CW 462 – Mark Meckler – Legislation Through Regulation & Self-Governance with Co-Founder of the Tea Party

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Welcome to Creating wealth with Jason Hartman. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven't thought of before. And a new slant on investing fresh, new approaches to America's best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multi millionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He's been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Hey, welcome, welcome, welcome. This is your host, Jason Hartman. This is episode number 462. Gosh, 500 is right around the corner, isn't it? Not too far away. Anyway, thanks for joining me today. And you know what? I do a lousy job of some things, and one of the things I don't do a very good job of is bragging about how my predictions become true. Now, you might think otherwise, call it luck, call it brilliance, call it whatever you want, but here I am finding myself on the right side of another fairly major prediction. Yes, did I predict the end of the good market in 2005, in November of 2005 when I just so happened to on November 11, close the deal on the sale of my traditional real estate company? Yes, I predicted that correctly. Nobody noticed it until spring of 2006? Did I predict the Fannie Mae crisis? The FHA crisis? The FDIC? We won't call it a crisis, but we all know the FDIC could very easily become insolvent. Did I predict the fact that the homeownership rate would drop and that would strengthen the rental market? Did I predict the comeback in the real estate market, you know, a good four and a half years ago? Yes, I predicted all those things. What was I out? Let's just point that out in the middle of all these right predictions. I was wrong about interest rates. Freely admit it, I didn't get that one right. I thought rates would be higher a long time ago. I was wrong. Got egg on my face on that one. And that's sort of a big one. But to my credit, really, nobody can predict interest rates very well. And I gotta get Grant's Interest Rate observer on the show because that is an expensive newsletter subscription. They seem to Be fairly good at predicting interest rates over at grants, but I don't know, maybe they're not. It's not exactly like I follow them closely, but you know, nobody can predict interest rates very well. That's unfortunate. So what am I right about this time? Gloating. Gloating. Gloating. Well, it's not oil because that one I predicted, but it's gone lower than my prediction. Remember on the show with Jawad Mia that I did. It's on tape, okay. I predicted that oil prices would head down. I predicted they'd go below $80 when he said $140. And, and he's a brilliant guy by the way. I love his newsletter, Straight Reflections. He did a very good show. But hey, I was right about the oil prices, right? And it's interesting because I'm going to get the author of a book called the Oil Card back on the show. And I interviewed him several years ago and I believe that was just for the Holistic Survival show. I don't believe I played that episode on Creating Wealth. But he predicted, get this, I mean this is like a mind blowing, shocking prediction. He predicted oil should be $3 a barrel, not a gallon a barrel. Okay? And today I'm reading an article about how oil could go below $20 a barrel.

Wow, wow, wow.

That's insane. Did I predict gold? Yeah, I kind of predicted gold pretty well at several points along the way. You know, you got to look at all the last episode, the past episodes to hear all those predictions. But I've been pretty good about gold and silver. Now what am I gloating about today? I'm gloating about bitcoin. Yes, bitcoin. We talked a lot about bitcoin at the last Meet the Masters because, heck, to have another currency come out of the woodwork in the history of currencies very, very recently and make such a big splash as it did. And you know, when I was in Peru just a couple of months ago, all my friends were around that love bitcoin. And I predicted bitcoin would go to $250. And as of today, dear listeners, bitcoin, when I checked earlier today, was getting right near there. $286 per Bitcoin. I predicted 250. And everybody, when did I predict that? I think it was around, I don't know, 400 and something when I made that prediction. So hey, here we go again. And I would love to be wrong about bitcoin or any alternative cryptocurrency, but I'm not going to be wrong about it. And you know why I'm not going to be wrong about it? Because unless the central banking, government cartel complex, unless they control it, they're not going to let it succeed in any big way. Okay, so that's that. You know, we got to think a lot about currencies and about valuations of these things because they are all measuring sticks for our investment portfolio. And a lot of what we need to be thinking about is the three fundamental economic scenarios. And we're going to be covering these at Meet the Masters, which by the way is totally oversold. I know everybody waits to the last minute. This always happens. We have, I think we have 114 people. It's going to be kind of crowded. Don't try to come to Masters anymore, please. It's done, it's over, it's baked. Next time you can get the home study course on the website. Still, we still got a few of those physical products actually left of the best of Meet the Masters where we combined two different Meet the Masters sections. So check that out@jason hartman.com. but what was I saying? I digress. But it's important to look at all these measuring sticks, right? You know, gold, silver, the cpi, the consumer price index, which of course is a, you know, a misleading scam. All of this different stuff for the three fundamental economic scenarios which we will be talking a lot about at Masters, how your real estate investment portfolio could perform based on those three basic scenarios. What are they? They are inflation. That scenario, if you follow my strategy, is a huge home run. In fact it's, you know, knocking it out of the park. Home run. Okay, then what is the other scenario? Well, the other scenario is deflation. Some now would say that might be kind of likely. I don't know, I don't really think so in any long term way. And then what is the other one? Stagnation. Now don't get stagnation confused with stagflation which we had during the very ugly years of Jimmy Carter, one of our lamest presidents until, well, until Mr. Obama came along. Did I predict that one right? Yeah, I did gloat about Obama's failures too. But Obama has done a couple of good things I will give him credit for. Easing tensions with Cuba I think is a great decision. So that one's a good one. I'm all in favor of easing tensions with Cuba. The embargo has been a disaster. Several years ago I visited Cuba legally, mind you, we got permission when I went with the young entrepreneurs organization from the State Department. I got a cool certificate I used to have hanging on the wall and we chartered our own commercial jet, an airliner jet out of Miami. And it was kind of fun because we had the whole plane to ourselves. We were throwing pillows at the flight attendants. You know, you'd get arrested for that on a regular flight. But it was, it was kind of neat. We had our own big, a big jet, not a private jet, like a full size commercial jet that we chartered just for us. And I went to Cuba at that time, I became pretty convinced that the embargo is definitely not working. So ease the tensions with Cuba. And believe me, folks, I know what you're thinking, you shrewd investor, opportunistic listeners. Yes, I've, I've hopefully had a good influence on you of being an opportunist, not an optimist. But you know, there are a lot of reasons to actually become an optimist again lately and we've been talking about that. But in terms of being an opportunist, what are you thinking when I talk about Cuba? You're thinking, well, if Cuba opens up, will there be some good real estate deals? Yes, that's the way I want you to think. I've been thinking that for a good eight or nine years now, ever since candidate Obama, even before candidate Obama, really. I remember reading an article about how he was wanting to ease up on Cuba. Definitely, definitely worth considering the opportunities there. I don't know, it may be complete chaos if it does really open up in any real way. We will see, we will see some interesting stuff. So income, property is a multi dimensional asset class and that's why we love it. We love it so much better than anything else. It's far from perfect. Nothing is perfect, including Elon Musk's last wife. Elon the great Elon Musk is getting another divorce. Well, I'm going to tell you something funny about that here in a moment, which I, I think I'm going to ask you a good question about that. By the way, we do have a guest today. I'm not just going to be rambling on here forever. We do have a guest and we're going to talk about the Tea Party and self governance a little bit today. But I got to talk to you about some of this other important stuff too first. So Elon Musk is getting divorce number two or divorce number three, depending on how you look at it. Because apparently his soon to be ex wife, he married her twice. Now get this, okay? And this is what I think about how maybe, you know, we certainly need to get the money out of politics, right? I mean, that's hard to disagree with. You know, most people blame the Republicans for wanting the money in politics, but the Democrats are just as bad. I mean, both sides are throwing money at politics. And I think we gotta get money out of politics. Just, we gotta keep it clean. But you know what? I think maybe we need to get money out of marriage too, to clean that up. Because that's like a whole cottage industry in and of itself. It's not even a cottage industry. It's ridiculous. Okay, so listen to this. And you know, I'd love your feedback. Maybe I'm crazy, tell me I'm crazy, tell me I'm wrong, whatever you want, but it's just a question. Do we need to get the money out of marriage too? Here is why I ask that question of you. And maybe, you know, maybe some of you will tell me what you think of it this weekend, okay? At Meet the Masters. So after a very short 18 months and no children, the great Elon Musk is getting divorce number two, or divorce number three, depending on how you count. And this is, I wrote this on my Facebook page today. So that's why I'm just reading my Facebook page. The couple agreed to settle with her getting $16 million in cash and quote, other assets, unquote. So here's the math, just based on the cash settlement, she got nearly $890,000 per month, or $29,000 per day that they were married. That's $1,235 per hour, even while sleeping. Now, is that right? Did she contribute to the creation and success of PayPal? Well, I bet she didn't even know Elon Musk when he was involved in PayPal. Did she contribute to the creation and the growth and the success of Tesla? You know, that coal burning car that pollutes the environment? Although people who drive them feel good about themselves and kind of maybe a little self righteous too. You know, I might even feel this way if I didn't think about it fully the equation. Because they think they just plug it in and it doesn't pollute. But where do you think that electricity comes from, folks? You know, what is it, 40, 50, 60% of the electricity in the country comes from, you guessed it, coal. So the Tesla is a hybrid coal burning car. And how much do you think it produces in terms of an economic footprint to mine coal? Well, let me see, you gotta, you gotta mine the coal out of the ground. You got to do some refining. And what are all those bulldozers and tractors and all that mining equipment running on? Well, diesel. You've been behind a diesel vehicle lately and experienced the pollution. Yeah. Not exactly a low carbon footprint, huh? And then you're going to burn the coal and produce and boil water and produce steam to turn a turbine. Now this is a massively inefficient process. We would be so much better off with currently still today, the absolute cleanest, safest and best form of energy, which is nuclear. Okay, but hey, weren't we talking about Elon Musk and his divorce? Yes, we were. Okay. Did she contribute to the creation and success of SpaceX or any of those other ventures? Maybe. Maybe. I do not know the answer. I don't know if she did. But maybe this settlement is actually a bargain for Elon Musk. Because Forbes puts his net worth at $7.8 billion. And if you're worth $7.8 billion, $16 million is pocket change. So I'm really not sure. I'm just asking the question, what do you think? And P.S. remember that cash settlement was $16 million. That's what I did the math on. I don't know what the other assets were. Maybe there were a couple of yachts, a couple of jet planes, some coal burning Teslas, some real estate thrown into the deal. Who knows? We're just talking about the cash. $1,235 per hour, even while you're sleeping. That's not a bad deal. So what do you think? I'm kind of thinking that money taints the political process. And it taints a lot of things in life. Okay? You know, money's good and bad, so it taints the political process. Well, doesn't it taint marriage? I mean, this would be fine if Elon Musk, wife. If they were married for a long time and if she sat at home being a, you know, a domestic engineer, you know, a housekeeper. Well, he went out and slayed dragons and she supported him in all that effort and they did that for 20 years and she wasn't in the labor force, so she lost all of that opportunity. But she works. I mean, she's a, she's a model, she's an actress, she's had some fairly big parts and they were only married for 18 months and they don't have any children. It's not like she was busy raising the kids. So call me crazy, I don't know, maybe it was a bargain. I mean, it was a settlement. Elon Musk Must have thought it was a good deal too. If you're worth $7.8 billion, 16 million is pocket change, right? Another bunch of people got burned. Violating my commandment number three, thou shalt maintain control, thou shalt be a direct investor. A 29 year old hedge fund founder has disappeared with all the firm's money. Now this one happened to be based in Russia, okay? But it could have easily happened and it already has happened in the good old US of A. Probably in every state in the union by people with big resumes too. John Corzine, he was governor of New Jersey. And he had all kinds of other accomplishments on his resume, which I forget. Bernie Madoff, well, he was president of nasdaq. He was super well networked. Everybody knew him at every country club, you know, every charity event, right? These people here's maybe a rule of life. I've definitely noticed this. Really, really nice people. Watch out. Now you don't have to watch out for me because I'm really not very nice, okay? These really nice people. Think about a con artist. A con artist, their stock and trade basically consists of two things. Either the ability to deceive us or the ability to get us to let down our guard. How do we let down our guard? Well, nice people are. They help get us to let down our guard. Right? They're very disarming. You know, watch out for really nice people, okay? And watch out for people. Hey, look, you know, talking about this, I'm not nice. Nobody likes me because I call everybody out all the time. So I have like no friends, okay? Just kidding. I have a few, but my friends tend to actually believe in something, right? So there's the difference. Oh God. Anyway, so another hedge fund manager steals all the money. What a concept. All right, on the positive news here, so Mercedes is out with this really swanky new concept car. And this car looks very much like. Although it looks way better than the cars you've seen in some of these futuristic movies. One, and I can't think of the name of that darn movie right now. It was this weird movie with Tom Cruise and I think Bruce Willis was in it. Or maybe it was just Bruce Willis in that one. Anyway, and they got in the self driving cars and the cars took them places and stuff. Well, this car is so cool looking. I mean I'm, I'm looking at a picture of it right now. It's amazing. Just do a search for it. I don't like to say Googling because I want to be search engine agnostic, like the Way I'm, you know, market agnostic with real estate. Right. Or area agnostic. Google. Don't Google it, just search it, you know, on a search engine. There are other search engines besides Google. Bing. I use Bing a lot, kind of as a statement because Google tracks everything too much and that bugs me. But they make it so convenient. We just ultimately give in, we give it away for, you know, convenience anyway, expediency. So this car they've designed is a self driving concept car that turns into a mobile living room. And this thing is so doggone swanky. I've said many times that the three cardinal rules of real estate have always been location, location, location. Remember how a few episodes ago I called out a yellow light warning on Houston and you know, we're not pushing Houston anymore because I want to see how this oil price thing kind of pans out. Now listen, I own properties in Houston. I'm not selling, okay? I, I think Houston's a great market, but my property stabilized. Okay. Would I tell you to go rush into Houston today and buy another property? I think you could be a little safer with some other markets. Okay. Because when oil prices drop like this, the exploration declines and a lot of those jobs in, I mean, certainly North Dakota, that's going to be a mess. I'm so glad we did not enter that market. Although believe me, we have been heavily, heavily pitched on it. And you know, maybe sometimes it's good to be just really conservative like I am and really risk averse. And you know, I think a lot of that comes with age. You know, I used to feel like I was bulletproof. I don't feel like that anymore. I've had my ups and downs in life and most of us listening are old enough to have experienced that stuff and so we're just a little more careful. Okay. Anyway, I wouldn't rush into buy, you know, property in Houston, but you know, when it comes to, and that may certainly change, I mean, fundamentally, I love Houston. I mean that market's got, you know, it's got some decent diversification, but there's definitely a lot of oil there. Okay? So this car and the whole concept of the self driving car and the whole concept of the three cardinal rules in real estate that have always been location, location, location that could be up for grabs. So this isn't quite the yellow light warning on location, location, location yet, but it's getting there. As we get closer to autonomous driving vehicles that are like mobile living rooms, like this gorgeous Mercedes concept car I'm looking at, I don't know if it's so important where you live, you could live maybe way out in the suburbs and your self driving car will just pick you up and drive you to wherever you want. The second tier, the third tier cities, the fourth tier cities could become more desirable because technologically you can certainly live any place in the world now as long as you have reliable, fast Internet, which by the way you don't have in a lot of these countries that I profile on my jetsetter show. And that's why still I'm not recommending any international deals yet. But I don't know, maybe Cuba, we'll see how that plays out and we'll be watching. But you know the location, location, location thing, as Yogi Berra said, the future ain't what it used to be. Okay? So location, location, location, think about it, that ain't what it used to be with a self driving car. And if as long as energy prices are low, wow, it's, that's really kind of up for grabs. I mean do you need to pay a super mega premium to live in Manhattan, New York or Newport Port Beach, California where I'm from, or Los Angeles? I mean in the past you always paid that because there's this old saying in real estate. People commute until they qualify. People commute until they qualify. And what that means is until you can qualify for a loan to buy a house, you commute. So if that number is 30 minutes, then that's how far you commute. If it's 45 minutes because you don't qualify to buy anything you want to buy until you drive 45 minutes from your job or maybe an hour and a half from your job, then that's you commute to qualify with a self driving car. And I don't know if the energy prices will stay that cheap for, you know, indefinitely. I mean overall I think inflation is the future. But we'll see, we'll see. Okay? We will see if energy prices are low and we got self driving cars. Location, location, location, location. Not as important. Okay? So it's certainly something to be mindful of. But again, this is going to take several years to play out this trend. Okay? So we will see how it goes. All right, let's get to our guest, Mark Meckler. Yes, self governance. I don't think we've ever had a Tea Party guy on before. So he's from the Tea Party and is going to talk about self governance and that kind of stuff. Go to jasonartman.com check out our meet the Masters home study course. We've still got. I think I've got exactly like. I don't know, I counted them the other day. I think I have 17 of those left. Maybe I went to my storage unit, I counted them. I haven't asked you to buy them lately. Please buy them. Let us ship them to you. And they're a beautiful physical product. They're on sale. I mean, they're less than the digital product. When does that ever happen? I know, it's kind of like, like bass ackwards, as they say. Right. So you can check those out@jason hartman.com and especially if you're not coming to Masters on Saturday. Okay, let's get to our guest. And here we go. It's my pleasure to welcome Mark Meckler to the show. He is president of Citizens for Self Governance and co founder of the Tea Party Patriots. He's author of Tea Party Patriots, the Second American Revolution. Mark, welcome. How are you?

I am fantastic. Even better being with you.

Good stuff. Well, tell us a little bit about the Citizens for Self Governance.

Sure. Well, you know, I come out of the Tea Party movement. I was uninvolved in politics until Tea Party movement started. And I was one of those folks who was just darn fed up and stood up and started protesting in 2009, early 2009. I kept standing up and protesting. And ultimately that led me to the helm of an organization called Tea Party Patriots, which. Which we founded to be sort of the go forward grassroots center for the Tea Party movement. We built that organization to over 3200 chapters and 23 million members around the country. And then I stepped away from the organization about two and a half years ago because I wanted to broaden the base. It was my opinion at that point that the Tea Party brand had reached its zenith. Still a great brand, but it had reached this point where a lot of people who believed in the ideas didn't identify with the brand. The brand had been vilified. And so I knew when I went out and talked to people, they believed in capitalism, in free markets, they believed in the Constitution, and they believed in limited government. Really. And so when I talk to people about that and then I would say, oh, so you're a tea Party? A lot of people would say, no, I don't like the Tea Party. But if I said, well, so you're in favor of self governance? They said, yeah, absolutely. I'm a self governance person. And that's why I founded Citizens for Self Governance. It was the idea of broadening the appeal of those ideas beyond the brand of the Tea Party.

So I'm curious. So when was the Tea Party really founded? About 2008, actually.

Officially, it got started. Rick Santelli did his now famous rant in early February of 2009. And so what happened is Santelli calls for a Tea Party on the shores of Lake Michigan. He calls for it in July. A bunch of us get on the phone together and say, we can't wait that long. And so A week later, February 27, 2009, we held the first series of Tea Party protests around the country. There are 35 of them around the country, of which the one I held in Sacramento was one. About 39,000 people came out. And then a group of us got together, actually five of us, and decided we should do it again. And that's how we planned the Tax Day Tea Party, which took place on April 15, 2009. That was really the biggie that most people know about. Over 850 tea parties around the country, over 1.2 million people came out, actually historically, making it the largest multi city simultaneous protest in world history.

Wow, that's amazing. Give those numbers again.

April 15, 2009, there were over 850 organized tea parties around the country protesting government run amok. Total number of people in attendance at those tea parties, roughly 1.2 million. Making it literally the largest single day multi city protest in world history.

Wow, that's amazing. And not a single arrest, Not a litter problem. Not. I mean, it's just amazing. You know, the critics tried to just slam the Tea Party any way they could, but you compare it to Occupy Wall street, which, by the way, I must tell you, I support, at least in concept, because I think Wall street is the modern version of organized crime. But that's another subject.

And you and I are in the same place on that. As Occupy Wall street was sort of ascending to center stage, I had friends who were participating and I provided some guidance to them. The problem was is that they wouldn't police their own. See, the Tea Party's been extraordinary about policing its own. If there are any problems that ever pop up, then everybody around that person. You know, you talked about crimes being committed or even litter. It's just a self policing movement. Nobody allows that kind of stuff. And Occupy Wall street was exactly the opposite. It became laissez faire. Anything goes. Drugs, alcohol, literally child abuse. There were rapes, there were all kinds of crimes. And so the movement sort of ate itself alive due to lack of self policing.

Yep, that's true. So you Know, I'm curious, why do people, some people hate the Tea Party so much? I mean, it. It seems so in line with the concept of the founding of America. Do they just hate? The original intent of the Founding Fathers is that, you know, you hear this real hatred from the left. I mean, liberals just love to hate the Tea Party. I don't really exactly understand what their problem with it is.

Yeah, and I don't think you actually could understand because frankly, it's not rational. If you talk to people on the left and you explain that the Tea Party is about free markets and capitalism and it's about the Constitution and love of liberty, they're all in favor. But they've been listening to MSNBC and CNN and they've been listening to the people who, who call us racist and crazy and backwards and all that stuff. And that's what they know. And so if you actually get into details and you talk to people who, quote, unquote, hate the Tea Party, they don't have any details. They don't have any specific reasons. It's a narrative, and they bought into a particular narrative. And it's one of the reasons I spend a lot of my time personally going out to the left and speaking with people on the left and going to meetings of the left and demonstrating to them that the Tea Party and even American conservatism is not what they think it is.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's true. It's interesting. And I think that the left and the right is. I mean, it's largely a fake debate. It's like a wrestling match on television. You know, it's. It's show business. And it's really probably designed by the powers that be to divide people. And people have a lot more in common than they think they do. So if you look at the right, they want limited spending and limited regulation. If you look at the left, well, they might want some free stuff and some spending, but they definitely don't want to be regulated too much. So why can't people come together?

Well, I'm with you. And the reason that they struggle to come together is exactly what you identify. You did it incredibly well. I call it the profitable politics of hate. It really is important to the politicians that Democrats hate Republicans, liberals hate conservatives, gay rights folks hate marriage and family folks, religious folks hate secularists, and vice versa. These are tools that the politicians use to maintain their power, and they're tools that the media uses to make money. So if we go on TV and I go on Fox News, like I do Regularly. A lot of times what they want is us to yell, oh, the evil Fox News.

Really?

Exactly. Well, and you know, and on the other hand, I go over to MSNBC and I sit on the air with Chris Matthews on Hardball. And in both cases, what they're trying to do often is foment the hatred. I mean, there are exceptions, right? There are people who I would consider straight up journalists, not many, but most of the shows, they ply their trade in hate and they want, they want you to come on and yell at the left and call the left names. And I just don't buy into it because my neighbors, some of them are conservative and some of them are liberal. And by and large they're good people who have very similar values. They might differ a little bit politically, but they're much more similar than dissimilar. And you know, I engage in this exercise and I know you know all the stuff I'm about to say, but it's important for your listeners to hear when they're talking to people of different ideologies. If I'm speaking at an event on the left, I always ask them, how many people in that audience voted for continuing trillion dollar deficits? You know what? Nobody's ever raised their hand. This is the left, right? And then I say, well, I don't understand because my representatives seem to keep voting for it and so do yours, so why. And then I ask how many people in the audience think that we have the best education system in the world? The money's going spot on, right where it should, to the kids. And it doesn't matter whether I'm at a Tea Party or a MoveOn.org type event, nobody thinks that we're doing it right. And I asked about criminal justice. How many people in the audience think we have the best crisis criminal justice system in the world? And question, which is that the war on drugs has been a tremendous success. And you know what? Nobody raises their hand. And if I'm at a Tea Party, say, it's so weird because I was at a liberal event last night and none of them think that we have the best justice system or the best education system either. So I'm not sure what's going on. Am I a liberal? Are you guys Tea Party? I mean, I'm just confused. And the reality is we all believe a lot of the same things and it's not good for the politicians to let us know that because then they can't keep taking away our liberty and our money, frankly.

Yep, that's for sure. So the bigger game is beyond either of those, that's for sure. Okay, so tell me about your idea for not a Constitutional convention, but maybe you can explain what that is and then explain what you're trying to do.

Sure. So the main project being pursued by Citizens for Self Governance is called Convention of States. It's found@conventionofstates.com and the idea is this. Under Article 5 of the Constitution, that's where we get the power to amend the Constitution. And there are two ways. One is Congress has the power, 2/3 of each house, to propose amendments which then go out to the states for ratification by 3/4 of the states. That's one way. That's the way we've always amended the Constitution. But, you know, during the convention in 1787, in the last couple of weeks, when they were winding down, George Mason stood up and he noticed that we had forgotten to include the right of the people to amend. And he said, you know, this is outrageous, because do we really believe that if Congress and the President, if the government ever becomes a tyranny, that the government will propose such amendments as would restrain its own tyranny? And the wisdom of that position was so profound that Madison's notes reflect there was no debate. It was adopted unanimously. One of the few things in the Constitution to be adopted unanimously to give the people the right, acting through their states, their sovereign states, to call an Article 5amending convention specifically for the purposes of restraining the tyranny of the federal government. I think most people, frankly, left or right, agree that the federal government has become a tyranny. They'd like to see it restrained. 60% of Americans say that the federal government is too large, never do that for itself. And so the only way to do it is we call it. We call the convention and we do that. 34 states file an application. When 34 states do so, then there's a convention of the states. And we're doing that right now, literally. And again, people can read about it@conventionoftates.com that convention has already been called for by Florida, Georgia and Alaska. We're looking likely to get that done in Ohio here very shortly. We have legislative sponsors in upwards of 25 states going into the 2015 session. So my expectation is that what people are going to see in 2016 is something extraordinary besides the presidential election. What they're going to see is the citizens of this country actually call an amending convention and meeting convention, in other words, do an end run around the President and Congress and the courts. And we're going to tell them what the boundaries of the government is without the federal government's input.

Okay, so what does this amendment look like exactly and what's it called?

So we don't know exactly what amendments will come out of it. What are germane for discussion during that convention are amendments that would restrain the state scope, the power or the jurisdiction of the federal government, amendments that would impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, or amendments that would impose term limits on the federal government. So any of those things can be discussed and we don't know exactly what amendments will come out of it. I can tell you what I think. I think I'm pretty sure what will come out of it is a balanced budget amendment of some sort. 80% of the American public support that right now. I think we'll get term limit, I.

Mean is that, I'm curious before you move on to term limits limits, which I would love to see term limits. I mean that, gosh, God, we need term limits so badly. Politics was never meant to be a career, okay? That was, it was, it was meant to be your civic duty and you do it and then you go back.

To your business and the majority of Americans agree with you.

Right, Right.

Yeah.

But as far as a balanced budget amendment, you know, I'm kind of wondering if that's even possible. And I'm also wondering, believe it or not, if it's even wise. And the reason I say that is, look, you know, if I as an individual had to balance my budget, for example, at times, especially when I was younger and just starting out and you know, buying lots of real estate and rental properties, you need to extend yourself at times to do a bigger thing. Right. And you know, the government is just totally out of control, obviously. But I think there are short times and good reasons occasionally not as a standard practice as we've now engaged in for way too long to be imbalanced.

No, I think you're right. And every balanced budget I've ever seen proposed has exceptions for national emergencies of various kinds, military emergencies, financial market collapse type emergencies. And so exactly what the restrictions should be, exactly what those emergencies look like, I don't really know. But what I do know is a bunch of smart people, citizens in whom I have immense faith, are going to get together in a convention and they're going to discuss what those exigent circumstances are. I've never seen a balanced budget amendment seriously proposed that didn't contain some of those out clauses. Now I have my concerns about those too, because basically what it means is we're going to end up ultimately turning that over to the courts. They're going to litigate. You know, are we in an actual national emergency? What does it really mean to be in a national emergency? So I'm a little hesitant to turn it over to the courts, but I'm hopeful and I have a strong belief in the wisdom of the American people that when they get together in convention, they're going to find some good solutions to those questions and propose a good, solid, balanced budget amendment with the right exceptions.

Yeah, okay. All right, go ahead.

So let's talk term limit.

Yeah, yeah, term limits. What a wonderful idea that is.

You know, so here's, here's an interesting bit of history that I think a lot of people don't realize that we actually, by proposition or initiative, passed term limits on our congressional delegations in 23 states around the United States. In 1985 in US vs Thornton, the Supreme Court told us that we weren't allowed to impose term limits on our congressional delegations. I think it's outrageous. I think it was a bad decision. Kennedy went the wrong way on us in that case, as he hasn't, frankly, in my opinion, in many cases. But the bottom line is the Supreme Court prohibited us from limiting the terms. The only way we can get those term limits is through an Article 5amending convention. We can actually amend the Constitution so that it imposes specific term limits on federal officials, not just on Congress. By the way, how about term limits on the federal judiciary? I don't like lifetime appointments. When the founders constituted the Supreme Court, the average age of an appointee was 47 years. Average life expectancy of a male at that time was 54 years. That meant they didn't expect these guys to serve very long. They certainly didn't expect them to affect the course of American jurisprudence for 20 or 30 years like we have now. So the idea of rotation on the court really appeals to me. And frankly, in all federal court positions.

So rotational in the court, I mean, the Supreme Court was meant to be a non political office. So, you know, that's why they get those lifetime terms. What would a rotation look like?

Well, so for example, you know, it could be set up like the Senate, that they get two, they serve consecutive six year terms, two back to back or 12 year terms, call it one 12 year term. And every cycle three of the justices are off and they're rotating off the court. And so you could be rotating off three justices at a time. And every. So every 12 years, you come on, you're there for 12, and then you're off. And then what we know is we're not going to get these wild swings in jurisprudence that are made by one justice or another.

Yeah, interesting. Okay. All right. It's sort of hard for me to think about how that would work out in practice in terms of the swings.

Well, you know what the best part is? That idea that I just gave you. I don't know. That's one idea. I'm not that smart of a guy. I'm sure there are people, people who would come up with far better ideas in a convention. We get a bunch of people together to debate it.

Yeah. Okay, so how does this convention work? I mean, it's an. What do you call it? An amendment convention?

Yeah, it's a convention for proposing amendments. That's what it's called under the Constitution. Under Article 5 of the Constitution. And basically the way it works is once 34 states apply for it, we hold the convention. Each state sends delegates. Those delegates are chosen however the state chooses. In other words, it's true federalism. So I come from California, a little bit wacky out here in the West. And in California, we'd probably send 100 delegates. I wouldn't be surprised because we have such a vast state with such different interests all over the state. But regardless of how many delegates you send, the state ends up with one vote. So every state's going to get one vote, and in the end they're going to cast those votes, and anything that garners 26 votes or a simple majority is going to pass out. As a proponent. So there might be a whole slate of amendments that come out. Balanced budget, term limits, all kinds of stuff. One of my favorites is the idea of a single subject amendment, meaning that Congress shall pass no bills that deal with more than one subject area.

I love that idea too, because that would just eliminate the pork. I'm curious. Speaking of pork, you know, Reagan wanted the line item veto. What do you think of a line item veto concept?

You know, I like the idea of a line item veto. You know, it requires Congress and the President to do. Be working together on budgetary matters. That's the way I think the Founders intended it. And again, a line item veto is something that you could propose in actually in an amending convention.

Yeah. So interesting. I mean, if you have a single subject rule, then you don't need a line item veto. In fact, that might give the President too much power. Just keep it to a single subject. I mean, that would probably be good enough. That'd probably do the trick, you know.

You know what's so great about this? You know, you and I just sitting here doing this interview, we're having this back and forth and you say something, I think that's really, you know, I hadn't thought about what you just said about the line item veto versus the single subject Amendment. This is what's going to happen in convention. People from all over the country getting together saying these are the problems we have with the way government is running. How do we address these problems? And you're going to have smart people sitting in a room together debating, I'm sure, sometimes in a heated manner, sometimes in a very friendly manner. But you're going to come up with some fantastic ideas that you or I individually could never come up with.

No question about it. Okay, all right. What else is on the table? Anything else or does that kind of COVID it?

Well, I mean, there's so, I've heard so many good amendments. Another one is what some people call the Regulatory Freedom Amendment. The idea that anything that affects the American people in the economy, according to the OMB or the GAO, at $100 million of value or more, any regulation actually has to be directly approved by Congress. In other words, one of the problems we have in America is Congress passes these broad enabling acts and then the regulators actually do the real legislating. And frankly, I don't really believe that's constitutional. The founders certainly never intended for the Founders to, or for the Congress to be able to give away its power to regulate and to give that to other people. And so I'd like to withdraw that power and put it back in Congress and say you actually have to go on record and vote on any regulation that imposes more than $100 million burden on the American economy. That actually sounds like a lot of money nowadays for regulation. It's a pretty low threshold. Let's get these men and women on record saying what they do and don't support.

Okay, good, good point. Good point. So, I mean, how likely is this? How many states do we have now?

So we just got started and this project started 18 months ago, you know, as just an idea. The idea was brought to me by Mike Ferris, who's the founder of the Home School Legal Defense association, also chancellor of Patrick Henry College in Virginia, and one of the few guys ever to argue An Article 5 case before the U.S. supreme Court. So 18 months ago we started it, kind of did a dry run in the last legislative session in 14, passed it in Florida, Georgia and Alaska. We're looking good for Ohio, actually, in this session, before the end of the year. We've got it teed up right now in about 25 states around the nation. For 2015, I expect that to jump up to 31 roughly by the time we hit legislative session in January. So I think we've got a really good shot for getting it done. And it's not just a pipe dream. You've got folks like Mark Levin wrote the book Liberty Amendments. It's all about this subject. Rush Limbaugh has come out in favor. Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Colonel Allen West, Governor Bobby Jindal just endorsed. So you've got Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Senator Ron Johnson got Mike. Senator Mike Lee has come out in Favor of Article 5. Rand Paul's come out. So this is a major, major movement in America right now. The momentum is much more than I ever expected. It's really been extraordinary. So I actually think we're going to pull it off. I think there's a good chance we're going to pull it off in 15.

The problem is there, though, most of those people seem pretty partisan. You know what I mean? Like, if you're a liberal listening to this, you think, oh, God, you know, you got Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. They're going to freak out and instantly dismiss the whole idea, you know, out of hand, without even considering.

No, and I think that's fair. And, you know, the movement definitely comes from the right because there's just of nature, a reaction in the right to large government. But it's important to know, like, for example, we have something called the assembly of State Legislatures, and these are folks who've gotten together to draft the rules for an amending convention. They're already working on this. They've already had two meetings. They're going to have a third one in December in Washington, D.C. it's a bipartisan effort. So every committee in that assembly of State Legislatures is headed by a Democrat and a Republican. And, you know, if you polled The American people, 60%, not just Republicans, not just conservatives, think the federal government is too big and it's out of control. And for my friends on the left, you know, one of the things that I tell them about this effort all the time and I think is really important. We just had the Republicans take control of the Senate in a pretty hard way and pretty strong way. Republicans took control of more state legislatures than ever before. Literally now control Both houses and 31 state legislatures. Democrats only control seven. We may, I don't know, but we may elect A Republican president, much to the horror of my friends on the left. Maybe it's somebody like Ted Cruz, who, you know, they consider a real right winger. Well, if that's the case, do they really want a government in Washington, D.C. telling them, them, meaning liberals in liberal states, what to do? I think the answer is no. I think the answer should always be no. For my friends, my crazy friends here in California who I love dearly and disagree with their politics vehemently. If they're in control of the state of California, they should be able to run liberal politics.

Where in the socialist Republic of California do you live?

I live up in the foothills in the Sierra Mountains, sort of directly between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.

Okay.

All right.

Because I grew up in Southern California, so I was.

Whereabouts did you grow up?

Louisiana as a. As a kid, and then Orange county as an adult.

Yeah, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, went to school in San Diego. So I've stayed in California my whole life. And California is real interesting demographically and geographically, because what you have is you have these vast population centers, San Diego and more so Los Angeles and San Francisco, that drive the politics geographically. If you look at the state, about 85% of the land mass in California is demographically conservative. So it's just an unusual dichotomy. Actually, we see that in more and more states now. The more rural areas are very conservative. The urban areas are very liberal. Of course, that's where the population base is. So that tends to drive the politics. But we saw in this last election an extraordinary swing. You saw states like Massachusetts and Illinois elect Republican governors. Even they're tired of the leftward swing. We saw a state like my sister state right over the border in Nevada. Right. It's Harry Reid territory. And much to our shock and surprise, I was there a couple weeks before the election. Nobody anticipated both houses and the governor in Nevada now all Republican. I mean, that happened. We had a Republican governor, now we got both houses. So that's happening all across the country right now. And I don't think it's because people are in love with Republicans. I think it's because people like the idea of limited government. People are sick of big government intrusion on their lives. And on that mark, they see Republicans as better. They see Republicans talking about limited government. Now the question is, will Republicans deliver?

Yeah, well, we will see. To me, it just feels like two sides of the same coin, with the Republicans interfering in my life a little bit less. But they've moved so far to the left already that I Don't know.

We're in total agreement. I agree with that, and I think most citizens agree with that. That's why. So look, if that's the case, I think what you said is 1,000% demonstrably accurate. If that's the case, then elections aren't enough. I mean, it definitively tells us if we believe that Republicans are doing kind of same stuff. Elections don't fix things.

Very good point. Elections aren't enough. And you know, everybody saw, oh, I voted. Whoop dee doo. You know, I don't know. I don't want to say don't vote or discourage voting, but you know, come on.

No, you know, we need them to vote because we want the best people in place that we can possibly get, but we can't expect them to solve the problems for us. It's always been up to the people. That's the way the system is designed. We expected an engaged electorate or the system wouldn't work. And so what we have is we have this tool called Convention of States that gives us the power to restrain these jokers in Washington D.C. they'll never restrain themselves. I don't care who the President is, I don't care what our majorities are in Congress. They will not restrain themselves. That's what history shows us.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

For sure. We're seeing it in D.C. right?

Getting far too close to absolute power. I mean, it's. It's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous. So give out your website. Tell people where they can find out more.

Sure. People should go to convention estates dot com. And it's not just find out more. It's really important that people understand nobody is going to save this country except for you. And I don't mean that figuratively. That's not rhetoric. I mean it. Nobody's going to save the country except for you. The question is, at the end of your days, are you going to look at your kids and your grandkids and say you did absolutely everything you could, or are you going to say, I voted, you know, I voted for the right people. And if that's what you're going to say, then you've got to know. You're throwing up your hands and you're really telling your kids you gave up. You knew they were going to lose their country, you knew your grandkids were going to lose their country and you were okay with that. You can't be okay with that. You go to convention of states, you get involved, you join the movement, we do an End run around Congress and the president and the courts and we restrain these jokers in Washington D.C. yeah, good stuff.

Well, sounds like a good plan to me. You know, I'm curious. I have predicted for many, many years. A long time ago I made this prediction and not necessarily saying I want it to happen, but like you said, it doesn't seem like the elections are fixing much of anything. Do you think? Well, I'll tell you my prediction first. Within my natural lifetime and many people listening to, I think we will see a serious secession movement and I think we will see a successful secession of at least one state. And my guess, Texas would be the first to go. And if it did go, Texas would become the Hong Kong of the United States.

Yeah, you know, I think it's plausible. I think the only way out of it is if we are able to reform the federal government. I mean, this is why this is so important to me because I don't think secession is the best thing for the country. I think keeping the union together, like a lot of blood has been shed to keep this country together. I think it was a wise thing to keep this country together. I think it's demonstrably wise in what this country has accomplished. And I personally believe that the United States has its brightest days ahead of us. If we can get back to what made the country great. What the country made this country great was not the idea of an unlimited government. It was the idea of a limited government. It was the idea that the citizen was larger than the government, that the citizen was sovereign. We've largely lost that in our system today. If we can recover that, I believe there's a renaissance ahead of us, and I don't say that lightly. We are right now going through a technological boom like nothing ever before seen in human history. Our ability to communicate everything is devolving power naturally. Right. The media, the mainstream media getting less and less powerful because of shows like yours. Right. You can do this. It doesn't take millions of dollars of equipment. It doesn't take millions of dollars of.

Support until they find the kill switch.

Exactly. So right now we.

And they're looking, and believe me, they're.

Looking for right now, though, media power is devolving technology is devolving power away from the center and out to the masses.

I think that, I call it. I call it the democratization of everything.

I think that's a fantastic. I'm going to, I'm writing that down.

No, do not take that because that's going to be the name of my TED Talk.

Well, I'm going to give you the. I'll give you credit for it. So I think we are. We're seeing the democratization of everything. And what that equals to me is nothing less than the second Renaissance. If government doesn't clamp down on it, and it's a huge if, if government clamps down on it, then I think you're right. I think things point towards a secession movement. If government doesn't clamp down on it, if we can push back against it, if we can literally open things up the way things were intended to be, I think we're going to see an extraordinary renaissance, not only in our country, but when America leads the rest of the country, the rest of the world follows. So they're either going to follow us into darkness. Reagan said, are we sentencing our children to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness? Or are we going to meet our rendezvous with destiny? Or are we going to step up and make sure that doesn't happen?

Yeah, good stuff. Good, good stuff. Well, I hope that this renaissance comes. And I think the thing that people need to leave this interview with thinking and understanding is regardless of what side of the political spectrum you're on, you must inevitably believe this because history has borne it out to be true every single time. And it is this simple concept. The larger the government, the smaller the citizen. The larger the government, the smaller the citizen. So I don't think anybody wants to be small. Right. We all want to be big and have big rights. And when the government gets bigger, our rights contract and they get smaller.

That's it. And so that's what we're fighting for. Left or right, I'll stand and die with my citizens and friends on the left for their right to decide about what goes on in their own lives. That's what I believe in. Left, right, center, it doesn't matter to me. I'll fight in my own community. I'm more of a right wing kind of a guy. And in my own community, I'm going to fight for that kind of stuff. But at the national level, the real question in America today is who decides? And the real answer should be the citizen.

Well, Mark Meckler, thank you so much for joining us. This has been very informative and lively discussion and I'm looking forward to this renaissance. Thanks for joining us on the show today.

Thanks for having me and we'll keep you posted.

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