Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

There are around fifteen Republicans running for President.  None of them, including John Kasich, is advocating the use of Article V to reform Washington.  Kasich is all in on a BBA, but he never talks about Article V, except as a vehicle to a balanced budget.  He openly hopes Congress gets the message and passes a BBA itself, thus eliminating the necessity of an Amendment Convention.  Why doesn’t at least one of these bright and well informed politicians embrace Article V wholeheartedly, and advocate its use not just for a BBA, but for the restoration of federalism, a bedrock constitutional principle honored mainly in the breech?  I don’t know.

Why not explain that the Framers foresaw a day when the Congress itself would be so corrupted that political reform would need to come from the states, and the people?  Argue that the day foreseen by the Framers has indeed arrived, and that the remedy they provided us  –Article V  — stands ready and waiting.

Over the last year and a half on this blog I’ve made the case for Article V as the vehicle for completely turning this country around.  Everybody has had it to here with Washington D.C. corruption and dysfunction.  Electing a Republican President would help put things right, but based on the last 35 years of experience you’d be a fool to think it would really solve our problems.  Those problems are institutional in nature, and require an institutional solution.  The Federal Assembly has the potential to be such an institution.  It can be an overseer of the federal government.  If we can get one Amendment Convention under our belt, the Federal Assembly can emerge as a forum for organizing repeated Amendment Conventions, one every two years.  Once the principle has been established that the States, with Article V, are the master of the federal government the people will realize that they are the masters of their state governments, and thus of the country.  Helplessness in the face of oncoming tyranny will be replaced by hope in a return to the Constitution as it was written.

It’s a pleasant tale to tell.  But no one tells it.  Is it that far fetched?  Why not run it up the flagpole, and see if anyone salutes?  I’m missing something.

What is it?

The middle of the country  —  the part that decides elections  —  tolerates the north and the south, the east and the west.  We’re a diverse country; always have been.  Diversity demands toleration.  Middle America minds its own business, and wishes the busybodies of the north and the Bible thumpers of the south would mind theirs.  Federalism is an acknowledgement of our diversity, and an expression of it.  Federalism is tolerance.  It is peaceful coexistence.

Some things are, of course, intolerable.  Racial segregation is one such, and the war against it caused enormous damage to our federalist system.  But that war is over.  So the time for the restoration of federalism is at hand.

Anthony Kennedy, secure in his Washington cocktail party world, has struck a hard blow against federalism with his gay marriage decision.  This issue, as much as any, cries out for tolerance.  But it is not to be.  The Supreme Court has issued its decree, and all must obey.  The entire country will do as the Court says.  There is no appeal.

Except Article V.   There is certainly no consensus on gay marriage, and so it is not a fit topic for an Article V solution.  But Kennedy’s decision is a stark reminder that we live in a judicial tyranny.  There may be an emerging consensus about that.

Ted Cruz has proposed the worst remedy  — retention elections.  Terrible idea, no discussion needed.  But if the President is term limited, the Court should be as well, in spades.  Presidents face the voters every four years.  Justices never do.  Ten and out.  Nobody has been indispensable in this country since the man who founded it.  Fifteen, max.

Social issues, specifically gay marriage, add surge to the tide.  If the Republicans are the party of toleration, middle America will embrace them, and victory is theirs.

Since Emperor Tony has spoken, gay marriage is legal in this country.  So be it.  We’ll tolerate it, if you tolerate us.  But these people are Nazis.  They will not tolerate us.  Because we refuse to celebrate homosexuality we are evil and must be destroyed.

I wish it was a year from now.  I’d get the money and go to Oregon to talk to the Christian couple who lost their bakery because they don’t do gay.  Furthermore, the Communist State of Oregon’s Politburo has fined them $135,000 for their hate.  Put their story on film, and show it to the American people.  The Republican Presidential candidate would appear at the end of the ad, and stand in solidarity with these ordinary God-fearing Americans.

That could have an impact.  You don’t attack gays, or gay marriage.  You just stand with the innocent victims of intolerance gone mad.

You stand for freedom.

Affirmative action is a form of racial discrimination.  It’s not popular.  It’s a political loser.  Given the chance, people vote against it.

Hillary, of course, is all in.  She is desperate to duplicate Obama’s black turnout, and will tell blacks whatever she thinks they want to hear.  The only thing she hasn’t embraced is reparations for slavery, and that may come.  I doubt any of the umpteen Republican Presidential candidates will make her pay any political price for this.  It’s a very dangerous topic for Republicans.  When Democrats support affirmative action they are celebrated in the media.  Any Republican who criticizes it is immediately labeled a racist.  It makes no sense, but there it is.  Eliminating racial preferences, and treating everyone the same, is racist.

The recent Kennedy decision on disparate impact is a case in point.  Everybody’s bitching about the Obamacare decision and gay marriage, but no one utters a peep about this god awful ruling.  A whole lot of white people are afraid of making black people angry, and will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid it.  They know affirmative action is a crock, but they don’t want to talk about it, and they are uncomfortable when the subject comes up.

But there are also a lot of white people  — mainly white working men  — who are thoroughly pissed off at the whole concept.  They will vote against it whenever they can.  All they need to know is that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for affirmative action.  A vote against her is a vote against it.

The Republicans won’t say that, though.  Not so much because they’ll lose black votes.  Blacks who vote Republican don’t want any more God damn affirmative action.  It’s demeaning and counterproductive.  But lily livered whites get nervous about any politician making some blacks angry.  So Republican politicians keep their mouths shut, and racial demagogues like Hillary Clinton get a free pass.

Or not.  The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did what Bush wouldn’t do:  call Kerry out on his Vietnam lies.  Some think it turned the election, including, I believe, Kerry himself.  A group will be formed in the next year to do to Hillary what the Swift Boat vets did to Kerry.  Make her pay the price for her race hustling.  Tie her to affirmative action and nail her on it.

It won’t take a lot of money to do this.  Some simple 60 or 30 second spots could do the trick.  You run them on cable TV in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and maybe Minnesota.  You show them on reality TV shows that white working men watch  — Swamp Logger, Ice Trucker, or any show about Alaska.  You hit it hard, and lay it out there.  The spots write themselves.

Naturally this will provoke outrage.  Twits like Chris Matthews will soil their privates they’ll be so pissed.  Tough.  The reaction will help make the sale.  It is, of course, perfectly reasonable to be either for, or against, affirmative action.  But the leftist press won’t allow this to go unpunished.  Anyone associated with this group will be permanently branded with the letter “R” on their forehead.  It won’t be for the faint of heart.  But some group of people are going to do it anyway.

It could win the election.

Right after I got in to law school at UCLA in 1971 I found out about their racial quota system.  The place was run by brilliant law professors, so they had an awesome plan:   12% black, 12% Chicano, 1% poor white.  I was white and I was poor, so I might have qualified if I’d known about it.  Instead a guy from West Virginia named Robert Ray was the token poor white.  Nobody knew what to do with him.  He didn’t know what to do with himself.  He finally wound up hanging out with the Chicanos, who begrudgingly accepted him.  The poor, sorry bastard.

I later found out that they had another admission policy experiment, one that involved me.  They decided, just for the hell of it, to admit somebody with really low LSAT scores but with fabulous GPA’s.  And admit a guy with mediocre grades but really high LSAT’s.   Like me.  They abandoned that little experiment rather quickly.

It might have been my attitude.

When we get to 31 or 32 we expect Maryland to rescind.  There’s nothing we can do to stop them.  The legislature is solidly Democratic, and we’ve been advised that they have every intention of rescinding next year.  This means that in addition to Wisconsin, South Carolina, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho and Arizona we’ll also need Virginia.

Since Virginia is purplish, with some of the northern part of the state a suburb of D. C., this will not be easy.  We think we may have had the votes in the House back in January, but the Senate was split 21 R-19 D, and we couldn’t line up the votes there.  The entire legislature is up for reelection in November, so we’re not even guaranteed Republican majorities.  Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe is a skilled and ruthless political operator who will be pulling out all the stops to get a Democrat legislature.  But if the tide is with us, as it is, we should win this election, and have even stronger majorities.  But until that election takes place we won’t know how realistic our chances are.

Without Maryland we have to run the table next year  — getting eight out of eight.  It certainly can be done, but you have to call it a long shot.   We’ll need a lot of help, help that has not been forthcoming.  And I think we need some breaks as well.  The closer we get to 34, the more likely it is that we get the help we need.

The first meeting of the Federal Assembly will be on July 25th.  If it is a success, we should have a second meeting in December, preferably in Annapolis.  If by this time next year we haven’t hit 34, we should have a third meeting immediately following ALEC’s 2016 summer meeting.  A fourth meeting would be held in December, 2016, after the elections.

I think the 2016 election is the flip side of 1932, and we pick up a couple more states with complete Republican control  — Maine, Washington, Kentucky and Minnesota are the most likely.  With the addition of a couple of these states the December 2016 meeting of the Federal Assembly will, hopefully, be the last that deals with the BBA.  If we get 34 in 2017 no summer meeting of the Federal Assembly would be necessary.  But if the Amendment Convention is held in the summer or fall of 2017, there should be a meeting of the Federal Assembly in December of 2017.

The purpose of the Federal Assembly is for the state legislative leadership of this country to meet and discuss their responsibilities under Article V of the Constitution.  If, in late 2017, the First Amendment Convention has been held, discussions need to take place on the appropriate subject matter of the Second Amendment Convention.  The BBA, when enhanced by the Reagan Initiative, will do a great deal to get this country turned around.  But it is not sufficient.  To get back to constitutional government much more work needs to be done.  A decade’s worth of work.  The Federal Assembly should continue to meet until the job is complete.  Hell, they ought to meet forever.  Somebody’s got to keep an eye on the federales, and the Federal Assembly has the juice to keep them on the reservation.

These meetings should be short and sweet.  In San Diego the principal business meeting will start at 9:00 PDT and be over by 11 or 12.  You can’t expect remote participants to stay with us too much longer than that.  And we’ll stay on point.  No random bullshit.  Stick to business.  If people want to bullshit they can do it in the afternoon session, or the evening, or Sunday morning.

The Federal Assembly is in its infancy.  What it becomes is anyone’s guess.  It has great potential  — in my mind, at least.

It’s a start.

It’s easier to balance a budget with growth than with spending cuts.  Cutting spending causes pain.  Growth makes people happy.

Spending needs to be cut, no doubt.  It’s ridiculous.  The federal government pisses away so much money it’s a scandal.  There’s an awful lot of low hanging fruit in the federal budget.  Just not enough to bring spending down to where it equals revenue, if revenue is static.

The Reagan Initiative is a growth agenda grafted on to the traditional BBA.  Because the economic and fiscal  impact of both regulatory reform and of the transfer of federal lands to the states is so obvious and so enormous,  these two easily fit within a reasonable definition of a “Balanced Budget Amendment.”   Does tax reform?

Rand Paul is out with a flat tax proposal, drafted principally by Stephen Moore of Heritage.  It is my cup of tea.  I’d like to think a President Paul, with big Republican majorities in Congress, could get it passed.  I’m a dreamer, I know.  Even if all the corrupt Republicans in Congress (and there are a lot of them) voted for it, there’s the filibuster by Senate Democrats.  How do you get 60 votes in the Senate?

Maybe you don’t have to.  Maybe the flat tax qualifies as germane to a budget bill under the Byrd Rule, and thus can be passed as part of a reconciliation bill.  With 51 votes, not 60.  The Senate Parliamentarian is the one who would make the call (subject to being overridden by a 60 vote majority).

If the flat tax fits under the Byrd Rule it fits within a BBA.  And I would argue it fits.  A flat tax would produce an economic bonanza, as Moore argues convincingly.  The Roaring 20’s aren’t in it.  There would be so much wealth created that the federal government’s cut would balance the budget.  If you combined a flat tax with regulatory reform and transferring federal lands to the states we’d see growth that would put the 80’s to shame.

The nice thing about doing all this through Article V is that it’s in the Constitution.  Tough to change.  One of the criticisms of the flat tax is that Congress could always jack up rates, or impose a VAT, or somehow screw everything up.  If it’s in the Constitution Congress can’t touch it.  Maybe you’d have a provision for wars (only the declared kind) or natural disasters, allowing Congress to make temporary changes with a 2/3 vote.  You have to be a little flexible.

Like every other discussion of Article V, the number 38 pops up.  Forget getting 38 state legislatures to ratify.  Too tough.  But would the people of 38 states elect delegates to ratification conventions who’d vote for a package that contained, say, regulatory reform, land transfers, a flat tax, and spending restraints?  Who knows?  It would be the defining political fight of 21st Century America.

Whenever I think of 38 I see purple, as in Maine, Minnesota, Washington and Kentucky.  Are there majorities in these states for a pro-growth BBA?

Maybe, just maybe, we should find out.  It’s a political call.  I say leave the decision to the delegates.  They’re all politicians.  Let’s leave it up to them.

But let’s give them the option.

There’s no need to talk about all this at the Federal Assembly.  The first meeting, in San Diego, is all about One State, One Vote, One Amendment.

But down the road ……?