Miscellaneous

Maryland Democratic State Senator Jim Clark was a founder of the Article V Balanced Budget Amendment movement in 1975.  Democratic Maryland may have been the first State to pass a BBA Resolution.  Working with the National Taxpayers Union, Clark traveled the country promoting the cause, and was as responsible as anyone for getting 30 Resolutions passed in just four years.  It was bipartisan, Democrats and Republicans working together for a common cause.  But that was long ago.

Now “Common Cause” is leading the charge for rescission in Maryland.  (Who, exactly, is common to their cause?)  A floor vote on the rescission Resolution is set for Tuesday, and the Democrats in the State Senate hold its fate in their hands.  As the Democratic Party seeks to redefine itself after six years of steep decline, do they really want to be the political party that opposes balancing the budget?  65% of Democratic voters favor a BBA.  Why won’t they listen?

If they think a rescission will stop this movement they are all wrong.  We have three States in reserve.  Even if New Mexico and Nevada rescinded, we can still get to 34 without having to pass in a legislative chamber controlled by Democrats.

And when we do get to 34, and have an Amendment Convention, and propose a Constitutional Amendment to balance the budget, we will have to be candid about how this was finally accomplished.  What started out, with Jim Clark, over 40 years ago, as a bipartisan movement, became trench warfare  — Republicans fighting Democrats every step of the way toward balancing the budget.  No elected Democrat in the country did anything to help.  Do the Democrats really want to be the party opposed to balancing the budget?   Why don’t they try something completely different, like arguing against massive budget deficits and a ballooning debt?

Special Agent Loren Enns was in Cheyenne for third and final passage today, and prevented a disaster.  Five of our votes were off the floor, and we weren’t going to hit the needed 16.  So Loren got a continuance until Monday, when the votes will be there.  Wyoming would be 29, but that may only last a day if Maryland rescinds.  Just more work to do.

The big positive news is from Idaho, where we passed out of Senate State Affairs, 5-4.  If we were going to lose Idaho, we were going to lose in this, Sen. Bart Davis’ committee.  Former United States Senator Larry Craig, Greg Casey, and Georgia’s finest, Dave Guldenschuh testified on our behalf.  President of the Senate Little provided the winning vote.

It may not have been an easy vote.  My understanding is that the room was full of Birchers, of which there are a lot in Idaho, especially in the panhandle. It’s going to take a while, and plenty of work, but Idaho is looking very strong.  Speaker Bedke is as strong an advocate of the BBA as any legislator in the country.

CoS is now 0-5 in the five State Senates where they had a floor vote, losing in Utah today.  I don’t think they’re blaming us for that one.  Everyone is doing what is necessary to assure everyone involved that the BBA Task Force, and no one associated with it, did anything to discourage voting for CoS in the Arizona Senate.  To say that our lobbyist did, is to impugn his professional integrity, which I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate, and will straighten out in no time.

 

Turn off the bubble machine!

You try to be open minded, and get outside your bubble.  So you keep up with things at the WaPo, and read Politico, and check out CNN occasionally.  But lately, there’s not much point.  The elite media, or as I call it, the Hive, speak with one voice, and has one thing to say:  Trump is a disaster, a moron, and illegitimate.

But they’ve been wrong about him for close to two years, and they’ve learned nothing.  This may be what their core audience wants, but outside that bubble are others, and they are losing their relevance.  I’m hoping for a lot of good things from Trump.  If he can break the bubble of the Hive, as he is intent on doing, it will be his most significant achievement, politically.  Since the age of television began in the 50’s, the Hive has pushed the country left, and it’s been very effective.  I like to think with Trump, and the internet, it has met its match, at last.

I think it’s important to recognize the significance of what Trump is doing with his America First trade policy.  Since the founding, tariffs have been one of the most important political issues in this country.  The Federalists wanted tariffs, the Jacksonians didn’t.  After the Civil War, the Republicans wanted tariffs, and the Democrats in the South and West didn’t.  After WW II, the Republicans were the champions of free trade, and the Democrats were more pro-tariff.

Bill Clinton pushed the Democrats toward free trade, and now Trump has made the Republican Party skeptical of unfettered free trade.  In the grand scheme of things political, this is a very big deal.  These sorts of shifts on fundamental economic policy happen very rarely in our history.  And yet the Hive wants to talk about some gay provocateur being disinvited to CPAC.  But maybe that is what people are interested in, and I’m becoming a curmudgeon.

After losing in the Arizona Senate a couple days ago, the Convention of States (CoS) is trying to blame their failure on the BBA Task Force.  Apparently they think a lobbyist for the Task Force told some Senators to vote no on their Resolution.  This is untrue, and needs to be quashed.

I’ve been associated with the Task Force for over three years, and the public and private stance has always been, with respect to conservative Article V proposals:  come one, come all.  We all want to use Article V to attack the center, the federal government.  The more the merrier.

Before associating myself with the Task Force, I found the CoS on the internet.  This was October of 2013, and I wanted to get involved with an Article V movement.  I didn’t really care what it was about, term limits, the BBA, repeal the 16th Amendment, I didn’t care.  I just wanted to use Article V.  So I called up CoS, and someone explained to me what they were doing.  As soon as I heard it was a multi-subject Resolution, I told them they had made a mistake.  It wasn’t going to work.  Any experienced and half way intelligent State Legislator can tell you:  you don’t combine two or more major proposals into one bill.  You’re multiplying your opposition when you do.

Nonetheless, when I was in Helena with Bill Fruth a couple years ago, and I noticed on the Legislative Calendar that CoS was up in Senate Judiciary, I hung around the Capitol for a couple hours, and signed up to testify on the bill.  I was in the audience, lined up behind a microphone.  When my turn came I gave as forceful and full throated endorsement as I could.   And I still believe that.  If CoS was politically feasible, I’d be all over it.  But it’s not.

But maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe after the BBA Convention is successfully concluded, there will be enough confidence in Article V, and enough appetite for some more attacks on the center, that CoS could succeed.  It’s their only hope.  Since most of the CoS are actually very good people, and committed patriots, I wish them well.

We’ll be asking our lobbyist to clear all this misunderstanding up in the Arizona Senate.  The Task Force, in no way, shape, or form, recommends a no on CoS.

Loren Enns will be on hand in Cheyenne for final Senate passage tomorrow, as #29, Wyoming, is brought into this world.  Each one is more precious than the one before.  Let’s hope it’s the first of half a dozen.

 

 

 

 

When  the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump, it repudiated Bushism.  Bush Republicans are recycled Rockefeller Republicans, and, in that sense, Trump is another Goldwater.  As an original Goldwater Republican, I am well aware that Trump is something completely different.  He is an adaptation to changing political circumstances.

Back in the day, conservative Republicans were all free trade.  Economics told us that each country should produce goods where it had a comparative advantage, and trade with nations for goods when it had a comparative disadvantage.  Everybody would be better off.  It made perfect sense, and still does.

But the globalist and corporate Republicans, as well as the corporate Democrats (the Clintons), hijacked free trade and screwed the American worker.  It was happening right before our eyes, but we didn’t see it.  Free market Republicans saw the United Auto Workers lose members, and thought that unionization had made American labor overpriced.  But it wasn’t the unions that screwed the worker, it was the globalists.  At the altar of world harmony, they sacrificed the working men and women of their country.  A pox on them.

Another aspect of Bush Republicans was neoconservatism, or the Great International Crusade for Truth, Justice and the American Way  — that is, Iraq.  That disastrous decision, and the thinking that led to it, had to be repudiated for the Republicans to regain power.

In its 2012 post mortem, the Bush Republicans at the RNC advocated easing the stance against illegal immigration, in order to win more Hispanic votes.  This was the third leg of Bushism, and the most idiotic.  If Trump won on one issue, it was immigration.

These three Trump policies  — “America First”trade agreements, the rejection of foreign interventionism, and the enforcement of our immigration laws   —  are now mainstream Republican positions.  But it is a brand new face of the Republican Party, free of the control of the donor class.  Because the donor class are Bush Republicans.

The Democrats need to reject Clintonism just as the Republicans have rejected Bushism.  And then they need to escape the control of the public employee unions.  I don’t know if they can manage that.  But until they do, they will  be the party of government in a country that doesn’t like the government.  That’s a tough sell.

A correction:  Maryland Senate President Mike Miller was not a protege of Senate President Jim Clark.  This was pointed out to me by Senator Clark’s daughter, Martha.  Senator Miller was a co-sponsor of the BBA Resolution, and voted for it.  But he was not bosom buddies with Senator Clark.

We passed the Wyoming Senate on first reading, 20-10.  Final passage should be on Friday.  The Convention of States (CoS) failed in the Arizona State Senate, 13-17.  Bill Fruth was engaged in hand to hand combat in a Tennessee House subcommittee today, fighting for the Resolution calling the Nashville Planning Convention.  The people he has to fight are CoS.  If they are included in the Resolution, the Convention is off.  They don’t care.

The sooner these people go away, the  better.

Senator Jim Clark was a glider pilot in World War Two, and landed a glider full of 82nd Airborne Paratroopers in Operation Market Garden.  One of them could have been my Uncle Fritz.  These glider pilots were total bad asses.  They not only fly their flimsy, overloaded gliders, once they land they’ve got to become paratroopers.  Senator Jim Clark, R.I.P.

Maryland Senate President Mike Miller and I have one thing in common.  We’re on the same list  —  State Legislators who have voted for an Article V Convention to propose a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.  He was a 34 year old freshman Maryland State Senator.  I was a 37 year old freshman Alaska State Senator.  No one’s done a count, but i’d guess that there are around 4,000 other Legislators on the same list, from the 28 States which have passed BBA Resolutions.  By the time we get to 34, there will probably be 5,000 people on the list.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the most significant things I did in my legislative career.  Mike Miller had a different career than I did, and I don’t know how he feels about that vote.  I do know that Senate President Jim Clark carried the bill, and, from the looks of it, Miller is a protege of Sen. Clark.  Mike has been President of the Senate for 30 years, but before him it was Jim Clark for eight years.  I doubt that Miller could have been elected Senate President without Clark’s support.  I’m sure he remembers that.

Senator Jim Clark, along with Representative David Halbrook of Mississippi, started the Article V BBA movement in 1975 by introducing and eventually passing Resolutions in their respective legislatures.*  Quickly joined by Lew Uhler, by 1979 the movement, begun by Clark and Halbrook, had won 30 Resolutions, only four shy of the goal.

39 years later we’re at 28.  We were down to 17 at one point, and we’ve been clawing back.  One big problem we’ve got is that there aren’t that many Democrats like Jim Clark any more  — fiscal hawks.  There are a few, but they’re far between.  Maybe Mike Miller is one of them.

30 years ago, when she was a Delegate, Maryland State Treasurer Nancy Kopp led a rescission effort, passing her Resolution in the House of Delegates.  Mike Miller had just been elected to succeed Clark as Senate President, and Kopp’s bill never made it to the Senate floor.

Kopp is back at it.  She’s been the Maryland State Treasurer for fifteen years, and she’s the driving force by the rescission effort in Maryland.  She hasn’t quit.  We’ll see if Mike Miller has.

To say that Mike Miller’s career differed from mine is an understatement.  But then, Mike is a natural born Irish pol, a Tip O’Neill type, with five kids and fourteen grandchildren.  Maybe he thinks about the debt he’s passing on to those kids.

He started practicing law when he was 23, and was elected to the House of Delegates when he was 29.  Four years later he was in the Senate, where he’s been ever since, the last 30 as President.

I was a State Senator for two years, then the Governor gerrymandered me out of my seat.  That was the high point of my political career.  I should have walked away from politics, but I wanted revenge, so I ran for the State House and spent two years trying to destroy Gov. Bill Sheffield, politically.  By the time we were done with him his own party wouldn’t nominate him, so I had that.  Then I decided that if I became Speaker of the House I could run against Ted Stevens, so I wasted four years chasing that rabbit.

So, Mike Miller and I don’t have that much in common.  But we’re both on the list, along with Jim Clark.  It would be a shame to see that name taken down.

 

 

 

*Setting Limits by Lew Uhler, p. 186

Politics is arithmetic, and numbers count.  The most fundamental count is a majority, 50% plus one.  We’ve devised other counts, supermajorities such as 2/3 and 3/4.  Politics is about who and what counts, and who does the counting.

Under Article V the 50 States each count, and 34 of them must agree for an Amendment Convention to be called by Congress.  What constitutes an agreement?   What counts?

Formal Legislative Resolutions, passed by  both chambers of a State Legislature, that’s what counts.  It is the province of Congress to determine if 34 such Resolutions have passed, and to examine each of them to see if they count  — if they can be Aggregated.

Since Congress has never before been called upon to consider this question there are no direct precedents, no clear guide from the past.  But there are parallels.  One such is State Ratification of Constitutional Amendments proposed by Congress.  3/4 of the States must vote for Ratification.  What, exactly, counts as a Ratification?

It’s up to Congress, and it is their right to exercise wide discretion.  Such discretion was freely exercised by Congress with respect to Ratification of the Civil War Amendments, the 13th, 14th, and 15th.   Anything that resembled a Ratification counted.  They were very forgiving.

I have this on the authority of a leading constitutional scholar, attorney Mike Farris.  I met him at the December, 2013 ALEC meeting, and he told us of the research he’d conducted while he was opposing Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.  He’d been to the Library of Congress, and personally examined the originals of the Civil War Amendments’ ratifications.   He was amazed at their diversity.  Congress counts what it wants to count.

Congress is not a court, and Congressmen are not judges.  The question of what constitutes a Ratification is a political decision, not a legal one.  The same goes for Aggregation.  If Congress wants to count something, it will.  If it doesn’t, it won’t.

The Courts have no jurisdiction in the matter, other than to, at most, review it to see that Congress had a rational basis for its decision.  If the left had taken over the Supreme Court it’s possible they might have considered intervening on the question of Aggregation.  But with the Roberts majority intact, it’s quite clear that will not happen.  The majority Justices understand the concept of Federalism.  Most, if not all, of them are associated with the Federalist Society.

Apparently Gov. Abbott of Texas has drunk the Kool-Aid, and thinks the BBA has an Aggregation problem.  That’s because Abbott is thinking like a lawyer, considering a legal question.  It’s not a legal question,  but a political one, and I find it hard to believe Gov. Abbott doesn’t understand that.  But lawyers think everything is a legal question, and Abbott is a lawyer’s lawyer.

So we may need to pursue trifurcation, making each of the three parts of the CoS Resolution aggregate with a single subject Resolution on the same subject.  It’s little unwieldy, but it can work.  Gov. Abbott can redeem himself by making sure this trifurcation is done properly.

If this is done correctly, we don’t lose Texas.

Now the CoS is causing trouble in Tennessee, threatening to cause the cancellation of the 7-11-17 Planning Convention.  We’d have to get another State to issue the call, and that will be done if necessary.  But it would be a shame.  Nashville would have been perfect.