Month: May 2020

When I retired from the legislature in 1991 I got a call from Mike Carey, the editorial page editor of Alaska’s most important newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News.  It was a liberal paper, and they wanted a local conservative voice.  So for the next eight years I wrote a  column for the ADN every other week.  In some ways, it made me the most visible conservative in the state.

The next year I got a call from Tom Tierney who owned the local conservative talk show station, KENI 650.  He was airing Limbaugh and other national conservatives, and wanted a local conservative host.  So I was on from 4:00 to 6:00, “Fritz ’til Six”, every weekday afternoon until I left Alaska in 2000.  It was fun, and I found to my amazement that I had more political influence as a talk show host than I ever did in the legislature.  For instance, when opposition from the Commissioner of Public Safety was preventing passage of a concealed carry bill, I got my listeners to inundate Juneau with phone calls.  The Governor got the message, overruled his Commissioner, and we got the bill.

In 2016 I was in California, trying to help the Ted Cruz campaign, and discovered that Donald Trump opposed the transfer of federal public lands to the states.  I told the Cruz people to exploit this in Nevada.   They didn’t get the word out enough, but they were able to win Elko County, the home of the Sagebrush Rebellion.

Alaska’s precinct caucuses were the following week, Super Tuesday, and I knew this issue would kill Trump’s chances there.  The Transfer of Public Lands is a big issue up north, since the feds own 61% of the state.  I did a number of things to spread the message, the most effective of which was to appear on my old radio station, KENI.

Mike Porcaro now holds my old time slot, so I called up Mike and arranged an appearance on Friday afternoon, drive time.  I came out hard against Trump, an arrogant New Yorker who didn’t trust us with our own land.  The caucuses were the following Tuesday.  Contrary to all expectations, Cruz beat Trump in those caucuses.  My appearance on the Mike Porcaro show made the difference.

Cruz won his native Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, but was swept by Trump in the rest of the country.  Except for Alaska.  That’s talk radio for you.

I’ll be giving Mike a call, and hope to be appearing back on KENI soon.  When I’m scheduled, I’ll notify readers of this blog, and ask them to go to the KENI 650 website, log in, and listen to the show on your computer or cell phone.

KENI is now owned by iHeart radio, a chain with 850 stations.  They have a sophisticated system to track who is listening on the web, and where they’re from.  If enough people from out of state call, it will get their attention at KENI, and when I eventually ask to host a two hour show on Saturdays, they’ll understand it’s meant for a national audience.

If the show goes well, it can be picked up and broadcast by any of its iHeart sister stations, all over the country.  Could be the start of something big.

I eventually lost my column at the Daily News.  I was given no explanation, but a couple years later Mike Carey and I had lunch together, and he told me what happened.  Senator Ted Stevens was visiting the editors of the Daily News, and as he was leaving the chief editor asked him if there was anything they could do for him.  He said, yes, fire Pettyjohn.  So they did.

Ted and I really didn’t like each other.

What do Barack Obama and Donald Trump agree on?  How about Nancy Pelosi, and Mitch McConnell?  Anything they agree on?  How about George Soros, and the Koch brothers?  Or the Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO?  Do the Heritage Foundation and Common Cause have something in common?

There is virtual unanimity, across the spectrum of respectable opinion, including everyone named above, that there is something very dangerous in the Constitution.  It’s a forgotten provision, which has never actually been used.  It’s tucked away in obscurity, in Article V.  It’s the mechanism by which the people, acting through their state legislators, can control the federal government, and amend the Constitution.

Over a hundred years ago, the progressive movement was on the verge of using Article V for the first time in American history.  At the time, seats in the United States Senate were for sale.  A wealthy and ambitious man could go to his state legislature and buy a seat in the Senate.  Senators were not being elected by the people, but by state legislators, whose votes could be purchased.

The progressives were determined to end this corruption, and were able to get 30 state legislatures to pass Article V resolutions, calling for a Convention of States to propose a constitutional amendment for direct election of Senators.  At the time, 32 states constituted 2/3 of the union, and if the progressives got two more states, an Article V Convention of States would be called.

Terrified that the people would be able to exercise power directly, the Senate caved, and passed a resolution for direct election of senators.  That’s how we got the 17th Amendment.  For some corrupt senators, it meant the end of their political careers.  But it was a price that had to be paid, in order to prevent the use of the dreaded Article V.

All opponents of Article V use the bogeyman of a runaway convention.  None of them, except perhaps the loons of the John Birch Society, are actually fearful of a runaway.  The whole idea is laughable, preposterous.  It’s a way for those fearful of the people to justify their opposition to common sense reforms, like a balanced budget amendment, or campaign finance reform.

For seven years the Reagan Project has sought to promote Article V.  It’s had very limited success.  The message has not gotten out.  We were blacklisted by Facebook a long time ago, and this blog is deemed a threat that must be contained.

In the very near future I’m hopeful of breaking out, and getting widespread attention to the cause.  Everyone who reads this blog will be asked to help.  (No, I’m not asking for contributions.)   It will cost nothing, and only take a few minutes of your time.

Stay tuned.

 

My post of a couple days ago was incorrect as to the progress Wolf-PAC has made in red or reddish states.  National Director Mike Monetta informs me that there has been real progress in Missouri, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and a floor vote is tentatively scheduled for June 1 in Tennessee.

Ignorance is the biggest obstacle in any Article V campaign.  State legislators, for the most part, have never heard of Article V, and it sounds somehow radical to them.  If they have any brains you can explain it to them, but relatively few appreciate the critical role the Framers gave them to play in the balance of power between the federal government and the states, or the people.

In my second year at UCLA Law I saw a notice on the bulletin board for a position with the City Attorney’s office in Ketchikan, Alaska.  I applied, was hired, and on a “quarter away” program, Babbie and I spent the last six months of 1973 in Ketchikan.  There were about 20 lawyers in Ketchikan, and they were a very sociable bunch, and I made a lot of friends, including State Senator Bob Ziegler, a blue dog Democrat.

Ten years later, in 1983, I was in the state senate myself.  (This was only possible because my political hero, the 4th Governor of Alaska, Jay Hammond, had designed a senate district specifically for me.)  Bob Ziegler was a senate veteran, and took me under his wing.  One day he comes into my office and shows me a resolution he was carrying.  It was an Article V Resolution, calling for a Convention of States to propose a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

I was 37 years old, a lawyer, with substantial political experience, and a degree in political science from Berkeley.  I thought of myself as a pretty savvy guy, yet I’d never heard of Article V.  Once I gave it a little thought, I realized its significance, and I’ve been advocating for it ever since.

So I don’t hold it against legislators who are unaware of their responsibilities under Article V.  I had to be educated myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I watched the Wyoming legislature hold a virtual session today, and it went pretty smoothly.  The small glitches are easily corrected.  We’ll see more and more of this, and on balance that’s a good thing.

In Washington D.C. or at a state capitol a lawmaker is surrounded by staff and lobbyists, and is far from the voters who elected him.  In a virtual session, he’s at home with his family, neighbors and voters.  They should be the ones influencing him.  Not the special interests that congregate around the capitol.

This is especially true of Congress.  The more time a Congressman spends with the people who elected him, and the less time surrounded by lobbyists, the better.

If you look to the right of this post, you’ll see a section titled “What is the Reagan Project?”  If you read it you’ll see it’s a brief for Article V, and doesn’t even mention a Balanced Budget Amendment.  I support Article V, without qualification.  The BBA is just one of many needed reforms.

From 2013 to 2018 I worked with the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, trying to get 34 states to pass BBA Article V Resolutions.  They were the only feasible Article V movement going.  When I joined them they had 19 states, and we got it up to 29, but no further.

Despite our best efforts, and despite the fact that 2/3 of Democratic voters say they support a Balanced Budget Amendment, no Democratic majority in any legislature ever gave us the time of day.  From 2014 to 2018 it was possible, because of Republican dominance in state legislatures, to do without Democratic support.  After the 2018 election, and for the foreseeable future, any future Article V effort must be bipartisan.

Which brings us to Wolf-PAC, which seeks an Article V convention to take up campaign finance reform.  They have passed their resolution in five deep blue states, but have made no real progress in any of the 30 or so states that are red or reddish.  Wolf-PAC is populated mainly by people on the left side of the political spectrum, many of them Bernie Sanders supporters.  They think the whole of Washington is corrupt. In fact, they’re right.  If you don’t understand that, you haven’t been paying attention.

So I’ve joined Wolf-PAC, and I’ll be trying to help pass their resolution in the 2021 session of the Alaska legislature.  Their prime sponsor is Democratic Rep. Geran Tarr, a member of the coalition that controls the House of Representatives.  From what I know of her, she’s at the left end of the Democratic caucus, and not beloved by the Republicans, who control the Senate.

So it’s time for bipartisanship.  I still have friends in the Alaska Senate.  One of them, Senate Majority Leader Lyman Hoffman, I served with from 1987 to 1991.  Lyman’s from Bethel, and he’ll be able to serve as long as he wants.  He’s been an Alaskan legislator for 33 years, and I look forward to talking to him again.  We played a lot of cribbage in the legislative lounge back in the day, and have a few old war stories to share.