Month: November 2016

Generally speaking, people get the government they deserve.  And the American people are about to get it good and hard.  I’m looking forward to a Clinton Presidency, the same way I look forward to dental surgery.  It will be long and painful, but it’s just something you have to endure.  There will be an end to it, and then the beginning of something new.

I want 2017 to be the start of the Insurrection of the States.  To my mind, the timing is perfect.  Things have gone terribly wrong in this country, and they’re going to keep getting worse.  If the last line of American freedom’s defense, its 7,382 State Legislators, don’t step up and perform their duty now, they probably never will.  If not now, when?  If not us, who?

I know Trump could still win.  Nate Silver gives him a one in three shot, and he knows his business.  But the last shoe just dropped, and James Comey did the Democrats a favor.  Now, at least, we won’t be electing a President under investigation by the FBI.  It’s something.

I’m fairly confident Speaker Ryan will be ineffective in opposition.  He wants to govern, he wants regular order, he wants to work with the President, to compromise.  He’ll do his best, but it won’t be much.  The institution he leads, Congress, is corrupt.  The next Congress will be the same as the last  — feckless, unwilling to fight.

Everybody’s going to be unhappy for the next four years.  Nothing will get done.  We may manage to kick the can down the road, and avoid economic disaster.  I hope so, but that’s the best we can hope for, and it will be a close run thing.

And while all this is going on in Washington, Republican Governors and State Legislators will be governing the States effectively.  They have a lot of problems, but they’ll work through them.  These men and women are, by and large, not corrupt, and are patriotic Americans.  What a contrast to D.C.

Walter Russell Mead thinks “the blue model” is on its last legs, and can’t last much longer.  Tax, tax, tax, spend, spend, spend, elect, elect elect.  It only works for so long, and I think Mead is right, it can’t last much longer.  Detroit was for openers.  Illinois may be next.  Things may get ugly, as all the bills come due.

Never in my long life, and, never, in my opinion, in American history have been conditions so ripe for a revolt against the Center.  People hate Washington and everybody in it.  This is not just from the right.  The young Sanders supporters, like my acquaintance Ryan Clayton of the Young Turks, hate Washington as much as I do.  These liberal idealists want to use Article V against Washington the same way we do.  They want an Article V Convention to propose a campaign finance reform Amendment to the Constitution.  They’ve got Resolutions from five States, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Illinois and California.  All these very liberal Democratic State Legislators have embraced the use, by the States, of Article V to reform the federal government.  Somehow, in the next couple years, we’ll all find something we can work on together.  Wolf-pac wants to overturn Citizens United, and that’s a non-starter.  But campaign finance reform, in general terms, has huge public support.   We just have to find a way to do it without violating the First Amendment.  Maybe there’s a way.

What I’m getting at is that the news from Washington in 2017 is going to be very depressing.  People will ask, Is this the best we can do?  Isn’t there a better way?  And all the while, the battle goes on, State by State, for the first exercise of the Article V power in American history.   At some point, you’d think people would notice.

That should start happening at the end of the month.  Stay tuned.

 

The guardians of the Constitution are the States, acting through their State Legislatures.  They are given the ultimate authority.  If they wanted, they could abolish the Constitution, and start over.  The only thing they can’t do is reduce the equal suffrage of the States in the upper chamber of the federal legislature.

Since the power of the States is essentially unlimited under Article V, there is fear that an Article V Convention would “run away”, that is, exceed the scope of its call.  Our fundamental freedoms under the Bill of Rights could theoretically be eliminated.  An Amendment Convention called for the sole and exclusive purpose of proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment might decide that it wanted to do something else besides.

In which case Congress would be within its rights to refuse to specify how such proposed Amendments would be ratified.  Until Congress does this, the process of Amendment under Article V is brought to a halt.  Further, of course, is the difficulty of getting 38 States to ratify such Amendments.  All it takes to stop an Amendment is one chamber of a State Legislature in 13 States.  With Amendments to the Constitution, many are called, and few are chosen.

Another reason this runaway scenario is so fanciful is the composition of the people with the power, the 7,382 members of our State Legislatures.  I was one for eight years in Alaska, and over the last three years, working with the BBA Task Force, I’ve met hundreds of them, all across the country.  With some exceptions, like California, they’re not professional politicians, and have no desire to become one.  They’re citizen legislators, most of whom make a financial sacrifice in order to serve.  Unlike Congress, few of them are lawyers.  There’s no money in it, unless you’re corrupt, and few are.

A State Legislator is an elected community leader, and it’s considered a great honor.  Your friends and neighbors want you to go to the State Capitol and represent them.  Many of them are personally acquainted with you.  In places like Maine and New Hampshire the number of voters in a State House District is tiny, maybe 10,000.  As a State Senator in Alaska, I had about 50,000 people in my district.  It was where I lived, earned a living, and sent my kids to school.  I was never a very sociable person, but Babbie made a lot of friends, and  we were just members of the community.  If you wanted to ask me a question at the grocery store, I’d be happy to answer, though in my case nobody ever did.  Most State Legislative sessions only last a few months, so you’re living at home in the district almost the whole year.  You’ll answer your own phone, and arrange to meet with anyone in your district on legislative business.  A State Legislator is accountable, unlike a Congressman.

With few exceptions, these people are nothing to be afraid of, especially when about 60% of them are Republicans, and most of those are conservatives.  These are the people who care about where this country is heading, and prove it by running for office.  More than the average citizen, they understand the importance of the Constitution, which every one of them has taken an oath to uphold.  A lot of them take that oath seriously.

So the answer to the question, who guards the Guardians?, is simple.  The people who live in their community.  The answer is, you.  If my State Representative starts messing with the Bill of Rights, he’ll hear from me, face to face.  And I’m not alone.

The crazy thing is, the Guardians are afraid of each other.  Bill Fruth and I have run into this time and time again.  “We’re OK here in Utah, but how about all those other guys?”  I’d tell them that those other guys were a lot like them, but they didn’t believe me.

Fruth and I have finally figured out how to deal with this problem, and it’s why I go into 2017 with such complete confidence.  I’ve always known the Great American Eclipse in August of next year would be somehow symbolic.   Now I’ve figured out how.  The impact of the first use of Article V in our history, to save the Constitution, marks a turning point in our political history, a new beginning.  We’re going to restore our Constitutional form of government, one Amendment Convention at a time.

It starts in 2017.

Starting next Wednesday the final push to 34 States begins in earnest.   Regardless of the election, this year we’re going to pull it off.  After years of preparation, in 2017 we harvest the fruits of our labors.

Article V is easy to explain, but hard to fully appreciate.  For a hundred years the size and scope of the federal government has grown, so that it now has a virtual monopoly of political power, the States reduced to the status of administrative units of the Center.  Together, the Congress, the Supreme Court, and Presidents of both parties have grown the central government, gutted the Constitution, and imposed their will on the American people.  Winning elections, even with a man like Reagan, didn’t make much difference.  Since Newt Gingrich resigned as Speaker, Congress,  regardless of which party was in control, has only made things worse.  Things just get worse quicker under the Democrats.  Big money runs Congress, and that’s not going to change.  Our political system is broken, as shown by the two Presidential nominees it has produced.

The answer to all these problems is Article V, which is nothing more than the States exercising their prerogative of asserting their authority over the federal government.  It’s never been done before.  Very few people are aware that the States have this power, which is virtually unlimited.  The people who are charged with exercising this authority are the 7, 382 members of our State Legislatures.  Most of them, the large majority, have no idea that they have this vital responsibility.  They are the last line of defense of the Constitution, and they don’t even know it.

It takes time to educate them, but they are capable of learning.  In the spring of 2014 the Reagan Project, supported by Lew Uhler’s National Tax Limitation Committee, sent pledge letters to all Republican legislative candidates in Wyoming, right after the filing deadline to run.  I got seven back, two of whom won their primary, and then the general.  Bill Fruth and I each made several trips to Wyoming to lobby the legislators.  We lost on the Senate floor in 2015.  We lost on the House floor in 2016.  But now, with Loren Enns doing the groundwork, and with Eli Bebout as Senate President, all the ducks are in line.  We switched sponsors in 2015, and that was a mistake.  We’re back with Rep. Tyler Lindholm as our prime sponsor, aided by his sidekick, Rep. Dan Laursen.  Wyoming convenes on Jan. 10th.  It should be our 29th State by the first week of February.

Idaho should follow shortly thereafter, then Arizona and Wisconsin, getting us to 32 by the beginning of March.  At that point the fight is on for Montana, South Carolina, and then Kentucky (if the Republicans pick up the House, which all signs point to).  We’d be at 35, meaning a rescission in Maryland wouldn’t stop us.  And we may have gained so much momentum, and publicity, that the Democrats in Maryland might be reluctant to stick their political necks out by stopping a drive to a federal Balanced Budget Amendment.

While all this is happening at the State level, the new administration will be assuming power in Washington.  Cabinet members must be chosen, and confirmed.  There will be a lot of sturm und drang, but nothing will be getting done.  Congress is dysfunctional.  It’s paralyzed by the special interests, or factions, which finance political campaigns.  At the same time as Congress is once again is demonstrating its futility, the States will be organizing to take power away from it, to bring it back to the States, and the people.

The Balanced Budget Amendment is just for openers.  The Second Amendment Convention, should, in my view, should be called for the sole purpose of passing one Amendment.  Call it the Federalist Amendment.  It gives 30 State Legislatures the power to repeal or overturn any federal law or regulation.   It would give the States veto power.  It would change everything.

The Third Amendment Convention?  I say Congressional term limits, but who knows?   Those 7,382 State Legislators will decide what happens.  Acting together, they are the sovereigns of this country.  If they only knew, and now they will.

 

 

Our ideas work, theirs don’t.   Compare California to Texas.  Which one is working, and why?   Compare Reagan to any of those who came after him.  He put this country back on track, with policies that worked.  Bush 1 was Reagan’s third term, but without Reagan.  Instead we got a kinder, gentler and pale imitation of the original.  Which led immediately to Clinton, the phony conservatism of Bush 2, and Obama.

In politics you’re making a sale, and it matters what you’re selling.  The dog food has to taste good, it’s got to do what you say it’s going to do.  Clinton is running for Obama’s third term, but in the final days his record of incompetency is catching up with her.  Obamacare is such a colossal wreck that it could cost her the election.  If she does lose, don’t blame the FBI.  These premium increases are coming at exactly the wrong time.  They open up old wounds.  Why didn’t Obama delay them, on some pretext, for two weeks?   It could prove a fatal mistake.

Or not.  Babbie and I watched the World Series, and the campaign ads were instructive.  These were the best messages the two campaigns have.  Clinton hit him as a sexist pig.  Trump called her a liar and a thief.  Both ads were effective, because they were both true.  But there was flaw in Trump’s ad, perhaps caused by his Achilles heel, his vanity.  The ad ended with a picture of him, and that was a mistake.  The charges in his ad may have been true, but they were being made by a man who is personally loathed.  That’s why he’s a two to one underdog today.  No one is going to change their mind about how they feel about these two.  That’s baked in.  We know who they are.  But that small businesswoman in Michigan, or Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania has to decide which poison to pick.  If she holds Clinton responsible for her Obamacare problems, she may cover her eyes and vote for a man she despises.  Or not.  On such things this election will turn.

Congress looks to stay pretty much the same.  No one even remarks about it anymore, but every two years we get a demonstration of the corruption of Congress.  A few uninformed voters approve of Congress.  Anyone with a brain knows they’re a collection of political whores who have created an incumbency protection racket.  A 98% reelection rate, cycle after cycle.  All they care about is their power and perks.  Most of us that have been in politics have seen what service in Congress does to people.  They start out with the best of intentions, and then they get sucked in to the system, the bubble. Life’s good in the bubble, and they hang on to it for dear life.  Only an outside force  — the States, using Article V — can burst that bubble.

I was thinking about yesterday’s post, and American blacks.  I realized Obama is not one of them.  His father was a Kenyan, not an American, and he dreams of his father.  Real black Americans have an attachment to this country, even when some of them hate white people.  They played an indispensable role in making it.  When Washington marched south with the French, heading for Yorktown, and victory in the War of Independence, as many as 20% of the Americans under his command were free blacks.  A lot of blacks serve in the military today, and wear their uniform proudly.  They’re American patriots.  Obama’s not like them at all.  Deep in his bones he’s a Kenyan, not an American.  Begone with him.

Project 2017, the plan to get 34 States this year, is in the advanced planning stages, and all goes well.  The Presidential election has no bearing on our plans, except to the extent that a Democratic Senate would pose a problem.  But I think we could even overcome that.  Joe Manchin does want to get reelected after all, as do a number of other red State Democrats.  To survive the 2018 midterms, the Senate Democrats can’t be too overtly partisan when it comes to aggregating Article V Resolutions.

We’re about to enter the dark season of the year.  From now until the winter solstice, right before Christmas, every day will be shorter than the one before.  And then the days of light start to come back.

 

I can’t quite understand a lot of the hysteria surrounding this election, as though end times are at hand, and the world will go all to hell if one or the other of these disgraceful people is elected.  This election has no significance, and neither do either of the candidates.  Regardless of who wins, some very difficult days lie ahead.  But we’ll get by.  We always do.  What’s the alternative?

My political life began in 1960, when we elected a charismatic young Senator who had no idea of what he was doing, and got us on to the path to disaster in Vietnam.  Then he was assassinated, a wound that still festers for those my age.  Johnson took over, and the debacle in Southeast Asia came to a head.  He lied about the war, just like he lied about everything else, and was hounded out of office, a national disgrace.  Then the criminal Nixon, the inept Ford, and the fool Carter.  We had eight good years with the Gipper, then the feckless Bush 1.  Then the Clinton crime family had eight years in power, followed by the half witted Bush 2, and then the man who didn’t really like the country he was elected to lead, Barack Obama.  And you’re telling me four more years of this garbage is what is going to finally be the downfall of America?  Rubbish.

Trump’s drawing to an inside straight, and could get lucky.  So what?  Don’t talk to me about judicial appointments.  Judges only run this country when the people actually responsible for running it, in Congress, refuse to do their job.  Give me a Congress with a will, and a leader, and we’ll take this country back, otherwise forget it.  Trump has no idea of what’s involved in being a successful President.  He’s a celebrity, with no real talent, another Kardashian.  He’s run a celebrity campaign, and would be a celebrity President, and a total failure.  If you want to know what kind of a Presidency to expect, look at the way the President-elect ran his campaign, what kind of candidate he was.  Trump is only able to discipline himself for short periods of time, then he gets bored, and wants to do his lounge act.  Since he’s a “Republican” he’d screw things up for the whole party.

The one thing he would do is get us an Article V Convention, but it would not be by design.  He wouldn’t lift a finger to help us get to 34 States.  What’s in it for him?  But with Trump in the White House, and the R’s running Congress, we’d finally get some Democratic legislators to vote for a Balanced Budget Amendment.  It would be a way to restrain Trump’s spending, so they’d like that.  They just don’t want a Democratic President’s spending habits restricted.

But we’re going to get to 34 before long, and when we do it will be the most significant political event since the R’s took Congress in 1994.   What we need is another Newt Gingrich, not another Ronald Reagan.  A month from now I’ll be in D.C, reporting live from Article V Central.  It will be remembered as the tipping point in this whole campaign, which Lew Uhler started nearly 40 years ago.

This election is the reverse of the World Series, where you want both teams to win.  Most Americans want both of these people to lose.  Baseball’s more fun than politics.