Philip Blumel: Term limits are everywhere. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel, President of U.S. Term Limits. Welcome to the No Uncertain Terms Podcast for the week of October 29, 2018.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: We find term limits all over our nation. From the President, 35 Governors, and their cabinets, nine of our ten biggest cities, 15 legislatures and a zillion counties and cities. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Term limits are also everywhere in the sense that career politicians and entrenched power are everywhere. And they naturally effect in one way or another nearly every political issue that pushes it’s way to the top of our news feeds.
Philip Blumel: Institutional arrangements like this may seem academic and dull when examined directly or abstractly… but they affect real world outcomes. Let’s get some insights on some of this week’s news feed issues with U.S Term Limits Director, Nick Tomboulides. Hey, Nick.
Nic Tomboulides: Phil. Great to be back with you.
Philip Blumel: So, here’s what I’m thinking with this idea. I pulled out the newspaper the other day and was looking at the front page and there’s a handful of political articles. And, the truck is since all politics involve power and politicians acting in their own interests, basically there’s a term limits tie in to just about anything that comes up in the news that’s political. So I started to play a little game with myself and looking down the page, and sure enough, without exception I could find some connection to the kind of issues that animate us at U.S. Term limits embedded in each of these articles, even though none of them even mention the words term limits.
Nic Tomboulides: Well let me try to stump you then because I’m looking at a newspaper now and there’s a photo of several hundred people in this caravan heading from Honduras, to the southern border. What’s up with that? What does that have to do with term limits?
Philip Blumel: Well, again it doesn’t directly but um, I think it’s the issue of immigration is probably outside the scope of what we worry about here at U.S Term Limits. But, there’s politics at the core of this. It began as a political project in Honduras and it’s basically a battle between the Libre Party and other elements in Honduran society and the ruling Government of Honduras which is seen as a pro U.S. Government.
Philip Blumel: The Libre Party was the creation of former President of Honduras, President Zelaya, who actually tried to overturn the presidential term limit in the Constitution of Honduras.
Nic Tomboulides: That actually rings a bell. Wasn’t he the guy that the Military threw him out of office when he was in his pajamas?
Philip Blumel: That right. That right. That’s him.
Nic Tomboulides: I kinda like that. Can we do that with Congress?
Philip Blumel: (laugh) We’re working on it. Right, exactly. He, felt constrained by the one six year term limit and he wanted to have a National referendum to change the Constitution, to change that and other provisions in the Constitution. Now there’s no provision in our Constitution for a national referendum, and in fact, the Constitution says that the term limit is one part of the Constitution that could not be amended. And yet, he insisted on having this referendum. And his army chief who instructed to organize this national referendum, he refused to do it, and President Zelaya fired him. This case went to the Supreme Court of Honduras, and the Honduran Supreme Court told Zelaya, “you cannot have this referendum, in fact you must rehire the army chief.” And he refused.
Philip Blumel: Well, it wasn’t too long later that in the early morning hours his house was surrounded by soldiers and yeah, he was in his pajamas.
Nic Tomboulides: I remember that, and I remember everyone was pretty much against him. Not just Supreme Court, but Congress of Hondura, his own party, the Catholic Church was against him, because they all fundamentally understood that the minute one person was allowed to consolidate power and totally take over Honduras, that was the end of representation for the citizens. That’s how we’ve seen it all over the world, actually especially in that part of the world. Because Hugo Chavez was such a looming figure there for so many years, and I think Zelaya was actually a pawn of Hugo Chavez.
Nic Tomboulides: Back when Zelaya was getting overturned, there were questions about whether the U.S. would sanction Honduras and people were saying, “in Honduras, we’d rather have a year of sanctions than 20 years of Chavez.” Because Zelaya was under Chavez thumb, and Chavez had also run rough [inaudible 00:04:41] over term limits in Venezuela, which had allowed him to turn that country into a disaster. So you’re right, you don’t see it… it’s not apparently very obvious when you look at the news. But, there is some kind of term limits tie in, in these stories for sure.
Philip Blumel: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Scott Tillman: Hello, this is Scott Tillman, the National Field Director with U.S. term limits. Every election cycle we ask congressional candidates to sign a pledge to support congressional term limits. The pledge reads: I pledge, that as a member of congress I will co-sponsor and vote for the U.S. Term Limits Amendment of three house terms and two senate terms and no longer limit. This cycle we’ve had a record number of pledge signers. 376 candidates signed the U.S. Term Limits Congressional Pledge this cycle, of those 376, 133 will be appearing on the ballet come November 6th.
Philip Blumel: Well I have a challenge for you then. How about this story about Khashoggi, the journalist for… I think, what was it? The Washington Post? Who was apparently murdered in the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Turkey.
Nic Tomboulides: So he entered the consulate on October 2nd. His wife was outside, I think he had to get a marriage license or something, and then he never came out. First, the Saudi’s put out a press release saying that he did come out, then they later retracted that, changed their story and said that he died in some kind of fight inside the consulate.
Philip Blumel: Right, it turns out we believe that he was dismembered inside the consulate.
Nic Tomboulides: And, ask yourself is it just a coincidence that a journalist like this had been… probably the most prominent critic of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. This guy was for women’s rights, he said women should have the same rights as men, women should speak their mind, they should have a free press, democracy, separation of church and state, all things that are not very popular inside Saudi Arabia. And so, for anyone with even an ounce of common sense, it’s obvious that this guy was murdered by the Saudi government, right? I mean, what’s so hard to understand about that? Any yet, from members of congress, for politicians in Washington, it’s not that easy to understand.
Nic Tomboulides: And the reason why is because they have a dependence on Saudi Arabia. We import, what? A billion barrels of oil a day from Saudi Arabia, we sell them fighter jets, missiles, and equipment to these people. And so we have a dependency on them that doesn’t allow our politicians to be objective when it comes to the evil that is coming out of that country.
Philip Blumel: Special interest politics.
Nic Tomboulides: Yeah, it’s typical special interest politics. I did a little bit of research on this story… and here’s what I learned. In the first decade of the 21st Century, Saudi Arabia spent 100 million dollars on lobbyists in Washington D.C. Isn’t that amazing?
Philip Blumel: It is, astounding. Well you know what’s interesting is that Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that doesn’t get direct foreign aid from the United States, but apparently they give a lot of foreign aid to us, or at least one segment of our population… lobbyists.
Nic Tomboulides: Right, and in the last three years alone, the Saudi’s have spent 18 million dollars on 145 registered lobbyists in the U.S. So, it’s a dirty, dirty swamp. We know if you’re not paying, you’re not playing. Some of the lobbyists they hired were household names to people who follow politics, John Podesta, who’s been an instrumental figure in a lot of democratic campaigns. Norm Coleman, who was a former republican senator, from Minnesota. Those guys are both very closely tied in to the swamp. So, when you see a lot senators, grand standing, and saying “All this is horrible, we need to crack down on Saudi Arabia.” Ask yourself, what are they really doing? Why did the senators lack the guts to stop these arm sales? I think it’s because they’re owned by lobbyists and special interests… Saudi Arabia has been able to manipulate that system. And these politicians are more worried about losing their jobs than they are about doing the right thing.
Philip Blumel: Very good, (laughing) good work on that one Nic. Another thing that jumps out to me about the Khashoggi affair is that this kind of behavior by governments, this extreme kind of behavior is of course more likely to be found in countries that are dictatorial rather than those that are democratic. And they’re more likely to be found in more oligarchical democracies than healthy democracies with a lot of turnover.
Philip Blumel: One evidence that I threw out for this is… this was brought to my attention by Paul Jacob, who writes the column Common Sense. According to the new rankings from the Freedom House on how free countries are around the world, most of the Arab nations are listed as ‘not free’, and most of them don’t have any turnover in their governments and electoral turnover. And, one of the areas that’s actually improving somewhat is Latin America and the Freedom House attributes turnover, to that. And that the countries that have newly elected governments tend to be more liberal, or at least more effectively liberalizing then those that have had long standing governments, that have, in a lot of cases, overturned their term limits, which is a phenomena of the last decade.
Philip Blumel: Politicians have learned from bitter experience that if voters are asked to approve term limits, they will. They’ve also learned, that if they ask voters to weaken or abolish term limits… they won’t. At least, if you ask em’ honestly. Sadly, politicians have also figured out that if you can craft a ballot measure that weakens or abolishes term limits, but sounds like it would establish or strengthen term limits, voters will often say ‘yes’, unless there is an organized effort to bring the scam to light in time.
Philip Blumel: One such term limit scam is underway right now in Memphis, where one election reform measure of three on the ballot November will ask voters this question; quote “Shall the charter of the city of Memphis, Tennessee, be amended to provide, that no person shall be eligible to hold or be elected to the office of Mayor or Memphis City Council, if any such person has served at anytime more than three consecutive four year terms.” Huh, term limits, sounds good. But what this doesn’t say is that Memphis already has… two term, eight year limits, and that this ballot measure actually weakens the existing term limits law. Fortunately, there is an effort to alert voters but there isn’t much time. Actress Jenifer Lawrence, known for her role in The Hunger Games, and other popular films is helping out and recorded this 30 second spot, telling citizens to vote ‘no.’
Jennifer L.: Hi, I’m Jennifer Lawrence. Memphis you’re about to get blindsided by your own government. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Ten years ago, voters approved laws that give the people more power over elections, hold politicians accountable, and create term limits. Politicians are sneakily trying to reverse those laws, so they put dishonest questions at the bottom of Memphis ballots. We should protect our elections by saying ‘no’, to all of the questions. Tell the politicians, they work for us.
Stacey Selleck: Hey, hey you… listening to this podcast. Yeah, you… I’m talking to you. I’m going to assume you came here because you support term limits, I’m also going to assume you’re tired of our politicians acting out of self-interest and not doing what’s best for the people they represent. How bad do you want term limits? Last episode, Phil, and Nic brought up Term Limits Day. A national Terms Limits Day, what do you think about that idea? We at U.S. Term Limits love it! But, what we need is for you… yes you, sitting over there listening to this podcast, to provide your input and get involved. You see we have many important tools in our arsenal to pull this off.
Stacey Selleck: However, none of them are as important as you. We can’t do this without help from our supporters, so let me know. If we had a national day of action, what would you like to see done? Do you think we should march on D.C.? Would you commit to joining us there? Will you help coordinate or attend a term limits capital day in your state? How about getting a group of five friends and meeting with your state law maker for half an hour or so, to tell them how important term limits are to you. Or do you want to do something more creative? This week, a group projected a billboard made of light on the Capital in Portland. Or perhaps you can come up with something as viral, and as clever as the Ice Bucket Challenge. We really want to hear from you, email me at: nut@termlimits.com. Give me your ideas, tell me how you’d like to contribute and how you want to participate. Tell me what date you’d like to pick and why. Will you be a founder of National Term Limits Day? Go to termlimits.com/termlimitsday for more information. The big questions are: National Term Limits day, a good idea or not? What simple and repeatable activities do you want to see, and would you participate in? And three, what day should we pick? Thank you so much for your input, and I look forward to celebrating National Term Limits Day with you.
Nic Tomboulides: Another trick that a lot of these foreign countries and entities use, to influence Americas career politicians is the concept of princelings. I don’t know if you’ve read Peter Schweizer’s latest book Secret Empires, I definitely would, he exposes a lot on how this works. But, foreign countries are effectively able to legally hire friends and family members of American politicians in order to wield influence on Capitol Hill. China, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and others have wielded this power masterfully. And if you were to hire the wife of a congressman for example, that would be illegal. But if you hire their son or their brother-in-law, that is perfectly legal, that is not a violation of the foreign corrupt practices act.
Nic Tomboulides: So… foreign countries have been able to circumvent the anti-corruption laws of this country to influence our politicians. And it really begs the question, of whether our politicians are loyal to the people alone? As James Madison said they should be, or whether they’re totally, wholly, bought and paid for by the people keeping them in office. I think most people listening to this podcast have a good idea of what’s really going on.
Philip Blumel: Excellent point, another front page issue from the last week was this explosion in our deficit, and also naturally our national debt. Which again, there is a tie in with term limits, with politicians acting in their own interest instead of those of the public.
Nic Tomboulides: What’s the deficit? What’s the number?
Philip Blumel: Welp, it’s sort of 779 billion, and is projected to approach 1 trillion in 2019. Now, that’s the federal deficit. The national debt is about 21 trillion and counting.
Nic Tomboulides: So, looking at that deficit mathematically, just so our listeners can understand the sheer size of it. If you were to spend 1 million dollars… every day, since Jesus was born. You would not have spent that deficit yet, you would have spent only 700 billion. That is an astronomically high deficit and it threatens this country’s solvency. I think it also threatens our countries national security. There have been a lot of national security experts who’ve said that the debt and deficits are the number one threat to our security because they make us less sovereign. And they create the risk of a fiscal crisis, collapse. So, I mean, I’m taking that very, very seriously, and obviously it’s something that we have to lay at the doorstep of members of congress who the authority over this.
Philip Blumel: Absolutely, it is an incredible lack of responsibility. I’ll tell you what it’s not a lack of, it’s not a lack of political experience, cus we’ve got that in Washington D.C. decades of it, under a lot of these guys belts that make these decisions. And they are in the pocket of special interest that want to them to continue spending, and simultaneously want them to continue cutting taxes, and it just doesn’t add up. We’re getting deeper and deeper in debt.
Nic Tomboulides: It’s a nasty, nasty side effect of unchecked political opportunism. Because… if you’re faced with a choice, between doing the right thing, be it something that might be unpopular, like cutting spending for instance. If you’re faced with the choice of doing that versus protecting your own political career, cus you can stay in Washington forever and build up all this power. Nine times out of ten, member of congress is gonna take their own career over doing what’s right.
Philip Blumel: There are lots of different kinds of experience. The nation benefits when citizens run for congress and new legislatures bring with them, a wide breath of ideas and experience from their professional careers as business or professional people. Doctors, teachers, investment professionals, farmers, even state municipal politicians. Long term congressional incumbents who have years ago lost touch with real world concern and responsibilities, often disparage this broad conception of this experience and claim that term limits would, oddly, produce a politically inexperienced congress. But as this 60 Minutes Exposé from 2016 demonstrates, much of the political experience that [inaudible 00:18:34] incumbents tout, has nothing to do with serving you… and everything to do with serving their party and themselves.
60 Min: Republican, David Jolly won a special election to congress in March 2014. Facing reelection bid that November, he was happy to get a lesson in fund raising from a member of his party’s leadership, but he was surprise by what he learned.
David Jolly: We sat behind closed doors at one of the party headquarter backrooms, in front of a white board. Where the equation was drawn out, you have six months until the election. Break that down to having to raise two million dollars in the next six months and your job, you… member of congress, is to raise $18,000 a day. Your first responsibility is to make sure you hit $18,000 a day.
60 Min: Your first responsibility as a congressman [crosstalk 00:19:23]. How were you supposed to raise $18,000 a day?
David Jolly: Simply by calling people, cold calling a list that fundraisers put in front of you. You’re presented with their biography, so please call John… he’s married to Sally, his daughter Emma just graduated from high school, they gave $18,000 last year to different candidates, they can give you a thousand dollars too if you ask them to. And they put you on the phone, and it’s a script.
60 Min: There are actually scripts for calls, and we got our hands on one distributed by the National Republican Congressional Committee to help GOP members invite donors to attend their annual fundraising dinner in March.
David Jolly: The house schedule is actually arranged in some ways around fundraising.
60 Min: You’re telling me the whole schedule of how work gets done… is scheduled around fundraising.
David Jolly: That’s right. You never see a committee working through lunch because those are your fundraising times, and then in between afternoon votes and evening votes that’s when you can see democrats walking down this street, republicans walking down that street, to spend time on the phone making phone calls.
60 Min: By law, members of congress cannot make fundraising calls from their offices. So both parties have set up call centers just a few blocks away. This is where the republicans have theirs.
60 Min: So can I go in there?
David Jolly: I don’t think they would let either one of us in here at this point. Remember, I stopped paying my dues [crosstalk 00:20:47]
60 Min: What Jolly means is that in addition to raising money for their own campaigns, members are supposed to raise thousands of dollars for their parties. That’s their dues. If republican members don’t pay up, they can’t use the party’s call suites. No photos exist of the inside of either the democratic or republican centers. But with the help of a staffer, we were able to get into the republican center with a hidden camera.
60 Min: About a dozen tiny offices equipped with a phone and computer line a corridor. This is where members of congress sit behind closed doors and plow through lists of donors, dialing for dollars. Outside in the main hallway, is a big board, where the amount each member has raised for the party is posted for all to see and compare.
David Jolly: It is a cult-like boiler room on capitol hill, where city members of congress, frankly I believe are compromising the dignity of the office they hold, by sitting in these sweatshop phone booths calling people, asking them for money. And their only goal is to get five hundred dollars, or a thousand dollars, or two thousand dollars out of the person on the other end of the line. It’s shameful.
Philip Blumel: Alright, well I don’t wanna go this week until we finish up with the story of Jim Coxworth. As you recall, he’s the gentleman that was walking from suburban Chicago to bring attention to the idea of term limits and also ending gerrymandering in that state. It was a successful walk, he reports that he finished up at the capitol on the 23rd, where he held a press conference in the Blue Room. He said that, along the road, he didn’t run into a single person that did not agree that Illinois needs term limits. Not one.
Nic Tomboulides: I think Coxworth is having some influence, because there was a story in the Chicago Tribune today that Bill Daily, the brother the Richard Daily and the son of Richard Daily Sr. Who had collectively run the city of Chicago for 43 years. Well, he announced that he now supports a term limit for the Mayor of Chicago.
Philip Blumel: No kidding.
Nic Tomboulides: So, term limits are gaining traction in Illinois, and I really am grateful to Jim, I think he’s been a big part of that.
Philip Blumel: The issue surrounding term limits are everywhere, but the policy of term limits is not… yet. We have a lot of work to do, one important step is to learn the issue and join the growing network of citizens who are taking concerted action to impose on Washington D.C. and elsewhere.
Philip Blumel: Subscribing to this podcast is for many, the first step. Share it with your friends, and family, and subscribe. You can do this via the Podcast App on your iPhone, or you can use Stitcher, or Google Play on your Android device, or go to iTunes, and while you’re there rate and review us.
Philip Blumel: Until next week, happy Term Limits Day… whenever that might be.
Philip Blumel: From suburban Chicago, to Springfield… Springfield, to Springfield. From suburban Chicago to Springfield.
(end podcast)
MUSIC CREDITS – Full versions of the music sampled during this podcast may be purchased via iTunes at the following links :
“Gates Of Steel” written by Casale/Mothersbaugh/Schmidt/Smith as performed by Devo
The “No Uncertain Terms” podcast is produced by Duke Decter for U.S. Term Limits
Executive Producer Philip Blumel (President, U.S. Term Limits)
