Month: July 2015

For some reason politicians don’t take advantage of the opportunity protestors represent.  Let’s say you’re Donald Trump and a bunch of pro-immigration protestors show up at one of your events.  You don’t have security show them the door.  You ask them to send their spokesperson up to the stage to explain their point of view.  After they’ve made their case you politely ask a few questions, such as “Do you think we should control our borders?” and “How many immigrants should we allow into the country?” or “How many people want to immigrate to America from around the world, and is there any way we should give priority to certain types of immigrants?”

The ensuing dialogue would be entertaining and informative.  And newsworthy.  This technique works with all protestors.  If an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street protests your speech, bring one of them up on the stage to explain their point of view.  Then ask them a few questions.  With the entry of Gov. Walker today we have fifteen Republican candidates.  Do any of them have the brass to do this?

I have eclectic interests, and visit a lot of websites, from Instapundit to the Daily Kos.  The Unz Review is an alternative right wing site that just posted my last entry, “Scientific Affirmative Action.”  As a result 1100 new visitors have logged in, and I must say it’s gratifying.  I’ve been blogging for close to two years and this is way more action than I’ve had before.  This blog is a chronicle of the campaign for an Article V Balanced Budget Amendment, and for Article V in general.  It’s also a place for me to vent and reminisce.  I started writing a regular column when I was a sophomore in high school, and have always enjoyed putting words in print.  So the traffic is encouraging.  Coincidentally, Michael Callahan of a website called ArticleVProjecttoRestoreLiberty.com has asked to feature this blog, and I’m happy to oblige.

The first meeting of the Federal Assembly takes place in twelve days and in order to gin up attendance I’ll fly to San Diego on the 22nd.  The next three days will be spent at ALEC trying to encourage people to come.  If we can’t get a Presiding Officer to participate or appoint a designee I think we should have any legislator from a state to represent it.  A Republican from California could say that while a California delegation to an Amendment Convention would not support One Vote, One State, it would not support going beyond the scope of the call to take up matters extraneous to a BBA.  This could be based on the debate that took place when the California legislature passed the Wolf-pac Article V Resolution to overturn Citizens United.  Such a statement from a minority Republican might not be particularly persuasive, but it would be better than nothing.

If we can’t get New Mexico Speaker Don Tripp, we’ll have Rep. Yvette Herrell talk about New Mexico, and One State, One Vote, One Amendment.  She might not make the cut into the documentary, because we’ll get Speaker Tripp to film a short segment after the meeting is over.  But she can certainly contribute to the discussion at the meeting.

The meeting is not as important as the product   — the documentary  —  of which it is a part.

I just read that I’m now a minority in California.  Does this mean whites can’t be discriminated against any more, now that we, too, are a minority?  Don’t hold your breath.

In the hierarchy of victimhood black Africans are at the top of the heap.  If you’re from Kenya you qualify, even if you’re just off the boat.  At the bottom are whites and Asians.  Why, exactly, Asians can be discriminated against in favor of Kenyans is a bit of a mystery, but there it is.  In the middle are Hispanics, American Indians, Pacific Islanders, and, I believe, Australian aborigines, although I’m not sure about that one.

If you’re from Spain you’re Hispanic, but you’re white, too.  What’s to be done with you?  There are Mexicans who are as “white” as I am, but for some reason they get first dibs.  Why?

It’s all very confusing, so I propose a scientific form of affirmative action, one based on DNA.  Everybody will have their racial identity established by DNA, and your score will determine the extent to which you may be discriminated against.  American blacks average about 20% white blood, so as long as you scored an 80 on the blackness of your blood you’d qualify for the head of the line.  If you’re all white and/or Asian, go to the rear.  If you’re like Obama, half and half, you’d only get a 50% preference.  If you can show some Indian blood  — say 10%  — you get to move up ten places.  Some Hispanics are white, some are black, some are Native American, and most are some combination.  Black and Native American Hispanics qualify for full affirmative action.  But if you’re a half white Hispanic, according to your DNA, you only get a 50% boost.  Ted Cruz, eat your heart out.

Science will prevent cheating.  Sen. Elizabeth Warren may or may not deserve to be given a leg up because she’s 1/32 Indian.  Let’s test her and find out.  And all officials of the NAACP need to be tested to make sure nobody’s passing for black.  And here’s a dirty little secret:   there are Italians and Portuguese who pass themselves off as Hispanic, and these cheating bastards are getting away with it.  In 1972 at UCLA Law School my classmate Robert Rosario was exposed as a fake Hispanic.  He was a Goddamn Italian, and he lied about it.  He was a pretty good guy so nobody did anything about it.  But that kind of fraud is a stain on the good name of affirmative action.

There are blacks that barely qualify  — they’re like 7/8 white.  Since they’re infected with all that guilty white blood, why should they be given equal treatment with someone who’s all black?  It’s unjust.

In politics, minorities tend to vote as a bloc.  Whites in California will soon be behaving like all ethnic minorities have since the founding.  When you’re outnumbered it pays to stick together.  It’s science.  It’s also, of course, racist.

When blacks vote 97% for Obama it’s a non-story.  But when whites in California begin voting 65% or 75% for one candidate it will be the return of the Klan.  Here’s a prediction:  the odds on favorite for the U. S. Senate, black AG Kamala Harris, is going to lose to a candidate who wins with a white/Chicano alliance.

It might even be a Republican who wins: Rep. Devin Nunes.  And guess what?  He’s not even Hispanic!  His ancestors came from the Portuguese Azores, which means he’s white!  I know Spain and Portugal are right next to each other, with very similar languages, and they used to be one country, and you can no more tell a Spaniard from a Portuguese than you can tell a Norwegian from a Swede, but none of that matters.  He’s not Hispanic.

He’s white!

Dave Guldenschuh has written a comprehensive summary of the recent history of the Article V movement.  When it’s in final form and published  — probably by the Independence Institute  — I’ll link to it.  Our two principal “competitors”, the Convention of States and the Compact, have three or four Resolutions to show for years of effort.  The BBA Task Force has 27.  Dave argues that the best course for all concerned is to unite behind the BBA, have an orderly Convention, and then move on to these other projects.  It makes perfect sense but probably falls on deaf ears.  For a variety of reasons these two groups will soldier on next year.  It’s hard to see them doing much better, but institutional inertia is what it is.  If we all come up short next year, though, Guldenschuh’s argument will carry even more weight.  We would press on, but these other groups will fold their resources into ours.  It will help.

Kasich announces July 21st, and no one this side of heaven has any idea of how well he’ll do.  In a field of fifteen plausible and semi-plausible candidates, nobody knows anything.  Kasich is certainly as smart as any of them, so he can compete. Plus he’s got balls, a record, and is pretty nimble.  You’d be a fool to count him out.  We in the Task Force have been cooperating with Kasich’s people for the entire year.  He’s been very helpful to the cause.  We have no idea of how he intends to campaign, and how much emphasis he’ll place on the BBA and his work to get it passed.

Comparing him to the field he has one outstanding qualification.  As Chairman of the House Budget Committee he fought like a lion for a balanced budget and he delivered.  Nobody else has those kinds of credentials.  And balancing the budget should be a big issue.  Republican primary voters care a lot about it.  They’re worried about unsustainable spending and debt, and the very future of the country.  When Kasich swears he’ll balance the budget, he’s got cred like nobody else.

So it makes perfect sense for him to talk about Article V and the BBA.  The best thing he could do for us is ask his competitors at the first debate if they agree with using Article V to get a BBA.  Ask for a show of hands.  The only people who might hesitate are Walker, Bush and Cruz  — I think.  I’d like to know.  In addition to helping us, such a question has an obvious subtext, i.e.what have you done to promote it?  If you’ve done nothing, why not?  I, John Kasich, have traveled 20,000 miles to lobby state legislatures.  That’s how strongly I feel about it.  That’s leadership.

Jobs and the economy will decide the election, and a BBA fits nicely in that paradigm.  Barring an intervention by the devil the Republican should coast to a win.  No Democrat has an economic recovery plan that doesn’t fall back on the federal government.  Minimum wage, infrastructure, job training, stimulus, blah blah blah.  It’s all government.  Nothing new.  Nothing remotely credible.  Pure bullshit.  The Republican can talk about regulatory reform, balancing the budget, cutting taxes, privatization, eliminating entire departments and agencies  — growth, growth, growth, private sector growth.  Why in the name of God would you vote for four more years of what we’ve had for the last eight?  The Democrats are the party of government and government has never been held in such low esteem.  How can we lose?

Lots of ways, of course.  All of us, every one, know nothing.  The stakes are high and the game is on.  The tide rolls.

Political campaigns give candidates the chance to force the media to talk about things they’d really rather not.  The Kate Steinle story is something big media would have but a passing interest in.  An illegal immigrant randomly killing an American isn’t really the kind of thing they want to talk about.  It’s unhelpful.  It’s tragic, of course, but no more newsworthy than any other homicide.  A local story, at most.

Enter the Donald and it’s a national story.  His language was inartful, even inflammatory.  But the point he is making is, of course, true.  Criminal Mexicans come north to prey on Americans because we’re a rich and a lenient country.  Doing time in this country beats the hell out of jail time in Mexico.  Maybe we ought to do something about all this.

And campaigns can keep a story alive when big media wants it to die.  Trump knows all this.  If I’m the Donald I bring it up at the first debate.  I’d ask Bush if he thinks the killer of Kate Steinle came to this country in an act of love.

Trump is smart enough to know he’ll never win the nomination.  But that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy himself.  A natural born showman, he’s having a ball.  And he’ll do what Gingrich did four years ago:  challenge the media.  Push back, hard. He’ll have fun doing it and the Republican base will eat it up.

In the end he’ll go up in flames because that’s just who he is:  a shit disturber, a trouble maker.  The eventual nominee won’t suffer because Trump pissed off Latinos.  But Trump will have performed a service.  He already has.  The story of Kate Steinle needed to be told.  Trump did it.

People who live in San Francisco are an odd lot.  I grew up in the East Bay, and I’m familiar with them.  They are completely full of themselves.  They live in “The City”.  They’re so sophisticated they might as well be Europeans.  And they’re hip, and with it, and smart.

I guess they are smart, in some ways.  Actually, there are a whole lot of really smart people  — by almost any definition  — who are complete idiots when it comes to politics.  I’ve seen it again and again over the course of my life.  Einstein was probably the smartest guy in the 20th century, yet when it came to politics he was like a ten year old child.  Herbert Hoover was a brilliant engineer who was one of the dumbest Presidents ever, right up there with his fellow engineer Jimmy Carter. Without exception, scientists and engineers are completely incompetent in politics.  Because they’re smart as hell at what they do, they think they should be smart at politics as well.

Bullshit.  Science and engineering are black and white, straight lines, right and wrong.  Politics is an art.

There are a lot of Kate Steinle stories out there, stories the media won’t touch.  Trump can be relied upon to bring them to our attention.  Good for him.

I got carried away a couple days ago and compared the 2016 election to 1932.  Over the top.  Sorry about that.

A better comparison would be 1828  — now that was an election that mattered.  Campaigning against Washington corruption and a return to Constitutional principles, Old Hickory rallied the forebears of the Tea Party to a new political era: The Age of Jackson.

But no one like Andrew Jackson will ever be elected President again, unless this country fears for its very existence.  He was a radical man, almost a savage.  But if you know your history you know that the Louisiana Purchase was ratified at the Battle of New Orleans, and that Texas and the spoils of the Mexican War can be laid at his feet.  Next to Washington he was the most consequential President we’ve ever had.

Next time you have a twenty dollar bill in your hand look at the portrait of the man who finished the job that Washington started.

Making a nation.

There are around fifteen Republicans running for President.  None of them, including John Kasich, is advocating the use of Article V to reform Washington.  Kasich is all in on a BBA, but he never talks about Article V, except as a vehicle to a balanced budget.  He openly hopes Congress gets the message and passes a BBA itself, thus eliminating the necessity of an Amendment Convention.  Why doesn’t at least one of these bright and well informed politicians embrace Article V wholeheartedly, and advocate its use not just for a BBA, but for the restoration of federalism, a bedrock constitutional principle honored mainly in the breech?  I don’t know.

Why not explain that the Framers foresaw a day when the Congress itself would be so corrupted that political reform would need to come from the states, and the people?  Argue that the day foreseen by the Framers has indeed arrived, and that the remedy they provided us  –Article V  — stands ready and waiting.

Over the last year and a half on this blog I’ve made the case for Article V as the vehicle for completely turning this country around.  Everybody has had it to here with Washington D.C. corruption and dysfunction.  Electing a Republican President would help put things right, but based on the last 35 years of experience you’d be a fool to think it would really solve our problems.  Those problems are institutional in nature, and require an institutional solution.  The Federal Assembly has the potential to be such an institution.  It can be an overseer of the federal government.  If we can get one Amendment Convention under our belt, the Federal Assembly can emerge as a forum for organizing repeated Amendment Conventions, one every two years.  Once the principle has been established that the States, with Article V, are the master of the federal government the people will realize that they are the masters of their state governments, and thus of the country.  Helplessness in the face of oncoming tyranny will be replaced by hope in a return to the Constitution as it was written.

It’s a pleasant tale to tell.  But no one tells it.  Is it that far fetched?  Why not run it up the flagpole, and see if anyone salutes?  I’m missing something.

What is it?