The Answer is “Shrink the Government”

The Question is: “How can we get out of this mess we’re in?”

A Constitutional Convention is absolutely the WRONG action. State need to take back control of the country from the Feds.

Any Convention would be infiltrated by the Left, subverted by special interests, and make it very difficult to get out of this mess. What we need to do is to:

• Shrink the bureaucracy – agencies, departments, and entitlements. Start with unnecessary agencies, such as the Consumer Affairs cr@p, Eliminate the Education Dept., HUD, HHS, and Energy.
• Make a deal with the states – we’ll reduce the amount your citizens have to send to Washington, if you will take over providing the services – Welfare, Social Security, and other entitlements. National educational mandates dropped, in return for reduction in money sent in the form of block grants. EPA out of your face, with encouragement to work with other states, mostly regional (the prairie states can set up a regional structure, the Great Lakes already have a Compact that has them working in concert, New England states can do the same). And, for example the Coastal states can arrange to have their representatives meet to set up cooperative agreements on fishing, flood control, a regional Coast Guard intercept of smuggled goods. States along the Mississippi could work together, as well.
• Some services would remain, such as national defense. That would have a SMALL core of regular military, augmented with state and regional National Guards (I’m anticipating that the smaller states will work together). National Weather Service, which would provide the monitoring with the assistance of local reporters (as the ARES, manned by amateur radio operators, does). Each state would provide a portion of the cost, depending on the number of residents, legal or not. All states would pay the same per-capita amount.
• States would be free to allow cross-state purchasing of insurance. That would do a lot to reduce the cost.
• Smaller states could purchase services from larger ones, rather than set up the structures themselves. One example is the IOWA testing service. I took the IOWA tests when I was young. They were a fair assessment of what basic skills the students learned each year. The tests have been validated over many years, unlike many of the newer state tests.

We won’t win by making a Big Push to solve this, for once and for all. It’s necessary to work incrementally, chipping away at the Encrusted Left’s Damage. This mess is not like a party your kids held while you were gone, that can be repaired with a whirlwind effort. It’s more like termite damage. It’s going to require a lot of money, work, and time to fix it.