Month: December 2016

The President proposes, the Congress disposes.  Without Congress, Trump can accomplish very little.  It’s all right there in the Constitution.

Congress, in the persons of McConnell and Boehner, rolled over and played dead for Obama.  All he had to do was threaten to veto the budget, cause a government shutdown, and blame the Republicans.  That threat was so scary to the Republican leadership that they caved in, every time.  Now, with Trump, they’re starting to sound like a separate branch of government.  They don’t want to cut taxes if it will increase the deficit.

He hasn’t said as much, but you get the impression Trump wouldn’t mind a few trillion dollar deficits, if that’s what it takes to get the 4% growth we need.  Ryan and McConnell might not go along.  What can be done?

What if there was a looming Balanced Budget Amendment, drafted by the States, and passed using Article V?  What if it was proposed at an Amendment Convention in November of 2017?  What if Congress chose to have it ratified by special State Conventions, as happened with the 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition?  What if it was ratified in 2018, and went into full effect in 2019?  Would that influence the deal that eventually gets cut between Trump and Congress on spending?

It should, because all that’s likely to happen.  Fruth will be in Nashville this week working on this summer’s Convention of States.  The Tennessee legislative leadership has some decisions to make.  I think it should be called the Nashville Convention.  Fruth likes the Tennessee Convention.  They need to decide.  And they need to pick a date.  We like 7-11-17 (it sounds lucky), but they have to figure out what they want.  And they need to have an identity, a public face, a spokesman.  Fruth and I like Senator Kelsey, and he seems perfect, along with Speaker Harwell and our sponsor, Rep. Dennis Powers.  Ideally, the three of them would be doing media, explaining everything to the press, but that’s not for me and Bill to say.

I’m arguing strongly that the initial session be held in the chambers of the Tennessee House, with Speaker Harwell gavelling the Convention to order, and the roll call of the States is first made.  This is absolutely perfect, visually.  You have to personally see the Tennessee House Chamber, as I have, to understand just how perfect it is for our purposes.

Words don’t make nearly the impression that sight does.  We remember what we see more than what we hear.  And what the country would see, as the first Convention of States is held in 156 years, is the idealist setting of a serious legislative meeting.  This is what we want people to think that this is what a Convention of States looks like.  It’s serious, somber business, conducted according to strict rules of protocol and procedure.  Everything proceeds in an orderly fashion.

This, this first impression, is the one that will stick with people.  And we want it to be perfect, in every detail.  In honor of the 250th birthday of one of the greatest of Americans, Andrew Jackson, it should be held in the Capitol of his State.  The burial site of one of Jackson’s best men, and one of his successors in office, the great James K. Polk, who completed the work of Manifest Destiny.

In the Capitol it must be.

 

It started on February 9th, 2009, three weeks after Obama was inaugurated. CNBC reporter Rick Santelli went on a rant, and inspired the creation of the Tea Party.  In the 2010 Tea Party election the Republicans picked up six Senate seats, 63 seats in the House (almost a record)  and 680 state legislative seats — and that was a record.  Republicans now had full control of 25 State Legislatures, up from 14.  In 2012 they picked up two more, giving them 27.  In 2014 three more, up to 30.  In 2016 three more, to 33.

Beginning in the 1970’s,  Lew Uhler’s National Tax Limitation Committee had accumulated 32 Article V BBA Resolutions by 1983.  At that point House Speaker Tip O’Neill and the AFL-CIO teamed up with the Alt Right John Birch Society and Phyllis Schlafly to start a rescission campaign.  Sixteen States rescinded their Resolutions, and it wasn’t until 2010 that the tide began to turn.  Florida and Alabama passed Resolutions, bringing the total back up to eighteen.  These were the first such Resolutions passed in 27 years.  The BBA Task Force teamed up with the NTLC and in 2012 convinced New Hampshire to reverse course, cancel its previous rescission, and once more pass an Article V BBA..  It was quickly followed by Ohio and Michigan, and today the Resolution count stands at 28, with just six to go.  With nine target States under Republican control, 2017 should be the year when the magic number of 34 is reached, and the first Article V Convention in American history should take place later this year.  It will be nothing less than a peaceful and constitutional political revolution.  For the first time since 1787, the States will exercise their sovereignty over the federal government.

None of this had anything to do with Donald Trump, with one exception.  It’s fair to say that his campaign in Minnesota gave us the Minnesota Senate, and our ninth target State.  So, thank you Donald Trump.  But our campaign for Article V and the BBA is opposed by Trump.  Shortly before she passed on, Phyllis Schlafly was able to convince Trump to oppose us, and he has, consistently.  Which is fine with us, because we’re bigger than Trump.  He may have a 50% approval rating, our cause is more like 75% approval.  We don’t have his baggage, and we don’t want it.

The international rebellion against the Ruling Class began with Brexit, continues with Trump, and may very well spread all across Europe.  The nations of the world want their national sovereignty back.  And so do the States of our country.  It’s all about taking power away from the Center, and returning it to the States, and the people.

Trump may think he’s leading this parade, but he’s just a part of a much larger political phenomena.  That’s not to denigrate his importance, it’s just to put it into perspective.  Almost all of the serious Republican Presidential candidates of 2016 promised to rein in the federal government.  But Trump spoke with the loudest voice, and won as a result.

I don’t want the Article V movement associated with Trump because I want it to be bipartisan, and there are too many Democrats who will despise Trump no matter what he does.  I’d like some of those Democrats to join the Article V movement.   We’ll need them to help ratify the Balanced Budget Amendment, for one thing.  It takes 38 States, and Republicans will never control that many.  We also want them to join us as full and equal partners in the campaign for Article V Term Limits Resolutions.  With Democrats on board, we should get 34 States for Term Limits very quickly.  The runaway Convention bugaboo will have been discredited, and we should get Term Limits by 2020.

As Trump is showing with his Cabinet picks, he’s turning the ship of state around, and good for him.  But permanent change is beyond his power.  Anything he does can be overturned by an election.  The Article V movement is about institutional change.  Just as the 16th and 17th Amendments institutionalized the Progressive political revolution of 100 years ago, the Balanced Budget and Term Limits Amendments will institutionalize the 2016 Revolt Against the Ruling Class.

The 45th President will come and go.  The 28th and 29th Amendments to the Constitution will be forever.  And there may be more to come.

Don’t tell Herr General McCain and his Oberleutnant Lindsey Graham, but the American people have no desire to mix it up with the Russians.  Or anybody else for that matter.  As the great maritime nation of the world we want the freedom of the seas, and the ability to engage commercially with the rest of the world.  We fought World War One because the Germans tried to prevent our peaceful maritime commerce, and we’ll fight any one who tries it again.  Russia is a land power, and would never be that stupid, so there’s no reason for us to fight them.

When McCain was at the Naval Academy in the 60’s his attitude toward Russia was formed.  It was the Soviet Union back then, and as a Navy fighter pilot McCain was trained and prepared to go to war with them.  Naturally combative, I’m sure he was raring to go.  They were trying to take over the world, and destroy the United States, and they were our mortal enemy.  I’m McCain’s age, and I was certainly willing to fight the Soviets if necessary.  Most young men of my generation felt the same way.

But times change.  The Russians aren’t Communists any more, and they’re not trying to take over the world.  They’re trying to survive, as a nation and a people.  They still haven’t fully recovered from the enormous loss of life they suffered in World War Two.  They are trying to make a transition from seventy years of totalitarianism, state atheism, and unimaginable hardship.  No one has suffered more in the last 100 years than the people of Russia.  Read  Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago if you want a taste of what these incredibly strong people have gone through.

Why did Putin want the Crimea, and the eastern Ukraine?  Because of the ethnic Russians that live there, and they’re a dying breed.  They’re in a demographic death spiral, and Putin wants as many of them as he can get.  He doesn’t care about Poland.  There are no ethnic Russians there.  But there are a million of them in the Baltics, half a million in Latvia alone.  That’s why he’s nosing around there.  There are ways to satisfy Putin’s nationalistic solidarity with these people short of war.  It will just take some diplomatic ingenuity.

Rex Tillerson is the son of a Boy Scout official, and has been a life long Boy Scout, and is proud of it.  He was responsible for the change in national Boy Scout policy which allowed gays to become Boy Scouts.  He rose, on his merits, through the ranks of one of the most powerful corporations in the world.  What else do you need to know about his character?

With this pick  as Secretary of State, Trump has announced a new era in Russo-American relations, one which is long overdue.  Putin is in the process of attempting to re-Christianize the Russian people.  He wants Russia to return to its historic role as the great Christian nation of the East.  We are the only real Christian country in the world.  Aside from Poland and a few other places, Europe is post-Christian.  As fellow Christian nations, Russia and the United States should stand shoulder to shoulder against radical Islam.  They hate it as much, or more, than we do.  And they’re prepared to do something about it.  Russia has reverted to what it has always been, an autocracy.  Putin rules with almost complete power.  If he wants to play rough, he can play rough.

And then there’s oil, there’s always the oil.  Russia still produces more oil than any country in the world, and we’re on our way to being number two.  Together, our oil industries could dominate the world of oil far beyond what OPEC was ever able to do.  Add in the Canadians, Mexicans, Brits and Norwegians and you’re talking about close to half the world’s oil.

Having joint control of the world oil industry with the Russians makes us natural partners, and allies.  And Allies are what we are going to become.

My hat is off to Donald Trump, a man capable of clear geopolitical thought.  Who’d a thunk?

 

They haven’t hatched, so they’re technically still eggs, but every passing day fortifies my belief that 2017=34.  The truest of true believers, Loren Enns, continues his foray in the Far West, speaking to the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, one of the most politically powerful groups in the State.  Loren is being supported in his efforts by Dave and Suzie Biddulph.  He flew to Casper for the event, and with his success we’ll enjoy the support of Jim Magagna, Exevutive V. P. of the WSGA and a great guy.  I got a chance to talk to Jim myself in Cheyenne a couple years ago.  He raises cattle on BLM land, and I asked him what he thought about the Transfer of Public Lands to the States. He was all for it, and with that, I knew that TPL was politically feasible.  But that’s down the road a bit.

While in Casper Loren met with the incoming Speaker of the Wyoming House, and secured his endorsement.  Senate President Eli Bebout will take care of that side of the Capitol, so Wyoming is as good as done.  In Idaho he’s lined up 25 of the 29 Republican State Senators, with one on the fence.  The relevant committee is stacked 6-1 in our favor, and Bart Davis will be lonely in opposition.  Greg Page has been as good as his word.  He promised us he’d get the Idaho Senate, and he’s going to do it.  It’s nice when a man keeps his word.

In Arizona the House Speaker J. D. Mesnard has made our bill his own.  It’s one of the three bills that he is personally carrying.  Loren will be in Phoenix for several days next week, finishing up a whip count in the Senate that looks promising.  Governor Ducey will do what he can to help, and we can count on Arizona.

The sphinx-like Sen. Chris Kapenga of Wisconsin has all he needs to get it done, including two new Republicans in the Senate.  You’d have to be incompetent not to get Wisconsin, and no one has ever accused Kapenga of that.

Organizational work is under way in Kentucky, with all of the leadership on board.  As long as we stay on top of things, and don’t get lost in the shuffle, we’ll be just fine in Kentucky, especially with the Nashville Convention of States as a lure.

I’ll be on the phone Monday with John Steinberger in Charleston.  He said new Senate Majority Leader Shane Massie was all in, but I want him to tell me that again.  Because if it’s true, we’re going to get South Carolina, and that, if you’ve been counting, makes 34.  It’s going to be fun watching these eggs hatch.

The people who made this happen were able to do so because they each operated as an equal partner.  There was no hierarchy, and no one was on an ego trip.  We were all in it for the same reason, and that didn’t have anything to do with any of us.  It’s great way to operate, but it only works if you’ve got the right partners.

 

Especially when they’ve got a $2 trillion government working for them.  As President-elect, Trump’s power is only a phone and a pen.  With a phone call, and the very subtle implication of a threat, he’s won a major political victory with the Carrier factory in Indiana (engineered, it should be remembered, by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence).  With a phone call, from the President of Taiwan, he’s initiated a new relationship with our greatest global competitor, China.  With one announcement, of Oklahoma AG Scott Pruitt as head of EPA, he has reversed a policy – toward climate change  — that has done more damage to the American economy than anything this century.

Wait until he gets some real power when he’s sworn in.  The glory days of the 80’s are back, in spades.  The Roaring 20’s ain’t in it.  Interest rates are rising, and let the good times roll!  We haven’t even gotten around to the trillion dollar infrastructure bill.  We’re talking construction like in the 50’s, with the building of the interstate highway system.  The military is in desperate need of basic infrastructure.  They are cannibalizing airplanes, for lack of maintenance and spare parts.  Airports need to be built, and seaports expanded, and many parts of the country need major new highways.  There’s going to be a whole lot of spending going on.   And that national debt, that $20 trillion thing?  We’ll worry about that later.  We’ve got an economy we’ve got to get started, and dealing with deficits can wait.

That’s Keynesianism, in a nutshell.  Deficit spend to get the economy going.  But once it gets going, you stop deficit spending.  That’s the hard part, for politicians, the stopping part.  And that’s why we need a Balanced Budget Amendment, and we need it now.  Because all this deficit spending that’s going to happen has to stop, at some point. And we can’t rely on Donald Trump to do it.  He has to be restrained.  That’s what Article V is for.

It won’t be long now, before Democrats come to see the merits of this argument, especially as it applies to Trump.  They want to exercise some control over him themselves, and they’ll be able to do that as full participants in the Amendment Convention.  There will be no separation by party at the Amendment Convention.  There very may well be a majority organization, or caucus, but it will be completely bipartisan.  Every State has an equal vote.  It’s just that California’s vote counts the same as Alaska’s.  I guess that’s not fair, but it doesn’t matter.  That’s the way it was all set up, and there’s no changing it now.

I can sense this coming, this help from Democrats.  But I’ve got to look into it myself, and I will.  If we ever really get bipartisan, we’re in like Flynn.  And with Clinton gone, and Trump in, there’s no reason it can’t happen.

The change between Obama and Trump is as stark as any transition I know of.  They are as different as night and day.  It’s such a major change, it takes time to get used to it.  It’s not like going from Carter to Reagan.  Carter was weak, but he was a patriot.  He wasn’t that bad a President, really.  When Reagan took over a new day dawned, for sure, but not the way it is this time.  The contrast between a President who was indifferent about his national identity, to a full blown patriot.

Night and day.