Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

Seattle, obviously.  What was I thinking?  The annual meeting of NCSL starts August 3rd in Seattle.  The Denver meeting is just the Executive Board.  There will be ten or twenty times more legislators in Seattle.  It occurs two months later, but who cares?  It just gives us more time to set it up.  I’ve been on Facebook with Greg Moon, one of the leaders of the Seattle Tea Party Patriots.  I hope to be able to meet him on Tuesday.  He told me about Westlake Park, in downtown Seattle, close to the Convention Center, where we can have a noontime Reagan Amendment Rally.

One of the speakers I’ll want at the rally is John Carlson of KVI, the big talk show host in Seattle, and Washington.  Actually, I’ll invite him to MC it.  If he promotes this on his show we’re guaranteed a good crowd.  Another possibility is Sarah Palin.  That’s a decision we don’t  have to make for three months.  She’d get media attention, and draw a crowd, but it would turn into a Sarah Palin event.  I’ll want to hear what everyone else thinks.  I’m betting we can get a Presidential candidate, and if we do we won’t need Palin.  Another speaker will be Utah Rep. Ken Ivory, President of the American Lands Council.  He will have the most substantive part of the rally.

I’ll be in Seattle Monday, and check out the park.  I’ll be at the Grand Hyatt, which we may want as the venue for meetings and a possible awards dinner.  I need to put together a budget for all this, and raise the money.

Senate President pro tem Curt Bramble is one of the heroes of Utah.  He carried our bill in the Senate.  When Curt Bramble agrees to put your bill through the Senate, it gets through the Senate.  As incoming President of NCSL, he’ll have a big say in what happens in Seattle.  I’ll be talking to him, soon, about coordinating the Reagan Amendment Summit and his show.  It would be nice to somehow be on the official NCSL agenda.

The goal, of course, is press coverage.  Maybe in the next four months we’ll have spread the word on the Reagan Amendment enough so that there will be some interest.  Actually, we need a gimmick of some kind.  Maybe.  Maybe a Presidential candidate would be enough.  We’ve got time to think this through.  I’m thinking as I type.  That’s not good.

Time for a beer, and a walk in the woods.

That’s the federal government, if you couldn’t guess.  Over the last ten or twenty years the American people have rendered judgment on the blob.  They don’t like it.  In one recent poll it was rated the number one problem facing the country.  It’s turned into a national joke.  Now the EPA wants to regulate the length of your shower in hotels.  That’s why regulatory reform is so popular.  It would also, of course, reduce the burden on business, resulting in more economic activity and more tax revenue for the Treasury.

The REINS Act, introduced by Senator Paul in 2013, would require every new regulation that costs more than $100 million to be approved by Congress before it takes effect.  Heritage says there were 130 such rules in Obama’s first term alone, imposing $70 billion annually in costs.  I would amend it by requiring any regulation that costs more than $1 has to be approved by Congress.

Congress won’t like that, but they’ve got nothing to say about it.  The states can put that in the Constitution with Article V, and Congress can go fly a kite.  It’s not that Congressmen are lazy.  Many are dynamos of activity, but their energy is focused primarily on raising money for their campaigns, and paying off their contributors with favors.  I remember one guy from a few years ago made a vow to spend no more than one half of his work day to raising money.  His buddies in Congress probably laughed at him, a goodie two shoes.  I don’t think he’s still around.

Reviewing regulations would be a lot of work, and they don’t like too much of that.  That’s why the gave these agencies the power to issue regulations, so they wouldn’t have to do the work themselves.  And, of course, to make themselves look good by giving vague, lofty sounding goals for the agencies to pursue with their regulations.

Congress should also be given the power to repeal any regulation by majority vote in each chamber, with no veto allowed.  There’s a lot of bad ones on the books that need to go.  You might also want to sunset any regulation, so that they automatically expire after, say, ten years.  If they’re really important, issue them again.

These will all be topics of conversation at the Reagan Amendment Summit in Denver on June 3rd.  The Amendment Convention will have the final say, but it’s worth talking about right now.  The Convention will probably be held about one year after the Summit, so it’s not too early.  Dave Biddulph is going to talk to John Aglialoro about being the sponsor.  At one time he said he was ready to put $100 million into Article V.  The Summit would be cheap.  If we had the bucks, I’d like to pay for every legislator’s plane fare and hotel.  I want representatives from 50 states there.  If not 50, 38.  If not 38, 26 will do.

From Louisiana I’d like to get Senator Elbert Guillory.  He’s black, from a poor district, but he figured out that his people need jobs, not handouts.  So he’s a Republican.  He cut an ad last fall that tore Senator Mary Landrieu a new one.  I like this guy.  I’d like him to talk about what an honest to God economic expansion would do for his people.

Ideally, I’d like a Democrat from West Virginia to talk about what federal regulation is doing to his people, the economic devastation being visited on his district.  I read last week that unemployment is up in every county in West Virginia.  I know this is Appalachia, and these Scotch-Irish hillbillies aren’t the right sort of people.  But they are Americans.  And the feds are killing them.  It’s a national disgrace.

I was 12 when “The Blob” came out.  It was Steve McQueen’s first leading role.  The double feature with it was “I Married a Monster from Outer Space”.  They don’t make them like that any more.  The blob was this slimy pink thing that kept growing and growing.  That’s why it reminds me of the federal government.  The best part of the movie is when the blob seeps into a movie theatre  through the heating vents, and eats the whole crowd.  Me and my friends really liked that part.  They finally figured out that it couldn’t take the cold, so they froze it and parachuted it into the Arctic.  Could we do that to the Federal government?  Under Article V, we can do anything we want.

Yes we can!

Bush is a joke.  As a candidate, he reminds me of John Connally in 1980.  All hat, no cattle.  The Bushes ruined the outstanding Republican brand that Reagan bequeathed them.  All it takes is a candidate with the balls to point that out, and Jeb is defenseless.  He can’t throw his family under the bus.  They are his tar baby.  Oh, and, by the way, sneaking into this country illegally is not an act of love.

Christie’s another joke.  A moderate northeast bully boy gets less and less electable the farther south and west he goes.

I liked Walker, read his book, “Unintimidated.”  I even sent him a couple hundred bucks during the recall.  He’s the real deal.  His failure to support the Article V BBA troubled me, but I figured maybe he thought Kasich had taken ownership of the issue, and it would never really get anywhere.  Not smart, but understandable.  But now, ethanol.  One of the worst environmental boondoggles of all time.  No serious person can see it any other way, and that includes Scott Walker.  But he’ll lie about what he knows to be true, doing the Iowa Pander. If he’ll lie about that, what else will he lie about, in order to get votes?  I don’t want to find out.  It will be interesting to see how the voters of New Hampshire react to the latest pol who comes in after Iowa, and the Big Pander.  On ethanol, I think Walker outsmarted himself, and it will cost him.

I like the rest of the field, more or less, though the only ones with a shot are Kasich, Paul, Cruz, Rubio, Perry and Pence.  Seeing as how I’m an antiwar libertarian, I’m naturally attracted to Paul.  But I could support any of them.

One of them will carry the Reagan Amendment banner.  It wins the west, save California and Hawaii.  It will be very popular in the south, and, I believe, the border states.  But the Midwest is the key.  I really don’t know these people.  I’ve never even been there, other than airports.  Will it sell?

I’m anxious to find out.

This could be a lot of fun in Denver.  We’ll have to rent a room at the Denver Westin to hold a morning strategy session, which would be followed by the press conference at noon.  After lunch those who are interested can meet in workshops on various topics, such as the language in the Reagan Amendment covering different aspects of it.  At 5:00 we’d have an open bar, followed by a banquet where presentation of the first George Mason Awards can be made.  We would also hear reports from the chairs of the workshops.  We’d try and get a dinner speaker, but it would have to be a good one, maybe even a presidential candidate.  If we pulled that off we could see if a local organization, such as the Denver or Colorado Republican Women’s Club would put on the whole show, with the public and press invited.  We’d split the proceeds with them.  I can dream.

This will be a chance to see old friends, and introduce them to one another.  Kraig Powell of Utah will be receiving the George Mason Award, as will Hal Wick.  Matthew Monforton, Art Wittich, Tyler Lindholm, Dan Laursen, Mike Chenault, Kevin Meyer, Kevin Lundberg, Pam Roach, Ted Ferioli,  Yvette Herrell, Gary Banz, Chris Kapenga, Jim Kaspar, Marv Hagedorn, Bill Cowsert, Dennis Powers, Larry Grooms, Bob Thorpe, Jim DeCesare, Don Huffines, Dave Lemunyon, Joe Harrison, John Overington, Ken Ivory and others will get a chance to meet each other, many for the first time.  Hopefully there will be a lot of new faces as well, from places that we got a while back, like New Hampshire, Iowa, Florida, Pennsylvania etc.

A principal reason for the gathering will be for all these people to get to know each other, informally, personally.  They have a lot in common.  They’ll like each other.  This will be the foundation of the actual organization of the Amendment Convention.  Many of these people will not be delegates, but all will participate in the selection of their state’s delegates.  And many of them will be delegates, and can use this gathering to form the nucleus of a majority organization.

The first time I did something like this was 50 years ago, when I set up the California College Young Republican Federation state convention in Oakland’s Jack London Square.  It was the first time I’d done anything like it, and I was nervous that I might have screwed up, but it went fine.  When it was all over a bunch of us got together for some beer in one of the rooms.  We were all relieved everything went well.  Then this guy walks in and has a couple beers.  Turns out he’s Walt Driver from San Francisco State, and he’s a big Bircher, a real crackpot.  I’d been told he carried a gun, because he thought the Commies were out to get him.  I didn’t like his attitude, so I go over and say, “Hey, Walt, I hear you’re packin’ a rod.  You got one on you?”  I thought it was funny, but it made some people nervous.  I mean, this guy was crazy.

I’ll try not to do anything like that in Denver.

Next year the Amendment Convention will meet and make their proposal.  I believe it should be called the Reagan Amendment, in honor of the greatest President of the 20th century.

It will be more than a balanced budget amendment, although balancing the budget will be its goal.  It will be an economic growth amendment, a regulatory reform amendment, and a federalist amendment. It will be a political realignment amendment.  Though it will contain nothing that is not directly related to balancing the budget, its ancillary effects can be so significant that it could set the course of this country for a generation.

We’ll unveil the Reagan Amendment in June in Denver.  A lot of work needs to be done in preparation, but there’s plenty of time.  It’ll be fun, as long as I don’t have to travel too much.  My current plan is to go to Olympia, Salem and Boise the week of the 23rd.  It’s possible Idaho Senate Majority Leader Davis will like the Reagan Amendment so much that we get our bill this year.  It will depend on how much sense he has.

I’m really looking forward to meeting Washington Senate President Pam Roach.  When I sent the pledge letter to her last summer she gave me a call, and we had a good talk.  She’s kind of a character.  I checked her out on the internet.  A couple years ago she was booted out of the Republican Caucus for obstreperous behavior.  I’m thinking maybe she’s not an ideal sponsor.  Then I find out she gets elected President of the Senate!  This sounds like my kind of gal.

When I was in Juneau I talked to Sam Cotton, the Commissioner of Fish and Game.  He was Speaker when I was House Minority Leader. Sam’s a good guy.  He told me my name came up recently in some budget talks.  With the low price of oil, Alaska will burn through $3 billion in cash reserves this year, and next year they’ll need to access the Constitutional Budget Reserve.  We set that up when I was in the House, and they needed my vote.  I gave it to them on the condition that no withdrawals could be made without a 3/4 vote in House and Senate.  The Republicans had been in the minority since statehood, practically, and I wanted to make sure they couldn’t get the money without our votes.  2/3 wasn’t good enough for me.  I figured they could always buy off a couple Republicans, so let’s make it real hard to do.  Now the Republicans have a 3/4 majority in the Senate, but only 2/3 in the House.  So guess who they have to go to in order to get to the money?  House Democrats.

Those guys owe me a beer.