Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

A Fourth Branch of Government was created by Article V of the Constitution, superior to the other three.  It consists of 7,382 voting members, distributed in the 50 States.  In order to act, this Fourth Branch of Government, which I call the Federal Assembly, must organize itself into a 2/3 supermajority of the States in order to make a proposal.  Majorities in both Houses of a State Legislature in 34 States must agree on the subject matter which will be addressed by an Amendment Convention.  Once the Amendment Convention agrees on the language of the proposed Amendment, an even more challenging 3/4 supermajority of States is required to adopt it.

It’s hard, and it’s never been done in the 229 years we’ve had the Constitution, not until now.  By using their Article V power, in 2017, the States, and the people, will for the very first time, exercise their sovereignty.  And it is full sovereignty, plenary, unlimited.  Aside from not reducing the equal suffrage of the States in the Senate, the Federal Assembly can do anything the people want it to do.  It’s popular sovereignty.  It’s the people showing the federal government who’s in charge.

Two of the other three Branches of Government, the President and the Supreme Court, have no role to play in any of this.  The federal courts do not have jurisdiction over the States when they are exercising their Article V powers.  And the Third Branch, Congress, has only a ministerial role to play.  The only discretion Congress has is in selecting the time and place of the Amendment Convention, and of choosing the method of ratification — by State Legislatures, or by State Conventions.

In order to organize a 2/3 supermajority, the States may choose to meet in a preliminary Convention of States.  This was last done in 1861, in Washington.  State delegations assembled to try to avert the Civil War, but they didn’t have enough time, and they failed.  The previous Convention of States, held in Nashville in 1850, was more successful.  It helped form the Compromise of 1850, which stopped the movement toward secession.  But the Dred Scott decision overturned the Compromise of 1850, and the Civil War soon followed.

There will be a Convention of States dealing with the Balanced Budget Amendment this summer.  It will be the first in 156 years. We have been so conditioned into thinking of ourselves as a nation that we’ve forgotten that we have another political identity.  I live in California, so I’m a Californian.  And California has rights under Article V, and I am going to personally ask  my Assemblyman Frank Bigelow and State Senator Tom Berryhill  to introduce an Article V Resolution calling for an Amendment Convention for the purpose of adopting a Congressional Term Limits Amendment.  And you should do the same with your state legislators.  We’re going to  get a Balanced Budget Amendment, so what’s next?  It is obviously Term Limits.

The campaign for Congressional Term Limits  is completely bipartisan.  Every Bernie Sanders voter would be for it.  They all hate Congress.  Everybody hates Congress.  The only people who don’t like term limits are politicians, because it interferes with their careers at the public trough.  U. S. Term Limits, founded by Howard Rich in 1991, and the U. S. Term Limits Foundation, headed by John Aglialoro, only have one State, Florida, of the 34 needed for a Term Limits Amendment Convention, but that’s going to change, in a hurry.  Once State Legislators become aware of the power of the Federal Assembly, they’ll want to use it again and again.  The Balanced Budget Amendment comes first, followed by Term Limits.  The third priority of the States will be discussed, informally, at the Convention of States.  I suspect it will be another of the Liberty Amendments, popularized by Mark Levin.

Levin has played no role in the Balanced Budget Campaign.  He supports a competing proposal, called, misleadingly, “The Convention of States.”  This proposal calls for what would be a wide open Amendment Convention, with the authority to propose a series of Amendments, in an all out assault on the Federal Government.  But this approach has a fatal flaw, and despite spending millions of dollars, has only eight of the needed 34 States.  What Levin doesn’t understand is that there are different political coalitions which support different Amendments.  The coalition which is succeeding with the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force is different than the coalition supporting Term Limits.  Including both, within one Article V Amendment Convention, doubles your opposition.  Some State Legislators want a Balanced Budget Amendment, but not Term Limits, and vice versa.   It’s Politics 101, but Levin is a lawyer, not a politician, and he doesn’t understand politics.

The great value of this summer’s Convention of States is educational.  People will wonder, what is a Convention of States?  And some of them will even read Article V of the Constitution to figure out what all this means.  While they’re at it, they might want to look at the Bill of Rights, and read it, all of it, including the 9th and 10th Amendments.  What do those words mean?

The Convention of States of 2017, will happen in a historic location, one which played a central role in our history.  It’s a place identified with our greatest President, except Washington himself.  It will be on the 250th anniversary of his birth.  And it will be in his honor, and that of his mother, the Mother of her Country.  She, not U.S. Grant, should have her likeness on the $50 bill.  And that too may happen.

Man of mystery Steve Bannon is peaking out of the shadows at the Hollywood Reporter.  This is my kind of guy, smarter than hell.  A little rough on the edges, but aren’t we all?

Normal America and the coastal elites live in two different worlds, and are not fond of one another.  The Media Hive, led by its Queen, the NYT, convinced their public, and the Clintons, that Trump could never become President, so no worries.  But outside of their little castles, and thus unbeknownst to them, Donald Trump was speaking to the American peasantry in their own language, and they were going to deliver him the Rust Belt, and the election.

Bannon had this all figured out.  And it wasn’t racial.  Scott Adams of Dilbert fame points out an article (hat tip, Instapundit) that proves that.   Trump improved on Romney in every racial category, not just whites.  Actually, his improvement in black, Latino and Asian voting percentages was higher than his improvement among whites.

But I do believe the number of whites who strongly identify themselves as White Americans is increasing.  Whites are a solid voting bloc in the Deep South.  They’re all Republicans, and in places like Alabama and Mississippi the Democrats are basically the black party.  This attitude is spreading north, and partly accounts for our pickup of the Kentucky House.  White Democrats are an endangered species in almost all of the South now.  This attitude is seeping into Missouri, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio.  If it spreads any further north, into the heart of the Rust  Belt, the Democrats are in big trouble.  Demography may be destiny,  but the destination may turn out to be different than the deep thinkers thought.

Bannon’s a history buff, and compares himself to Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.  Thomas Cromwell served Henry VIII, and is responsible for what is known as the Tudor Revolution.  This was a radical centralization of power, in which the traditional power of the Church was eliminated, royal supremacy over Parliament was strengthened, and the king ruled as a virtual tyrant.  If that’s what Bannon has in mind he may wind up, figuratively, like his hero, Thomas Cromwell.  Henry had him beheaded, and had his head placed on a spike on London Bridge.

There will be no centralization of power under Trump.  Quite the opposite.  Article V is going to succeed in 2017, and that’s a decentralization of power.  There’s a lot going on in Article V World, and it’s just about ready to pop.

I mentioned seeing Art Laffer predict a political era lasting 1,000 years.  Bannon thinks 50, which is more realistic.  But he doesn’t know anything about Article V, so he’s off by half..  Trump’s a figurehead, in some ways.  The reform this country needs will come from the States, and the people, not Donald Trump.  All he has to do is stay out of the way.

I identify with Bannon.  He’s nine years younger than I am, and from a very similar background.  He’s had an interesting life, as have I.  But I’ve got one up on him.  Babbie, my wife of 45 years.

I got married to the widow next door

She’s been married seven times before

And every one was an ‘Enery

Wouldn’t have a Willie or a Sam

I’m her eighth old man, I’m ‘Enery

‘Enery the Eighth I am, I am

‘Enery the Eighth I am.

 

 

 

I think Trump’s dyslexia has made him what he is today.   Dyslexics have trouble reading, for some reason.  It has nothing to do with intelligence.  A person I know as well as anyone in this world is dyslexic, and he’s as smart as anybody.  He just doesn’t like to read.  He’s been this way his whole life, and I just realized it’s because he’s dyslexic.  It explains so much.

This is why Trump is so insecure.  When he started school, he couldn’t do as well as was expected of him, because he had trouble reading.  He’s always had difficulty reading, all through school, and all through life.  He was probably teased about being dumb when he was a kid.  When I heard him brag about going to the Wharton School of Business at a rally, I couldn’t believe my ears.  Who brags about something as trivial as that?  And I’m pretty sure he’s talked in general terms about his intelligence, and his good genes.  Who does that?  Someone who is incredibly insecure.  And if you’re insecure you compensate in a variety of ways.  By being a bully, a tough guy, a ruthless competitor, a conqueror of women, a celebrity, a President.

I’m not worried about his insecurity preventing him from being a very successful President.  Nixon was the most insecure man to occupy the Oval Office, and it helped lead to his downfall.  But Trump’s family, along with his inner circle, is our best insurance policy.  No worries.

The inner circle around a President is our last line of defense against a lunatic.  Henry Kissinger tells the story, in one of his books, of one of Nixon’s last nights in the White House.  He was going to resign, and he was losing it.  He got drunk and told Kissinger (who, because he was a Jew, had been frozen out of a role on Israeli policy as National Security Adviser) to immediately cut off all aid to Israel.  He was all pissed off about something, and Kissinger, Haldemann and Ehrlichman all ignored him.  It was never mentioned again.

People think dyslexics aren’t smart because they don’t read books, but that’s not true.  Some dyslexics, like Trump, are geniuses.  It may not show up on an IQ score, because of their difficulty with the written word.  But they can be just as smart as anyone.  A lot of disdain that people like me have had for Trump is based on his ignorance.  A man who doesn’t read books doesn’t have as much knowledge as a man who does, and book lovers like me know more facts, and have more information, than a non-reader.

So we’ve been looking down on him because he has a learning disability.  Well, he’s certainly overcome it, in spades.  He’s learned to compensate.

 

 

 

If Romney gets State, and Cruz is AG, Trump will be acting in the tradition of  Abraham Lincoln.  Most of the country didn’t want Lincoln.  He only won 40% of the vote, but was elected because his opposition was split three ways.  In a sense, that election of the first Republican President was the only instance of a third party achieving its goals in our history.

Rather than appoint loyalists to his cabinet, Lincoln chose from among the men he beat, most prominently Secretary of State Seward (beloved by all Alaskans).  These were the famous “team of rivals” who helped him save the Union.  They were patriots, devoted with Lincoln to winning the Civil War, and freeing the slaves.  All in all, they served Lincoln, and the country, well.

The market’s acting like it did with Reagan, and he started a bull market that lasted from 1982-2001.  It was a period of the greatest wealth accumulation in American history.  A market is made, in part, on the animal spirits of the country.  We’re in an era of rational exuberance.  There is an enormous amount of pent up energy in this country, and we’re going to see an entrepreneurial boom.

In other words, the time is ripe for Article V.  It’s a time for bold action, for fundamental reform.  And the best part is, it’s going to be bipartisan.  Jerry Brown of California is an Article V man, and he’s in a position to lead the Democratic Party in a new direction.  The Sanders Democrats, such as those at Wolf-Pac, are all in on Article V.  Left and right agree on that.  We want to take power away from the center, and Article V is the way to do it.

On a Heartland Institute call today a woman named Vicki Deppe reported on her organizing efforts in the Illinois Legislature.  She’s got 27 sponsors, and almost half of them are Democrats.  She was saying how Illinois only gets 50 cents back on every dollar it ships to Washington, and they’ve had enough.  Here’s the weird part  — the Article V Resolution she’s working on is the most radical, extreme version of Article V, the so-called Convention of States Resolution.  If she can sell that, Article V is really on a roll.  And it’s bipartisan.

Republicans will have total control of the federal purse strings for the next four, six, eight years?   The Democrats would be better off retreating to their coastal enclaves, and leave the rest of America alone.  That’s all we really want, to be left alone.  We’re a big and diverse country, with distinct regional differences.  The secret of federalism is that it’s a way for everybody to get along.  It’s tolerance.

When I think of an inner circle which includes the Trump family, Pence, Conway, Bannon, Priebus, Romney and Cruz, with more to come, this could  be one hell of an administration.

But the Article V movement, or the Reagan Project, as I call it, is not looking for help from Trump, or anybody else in Washington.  We’re going to be bipartisan, and the Democrats can’t stand Trump.  We want to keep our distance from him.  This is not his movement, it’s ours.  And I can feel it growing.  And part of that is because of Trump.  We got the Minnesota Senate because of him, and that was huge.  He disavowed Article V early in his campaign, to gain the support of Phyllis Schlafly.   She’s gone now, and nobody really cares what she thinks.  But that’s still his position.   I hope he keeps to it.  We’re a bottom up movement, and don’t want any help from the top.

The days are pretty short right now, but in a month they’ll start getting longer.  That’s the Alaskan in me thinking.

I’ve been a lawyer for 42 years, but only actively practiced law for the first six.  I’m not cut out to be a lawyer.  I got into politics in 1980, and have tried to do as little law as possible ever since.  Lawyers are quibblers.  I did enjoy getting in front of a jury, but other than that I hated the whole thing.  I like politics, and that’s what I’m good at.

Ted Cruz is the opposite of me.  He’s a born quibbler, and relishes a good fight over some obscure technicality of the law.   He’d be a fabulous law professor, a great Supreme Court Justice, and an excellent Attorney General.  He’s a lousy United States Senator.  When 95% of your colleagues hate you, personally, you’re in the wrong job.  I think Cruz, deep down, realizes that.

The word is that Trump is going to pick a Justice from the list he came up with during the campaign, and Cruz is not on that list.  But who’s going to go into the Justice Department and hose down that stable full of leftists?   Giuliani doesn’t seem to want it, and Jeff Sessions might want to stay in the Senate and keep an eye on Mitch McConnell.

Outside of his family, who does Trump really trust?  His Prime Minister, Mike Pence.  What does Pence think of Cruz?  He supported him for President, even when he could see the Trump tsunami coming.  Another man Trump has absolute confidence in is Jeff Sessions, who’s served in the Senate with Cruz for four years.  He’s no fan of Cruz as a Senator, but Sessions, an outstanding attorney in his own right, knows a brilliant lawyer when he sees one.

The fly in the ointment is lack of trust by Trump himself.  He trusted Christie, and he trusts Sessions.  But I don’t think there’s another candidate for AG out there who Trump does trust.  Ted Cruz is an honorable and decent man, who Trump hurt, personally, by attacking his father.  Appointing Cruz as Attorney General would be an act of grace and magnanimity.

Jared Kushner is handy with a knife.  He’s wanted a piece of Chris Christie’s ass for over ten years, and he just carved out a big piece of it.  An absolutely masterful performance by young Kushner, and a great public service, as well.  This is a man to watch.

I just spoke with David Eastman, a 35 year old Representative-elect from Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley.  A young man of high ideals, and ambition.  I hope to see him at ALEC.  I may have something in mind for him.