I hear ya Wally, and agree with these changes. However I wouldn't trust the delegates to the convention and they would have the power to do WAY more harm than good.
Deziner, you got your comment in while I was writing my response, but this answers your question too.
The whole worry about a "runaway convention" is based on a false premise. First off, the Convention of States
is not a Constitutional Convention, per se. They're not able to create a new Constitution. They can only come to an agreement as to new amendments to the current Constitution, or repeal of earlier ones, that they'd then propose for ratification. This is the same thing that the Congress has the power to do today, but are way to gridlocked to do anything. Then, the Convention of States' proposed amendments would individually go through the same process of being ratified by 3/4 of the states. It's all covered in Article Five of the Constitution. It's just like the first ten amendments. Twelve were proposed and the states only ratified ten of them.
Here's an explanation for you from Wikipedia:
Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the process whereby the Constitution, the nation's frame of government, may be altered. Altering the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment or amendments and subsequent ratification. Amendments may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate
or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the state legislatures.[1] To become part of the Constitution, an amendment must be ratified by either—as determined by Congress—the legislatures of three-fourths of the states or State ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states.