... 2008, I mean. Democrat and (to some extent) Republican schemes to make every American, no matter how qualified, a homeowner leads to financial disaster, everybody with a business license is lining up for government (taxpayer) largess, the YouTube and Entertainment Tonight generation - people who have no clue in the world how our government actually works or who the key players are - turn a presidential election into a glorified version of American Idol, and now our wonderful elected officials in Washington are getting ready to vote on and pass a ONE TRILLION dollar stimulus bill without even so much as reading it.

We - and by "we," I means those of us who actually work and pay the taxes that keeps this government behemoth well fed - have completely lost control.

Have you heard about some of the people lined up at the stimulus trough? The latest? Newspapers! You got it .. newspapers want some of the bailout money. This isn't new, actually. I remember an article a few weeks ago where someone was suggesting that the government set up a fund - taxpayer money of course - to pay journalists and writers who lost their jobs. An excuse? Yup - this joker had an excuse. These people and their precious journalistic abilities were just too important to our culture to let them actually go out and have to find a job out of their field if they find themselves laid off. So ... to save them the pain of having to find a job they don't particularly like, the government needs to step forward and pay them ... I guess pay them to write stuff. Of course, if the government is paying them you can bet they're going to write stuff that will make the government happy. Just like those government-funded global warming "scientists."

Right now Ford Motor Company is offering cars with 0% car loans. Do you want to know how they pulled this off? With GMAC, that's how. It seems that General Motors only has a minority stake in GMAC, and GMAC is now using bailout money to make these car loans available to Ford buyers. So, what's wrong with this? Well, if you will remember, Ford said it didn't need any bailout money. They were going to do this on their own. So now we have Ford competing against the other two-thirds of the Big Three with 0% car loans made possible by government bailout money. In short, the politicians picked a winner here, and the winner was Ford. You didn't get to pick .. the government picked for you. The one company that didn't need bailout help now has a government-funded advantage over the two companies that did.

Also in line .. in case you aren't keeping a scorecard here ... the U.S. steel industry. Orders of steel from domestic manufacturers are down. What to do? Why, get the government to spend more taxpayer money on steel orders, that's what? These companies can't sell their products on the free market, so they ask the government to make a consumer choice the consumers clearly don't want to make.

Back to my theme: Clearly we have lost control of this process. Government is in the ascendancy, individual liberty, self-reliance and economic freedom are the losers. The politicians in Washington have no real fear of the voters. They know that in all probability they are going to be reelected no matter what they do. The true allegiance of these people in the congress is to the big donors and business interests that provide the bulk of the campaign cash. They just spend year after year building a power base and adding on the privileges and perks. It truly has become an imperial congress. If you want a definition of "imperial," try this one: "characterizing the rule or authority of a sovereign state over its dependencies; domineering; imperious."

Several weeks ago I made a suggestion as to how we might put the fear of God into our rulers in Washington. I got the idea from Georgia's Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine and just expanded on it a bit. Since we all have rather short attention spans (go ahead, name your two Senators and your Congressman) I thought I would remind you of the idea here today.

We need a Constitutional Convention. More specifically, we need a Constitutional Convention called for the sole purpose of adding three specific amendments to the United States Constitution. The convention would consider these three amendments ... and nothing further. Two-thirds of the States need to pass a resolution calling for such a convention, and those resolutions need to be specifically worded so as to limit the purpose of the convention to these three amendments. Without that limitation we're going to have left-wing fools trying to add amendments guarantying such things as a right to a job, a place to live and health care. Not good.

So .. what are the three amendments? (You don't listen to me all that much, do you?) Very simple ...

1. An amendment to the Constitution repealing the 16th Amendment. What is the 16th Amendment? That would be the income tax. By repealing the 16th Amendment the Congress would be forced to come up with a new way of generating the revenue needed for the legitimate functions of our government.
   
2. An amendment repealing the 17th Amendment. The 17th Amendment calls for the popular election of U.S. Senators. Before the 17th Amendment each state legislature would appoint that state's two Senators. The congressmen were in Washington to represent the people, and the Senators were there to represent the states. Right now the government of Mexico has an official representative in Washington; the government of New Mexico does not. This enables the federal government to run roughshod over the states with unfounded mandates and other federal demands. Give the state governments a voice in Washington .. repeal the 17th Amendment.
   
3. An amendment setting term limits for members of the House of Representatives. Give them three terms, then send them home. Yes, I know, there are some people we would truly like to keep up there to pursue some worthy objectives, but in the balance we're hurt by those who spend taxpayer money to solidify their power than we are would be by sending the few good representatives home at the end of six years.

Now .. here's the reality here. The Congress would probably never permit this Constitutional Convention to be called. As soon as they saw state legislatures passing the resolutions to bring these things to pass we would see the members of congress trying to beat the citizens to the punch. No ... they're not going to send the choice of Senators back to the states, and they're unlikely to set term limits for themselves. But we might actually see some movement on the repeal of the 16th Amendment and serious consideration given to the FairTax.

Dreaming? Maybe so, but maybe not. Get the right grassroots organization formed to push this idea for a Constitutional Convention and you just might rattle some cages in Washington. Who knows? Maybe the people might start counting again.