Month: April 2015

Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico is Co-Chair of the Article V Caucus and a leader of the Article V movement.  I finally was able to get through to her today, and we had a good conversation about the Reagan Amendment, and what, specifically, it would mean for New Mexico.  She will come to the Seattle legislative summit, and feels good about the chances of convincing House Speaker Tripp to accompany her.  She also agreed to discuss it with her Co-Chair, Senate Majority Whip Kevin Lundberg of Colorado.  Colorado is still in session, and Kevin is very busy.  I’ll get to him myself when they adjourn on May 11.

New Mexico is purple, and the Democrats control the Senate.  When I talk to Speaker Tripp about the Reagan Amendment, I’m going to ask him if he thinks it would be worthwhile to approach Senate President Mary Kay Papen with the idea.  The Reagan Amendment would be very good for New Mexico.  The feds own 34% of it.  Perhaps the best interests of New Mexico will prevail in a contest with her Democratic partisanship.  This will be a test case.  President Papen and the Speaker of the Colorado House are the only Democratic presiding officers of any legislative chamber west of the Mississippi, save the coast.  She is, presumably somewhat moderate, though I don’t know that.  I honestly don’t know how she’ll react to the Reagan Amendment.  Horror, probably.  It’ll be interesting.

Next is Nevada.  My target is Senate Majority Leader Michael Roberson.  First I’ll approach one of the five cosponsors of the CoS in the Nevada Assembly.  They know Article V, and they’ll understand the Reagan Amendment.  They’ll get me to Roberson.  This will be a very interesting conversation.  Roberson’s a lawyer, and smart.  He’s probably going to run for the U.S. Senate next year.  The Reagan Amendment has enormous implications for Nevada.  The feds own 83% of it.  Politicians in Nevada love to get up and raise hell about this, but they’ve never been able to do anything about it.  Roberson could.  The Reagan Amendment is no fantasy.  It could happen.  It’s very much in Roberson’s political interest to join our team.  I’m hoping he’ll be a leading member.

Marco Rubio has everything it takes to become President of the United States.  Unlike his fellow Cuban-American Senator, he comes across as a very nice, pleasant man.  He has what Reagan had, and Cruz lacks: humility.  The very best politicians have that.  Actually, the best people have that.  I’m very glad Marco is giving up his Senate seat.  To me, that speaks volumes.  That’s what Barry Goldwater did in 1964.  And Marco shouldn’t make a career of the Senate.  It would kill his soul.  I know of what I speak.  And if he became a great legislator, which he could, he wouldn’t necessarily help his chances of becoming President.  Ask Bob Dole.

I hope Marco is our next Vice President.  And I hope he performs well in that job, and is elected himself.  I like this man.  The Republicans can’t win without Florida, and he could deliver it.  It’s a no-brainer.

I should have left the legislature after six years, but I deluded myself into thinking we were going to take the House, and I’d  be Speaker.  My wife didn’t believe me, and she made me put it in writing.  She keeps it in her desk, and shows it to me every once in a while.

They’re like elephants.

Someone, I think Dave Guldenschuh, saw Ted Cruz’ father at a political event.  He’s for a BBA, but was noncommittal on Article V.  That reflects his son’s views.  John Steinberger, in South Carolina, pressed Ted on it, and was told, well, yes, I’m for using Article V.  John had to coax it out of him.  Cruz has publicly expressed caution, even skepticism, when it comes to Article V.

Cruz knows this is bullshit.  The time we live in cries out for the use of Article V.  He knows that because he may be the smartest man in America.  Alan Dershowitz, the greatest legal mind of our time, assures us of that.   If only I’d had Dershowitz as a law professor I might be almost as smart as Cruz.

Cruz is playing footsie with the Birchers and Eagle Forum.  Doesn’t want to piss them off.  He thinks he’s being a smart politician.  But he’s outsmarting himself.

He’s just showing he lacks balls.

The Balanced Budget Amendment Convention can not propose an amendment that does not clearly and directly help to balance the federal budget.  If it does anything more, it’s a “runaway”.  The Federal Lands Commission, created to transfer federal land to the states, with the feds retaining a beneficial interest in the proceeds of that land’s development, clearly fits the bill.  It would generate tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars to the Treasury.  Serious regulatory reform would have an even greater impact on the Treasury.  The economic expansion which would result from such a reform would provide so much revenue to the Treasury that we would not only balance the budget, we could start paying down the debt.

So, how do we do that?  Lew Uhler’s been giving it a lot of thought.  He’s 83, but he is still a very intelligent and informed man, with vast experience at the upper levels of policy making.  We talked at length today, and he’s assembled a bundle of reading material for me. I told him I’d ordered Philip Hamburger’s “Is the Administrative State Unconstitutional?”  Some of the material he’s sending me is from Hamburger.  We agree with Hamburger, and a growing body of conservative legal scholars, that it’s all unconstitutional.  A regulation is, for all intents and purposes, a law, except it was not introduced, no Congressional hearings were held, no legislature debated and voted, and no chief executive signed it.  In creating the EPA and other federal agencies, Congress unconstitutionally delegated its law making power.  True regulatory reform would simply eliminate such rule making authority from all federal agencies.  If the EPA wanted to regulate something, it would have to ask Congress to pass the regulation in the form of a statute.

That’s the elegant way to do regulatory reform.  It would do wonders for the economy, and thus for the Treasury.  It fits within the call.  The problem is not legal, it’s political.  I was hoping to find something in Hamburger’s book that might help us frame this thing, politically, so it doesn’t scare the horses.  I need the support of the gal down at the 7-11.  Would this scare her?  If I asked her, she’d say no.  I have a pretty good idea of where she comes from.  But what would our opposition say?  That we’re radicals?  Reactionaries?

Are the American economy, and the well being of the American people, dependent on the rule making power of federal agencies?  Is our modern society so complex, and in such need of regulation, that it can’t function without constantly being regulated?  What, exactly, is being regulated, and why?  Is the need for regulation so great that Congress would be unable to cope?  I don’t know the answer to all these questions.  I’d like to have some answers before the August 3rd Legislative Summit in Seattle.  I have no intention of composing a draft Amendment for consideration, and that will not be the product of the Summit.  But when we talk about regulatory reform I want to know what I’m talking about.  The Federal Lands Commission is pretty straightforward, and the impact it would have is easily predictable.  What I want to do with regulatory reform  — declare the rule making power of federal agencies to be unconstitutional  —  is also pretty straightforward.  Its impact would be enormous.  How would it work in the real world?  What would actually happen if it were adopted?  Someone, somewhere, has thought about that, and written about it.  I want to hear what other people think.  And then I want to really think this through, politically.

My first campaign was for class President of the third grade at St. Cornelius in Richmond, California.  None of us had the slightest idea of what being a class President meant, but Sister Mary Joseph wanted to have an election.  This was one of the sweetest women I’ve ever met in my life.  She was only in her early twenties, and very petite.  There were 54 of us in her classroom every day, and she never had a disciplinary problem.  We were well behaved little Catholic boys and girls, in uniform.  Sister Mary Joseph liked me, but she liked to bring me down a peg or two.  For my own good.  I think that’s why we had the election.  I lost to Don James, a chalk board monitor.  But I learned something in my loss, which has been of great value.

Most of the girls voted for me.

It’s not blue.  It’s purple, for the purposes of Article V.  The legislature is split, Republican House, Democratic Senate.  Biddulph has made contact with a Minnesota mega-donor who bankrolled last year’s Republican victory in the House.  This guy put in a call to the Speaker and asked him to meet with the Task Force.  We’ll have a cc with the Speaker and the Majority Leader later this week.  We’ll urge him to adopt the Maine strategy.  There they have a split legislature as well.  The Maine Senate will try to pass our bill, and dump into the Democratic House, where it will die.  If all goes according to plan, this will be an issue in the 2016 legislative elections.   There’s always the possibility, however remote, that a chamber controlled by the Democrats would even pass it.  It hasn’t happened in 30 years, and pigs don’t fly, but you never know.  I’ll be on the call mainly to encourage the Speaker and Majority Leader to be at the August 3rd meet in Seattle.  I want as many states there as possible, and these guys could learn a lot about Article V.

Politics is simple.  It’s arithmetic.  But you have to know what you’re counting.  In Presidential elections, you don’t count votes, you count the electoral college.  Under Article V, population doesn’t count.  States count.  And state legislatures count.  Right now, when you’re talking about an Article V Convention, there are 31 red states.  That total includes five states that most people think of as purple.*  There are seven purple states, including three that are normally thought of as blue.**  The last twelve are blue.

This means that a 2016 Amendment Convention would be completely controlled by red and purple states.  This is why a fear of a runaway is so misplaced.  It simply couldn’t happen.  Do the math.  Add up the numbers.  And it’s why we should be able to propose the Reagan Amendment at the Convention.  It is in my opinion entirely possible to put together a 26 state coalition to do it.  If Congress plays ball it will be ratified at state conventions.  This will be the biggest hurdle.  It’s impossible to know in advance how it would turn out.  But if the delegates are elected in a low turnout special election, it’s very winnable.  You’d even have a shot at some of the twelve blue states, like Maryland, Illinois and Oregon.  It would be tough in purple places like Maine, Washington and Minnesota.  But it could be done.  It’s just politics.  You run a campaign, as does the opposition, and the people decide.  Win or lose, you live with it.

It could fail, but that won’t be the end of Article V.  An orderly Amendment Convention will have convened, elected officers and adopted procedural rules, deliberated, voted on a proposal, and adjourned.  No runaway.  No talk of a runaway.  Article V is now in the political mainstream, available to liberals and conservatives alike.  The delegates from the 50 states will have enjoyed the entire experience.  They will have made history, win or lose, and they’ll want to do it again.

And they will.

*Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

**  Washington, Minnesota, and Maine.

It’s a luxury good.  How much is enough?  We should decide that democratically, but Congress unconstitutionally delegated its power to decide to a bureaucracy, the EPA.  That agency is under the control of environmental fanatics.  They are totalitarians at heart, and believe we should all learn to live with less.  Property rights mean nothing to them.  All must be sacrificed before the goddess Gaia.  The earth is their religion.

These are the people who will fight the Reagan Amendment the hardest.  With its promise of opening up large areas of the West to resource development, it is anathema to them.

To secure ratification of the Reagan Amendment, a political campaign will need to be conducted.  It will have to be, in scale, equivalent to a Presidential campaign.  The stakes will be just as high.  Actually, higher.  Because the Reagan Amendment would represent a turning point in American political history.  And everyone will know it.

I’m not qualified to run such a campaign.  There are true professionals who are.  I just hope to get my two cents in.  Who will run this campaign?  The Koch brothers?  I hope not.  They mean well, but they get taken in by political hustlers like Karl Rove.  Come to think of it, no one will run it.  Everybody will have to pitch in.  There will be no real coordination.  The energy industry will come up with the money.

I hope they spend it wisely.  We have a good story to tell.  In Alaska, selling the development of ANWR is easy.  Everyone’s afraid Alaskans will ruin their environment with their greed.  Bullshit.  No one cares about Alaska like the people who live there.  Trust me.  Look at the Pebble Mine, the largest concentration of undeveloped mineral wealth in North America.  It’s a mountain of gold, and it won’t be touched.  It lies at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, one of the great fisheries of the world.  The people who live there don’t want this mine, and it’s not going to happen.

And that’s their decision.  That’s the way such decisions should be made, not by some pencil pushing nerd in Washington.   That’s the story we have to tell the American people.

It’s a matter of communication.  And in the age of the internet, the truth gets out.