 3/4ths of the states just like an amendment proposed by Congress.
I don't really support any of these, save maybe for the 30 day requirement on legislation and one or two others. I most certainly oppose term limits on the judges.
The problem was also that the State Legislatures were easily corruptable. There was a story I think it was Montana or Mississippi. It went that it was always cold in the legislature and that was because the windows were always opened so the special interests could toss bundles of money through them.
We have eliminated the problem impacting the Senate, but the problem itself is still there and by making them less important, we ensure that fewer and fewer people pay attention to them and hence the problem gets worse, the lower you go down the gov't. The problem is that by centralizing the authority you also render more difficult effecting change unless you got gobs of money behind you.
