Day: March 15, 2015

Pro-life community shows its support

Last night supporters of the Eastern Shore Pregnancy Center turned out in force to assist the organization with its 2015 goals. The occasion was the first annual spring coffeehouse and benefit concert fundraiser, held at Providence Presbyterian Church.

Youth was the rule for the music at this event, beginning with an a capella group of young children called Rivers of Living Water and also featuring a group of 13-year-old triplets called (naturally enough) Triple Praise. Both sang spirituals and hymns, with Triple Praise employing recorded background music.

Even the adult groups tended to be on the youthful side, with Beauty for Ashes dedicating songs to their young children featured in the slide show that was playing behind them.

The married couple leading this group has a pair of three-year-old twin girls.

Similarly, Steve and Olivia (or Liv and Steve, as they billed themselves) are also recent parents. This shot also gives you an idea of how many were there – my guess is about 150 people.

In their own way, all four groups were entertaining although none of them played more than a handful of songs. The event was only a couple hours long and it also featured testimony from a young parent of three named Danaica Pierrot as well as remarks from ESPC Executive Director Jacquelyn Seldon.

Seldon was pleased about the progress the ESPC has made since acquiring a sonogram unit last year, but outlined a couple of worthy goals for this year: spreading the message on billboards near local university campuses in order to reach college-age prospective parents, and following up on the permission they were granted by the Wicomico County Board of Education to promote their services in the local high schools.

Of course, this event was also serving as a fundraiser. And while there were envelopes and donation slips on each table, the opportunity was also there to bid on a number of interesting, intriguing, and useful items. This was just one of three long tables the group had, with 35 different lots up for bids.

With the silent auction and the table top appeals, I’m pleased to report the event raised over $4,000 for the ESPC. But then that’s not to say they won’t take donations outside the event as well, and they definitely can use them because the need is there. They’re not getting even a tiny fraction of the $528 million Planned Parenthood received from government, in part as PP “fought abortion stigma in popular culture.”

I’m probably injecting far more politics in this report than many would feel comfortable with, for it was truly an apolitical event. Yet I would wager that most of those attending last night’s benefit would not participate in that “stigma” but would instead encourage and counsel those who made that choice. For those who are expecting, though, the range of options is much larger than groups like Planned Parenthood would have you believe, and the worthy goal of the ESPC is to bring that number who choose abortion in the Salisbury region down from its present 300 or so to as few as possible.

Will Maryland join a Convention of States or an Article V Convention?

By Cathy Keim

The push for an Article V Convention is growing nationwide, and it is coming from both sides of the political spectrum. The citizens are aware that they are not being heard and they are looking for ways to correct this.

An Article V Convention or Convention of the States is one of two ways to amend the Constitution of the United States. In case you’ve forgotten, here is Article V:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, (emphasis added) or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate

All previous amendments have been through Congress. However, the Convention of States method has been utilized to put pressure on Congress to act. For example, the states wanted to have direct election of their senators but Congress would not oblige – so the states began the process of calling for a convention of states. Once they got within one state of achieving the two thirds needed, Congress acted rather than losing its prerogative. (This led to the Seventeenth Amendment.)

Maryland has legislation under consideration now which states:

Applying to the U.S. Congress for an amendments convention called under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states, to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that affirms every citizen’s freedom to vote and restores free and fair elections in America.

This bill is filed as HJ2 by Delegate Sheila Hixson and is cross-filed with SJ2 by Senator Paul Pinsky. It was introduced last session also, but did not come to the floor for a vote. (Editor’s note: The Senate version from 2014, however, passed committee 9-2 with all three Republicans on the Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee voting yes.)

Reading the bill summary left me perplexed. Who thinks we need an amendment to restore free and fair elections? My mind thought of voter fraud, but who would want to amend the Constitution to fix that issue? After some phone calls to Delegate Hixson and Senator Pinsky’s offices, though, the confusion was cleared up.

This bill is the result of the work of Get Money Out of Maryland (GMOM) and its allies. They claim to be bipartisan, but the groups in the allies list lean distinctly progressive.

The bills have a total of sixty-nine sponsors of which two are Republicans, so I suppose that makes it bipartisan.

GMOM states:

The Citizens United v FEC decision by the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for unlimited campaign expenditures in elections, which corporations and the extremely wealthy have used with devastating impact in the last few elections. This misguided decision reversed decades of campaign finance regulation at the state and federal level, turning our public elections into private auctions. With regard to voting rights, Supreme Court justices in the Bush v Gore decision declared that there is no individual right to vote in the Constitution and in its aftermath, there has been a concerted attack upon the right to vote across the country. These legal travesties require remedy if we are going to preserve representative democracy and create a more perfect union. (Emphasis in original.)

According to Senator Pinsky’s spokesman, the principal point of this amendment is that there is too much money in politics since the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case opened the floodgates. GMOM wants the Citizens United ruling reversed so the only option is to exert pressure on Congress via an Article V Convention to amend the Constitution. Their expectation is that Congress will act if the states approach the two-thirds approval level as happened with the direct election of senators.

GMOM states that Vermont, California, Illinois, and New Jersey have already passed the “Democracy” amendment and several other states, such as Maryland, are considering the bill now.

Working from the opposite side of the political spectrum is the group Citizens for Self-Governance which states:

Citizens concerned for the future of their country, under a federal government that’s increasingly bloated, corrupt, reckless and invasive, have a constitutional option. We can call a Convention of States to return the country to its original vision of a limited federal government that is of, by and for the people.

They also add:

Rather than calling a convention for a specific amendment, Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG) has launched the Convention of the States Project to urge state legislatures to properly use Article V to call a convention for a particular subject—reducing the power of Washington, D.C. It is important to note that a convention for an individual amendment (e.g. a Balanced Budget Amendment) would be limited to that single idea. Requiring a balanced budget is a great idea that CSG fully supports. Congress, however, could comply with a Balanced Budget Amendment by simply raising taxes. We need spending restraints as well. We need restraints on taxation. We need prohibitions against improper federal regulation. We need to stop unfunded mandates.

Both sides of the debate assure their followers that the Article V Convention cannot spiral out of control and rewrite the entire Constitution once they convene. Their main defense against this is that any amendment that comes out of the convention still has to be approved by three quarters of the states, thus giving ample room for rogue amendments to be stopped.

You may want to keep an eye on how Maryland’s effort plays out this legislative session – although from the progressive side, it still illustrates the discontent that is growing as citizens realize that their overlords in DC are not listening to them. It is striking (and terrifying) that the progressives feel that President Obama is not doing enough to reach their goals, while the conservatives feel attacked and denigrated by their weak and ineffective leadership under Speaker Boehner and Senate Leader McConnell.

Perhaps the only people happy with the current system are the politicians that are in power and the wealthy elites and crony capitalists that consort with and fund their campaigns. Outside that narrow group, there is a battle brewing.