From The Dept. Of Dr. Woody Explains It All For You: Constitutional Amendments

Remember the ERA?

This is a message intended for all the good-hearted, optimistic, angry, disappointed people who were caught by surprise by the SCROTUS ruling in C.U. v. FEC who hope that Donna Edwards' amendment, introduced today, to roll back "CU v. FEC" will be effective and or adequate or if it is even plausible, and not some rhetorical 'life-saver' tossed over the side by a distracted passenger.

Regard the ERA. The simplest, most straight-forward of propositions: Equality, simple justice. Got through Congress in '72. Never passed in 38 States. Thirty Eight years ago.

Passage of a constitutional amendment requires completion of some combination of Congressional, State legislative, and State referenda. There are a couple of sine qua nons: It requires the affirmative vote of 67 Senator...and of 291 Congresscritters PLUS the popular vote of three/quarters (38) States, either in legislative or popular vote. It is not a walk in the park, and it will be made all the more difficult in this case by the determined and unregulated opposition to it from the very people the decision has liberated to purchase the results of any vote in which they take an interest.

And the fact, simple and true, is that the level of the bar (so to speak) for passage of a Constitutional amendment was set exponentially higher with the decision the proposed amendment would be designed to circumvent, in an environment wherein the opponents of such a measure would be unconstrained either by cost or truth to defeat it and retain their privilege and power.

With all the existing capacities to impede, or completely reject in the Congress legislative measures which anger the Owners, the additional power of the opponents inexhaustible purses will be virtually unlimited, in that they can reward and /or punish elected legislators and regulators, without fear of any legal censure: they'll hold the balls/pubes of EVERY elected official gripped tightly in their moneyed fists.

Nobody alive today will live to see that Amendment enacted...nor any of their children, either...