Month: March 2017

A guest post from Tennessee State Senator Brian Kelsey, who is emerging as a leader in the Article V movement.

P.S. – In my guest column in The Commercial Appeal, I explained why the planning convention is necessary:   Tennessee Planning Convention will Help Balance Federal Budget   History will be made in Nashville this summer. The Tennessee Senate recently voted to hold the first convention of states in America since 1861. The purpose of this convention will be to plan the rules, date, and location for a future Article V convention of states calling for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.   The United States is $20 trillion in debt. If you stacked 20 trillion dollar bills one on top of the other, the height would reach to the moon and back over five times. This huge debt is a financial crisis waiting to happen. The federal government is burdening our children and grandchildren with massive loan payments in order to cover its current wasteful spending.   The debt is also a national security crisis. For the first 150 years of our nation’s history, the national debt was largely owed by Americans to other Americans who had bought savings bonds. Today, trillions of dollars are owed to foreign countries like Japan and China. This puts the United States at the mercy of others who can demand repayment on their own terms.   I recently attended a community meeting hosted by Congressman David Kustoff. Three of the thirty people at the meeting asked the same question: “What can Americans do to reign in the national debt?”   The answer is found in Article V of the U.S. Constitution. A convention of states may propose a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, requiring Congress to balance the federal budget each year.   This solution may not eliminate the $20 trillion debt, but it will certainly stop the growth of deficit spending each year. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. There are times when deficit spending is necessary, such as in a time of war, but the balanced budget amendment as drafted by a convention of states could allow for deficit spending during a national emergency.   In 2014, Tennessee passed a resolution calling for just such a convention of states. In fact, when the Tennessee Senate passed my resolution, it became the first chamber in America to pass a balanced budget amendment resolution unanimously. Currently, 29 states have passed the same resolution, and hopefully five more will do so this year. Once these 34 states have passed the resolution, a convention of states must be held.   In anticipation, the Tennessee state Senate recently passed my resolution calling for the planning convention in Nashville this summer. While one Senator did raise the issue of a runaway convention, there are four safeguards preventing this from happening. Those safeguards led to an overwhelming, bipartisan 27-3 vote calling for the planning convention.   First, conventions of states are legally bound by the wording of the resolutions that call for them to be held.  Second, it is a felony in Tennessee for a delegate to a convention of states even to discuss a topic outside the reason for the convention. Third, any amendment proposed for adoption by a convention of the states would need to pass 38 states before it could be added to the U.S. Constitution. Fourth, the whole point of hosting a planning convention in Nashville this summer is to prove that a convention of states will stick to only one topic.   America faces a crisis, and Congress refuses to act. The time has come for states to fix this problem.

 

 

Given what else we know about him, it’s hard to think of Bill Clinton as a man of profound spiritual understanding.  In fact, it’s hard to take him seriously at all.  He’s a sexual predator, a political criminal, and one of the phoniest people in public life.  But there he is today, at the Brookings Institute, pontificating on globalism.

This is the sum of his deep wisdom:  “The whole history of the world is basically the definition of who is us, and who is them, and the question of whether we should all live under the same set of rules.”  Good God, what a moron.

It’s actually quite simple, but apparently a mystery to Billy Jeff.  “We” are Americans, and “they” are not.  We have our rules, and if anyone else in the world wants to adopt them, they’re free to do it.  But if they’ve got their own set of rules, such a sharia law, that’s their business.  Attempts to unite the world under one set of rules always fail, and almost always are steeped in blood.

The Moslems hate us for our rules, and would rather die than adopt them.  They are a rigid patriarchal society, and we celebrate the equality of women.  We’re not a matriarchy, but we have tendencies.  Thus we are the Great Satan.  At the very core, the essence, of Islam is the absolute authority of the husband over his family.  This is the basis of their culture, and their entire way of looking at the world.  The family is the basic unit of a society, and a nation’s family values are its values.  Islam cannot tolerate the equality of women.  It would undermine their families, and their culture would collapse.

The true equality of women is only found in countries that feature the Absolute Nuclear Family.(ANF).  We got it from the English, who got it from the Germans.  Tacitus describes it in the German tribes 2,000 years ago.  The center piece of the ANF is a woman’s right to choose.  Her body is her own.  She can choose to give herself to a husband, or not.  It’s up to her.  And when she does marry she is not subject to anyone’s control.  Her husband’s family has no control, and she and her husband will not control their children when they marry.  It’s a culture of liberty and women’s rights.  The two go hand in hand.

These are “The Origins of English Individualism“, as set out by British historian and sociologist Alan Macfarlane.    Because the English had the Absolute Nuclear Family, their women were free to choose.  As a result, as many as 20% of women never married, and those that did married late.  Marriage at 25 was the norm.

This is the family structure that came to Jamestown and Plymouth, and it is ours today.  It’s responsible for our success in populating this continent.  Because, in the ANF, each married couple was expected to set up their own household, apart and independent from their parents.  This is difficult in settled societies, but it was easy in early America.  There was land, everywhere, and these colonial families averaged nine or ten children, knowing that there would be new lands for them to settle.  America and the Absolute Nuclear Family were made for each other.

But it’s not for everybody, it’s incompatible with Islam, and the world would be a lot better off if fools like Bill Clinton didn’t go around telling everyone we’ve all got to live by the same set of rules.

You can look long and hard for facts, as opposed to opinions.  In the media, the absence of actual facts to report is a void, filled by opinion.  I’m getting worn out with all of the inside politics, and everyone’s opinion of this or that.  Who’s in or out, up or down?  Who cares.  Just keep the caravan moving.

The Friday jobs report may be as high as plus 300,000, a huge number, and perhaps the first of more and bigger reports to come.  That will  be a fact.  The Federal Reserve is poised to begin climbing down from its dangerous easy money policy, and this will be a great relief.  The Fed has been printing so much money it posed a danger of sudden collapse, a loss of faith.  Setting this all right will take time, but we’re heading back to a more normal monetary policy, and that will be a fact of great significance.

A fact that is starting to come into focus is the emerging rational exuberance in the economy.  This is the time to start a business, and it’s going to get better.  Trump is spending a great deal of his time promoting this, in his countless meetings with industry leaders.  Today it was infrastructure executives.  Trump’s spreading the word, and he’s being heard.  This is the most pro-business administration in history, that I know of.  The business expansion about to begin should be propelled into high gear by corporate tax reform, and return of overseas capital.  That may be a while, but it’s coming, and if you’re in business you’d better be prepared for it.

And this is what determines Trump’s political fate:  facts.  Jobs.  Growth.  Prosperity.

We passed out of committee in the Arizona Senate, and we should be on the floor soon.  #30.  It’s been a long time coming.  A lot of the credit goes to House Speaker J. D. Mesnard.  He rose from the ranks of a legislative staffer to become Speaker at the age of 35.  He is an impressive young man, with a bright political future.  And he’s smart.  He made our BBA Resolution his personal bill.  With the Speaker as the lead sponsor, a bill is greased. It doesn’t guarantee a successful floor vote, but the bill will get to the floor.

Mr. Mesnard is a man to keep an eye on.

 

As Ev Dirksen, the great Senate Minority Leader from Illinois, was fond of saying, “I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.”  Major legislation, such as the repeal and replacement (R and R) of Obamacare, requires political flexibility, and that almost always is expensive.

Harry Reid had to be “flexible” to pass Obamacare in the first place, and it was quite expensive.  There was the “Louisiana Purchase” to get Sen. Mary Landrieu, and the “Cornhusker Kickback” to get Sen. Ben Nelson.  (It’s odd, isn’t it, that neither won another term, despite bringing home special goodies to their States?)   As the R and R goes through the various House and Senate Committees, and to the floor, there will be lots of compromising going on, and it will almost all cost money.  That’s, like, politics.

As slimy old Bill Clinton understood about Obamacare, once it was passed, the die was cast.  It gave a very valuable benefit to a whole lot of people, and taking it away would be virtually impossible.  Those with long memories will never forget the footage of Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski being surrounded in his car by a mob of outraged senior citizens, beating on its hood, demanding that some small benefit they had be retained.  He was one of the most powerful men in Washington, and he caved like a cardboard suitcase.

So the federal government is not going to abandon the millions who have benefited from Obamacare, and that’s going to cost a whole lot of money.  That money will be borrowed, from your children, and my grandchildren.  And this theft from future generations will continue unabated, until a Balanced Budget Amendment is passed.  And that will only happen from the States, using Article V.

Trump wants his new Navy, and he’ll get it.  Congress never really says no to spending money on infrastructure.  Entitlements are off limits, and we’re all going to get a tax cut.  What’s not to like?  We don’t have to pay for it.

Lindsey Stroud of the Heartland Institute was kind enough to put this blog up on their “Freedom Pub”.    Heartland is stepping up, taking the lead, and showing the way for other such organizations.  We need all the support we can get.

I’ll never forget watching Trump at a rally in Vegas right before the Nevada caucuses.  Cruz was hitting him hard, and to effect, on the issue of the Transfer of Public Lands (TPL).  Cruz was making inroads in northern Nevada, which Trump remarked on.  He went on to explain, almost apologetically, that he really didn’t know very much about the issue.  I was loving it.  I had pitched the idea of promoting TPL to the Cruz campaign, and I was very proud of myself.  But all of a sudden, Trump switched subjects, and started mocking a protester, and suggested it would be O.K. to punch him.

So Trump’s admission of ignorance on an important Nevada issue was ignored, and everyone focused exclusively on his incendiary comments.  It pissed me off.  He was going to get away with it.  James Hohmann of the WaPo lists a bunch of examples of his successful use of the art of distraction.  He’s got it down to a science.

So he’s all pissed off at the Sessions thing, and then he hears Mark Levin come up with a fairly plausible scenario in which you could, if you really stretched it, claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.  So he tweets it.  And all of a sudden nobody was talking about Sessions any more.  Mission accomplished.

The media is having a breakdown.  He’s wearing them out.  This is great theater.

Meanwhile, he’s winning.  He just saved the auto industry untold billions by putting off Obama’s newly issued fuel standards.  He could, and he should, just repeal all of the so called CAFE standards.  Americans should be able to buy whatever car they want.  This is music to the ears of the auto industry.  Deregulation in general will help them, and getting rid of CAFE would be a windfall.  These people owe Trump, and they know how to repay him.  Bring jobs back, and sure as hell don’t ship jobs abroad.  For Trump, it’s a win win.

The federal government is such an intrusive force in so many aspects of private enterprise, that having a President who actively wants to help relieve this burden is a godsend.  Trump’s EPA just withdrew a demand it had made of 15,000 drilling rigs in the United States.  Obama’s EPA was going to require a bunch of worthless paperwork from them, and have them perform expensive, and completely unnecessary, methane testing.  This reversal of policy will save every one of those 15,000 rigs tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars of unnecessary cost.

Trump’s going to be very kind to the oil and gas industry, and his good will is being repaid.  Exxon Mobil just announced a $20 billion investment in the Gulf, over five years.  They’ll be processing chemicals and refining oil, and the construction and operational employees, tens of thousands of them, will be well paid, often at $100,000 a year.  Win, win.

These stories aren’t widely covered, but they touch people’s lives.  And this applies to just about every business enterprise in the U.S.  If Trump were to take Silicon Valley’s side in patent reform, he’d save them billions in frivolous lawsuits, and a lot of wasted time and effort.  In return, they bring some manufacturing back to the U.S.  Win, win.

The thing is, opportunities like this are all over the place, and Trump knows how to sniff them out.  They’re deals, kind of.  I get the government off your back, you bring jobs into this country.  Win, win.

None of this is of interest to the media.  Maybe that’s because it’s kind of boring.  It’s much better to talk about the desecration of Jewish grave sites.  Except these headstones weren’t knocked over.  They’ve fallen over, through the years, from erosion.  Some dope of a reporter saw a Jewish cemetery  with some headstones fallen over, and so he runs off and writes a story about an outbreak of anti-semitism.   That’s news.