From the Radio Free Michigan archives ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu. ------------------------------------------------ WHO'S WHO IN THE COS PUSH A tenth state has quietly endorsed a plan that could threaten the Constitution. (Spotlight, March 13, 1995) By Trisha Katson Organizers of the Conference of the States (COS), a revolutionary plan to make structural changes to the Constitution, have gotten their tenth state legislature -- Arizona -- to pass a resolution of participation. COS promoters are quietly trying to line up Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Montana and Nevada as the next states to support what will be historical reenactments or the 1786 Annapolis and 1787 Philadelphia conventions. Three tax-exempt private organizations, funded by U.S. taxpayers and tax-exempt foundations -- the Council of State Governments (CSG), the National Governors Association (NGA), and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) are publicly pushing the COS, without grassroots awareness. The C0S Action Plan outlines intentions to make constitutional, structural, fundamental, long-term changes to our system of government. The first meeting is planned for July 6-9 in Annapolis. A second meeting, which happens to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, is planned for October 22-25. COS delegates will be the nation's governors and four bipartisan leaders from state legislatures. The most prominent COS front man, Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt, will be a voting delegate. In a May 17, 1994 memo, Leavitt, a Republican, said the U.S. government was old-fashioned and outdated for our high tech, global marketplace. "There was a better way" of governing, he added. Previously, globalists have complained that the change in the U.S. economy from an agrarian to an industrial economy made the Constitution obsolete. Leavitt, like House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), cites as authorities futurists like Gingrich guru Alvin Toffler, a global socialist who wants to prepare the United States to be a service information-based economy. This fits into the New World Order plan to make America a colony dependent on the rest of the world for manufactured goods. The CSG was founded with a Rockefeller grant in 1930, as noted by author Jo Hindman in her trilogy of books on the imposition of regional or metropolitan government in America: "Terrible 1313, Blame Metro" and "The Metrocrats." Hindman has documented how, since the United States joined the United Nations in 1945, the CSG has been working to implement UN mandates, specifically Section 8 of the UN Charter, which imposes regionalism on its members. Another group supporting the COS is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC has been a driving force working to get state legislators to support resolutions calling for a constitutional convention ostensibly on the issue of a balanced budget amendment. MODEL RESOLUTIONS The CSG has prepared model resolutions calling for participation in the COS which, since January, have been introduced in state legislatures nationwide by a member of either the Democratic or Republican leadership. The measures are introduced as joint resolutions which are considered "non-controversial." Then the rules are suspended, and with virtually no public debate, they are passed, often by voice vote. The appointed COS delegates will be incorporated and have legal status. The reason the COS is needed, organizers allege, is to restore the "coequal partnership" and balance in the federal-state relationship. Scholars of the Constitution point out, however, that a deliberate imbalance favoring the states was written by the Founding Fathers into the Constitution, making the states sovereign and the federal government an agent of the states. The federal government is granted specified, limited powers under the Constitution and the remaining powers are left to the states and to the people. One example given by COS organizers of how the balance in the state and federal government relationship needs to be restored is the issue of unfunded federal mandates. Yet these governors and state legislators have not fundamentally challenged the authority of the federal government to impose these mandates, but simply requested that block grants be provided to pay for them. If COS actually was going to restore power to the states and truly posed a threat to federal power, there would be some pretty strong opposition by a jealous federal government. To the contrary, the federal government is apparently acting in collusion with the COS planners to support the event. Although a Republican, Leavitt is a Clinton appointee to a federal agency, the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR). The ACIR has been described by Hindman as a UN cell working within the federal government. The ACIR has worked with the CSG on an intergovernmental task force to promote constitutional changes, including proposals to improve on the 10th Amendment. One of the group's suggestions was "Whether a power is one reserved to the states, or to the people, shall be decided by the courts." Another idea was to amend Article V of the Constitution to make it easier to change the document. The NGA and NCSL were listed in 1985 as groups which could select delegates to a proposed convocation of the states to change our form of government. The book, "Reforming American Government," by former Clinton legal counsel Lloyd Cutler's Committee on the Constitutional System, argued in favor of a British-style parliamentary system, where no separation of powers and no checks and balances between the three branches of government would exist. No known opposition to the COS is evident among internationalist special interest groups, whether the UN, the World Trade Organization, the G-7, the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, to mention a few. One would think that any one of them might be concerned that their global interests could be threatened if the states were engaged in a legitimate effort to take power back from the federal government. The COS has been endorsed by Establishment mouthpieces including the Wall Street Journal, the National Journal, pundit George Will, Washington Post columnist David Broder, as well as the self-described conservative Human Events. ------------------------------------------------ (This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Radio Free Michigan archives by the archive maintainer. All files are ZIP archives for fast download. E-mail bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu)