523 - Coalitions for Freedom

Program Notes

https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty

[NOTE: All quotations are by Grover Norquist.]

“You don’t lose something because of partisan fights at the state level.”

“States rights is a stupid concept, since states don’t have rights. People have rights. States have power they use against people.”

“People who have concealed carry permits go to jail or get in trouble with the law one-sixth as often as cops. So they’re safer than cops.”

“All the groups that want to be left alone have something to teach each other.”

My first Burning Man:
Confessions of a conservative from Washington
by Grover Norquist in The Guardian

Altered Conference
22 October, 2016, at Topics Berlin
A conference exploring altered states of consciousness

Transcript

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And to begin with, I would like to thank the two anonymous saloners who recently made Bitcoin donations.

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Interestingly, the value of your donations has already increased thanks to the recent Bitcoin price rise,

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as have all of the Bitcoin donations that we’ve received over the last few years, I should add. And before long, I hope to use the last three

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years of Bitcoin donations to buy a badly needed new computer. So a big thanks to all of our Bitcoin

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donors during these past several years. And before we get started with today’s talk, I’d like to let

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you know that thanks to fellow Sol or Dax who is also very

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active over on our forums well he recently attended the altered conference

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in Berlin where he was also one of the presenters and Dax has recorded all the

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six talks that were given there and he posted these talks at altered conference

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calm where you can download them for free. I hope that eventually we will be able to play some of these talks next year

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when we begin our Salon 2.0 format.

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But until then, hey, thanks to Dax, we can listen to them today.

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Now here in the Salon today, I’m going to play one more of this year’s Palenque Norte lectures

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that fellow Saloner Frank Nuccio recorded for us.

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And since one week from today will be the 2016 presidential election here in the States,

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well, I thought that it would be appropriate to play the talk given by the most politically

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connected speaker that we’ve had here in the salon. And that well-connected person is none

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other than Grover Norquist, who we’ve had the pleasure of listening to twice before, as this was the third year in a row that Grover attended the Burning Man Festival and very graciously took some time out of his playa schedule to speak once again to our Planque Norte lecture in the big tent at Camp Soft Landing. You know, sometimes I forget to thank all of the people involved in producing these lectures at Burning Man each year.

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Not only the crew who manages the lectures themselves,

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but many of the participants in Camp Soft Landing also,

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well, they provide the necessary support services that are required to produce a lecture series in the middle of a desert.

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You all are the very best of what the culture of Burning Man represents.

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And for our fellow sauners who live outside of the U.S.,

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and there are a great many of you,

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the name Grover Norquist is, well, most likely means very little.

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And to be fair, I can’t name the key unelected figures in other countries either, so I want to put this talk in a little better context for you.

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You see, well, about 20 years ago, I had a very low opinion of Grover because he seemed to be on the exact opposite side of every issue that was important to me.

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And what was more, while us average citizens are unable to schedule a private meeting with our own elected representatives,

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well, there isn’t a single Republican, federal or state official, who would deny such a meeting to Grover.

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He counts some of the most powerful Republican leaders as his personal friends.

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And so, as you can guess, when he came to Burning Man in 2014,

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you can guess, when he came to Burning Man in 2014, there were a lot of people who complained that a conservative like Grover Norquist shouldn’t be allowed to come to their wild, somewhat

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liberal party. Of course, the fact that Larry Harvey, the founder of Burning Man, is the

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person who invited Grover, well, that made it a little difficult to hold such an elitist Burning Man attitude.

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In his first talk, which I posted as podcast number 420 with a smile on my face,

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you can even hear some people in the audience tell him how dislike he had been.

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But Grover has persisted in spite of the pushback that he received, and, well, in my opinion, Grover Norquist is every much a burner as anyone else I

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know. Unless I missed something, Burning Man is about radical inclusiveness, and with the mess

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that the next week’s election is going to cause here in the States, I think that we should all

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be trying to figure out how to become more tolerant of those with whom we have political

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disagreements. In this talk, you’ll learn more

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about what Grover has been up to in the way of preventing new taxes, and you’ll also hear a few

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of his other positions with which I have some serious disagreement. That said, if we stop

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listening to people we disagree with, I think we’ll be in for even more difficulty than we’ve

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already put in our way.

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Twenty years ago, my biggest complaint about Grover’s tactics was that he didn’t seem to be able to compromise very much.

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But as you are about to learn, Grover is now a major champion of finding ways for us to all compromise a bit on our tactics without compromising our principles. And, if for nothing else, I’m now a fan of his because, like me,

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he thinks that the so-called Patriot Act is really horrible.

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Now, the way I see it, Grover’s counterpart in liberal circles is Ralph Nader.

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And when one looks at each of their political philosophies,

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well, these two men seem polar opposites at first glance.

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Yet,

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they were able to come together on an issue that they agree on, prison reform. And unless you’ve been sleeping in a cave these past ten years, you already know that the United

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States has more of its citizens in prison than does any other nation. This is most definitely

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not the land of the free. It is the land of prisons and surveillance.

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A modern gulag, in other words.

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So, what happened to change the political atmosphere enough to get two powerful adversaries like Norquist and Nader working together?

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Actually, I have no idea.

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But I would like to think that one of the things that changed is the worldview of Grover Norquist once he became a burner.

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In a few minutes, you’re going to hear him talking about an article that he wrote for The Guardian a couple of months after his first burn.

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But to give you a bit of the flavor of his mood back then, I’d like to read a short bit from that article.

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And here’s part of what he said about his first experience of the culture of Burning Man.

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Someday I want to live 52 weeks a year in a state or city that acts like this.

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I want to attend a national political convention that advocates the wisdom of Burning Man.

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Burning Man is greater than I had ever imagined.

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I’ve been to large demonstrations in favor of the environment

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and the trash left behind is knee deep.

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At Burning Man,

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you are hard pressed to find

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a cigarette butt on the ground.

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There are no trash bins.

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Participants carry it in

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and they carry it out.

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I was invited to speak to a group

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one night for an hour

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and moments before I spoke,

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I was told that I was the last speaker in a series focusing on psychedelic drugs. My talk was on freedom.

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I left untouched the cup of coffee and open soda at my side. The questions lasted two hours. We had

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a ball. You hear that Burning Man is full of less than fully clad folks and off-label pharmaceuticals,

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but that’s like saying Bohemian Grove is about peeing on trees

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or that Chicago is Al Capone territory.

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Burning Man is cleaner and greener than a rally for solar power.

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It has more camaraderie and sense of community than a church social.

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And for a week in the desert, I witnessed more individual expression,

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alternative lifestyles,

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and imaginative fashion than anywhere. And now, let’s listen to what Grover had to say at the 2016 Burning Man Festival.

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Welcome, everybody. Our next distinguished guest in my book is a true world bridger.

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Robert Norquist is a political advocate who is the president of Americans for Tax Reform,

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a taxpayer advocacy group he founded in 1985 at President Reagan’s request. He also serves on the

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board of directors of the NRA and has authored four books. Mr. Norquist holds an MBA and a BA in economics, both from Harvard.

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He currently lives in Washington, D.C.,

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and I think it’s fascinating when a burner comes here

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who bridges different worlds that burners don’t normally get to be in.

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So with that stated, Grover Norquist.

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Thank you.

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Delighted to be in. So with that stated, Grover Norquist. Thank you. Delighted to be here. A couple of thoughts. One is where we can get left-right coalitions successful, what works, what doesn’t,

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because if you’re going to try and pass something in Washington or state legislators. In most states, and certainly in D.C., you’ve got to have both political parties

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have some stake in making this move forward.

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The other question is, how do you build the political coalition for freedom, period,

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for whatever issues? And I think we’ve

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seen that in a number of recent examples.

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In terms of, if you build a coalition around lifestyle issues, you can get the politicians to back down.

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You saw that on gay marriage.

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Maybe 2% of the population took on an organized effort that has only been going on for several thousand years,

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and they won because there was an intensity involved,

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and small numbers of people who are committed to an issue can defeat large numbers of people

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who sort of think it’s vaguely important, but they’re not committed.

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And then also you take people who want to move and expand liberty,

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and we’re our allies.

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Who else cares about this?

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Who else thinks this is important?

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My own work on taxes, I always try to figure out how in the world we can get more people

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who would prefer the government to back off and leave them alone.

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And I make a list of everybody the government’s screwing with

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and go to each of them and say, you know, the government’s messing here,

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and it’s annoying to me.

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But the government’s messing over here, it’s annoying to you.

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Perhaps we could work together.

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Perhaps there’s some opportunities.

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And people want to be left alone by the government for very different

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reasons. They may not hang out together. They may not live in the same neighborhoods.

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They may have radically different objectives of where they want to go.

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But they share the view that the government should not step on me or you in

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the various areas where that’s happening.

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You’re seeing that now. Exam example, a new coalition that cares about liberty, Uber, Uber drivers.

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There are 580,000 people who drive Uber drivers.

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Ten years ago, that number was zero.

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So when somebody says to you, you can’t change the prohibition laws, you can’t do X, Y, or Z,

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this has never been done before, so it can’t happen.

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We went from zero Uber drivers to right now 580,000 and millions and millions of people,

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2 million users of Uber in New York City alone. So when New York said, you know,

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the taxicab commission and the tax taxi cab owners are very powerful politically.

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And so we’re going to side with them against people who might like to use Uber or Lyft or the other options.

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There were 2 million people who downloaded the Uber app.

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And I don’t have the numbers for Lyft, but Lyft is there and a number of other companies similarly situated.

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So as you build your coalition

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for liberty, look for

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groups that didn’t used to exist

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or don’t exist now

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but could exist.

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When I talk to people about maybe taxes

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should be lower, maybe regulations

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are sometimes annoying, and I

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say to Uber drivers

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as you go around the country,

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they’re independent contractors.

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They don’t like the laws that were set up to make taxi cab companies profitable at the expense of everybody else.

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Airbnb, again, didn’t exist a few years ago.

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Homeschooling, 2% of Americans homeschool.

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People went to prison 30 years ago in 48 states for homeschooling, 2% of Americans homeschool people went to prison 30 years ago in 48 states

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for homeschooling, prison

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because you were violating the law about not

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sending your kids to the public school

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so there are a whole series of people

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throughout

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medical marijuana, all these other issues

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where not just

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they hadn’t thought to organize

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politically but they were criminalized

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because they disagreed with the consensus issue.

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And if you reach out and say, you’re never going to win most issues if you say, this is important to me.

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This is why it’s important to me.

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You should do what’s important to me.

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You should do what’s important to me.

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If everybody was agreeing with you and everybody wanted to do what you wanted to do,

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you’d have won this political issue a long time ago.

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So you’ve got to reach out to people and say, this issue that bothers me,

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there’s a similar issue that’s bothering you. Perhaps we could see that we can support each other in terms of limiting the power of the state to do damage.

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The other challenge, and you’re seeing real progress.

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I like the 50-state federalist effort because there’s very little you can do in Washington, D.C.

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You have Republicans and Democrats, and they’re not going to agree.

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You’ve got a president, House, and Senate.

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and Democrats and they’re not going to agree.

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You’ve got a president, house, and senate.

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But in the 50 states,

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some states are all Democrat. Some states are all

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Republican. Some states are

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mixed. But if you can convince

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the Democratic Party in Rhode Island to do

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something, it happens. If you can

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convince the Republican Party in Texas to do

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something, it happens.

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And as you move across

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the country, you don’t lose something because of partisan fights at the state level.

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You can lose a good idea in Washington because one party decides they like it, but then the other party says,

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well, we’re against it because that would make you look good if your idea passed.

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As silly as that sounds, it happens. But at state level, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the way it plays out.

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One of the ones that I think matters to the anti-prohibitionist

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movement is the right to try.

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The right to try movement, is this something people

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are familiar with or not? It’s not famous.

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Right now, for a drug

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to be legalized to cure cancer

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or stop you from getting headaches,

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the federal government, the FDA, has to decide it is safe and, not or, and it’s effective.

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Both.

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Once they’ve decided it’s safe, it’s still not legal.

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Once they’ve decided it’s safe, it’s still not legal.

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Somebody has to prove that it’s effective, important, useful.

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It’s not just the same as other stuff.

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And the problem is that the effective thing can take years.

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So there are drugs that save lives and are safe, but they can’t prove they’re effective.

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Doctors think they’re effective.

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Parents think they’re effective.

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Patients think they’re effective.

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But the federal government hasn’t said it’s effective.

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So what the right to try laws say is, and 31 states in just three years have passed these laws, 31 states.

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And the law says if in our state, Colorado was the first state to pass it,

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then Arizona, then Wisconsin.

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If in Colorado there’s a drug, the federal government has ruled,

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FDA has ruled it’s safe, won’t kill you,

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but it hasn’t proved it’s effective as far as we’re concerned

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it’s legal in this state like medical marijuana you know we don’t care what the feds say

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we say it’s legal colorado oregon washington the federal government says it’s illegal we say

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it’s not illegal in our state and so all of a sudden, the federal government says, we think this drug is effective.

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And they’re just tragic situations where drugs that can save kids’ lives are banned because the

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FDA hasn’t finished their testing. And it’s years away from finishing it. And they won’t let kids

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have it, even though it’s safe. But they’re not sure it’s effective. Well, how about letting us try it because my daughter’s dead in a year and a half or six months

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if we don’t try something and the feds say, no, no, no, no, can’t do that.

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So every year now, people die in America because the FDA has said a drug is safe,

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but they haven’t gotten around to deciding it’s effective, so it’s illegal.

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Although in 31 states, they’ve said it’s legal.

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Well, what used to happen is you’d say to the FDA, could you speed up the AIDS drugs, please?

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And the FDA would go, thalidomide, thalidomide, and everyone would back off.

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And grown congressmen and senators would be terrified that the FDA would call them names and they’d

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back off this effort. Now, there are, sadly, many people who are dying. State law says

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they should have access to drugs that might save their lives. The FDA says, nope, we don’t

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want you to have them, and people die. One set of twins, one son got in, one son didn’t.

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The son that got into the test program is right as rain.

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The one that didn’t kept deteriorating and will never recover.

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And that’s your government at work, you know, taking care of us.

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So using the 50 states, if you can’t convince Washington to

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legalize something or approve something, but you do it at the state level, at a modest level,

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it doesn’t say the government has to pay for this medicine. It doesn’t say the government has to

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give it to you or approve it or tell you it’s safe. You just say in our state it’s not illegal to use a drug that might save a life that’s safe.

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It won’t kill you faster than what you have.

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I think at the end of the day, fixing some of the FDA’s delays will happen

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because we took this approach state by state.

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Medical marijuana has certainly

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moved. I think we’re at 18 to 21 states now with medical marijuana laws. Complete violation of

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federal law. Federal law says go to prison, class A, bad drug. 18 states, somebody correct me if I’m

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wrong, but it’s about 18, have said for medical purposes, we say it’s legal. That doesn’t make it legal as far as the feds are concerned.

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But over time, people go, you know, just because Washington says it’s illegal

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is not a real argument against something.

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And it looks less and less intelligent as more and more states do it.

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Now, I like moving federalism. This is

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not states’ rights, by the way. States’ rights is a stupid concept, and states don’t have

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rights. People have rights. States have powers. They use against people. But federalism is

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50 states competing to provide the best government at the lowest cost

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and the most effective way, and looking at other states and saying,

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here’s what we’re doing.

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Is it better or worse than Rhode Island?

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What about other states?

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What can we learn from the other 49 states?

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Maybe there’s a better way to do it.

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That’s useful.

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That’s governments competing with each other to provide a real service

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and to do things better than other stuff.

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Federal government’s, by definition, a monopolist’s favorite monopoly.

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States’ monopolies are only within the state, right?

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There’s a state next door that could be doing something less stupid,

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and your monopoly doesn’t work.

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But if the federal government says it’s a

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monopoly and we’re going to all do it one way you really have a hard time explaining no no no really

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in ghana things are much better organized because that’s apples and oranges and people say well who

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knows maybe that’s not maybe the difference has something to do with not other than with the issue. So federalism on medical marijuana, on right to try,

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has moved issues forward decades ahead of what would have happened without the federalist

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approach. You could bang your head against the wall in Washington, D.C., trying to get

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medical marijuana passed or recreational marijuana passed or FDA reform, which has never,

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ever, ever happened in Washington, D.C. legislatively, but is happening. If you were

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trying to get one of these drugs for a child or a friend or a loved one and the federal government

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says it’s illegal and you say, well, I’d like to try it. It used to take 300 hours to get you into one of these compassionate

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use tests. Since we passed right to try legislation

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in 15 and now 31 states

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in Washington they saw this coming and they changed

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it from a 30 hour project, 300 hour project

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to a 45 minute project. That is the government

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moving because they see progress coming state by state, city by city. So as you’re building

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a movement towards liberty, yes, you should always have somebody in the House and the

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Senate who introduces the bill to do everything you want yesterday. I’m for that. I’m for having that bill introduced.

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But I wouldn’t count on that being the way we win.

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I think you’re more likely to move it through the states with the federal law ready and

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there and keep building as quickly as you can, but then move the other.

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The other one is on issues like prohibition.

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You’ve got left-right coalitions that are possible.

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In Washington, D.C., the Republicans and Democrats are very much,

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there’s a logjam.

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You have Democrat president, Republican House and Senate,

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and nobody wants to do anything that the other team might get credit for,

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and so very little happens, very little useful happens.

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But at the state level, we can do better than that.

00:23:33 ►

But also at the federal level, you can have left-right coalitions,

00:23:37 ►

and I would suggest that much of the progress we’ve made over the last 10 years

00:23:41 ►

has been when we do that, fighting corporate welfare.

00:23:45 ►

Ralph Nader doesn’t like corporate welfare.

00:23:47 ►

I don’t like corporate welfare.

00:23:49 ►

And we sit down and we say, how can we work together?

00:23:52 ►

Where can we work together?

00:23:53 ►

And this is not about compromising

00:23:56 ►

in the sense of compromising your principles.

00:24:00 ►

I’m not in favor of what Washington considers compromise,

00:24:04 ►

which is where both sides stay.

00:24:07 ►

Let’s do something destructive and stupid that violates my principles and something also destructive and stupid that violates your principles.

00:24:16 ►

And then we both get together in something that we both don’t like and we pass it.

00:24:21 ►

But because we’re both unhappy, that makes it a compromise.

00:24:24 ►

I’m not interested in that.

00:24:26 ►

I think that’s the present mess we’re in, where people compromise on principle.

00:24:32 ►

When Ralph Nader says, I don’t want the government giving money to various corporations,

00:24:37 ►

he has reasons for that.

00:24:38 ►

I don’t want the government giving money to various corporations.

00:24:41 ►

I have my own reasons for that.

00:24:43 ►

We can agree on this and we do

00:24:45 ►

it together. There is no compromise on principle. I’m not signing on to a bill that any part of it

00:24:53 ►

I dislike. Ralph Nader is not agreeing to any piece of legislation that any part of it he doesn’t like.

00:25:01 ►

And we can work together because I can say to conservatives, guys,

00:25:09 ►

this is a good bill, here’s why. And Ralph Nader can say to progressives, here’s a good bill, here’s why. We each talk to our coalition. And the establishment Republicans and Democrats

00:25:15 ►

look out and get scared because they see a growing support from people whose support

00:25:21 ►

they need. And then we end up making some progress. Getting rid of earmarks happened in the last 10 years.

00:25:28 ►

Earmarks, you know, when a politician would say,

00:25:31 ►

I’m going to steal some money and bring it back to Iowa and give it to my neighbors.

00:25:36 ►

And that was considered a manly thing to do.

00:25:39 ►

You’d go, look at him, he’s such a great congressman.

00:25:42 ►

He steals money from Alaska and he gives it to everybody in Alabama.

00:25:47 ►

Isn’t that wonderful? He’s a great hunter. He brings back food and feeds the village.

00:25:53 ►

But the problem, of course, is if you steal money from other states and bring it to your congressional district,

00:25:59 ►

the only way you can do that is if you agree that all other 364 congressional districts are allowed to

00:26:06 ►

loot the people in your district and bring it back to their district. So it’s really not such a great

00:26:11 ►

idea at any level. But we got earmarks ended. I mean, if you made a list of things that will

00:26:20 ►

never happen in American politics, getting rid of earmarks, targeted

00:26:25 ►

spending for friends of congressmen and senators, that would have been on my list of things

00:26:30 ►

that were unlikely to happen. So as you fight fights on prohibition and other issues, a

00:26:36 ►

lot of things are difficult. You think they’re impossible with the present structures, but

00:26:41 ►

I would suggest they’re not impossible. We got transparency at the

00:26:46 ►

national level in most states, where every check by the federal government, every check

00:26:50 ►

by state governments is now online in most states and at the federal level. And you can

00:26:56 ►

see who gets the money and how it goes. This was hidden for years. They didn’t want people to know this stuff. But liberals and conservatives, progressives and libertarians can all agree that we think the world would be better off if the American people saw exactly how government was spending their money.

00:27:17 ►

Ralph Nader is of the impression that if everyone saw that, they’d go, let’s spend more.

00:27:22 ►

I think people have a different approach.

00:27:22 ►

They’d go, let’s spend more.

00:27:24 ►

I think people have a different approach.

00:27:30 ►

But we each, for our own reasons, say let’s have this open to the public.

00:27:35 ►

So not only can we have left-right coalitions based on principle.

00:27:40 ►

Criminal justice reform, one of the few things that might pass in the next few months.

00:27:44 ►

Criminal justice reform, the idea that there are too many Americans in prison,

00:27:49 ►

there are too many laws that can put you in prison, there are too many stupid little laws that can trip you up and let the cops into your car, your house, your life, and put you in prison.

00:27:55 ►

And of the 600,000 federal regulations that can put you in prison and the 4,000 laws that can put

00:28:01 ►

you in prison, there should be some requirement that a normal person would have any idea that this was wrong or illegal.

00:28:09 ►

Mens rea.

00:28:10 ►

I debated somebody on mens rea, meaning guilty mind.

00:28:14 ►

Mens rea means you can’t be found guilty of a crime if you didn’t have a guilty intent,

00:28:19 ►

if you didn’t think you were doing something wrong.

00:28:22 ►

That’s why there’s a difference between manslaughter.

00:28:24 ►

If you bump into somebody and they break their leg,

00:28:27 ►

it’s different than if you take a hammer and you smash their knee.

00:28:30 ►

Okay, the first, you didn’t mean to hurt the guy the second time.

00:28:34 ►

You did hurt him, but you fell.

00:28:36 ►

You didn’t mean to hurt him.

00:28:37 ►

There’s a difference between when something happens that you didn’t intend

00:28:39 ►

and something that you did intend to do.

00:28:43 ►

I was told, oh, mens rea, it’s much too new a concept

00:28:46 ►

to really get involved in right now.

00:28:48 ►

I said, mens rea is Latin.

00:28:51 ►

It’s several thousand years old.

00:28:53 ►

It’s not new.

00:28:54 ►

It’s an old concept.

00:28:55 ►

It’s a good concept.

00:28:56 ►

Guilty in mind.

00:28:57 ►

If you don’t mean to do something wrong,

00:29:00 ►

you shouldn’t be in jail or punished for it

00:29:03 ►

because you weren’t intending to do something wrong.

00:29:08 ►

The criminal justice reform issue

00:29:11 ►

is one that has made tremendous progress

00:29:14 ►

because it puts together a left-right coalition.

00:29:18 ►

We work with the NAACP

00:29:21 ►

and the American Civil Liberties Union,

00:29:25 ►

a whole series of left-of-center groups and the NRA

00:29:29 ►

and every right-of-center group around who business groups included,

00:29:36 ►

and they both look at 4,000 federal laws, 600,000 regulations,

00:29:41 ►

and say this is not reasonable.

00:29:44 ►

Remember when you were a kid, your parents said,

00:29:45 ►

ignorance of the law is no excuse.

00:29:48 ►

Anybody be able to list the 4,000 federal laws that can put you in prison

00:29:52 ►

or the 600,000 regulations?

00:29:55 ►

There’s a guy in jail to this day because he was importing shrimp from Guatemala,

00:30:02 ►

and Guatemala has a law that you have to put them in paper not plastic

00:30:06 ►

and he put them in plastic

00:30:08 ►

not paper and Guatemala

00:30:09 ►

doesn’t care which we

00:30:12 ►

do it I don’t know why they put it in the law they say we don’t

00:30:14 ►

know why we don’t care the federal government

00:30:16 ►

US government said our law

00:30:17 ►

says we go by the local law

00:30:19 ►

so we put you in prison for

00:30:21 ►

using the wrong material to

00:30:24 ►

have shrimp that you’re going to eat put inside them.

00:30:30 ►

The guy had no idea he was doing anything wrong.

00:30:34 ►

There’s nothing wrong with paper versus plastic on shrimp.

00:30:37 ►

Not one is better or worse than the other, but it’s the law.

00:30:42 ►

than the other, but it’s the law.

00:30:44 ►

My favorite bumper sticker,

00:30:45 ►

and I was a bumper sticker,

00:30:47 ►

wonderful billboard,

00:30:50 ►

was one that the Hells Angels put up,

00:30:53 ►

said 55 miles an hour,

00:30:55 ►

it’s not a good idea,

00:30:57 ►

it’s just the law.

00:31:01 ►

Nobody here is old enough to remember when you had to drive 55 miles an hour

00:31:03 ►

in the entire country,

00:31:06 ►

because that made somebody feel better.

00:31:08 ►

But it was the law.

00:31:10 ►

It wasn’t a good idea, but it was the law. On the issue of criminal justice reform, what’s interesting is I think half of the impetus is the anti-prohibitionist understanding that more and more Americans have.

00:31:26 ►

Because when people talk about victimless crimes

00:31:29 ►

and crimes that people shouldn’t go to prison for

00:31:32 ►

and maybe there should be something else you look at,

00:31:34 ►

they’re really talking about prohibition.

00:31:36 ►

That’s the issue that they’re talking about.

00:31:38 ►

And so while few people talk about prohibition,

00:31:42 ►

that’s what drives the effort to say there are too many laws, too many people in prison,

00:31:48 ►

too many people in prison for too long, dot, dot, dot, usually for drug crimes.

00:31:55 ►

But somehow it’s just easier for everybody to talk about it.

00:31:59 ►

Yeah.

00:32:00 ►

So can you talk for a second about let’s take cannabis prohibition.

00:32:06 ►

So we’re now starting to see the change.

00:32:08 ►

The states are starting to see the light in terms of monetary taxes that they can bring in, et cetera.

00:32:14 ►

You can see the first few states doing it. It’s going really well.

00:32:18 ►

They’re adapting to making sure that things are properly labeled.

00:32:23 ►

And there still exists this federal law that makes it illegal to do banking.

00:32:28 ►

And because of that, you’re not seeing an investment in refining the medical capability of this substance.

00:32:36 ►

So can you talk about where a states’ rights movement

00:32:40 ►

or making something legal in the state that you’re in is handicapped

00:32:46 ►

by a federal law and what the strategy would be for overcoming that?

00:32:50 ►

Very good point.

00:32:51 ►

I run a taxpayer group, Americans for Tax Reform, and we’ve been very active because

00:32:56 ►

in 1982, American law has always said that you can deduct business expenses from your taxes.

00:33:11 ►

So if you rob a bank, you can say, well, I had to pay the four guys who helped me rob the bank,

00:33:18 ►

and I had to get gasoline, and we had to plan this whole thing,

00:33:22 ►

and we made a million dollars but it cost us a hundred

00:33:25 ►

thousand dollars so the taxes you pay are on the income minus the expenses and that’s just always

00:33:33 ►

been law well when somebody was they said we’re going to tax a drug smuggler from you know

00:33:41 ►

columbia he said, here are my business expenses

00:33:46 ►

and here’s what I made,

00:33:48 ►

so I owe you this tax money.

00:33:49 ►

I got it.

00:33:51 ►

And the National Enquirer or somebody saw that

00:33:54 ►

and just had a field day.

00:33:56 ►

So they passed a law that said

00:33:57 ►

with class one drugs,

00:34:00 ►

you can’t deduct for the taxes you owe

00:34:04 ►

on the money you made if you’re selling them. You can’t deduct for the taxes you owe on the money you made if you’re selling them

00:34:05 ►

you can’t deduct normal business expenses

00:34:09 ►

and that means marijuana

00:34:11 ►

so when you run a marijuana dispensary in Colorado

00:34:15 ►

or Oregon or Washington State

00:34:18 ►

or another seven states hopefully

00:34:21 ►

this cycle

00:34:22 ►

you’re paying your 35% corporate rate on all sales.

00:34:31 ►

You can’t deduct labor costs, the people you pay, rent, or anything like that.

00:34:37 ►

So it’s not a 35% tax on your profits.

00:34:40 ►

It’s like a 75% tax on your profits.

00:34:44 ►

And there’s actual legislation that my group, Americans for Tax Reform, has endorsed each year.

00:34:49 ►

We work on getting more co-sponsors to say, no, I mean, you should be able to get business expenses for any of these issues,

00:34:56 ►

specifically if the state makes it legal.

00:34:59 ►

And I think we’ll get there, but you’re quite right.

00:35:02 ►

Federal laws, federal banking laws, federal tax laws make the federalist approach slower and more difficult.

00:35:11 ►

It doesn’t make it impossible, but it slows it down, yes.

00:35:15 ►

So what do you actually, like, what is the strategy there for you have to approach, you have to play the game in the federal government?

00:35:23 ►

More states, more states, more states.

00:35:27 ►

More states means more senators.

00:35:30 ►

More states means more congressmen.

00:35:32 ►

More states mean more people think this is normal.

00:35:36 ►

I mean, once you start having gay marriage approved in some states,

00:35:40 ►

the idea that you move from one state to another,

00:35:42 ►

and all of a sudden you aren’t married, people go, what’s this, right? And as you move across the country, state

00:35:49 ►

by state, and change the rules, and change people’s attitudes, it’s tremendously important.

00:35:56 ►

And then that moves to Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. gets it last, just last. They need to know, politicians in Washington want to hear that something is safe,

00:36:08 ►

meaning if I do this, can I get reelected?

00:36:13 ►

That’s safe.

00:36:14 ►

Not safe for citizens, not safe for children, not safe for car accidents,

00:36:19 ►

safe for getting reelected.

00:36:20 ►

And the more states that do it, and has anyone lost an election because they

00:36:25 ►

voted or supported

00:36:27 ►

medical marijuana or

00:36:29 ►

Colorado,

00:36:32 ►

Oregon, Washington,

00:36:33 ►

recreational marijuana? I don’t

00:36:35 ►

think so. And the

00:36:37 ►

longer that happens, when I testified

00:36:40 ►

in Florida on

00:36:41 ►

changing the laws,

00:36:44 ►

criminal justice reform

00:36:46 ►

so that people don’t go to prison for as long

00:36:49 ►

and for as many crimes. The most important

00:36:52 ►

thing I said was one, this effort first

00:36:55 ►

started in Texas. They go, oh

00:36:58 ►

Texas. That means I won’t be accused of being

00:37:01 ►

some liberal silly person

00:37:04 ►

because I’m putting this

00:37:06 ►

for Texas, when they’re not busy

00:37:08 ►

executing people, they’re reforming the criminal justice

00:37:10 ►

system. They’re not

00:37:11 ►

weak on crime.

00:37:14 ►

And then secondly, I said they did this five years

00:37:16 ►

ago. Five years ago.

00:37:18 ►

You mean at least two election cycles

00:37:20 ►

ago. Nobody lost

00:37:22 ►

an election. They need

00:37:24 ►

to know it’s safe. They need to know that it won’t

00:37:29 ►

cost them the next election because they’re not brave. Most of them aren’t brave. And that’s why

00:37:35 ►

five states doing it, 10 states doing it, nobody loses an election. Very good. And I’m all in

00:37:43 ►

favor of moving slowly towards liberty, because in some

00:37:46 ►

cases, if you move too fast, the other team can come jump on your head. And something goes wrong,

00:37:53 ►

and they say, see, your whole project’s wrong. So there are a number of things that have moved

00:37:58 ►

through the states. Homeschooling, illegal in 48 states 30 years ago, now legal in all 50 states.

00:38:02 ►

illegal in 48 states 30 years ago now legal in all 50 states

00:38:04 ►

concealed carry for the gun

00:38:08 ►

the first concealed carry

00:38:11 ►

shall issue concealed carry laws

00:38:14 ►

in a state with stoplights was passed in

00:38:17 ►

00:38:19 ►

and they kept passing it limited

00:38:23 ►

and now 41 states have shall issue.

00:38:26 ►

Fifteen million Americans have a concealed carry permit.

00:38:30 ►

And the people who have concealed carry permits go to jail or get in trouble with the law one-sixth as often as cops.

00:38:40 ►

So they’re safer than cops better than cops and cops don’t

00:38:45 ►

they get in the papers when they misbehave

00:38:47 ►

but they don’t misbehave as much as the rest of us do

00:38:50 ►

00:38:51 ►

when you have a new idea

00:38:53 ►

if you take it slowly

00:38:55 ►

and you then expand

00:38:58 ►

that liberty

00:38:59 ►

I’m all in favor of

00:39:02 ►

compromise meaning

00:39:03 ►

moving towards liberty less rapidly than I’d like to go.

00:39:10 ►

But as long as you’re moving towards liberty slowly, that’s progress.

00:39:15 ►

If you’re moving away from liberty, that’s not progress.

00:39:19 ►

That’s not a compromise.

00:39:20 ►

That’s losing.

00:39:22 ►

What I fight on taxes, I’m always in favor of small tax cuts.

00:39:27 ►

I like big ones, but I’ll take a small one. But if taxes are going up, that’s not a compromise.

00:39:33 ►

That’s called losing. And so you want to move towards liberty, towards more individual

00:39:40 ►

choice, more individual control of lives on whatever issue you’re talking

00:39:46 ►

about, whether it’s gay marriage or taxes or spending or guns or prohibition. Slowly.

00:39:53 ►

Take it step by step. You never want to go more slowly than you have to. If they offer

00:39:59 ►

you the whole loaf, take it. But if you can’t get the whole loaf, take the half loaf.

00:40:08 ►

loaf, take it. But if you can’t get the whole loaf, take the half loaf. Questions, thoughts,

00:40:19 ►

arguments? Can you? Okay. Hi. Hi. I’m just curious. Can you tell us about how the reaction in your circles was to your attending Burning Man? Oh, sure.

00:40:27 ►

Can we shut that door a little bit?

00:40:30 ►

Does that at all drop the sound?

00:40:33 ►

Okay.

00:40:37 ►

If we can make them quieter by shutting those,

00:40:39 ►

that does it for me.

00:40:42 ►

The interesting question was,

00:40:46 ►

were conservatives upset, shocked that I was going to Burning Man

00:40:47 ►

actually it worked the other way around

00:40:49 ►

Larry Harvey said

00:40:51 ►

that our dear

00:40:54 ►

friends the federal government are always screwing

00:40:56 ►

with Burning Man and extorting

00:40:58 ►

money from it and stuff like that

00:41:00 ►

so he was in Washington

00:41:02 ►

and somebody said you should talk to Grover

00:41:04 ►

we sat down he talked about the problems he was having and I somebody said, you should talk to Grover. We sat down,

00:41:05 ►

he talked about the problems he was having and I was familiar with Burning Man but hadn’t

00:41:09 ►

been. And he said, well, you should come. And I said, we will. And my wife and I said,

00:41:14 ►

we’ll come. And we also wanted to work on getting the Park Service and the Bureau of

00:41:22 ►

Land Management to not mess with Burning Man in the way that they do.

00:41:26 ►

And the drug enforcement guys as well.

00:41:31 ►

The first year we were planning to come,

00:41:35 ►

the Republican National Committee convention,

00:41:38 ►

this would have been 12, I guess, yeah, 12,

00:41:41 ►

put their convention right on top of Burning Man.

00:41:44 ►

So I tweeted, who is the idiot who put the Republican convention the same week as Burning Man?

00:41:50 ►

Is there time to fix this?

00:41:53 ►

And they didn’t fix it.

00:41:55 ►

But I did hear from quite a number of people who said, yeah, I was hoping to go to both,

00:41:59 ►

and more than you’d think, but because they were conflicting, not everybody could do it. There were a couple

00:42:05 ►

of guys who did actually catch part of each week Burning Man and the Republican Convention.

00:42:12 ►

I didn’t get flack from the right. There was a group in the press, Vice and some of the

00:42:19 ►

San Francisco papers that said, you can’t have a conservative come to Burning Man.

00:42:27 ►

Well, why?

00:42:29 ►

And they had this idea about that Burning Man was this political thing

00:42:32 ►

as opposed to a cultural

00:42:34 ►

fight, a cultural issue.

00:42:36 ►

And Larry Harvey

00:42:37 ►

and the people who run Burning Man

00:42:39 ►

said rule number

00:42:42 ►

one or goal number one

00:42:43 ►

or ethos number one is radical inclusion who are these

00:42:47 ►

idiots who think that we don’t want everybody to be part of burning man and that really shut up

00:42:52 ►

the the objections um and i did a piece for the guardian the british publication which was a

00:43:01 ►

summary 800 words on um what I picked up from Burning Man.

00:43:06 ►

And that was actually very – they tell me it got well-received

00:43:09 ►

and lots of reads and likes and so on.

00:43:14 ►

But I think that was helpful because –

00:43:18 ►

look, Burning Man is a bunch of people getting together with very few rules

00:43:22 ►

and everybody minds their own business,

00:43:26 ►

and everybody leaves everybody else alone.

00:43:28 ►

I mean, that’s my goal for the whole goddamn country.

00:43:32 ►

That’s the way I want New York to operate and D.C. to operate,

00:43:36 ►

not just Burning Man from time to time for a week a year.

00:43:42 ►

So, yeah, no, actually, the first time

00:43:46 ►

I spoke here two years ago,

00:43:48 ►

and somebody had

00:43:50 ►

sat in the back with little

00:43:51 ►

stickers

00:43:53 ►

that they were going to hand out to demonstrate

00:43:56 ►

against my being here, and it

00:43:58 ►

was Grover, the Sesame Street character,

00:44:00 ►

with that international

00:44:01 ►

red slash sign,

00:44:03 ►

so no Grovers,

00:44:07 ►

and my wife is in the back picking up copies to give them to my kids,

00:44:09 ►

so they put them all over the house.

00:44:13 ►

But they didn’t even hand them out,

00:44:14 ►

unless you went and asked for them.

00:44:17 ►

So there was this in some of the social media,

00:44:23 ►

this horror that one was coming.

00:44:26 ►

And one group that I spoke, not this group,

00:44:28 ►

but another group that asked me to come and speak,

00:44:30 ►

canceled the talk because they were scared of violence.

00:44:34 ►

It turned out to be a big nothing.

00:44:36 ►

It was actually very healthy to see

00:44:39 ►

that there’s not a political test for Burning Man.

00:44:44 ►

And on the right, all I got was, what was it like?

00:44:46 ►

Should I go?

00:44:47 ►

I mean, I have a congressman in tow with me.

00:44:49 ►

Not in tow with me.

00:44:50 ►

He’ll be staying in my, with me.

00:44:53 ►

Who I talked to for a couple years

00:44:55 ►

and this year worked for us, so he showed up.

00:44:57 ►

And I think we’ll get more congressmen.

00:44:59 ►

And the more congressmen we get to come,

00:45:01 ►

the less the BLM and the Park Service screw with Burning Man.

00:45:08 ►

And the first year I came that week, Kucinich, Congressman Kucinich,

00:45:17 ►

a progressive congressman from Cleveland, was there also that same week.

00:45:24 ►

And Kucinich is great.

00:45:26 ►

Kucinich ran for president

00:45:27 ►

as Democrat.

00:45:29 ►

He’s a ventriloquist.

00:45:32 ►

And I helped organize

00:45:33 ►

something in Washington called Funniest Celebrity

00:45:36 ►

in D.C.

00:45:37 ►

And we

00:45:38 ►

get congressmen and senators

00:45:41 ►

to come and do stand-up.

00:45:44 ►

Which, these people are not generally terribly funny.

00:45:46 ►

We had Lieberman come.

00:45:48 ►

You want somebody who’s not funny?

00:45:49 ►

Joe Lieberman is not funny.

00:45:52 ►

His entire routine was, I’m not funny.

00:45:55 ►

And then he would read the cards.

00:45:59 ►

You can’t have notes with stand-up comedy at the improv.

00:46:04 ►

And he did. And he won because he’s a senator and

00:46:08 ►

the judges were all local press people and christopher hitchens was one of the competitors

00:46:12 ►

and he was actually funny and he was good he till the day he passed away he was pissed that

00:46:19 ►

lieberman had cheated on the funniest celebrity in D.C. with the little notes.

00:46:25 ►

But I bring it all because our friend Kucinich is a ventriloquist,

00:46:30 ►

and he and the former head of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie,

00:46:35 ►

are both talented ventriloquists who do the dummy thing.

00:46:40 ►

And so the four of them, the two of them each with their dummy,

00:46:43 ►

did one of those TV shows where four people scream at each other.

00:46:47 ►

It was very good.

00:46:49 ►

And I told this story to somebody who years ago had been on the city council in not Cleveland, but the southern Cincinnati.

00:47:01 ►

Cincinnati, thank you.

00:47:01 ►

Cincinnati.

00:47:02 ►

Cincinnati, thank you.

00:47:06 ►

And so he goes up to meet with Kucinich,

00:47:10 ►

along with the guy who had the TV show where people threw chairs at each other.

00:47:13 ►

The mayor of Cincinnati.

00:47:16 ►

Jerry Springer.

00:47:17 ►

Jerry Springer, that’s it, yes.

00:47:18 ►

So Jerry Springer and my friend are there talking to Kucinich,

00:47:22 ►

who’s got a desk, which is like a foot and a half off the

00:47:27 ►

ground, so he’s taller than everybody else, and so people come to meet with him, and he’s, the entire

00:47:34 ►

conversation for 40 minutes with a mayor and a city councilman from a major city in Ohio, he runs through a sock puppet. So the sock puppet’s talking

00:47:45 ►

and Jerry Springer’s talking

00:47:47 ►

to the puppet. And maybe

00:47:50 ►

he’d been through this before. To him,

00:47:52 ►

this was not odd. This was

00:47:53 ►

not different. This was not demeaning.

00:47:56 ►

Sure, okay.

00:47:58 ►

He’s talking to the puppet.

00:47:59 ►

And my friend’s going, I’m just going.

00:48:02 ►

I don’t get it. What’s happening here?

00:48:04 ►

But he’s a very talented ventriloquist.

00:48:06 ►

It sounds like he’s over there with a sock puppet, which is why Jerry Springer was talking to the sock puppet.

00:48:13 ►

How do we get on Jerry Springer and the sock puppets?

00:48:16 ►

You were talking about how it’s received amongst conservatives that you come here.

00:48:22 ►

Yeah, and one of the few former congressmen,

00:48:25 ►

or first Democrat congressman was Kucinich.

00:48:28 ►

He came when he was a former congressman.

00:48:30 ►

I don’t know that we’ve had other congressmen or senators.

00:48:34 ►

I think General Petraeus came here one year.

00:48:38 ►

Oh, really? Oh, that’s good.

00:48:39 ►

Okay, well, he’s not elected to anything.

00:48:43 ►

It’s easier if you just have a gun

00:48:45 ►

and I have my job, I have a gun, leave me alone.

00:48:48 ►

If you have to go ask people for votes, it’s different.

00:48:50 ►

No, but him being here, I think, is great.

00:48:52 ►

That’s great. I didn’t know it.

00:48:55 ►

I think more people coming is good.

00:48:59 ►

Would you be more open to taxation

00:49:04 ►

if you felt like our taxes were being spent more wisely?

00:49:10 ►

If I believed in unicorns, what color would be my favorite?

00:49:14 ►

Okay.

00:49:15 ►

The challenge is that there’s so much politically driven waste.

00:49:23 ►

Not waste meaning I meant to do it right

00:49:26 ►

I mean deliberately misspending money

00:49:28 ►

because certain people benefit

00:49:30 ►

and a lot of the politics of Washington

00:49:35 ►

and states is special spending interest

00:49:38 ►

stuff and when you can back off

00:49:41 ►

of that there’s so much to be done

00:49:44 ►

that I think…

00:49:47 ►

Look, 1774, before the American Revolution, we were taxed in the colonies 2%.

00:49:58 ►

2%.

00:50:00 ►

In Britain, for the privilege of messing with with us for the privilege of being the guys who

00:50:08 ►

run the empire londoners were paying 20 of their income in taxes okay so running empires is

00:50:14 ►

expensive somebody needs to explain this to cheney but but running empires is expensive it’s not for

00:50:20 ►

free and they wanted to take that tax thing up to three or four

00:50:26 ►

and we got the guns out and we said,

00:50:27 ►

this is it, we’re out of here. And we left.

00:50:31 ►

For a long

00:50:32 ►

time we were spending 2-3%.

00:50:34 ►

And now we’re spending

00:50:36 ►

34%. There’s

00:50:38 ►

a certain amount of waste.

00:50:40 ►

And there’s a certain amount of stuff that the government

00:50:41 ►

ought not to be doing. So I think

00:50:44 ►

right now, bringing spending down and giving people more freedom on how they do stuff is the best way to go.

00:50:54 ►

So where do you draw the line?

00:50:56 ►

Do you feel like we should have an environmental protection agency?

00:51:01 ►

Is there a line at which you can say no we really do need

00:51:06 ►

some taxes

00:51:07 ►

and how do you justify

00:51:10 ►

where that line is in your mind

00:51:11 ►

oh sure look

00:51:13 ►

some government is useful

00:51:14 ►

I’m not arguing for anarchy

00:51:16 ►

the constitution

00:51:18 ►

has a list of things

00:51:20 ►

they think the government should do

00:51:21 ►

it’s probably a good list

00:51:23 ►

except for the post office

00:51:24 ►

I’m not sure why the government

00:51:25 ►

should run a post office. I mean, FedEx,

00:51:27 ►

UPS does a perfectly fine job.

00:51:30 ►

You don’t need a government

00:51:32 ►

entity to deliver

00:51:33 ►

the mail.

00:51:35 ►

We don’t have one to do the internet.

00:51:37 ►

We don’t have one to do phones.

00:51:40 ►

At the time, they didn’t

00:51:41 ►

think of another way to do the mail other than

00:51:43 ►

the government.

00:51:46 ►

But most of the Constitution is just fine, except for slavery and the post office.

00:51:50 ►

They’re doing okay.

00:51:50 ►

They’re doing fine.

00:51:52 ►

So I think you make a list of things the government’s doing that hurt people.

00:51:59 ►

We were talking earlier about the FDA delaying the availability of life-saving drugs.

00:52:04 ►

You know, the FDA says, hey, we’ve got this new drug.

00:52:07 ►

We’ve just approved 10,000 people’s lives will be saved this year.

00:52:13 ►

And during the 10 years that you didn’t allow it when it existed,

00:52:18 ►

but you didn’t allow it to be used,

00:52:20 ►

that’s 10 times 10,000, that’s 100,000 people died.

00:52:27 ►

Government can do a lot of damage, and we need to reduce that.

00:52:32 ►

I mean, you don’t have to get in.

00:52:33 ►

Most governments throughout history have been mostly horrific.

00:52:36 ►

Ours is probably one of the least sucky governments around,

00:52:39 ►

and it still has many problems and still does a lot of damage.

00:52:43 ►

So I just think we should look to reduce the damage.

00:52:49 ►

It’s my understanding that you’re a Trump supporter. Is that true?

00:52:53 ►

No, I’ve not endorsed anybody for president.

00:52:55 ►

I vote in D.C., so it doesn’t really matter who I vote for.

00:53:04 ►

I think I like Trump’s

00:53:05 ►

tax proposal, which is

00:53:07 ►

fine. I think I

00:53:10 ►

prefer Hillary’s views on free trade

00:53:12 ►

versus

00:53:13 ►

Trump’s.

00:53:16 ►

But I’m not sure Trump

00:53:18 ►

understands the concept of

00:53:19 ►

free trade, or it doesn’t sound like he does.

00:53:23 ►

So no, I’ve

00:53:23 ►

not endorsed. And he has not

00:53:25 ►

signed the pledge against raising taxes.

00:53:28 ►

Every other Republican

00:53:29 ►

put in writing that he would never raise taxes.

00:53:31 ►

Trump has not.

00:53:35 ►

What is your

00:53:35 ►

impression of his decision not to release

00:53:37 ►

his own personal income taxes?

00:53:40 ►

I’m a trained economist.

00:53:41 ►

I don’t do impressions.

00:53:44 ►

What are your thoughts on that?

00:53:45 ►

I’m sorry, Air Force Two.

00:53:47 ►

I’m sorry, Airplane Two, the movie.

00:53:52 ►

I don’t, that doesn’t bother me one way or the other.

00:53:55 ►

I mean, that’s a privacy issue.

00:53:56 ►

I’m not sure it’s particularly interesting

00:53:58 ►

that we can look at somebody’s tax returns.

00:54:01 ►

If there was something illegal or problematic,

00:54:03 ►

the IRS would act on it.

00:54:09 ►

I’m not sure why people got into the business

00:54:11 ►

of opening up that way.

00:54:14 ►

I would prefer that people have more privacy in general

00:54:17 ►

rather than less.

00:54:18 ►

It’s not the government’s business

00:54:20 ►

to know everything about you

00:54:21 ►

or to share it with other people.

00:54:23 ►

So while I understand why somebody might do it, saying, look at this, I’ve never had any money in my life.

00:54:29 ►

Yay, vote for me. I don’t consider it a terribly interesting project. I only worry about what

00:54:38 ►

other things the government, what other privacy issues they might violate on people.

00:54:47 ►

I’m not crazy about them opening up people’s divorce records,

00:54:50 ►

which is the other thing they tend to do in the middle of elections.

00:54:56 ►

I guess there was some concern about whether or not Trump had business interests in Russia or with members of the Russian oligarchy or government

00:55:01 ►

and how that might impact his potential relationship with that country.

00:55:08 ►

On that one, both the CIA, the FBI

00:55:12 ►

and other entities would be all over that

00:55:16 ►

subject. My guess is if there was a problem there, you’d know about it.

00:55:20 ►

The government does take an interest in that.

00:55:23 ►

It’s not an unreasonable issue.

00:55:28 ►

Yes, thank you.

00:55:29 ►

My name is Luke.

00:55:31 ►

And my question is…

00:55:32 ►

Talk closer.

00:55:33 ►

My question is, do you believe that Republicans are psychologically prepared for a fairly devastating and dramatic November loss.

00:55:50 ►

And as you feel your way through this, losing the Senate as well as potentially losing a really landslide election on the executive,

00:56:01 ►

what kind of soul-searching do you think comes the morning after an event like that?

00:56:09 ►

Yeah, it’s an interesting question about the politics.

00:56:13 ►

The Democrats, when they ran McGovern, got wiped out at the national level,

00:56:20 ►

but didn’t do very well Senate, House, state legislature.

00:56:26 ►

They got wiped out with Mondale in 84

00:56:27 ►

carried one state.

00:56:30 ►

Trump for all of

00:56:31 ►

his hard work at throwing

00:56:34 ►

away a perfectly good presidential

00:56:35 ►

election isn’t

00:56:37 ►

going to come anywhere near

00:56:39 ►

Mondale, Dukakis

00:56:41 ►

Carter levels of losing an election.

00:56:49 ►

The other question is what link there is with House and Senate.

00:56:55 ►

In New Hampshire, one of the ones where we have a lady Republican senator who’s challenged,

00:57:01 ►

she’s running completely separately from Trump.

00:57:04 ►

Rubio in

00:57:05 ►

Florida is running 20 points ahead of Trump

00:57:07 ►

he’s winning Trump’s losing

00:57:09 ►

we’ll

00:57:11 ►

see I mean you

00:57:12 ►

can you turn it into a watershed election

00:57:15 ►

Hillary has her own challenges

00:57:17 ►

if we’re running somebody other than Trump

00:57:19 ►

I don’t think Hillary would be in the running

00:57:21 ►

but Trump insists

00:57:23 ►

whenever bad news comes out on Hillary,

00:57:25 ►

he has to send out a tweet to make that day about him.

00:57:30 ►

Sometimes when the other team’s committing suicide,

00:57:33 ►

shut up.

00:57:35 ►

Stay quiet.

00:57:36 ►

Don’t talk.

00:57:37 ►

And at some point,

00:57:39 ►

Trump just hasn’t been capable of doing that.

00:57:43 ►

Just step back, take a vacation,

00:57:47 ►

have a conversation about the other team’s challenges.

00:57:52 ►

Independent of Trump, for the last 10 years,

00:57:57 ►

I’ve been arguing inside the Republican Party

00:57:59 ►

to give up on this focus on the presidency.

00:58:03 ►

And the reason is the Democrats for 60 years

00:58:06 ►

had the House and the Senate.

00:58:08 ►

And Republicans won the presidency.

00:58:12 ►

Eisenhower, Eisenhower, Nixon, Nixon,

00:58:14 ►

Reagan, Reagan, Bush, Bush, Bush.

00:58:19 ►

But Congress has power

00:58:21 ►

more than the president over time.

00:58:24 ►

If you want to govern, you govern from the House, from the Senate, from the state legislators.

00:58:31 ►

And right now, the modern Republican Party has, of the 50 states, 23 have a Republican governor, House, Senate.

00:58:43 ►

have a Republican governor, House, Senate.

00:58:45 ►

The Democrats have seven.

00:58:47 ►

23?

00:58:50 ►

Seven House, Senate governorship.

00:58:52 ►

31 states have a Republican governor.

00:58:56 ►

32 states have a Republican House and Senate.

00:59:03 ►

So Democrats have lost 900 of 7,400 state legislative seats in the last eight years under Obama.

00:59:06 ►

They’ve just been wiped out at the local level.

00:59:11 ►

And that is, I think, the place from where to govern.

00:59:17 ►

I would like to govern from the House, from the state legislators, from governorships.

00:59:22 ►

The presidency is nice every once in a while,

00:59:25 ►

but it’s not the key thing. So to focus only on the presidency, to put your time and effort

00:59:33 ►

into it, which is what Republicans did, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, they focused on the presidency,

00:59:41 ►

not the House and Senate. I’m much more interested in the House, Senate, and state legislative bodies.

00:59:47 ►

And I think the Ds could well win the presidency and not the rest of it in this election.

00:59:55 ►

The fact that they’re down in Florida and other states at Senate level is, I think, interesting and important.

01:00:06 ►

I’m not happy with Trump’s position on immigration,

01:00:10 ►

trade,

01:00:11 ►

any number of issues there.

01:00:13 ►

But other Republicans,

01:00:14 ►

there aren’t other,

01:00:15 ►

like if there was a Trump wing of the Republican Party,

01:00:19 ►

like congressmen and senators and governors

01:00:22 ►

and state legislators going,

01:00:30 ►

you know, this is one third of the party or a tenth of the party or half the party.

01:00:31 ►

There’s Trump.

01:00:34 ►

The Trump wing of the Republican Party is Trump.

01:00:40 ►

We just had a guy who ran as Trump in Florida, and Rubio crushed him in Senate.

01:00:42 ►

He said, I’m like Trump.

01:00:46 ►

We had a lady running in Arizona running against McCain. I’m like Trump. She got crushed. The Trump candidates are not winning at state and local. I mean,

01:00:52 ►

Trump has run a very interesting campaign on name ID and social media and cable TV.

01:01:03 ►

It’s unique. It’s surprising. I was surprised.

01:01:06 ►

I thought when he said that McCain wasn’t a war hero

01:01:08 ►

because he got captured, that that was it.

01:01:11 ►

Okay, that’s it.

01:01:13 ►

He’s not going anywhere.

01:01:15 ►

Didn’t even affect it.

01:01:16 ►

So I can’t predict with any seriousness the next election

01:01:24 ►

because in the primaries

01:01:25 ►

my predictions were completely wrong all the way through.

01:01:28 ►

I was pretty sure that the governor

01:01:30 ►

of Wisconsin would win, but he didn’t.

01:01:34 ►

The guy with the bunny rabbit ears.

01:01:36 ►

This is my third year hearing you speak.

01:01:38 ►

I’ve had bunny rabbits every year.

01:01:40 ►

Thanks for being here.

01:01:41 ►

My question is, in your opening statement

01:01:44 ►

you mentioned things like a distaste for corporate welfare.

01:01:49 ►

And a distaste for corporate welfare.

01:01:53 ►

Additionally, you said that people have rights, states don’t have rights.

01:01:58 ►

I was wondering what your opinion is on corporate personhood

01:02:02 ►

and whether or not the 14th Amendment should be amended

01:02:07 ►

to sort of not consider corporations as individual people.

01:02:15 ►

And in an unrelated question,

01:02:17 ►

what your opinion or impression or feelings about Edward Snowden are.

01:02:22 ►

The last thought?

01:02:23 ►

The last thought. Unrelated question.

01:02:24 ►

What are your feelings about Edward Snowden? Edward Snowden are. The last thought? The last thought. Unrelated question. What are your feelings about Edward Snowden?

01:02:28 ►

Edward Snowden?

01:02:29 ►

Edward Snowden.

01:02:31 ►

Oh, oh.

01:02:34 ►

The interesting, when you say they’re corporations, people,

01:02:36 ►

do collections of people, if 10 people get together,

01:02:40 ►

do they lose their right to act or speak as if it was just one person? And newspapers,

01:02:49 ►

I mean, a columnist has the right to speak. A newspaper is a corporation that does the same

01:02:55 ►

thing. It’s a group of, you know, thousand people doing what the one columnist does,

01:03:01 ►

but they have to print the paper and stuff. So I would tend to think that voluntary

01:03:06 ►

collections of people should not sacrifice any of the rights they have as individuals,

01:03:14 ►

as long as they’re voluntary structures. When labor unions collect dues without people’s permission, that ceases to be voluntary.

01:03:27 ►

But if they’re voluntary dues, like in a right-to-work state, then the union should be able to do anything they want because they get the money voluntarily.

01:03:35 ►

People write them checks.

01:03:36 ►

They could say no.

01:03:38 ►

In California, you don’t get to say no.

01:03:41 ►

But in 25 states, you could say yes or no.

01:03:44 ►

Then the union’s a

01:03:45 ►

voluntary institution. And they should

01:03:47 ►

be able to do anything that

01:03:49 ►

an individual does.

01:03:51 ►

So, I don’t know if it’s personhood.

01:03:54 ►

I mean, I understand

01:03:55 ►

that’s how it gets discussed

01:03:57 ►

in law. But I would argue that

01:03:59 ►

if 10 of us got to,

01:04:01 ►

if Burning Man got together and wanted to do

01:04:03 ►

something collectively,

01:04:07 ►

they shouldn’t be told, you don’t have freedom of speech because you’re not a person.

01:04:10 ►

You’re a group of people.

01:04:12 ►

No, I think groups of people don’t lose their rights

01:04:15 ►

by being a group of people.

01:04:18 ►

I think the problem with that is that there’s been such a distortion.

01:04:22 ►

From what I understand, I’m not an expert,

01:04:23 ►

but that there’s such a distortion because the kind of power they wield financially

01:04:28 ►

by aggregating all these resources

01:04:30 ►

is just, you know, completely imbalanced.

01:04:34 ►

And, you know, so in that respect,

01:04:38 ►

and, you know, when it comes to the 14th Amendment,

01:04:39 ►

from what I understand,

01:04:41 ►

that was really an amendment to grant rights

01:04:42 ►

to recently freed slaves.

01:04:44 ►

And, you know, essentially what the corporate lawyers did understand. That was really an amendment to grant rights to recently freed slaves. And essentially

01:04:45 ►

what the corporate lawyers did is go in

01:04:47 ►

and

01:04:49 ►

essentially exploit a loophole

01:04:51 ►

and create this corporate personhood.

01:04:54 ►

And how does your experience

01:04:56 ►

in Washington, I would assume

01:04:57 ►

you must

01:04:59 ►

witness to some extent maybe the

01:05:01 ►

unbalanced power

01:05:03 ►

that corporations wield

01:05:05 ►

over policy.

01:05:08 ►

Yeah, but it’s, I mean,

01:05:09 ►

individuals versus corporations.

01:05:13 ►

The guy

01:05:13 ►

Stein who gave $100 million,

01:05:16 ►

you know, there’s no corporation

01:05:18 ►

that gives that much money.

01:05:19 ►

So there are enough rich individuals

01:05:22 ►

that

01:05:23 ►

I’m not sure that it wouldn’t change much.

01:05:29 ►

I do worry about anything that restricts the First Amendment period.

01:05:35 ►

And you tell, you know, ABC is a corporation.

01:05:38 ►

You don’t have the First Amendment rights because you’re a corporation.

01:05:41 ►

Then do you really have a functioning First Amendment?

01:05:47 ►

ABC is a very big corporation.

01:05:52 ►

They give hundreds of millions of dollars in free airtime to various politicians,

01:05:58 ►

and they choose which ones get them. I think the dangers of restricting that freedom,

01:06:03 ►

however abused it is, I mean, it’s a mantra in the conservative movement that the mainstream media might as well be an arm of the Democratic Party.

01:06:06 ►

And if you look at who they put on TV and who their executives give money to and who the companies give money to, that’s true.

01:06:13 ►

But I don’t want to use the power of the state against that.

01:06:17 ►

I just would rather expand liberty in other places rather than restrict it.

01:06:22 ►

There’s almost always, when there’s a problem, two solutions.

01:06:26 ►

Expand liberty, get rid of the things

01:06:27 ►

government does to make it

01:06:30 ►

difficult for people to participate in

01:06:31 ►

politics or go

01:06:33 ►

beat somebody on the head.

01:06:35 ►

And I just always worry when you give government

01:06:37 ►

billy clubs, that’s the wrong answer.

01:06:40 ►

And the better answer is to

01:06:41 ►

expand more opportunities and

01:06:43 ►

more liberties for everyone to compete with the guys who are winning right now.

01:06:55 ►

I feel like the inverse is true.

01:06:57 ►

That’s really the state that has granted the corporations the power

01:07:00 ►

and it’s not that the state is going to come back retroactively

01:07:04 ►

and take their power away. It’s the state in the state is going to come back retroactively and take

01:07:05 ►

their power away. It’s the state in the first place that granted this personhood.

01:07:11 ►

Well, the only thing a state does for a company is give it the right to go bankrupt, right,

01:07:19 ►

with limited liability?

01:07:20 ►

Well, I think originally the corporation had a charter and the charter had to sort of spell out some sort of benefit

01:07:27 ►

for the public good. And I think over the years that has kind of gone out the window.

01:07:33 ►

That’s a hangover from kings.

01:07:36 ►

You shouldn’t have to go to the government to start burning men

01:07:39 ►

or anything else. You should just say, guys, this is what we’re doing. Go away.

01:07:44 ►

But you’re right. The government says, this is what we’re doing. Go away.

01:07:45 ►

But you’re right.

01:07:48 ►

The government says, we allow you to do this.

01:07:48 ►

Well, screw you.

01:07:50 ►

You don’t allow me to do anything.

01:07:51 ►

Back off.

01:07:52 ►

We’re doing this.

01:07:57 ►

Unless you can show me that I’m hurting small bunnies or kids, leave me alone.

01:08:07 ►

So I wouldn’t go back and argue that the grants of monopoly and privilege that kings gave and that our government then says we give it, there shouldn’t be any grants of monopoly.

01:08:13 ►

All you’re doing is you’re saying we’re going to be working together and doing this.

01:08:16 ►

Okay, fine.

01:08:19 ►

That’s okay.

01:08:19 ►

You can do that.

01:08:21 ►

Oh, and by the way, if anyone invests in us and we go bankrupt, you can’t take our houses and our wives.

01:08:25 ►

Well, if that’s in the contract with the investor, that’s fine.

01:08:29 ►

You don’t need the government to approve that.

01:08:32 ►

I mean, just as we don’t need the government involved in marriage.

01:08:35 ►

The fact that it has been ever since the presidents messed it up and took it away from various churches and religions and so on.

01:08:42 ►

They said, no, the government’s going to do it.

01:08:44 ►

Why?

01:08:44 ►

Because we don’t like your monopoly.

01:08:45 ►

Oh, we’re going to set up our own monopoly with government,

01:08:48 ►

not the church monopoly.

01:08:49 ►

How about no monopoly?

01:08:51 ►

How about every religion has their own marriages,

01:08:53 ►

and nonreligions have their own marriages,

01:08:55 ►

they have their own rules,

01:08:56 ►

and there’s no reason for the government to be involved

01:08:58 ►

unless there’s a contract there.

01:08:59 ►

And then they would say, okay, if you two have signed a contract,

01:09:02 ►

we’ll honor the contract.

01:09:05 ►

I agree with you on many of those principles.

01:09:07 ►

But I feel like the same goes for most governments.

01:09:09 ►

Most government is destructive and stupid.

01:09:11 ►

And just as long as you keep that in mind, then you don’t make odd choices.

01:09:16 ►

Sure.

01:09:16 ►

I agree with that in principle.

01:09:18 ►

But, you know, when it comes to corporations, you know, if they have the lobbying ability to create the policy,

01:09:24 ►

then it’s really the government that is creating their power, this corporation.

01:09:29 ►

So you’re saying, well, the government shouldn’t have control over what we do and how that is, but it’s because of –

01:09:36 ►

Well, governments – an individual or a company could go to the government and say, give me a subsidy.

01:09:42 ►

And if the government gives them a subsidy, the person you should hang

01:09:45 ►

is the politician, not the guy who

01:09:47 ►

asked for it.

01:09:50 ►

The answer to that should be,

01:09:52 ►

no, we’re not going to do that.

01:09:53 ►

We’re not going to steal other people’s money and give it to you.

01:09:56 ►

If the politicians say, we are going to steal

01:09:57 ►

other people’s money and give it to you,

01:09:59 ►

I’m mad at it. It’s not the guy who asked,

01:10:02 ►

but the guy who did it.

01:10:04 ►

So you can ask.

01:10:06 ►

That’s what being a teenage boy is all about.

01:10:08 ►

But the government’s not allowed to require.

01:10:14 ►

So why do you think that the biggest prevailing trend in American politics in the last hundred years on both both sides, has been trying to tell other people

01:10:27 ►

how to lead their lives.

01:10:30 ►

Between the progressives saying

01:10:31 ►

you’re not allowed to use incandescent light bulbs,

01:10:34 ►

to the Republicans saying

01:10:35 ►

you’re not allowed to love a person of the same sex,

01:10:38 ►

or whatever.

01:10:40 ►

Why is liberty so much in decline?

01:10:44 ►

Why do we have to fight so hard for it?

01:10:46 ►

I would argue what you’re seeing is the destruction of just those limits on liberty.

01:10:55 ►

I mean, what we just went through is no gay marriage was a rule for, I don’t know,

01:11:03 ►

2,000, 3,000 years and whole bunches of different governments

01:11:07 ►

enforced but religiously inspired rules.

01:11:13 ►

And we just decided,

01:11:16 ►

well, you know, we’re not doing that.

01:11:18 ►

In a rather short period of time,

01:11:20 ►

I mean, I know we’re all Americans here.

01:11:22 ►

We don’t read history.

01:11:23 ►

I get this.

01:11:23 ►

But when you look at it, history’s taken a long time to do a lot of things.

01:11:30 ►

An old building in the United States is like 100 years old.

01:11:32 ►

Europeans laugh at us, right?

01:11:34 ►

Because they’ve got really old stuff over there.

01:11:37 ►

And they’ve been doing stupid stuff for a lot longer than we have.

01:11:40 ►

They just had longer to do it.

01:11:43 ►

I think we’ve been making tremendous progress towards

01:11:45 ►

liberty. Step on a whole

01:11:47 ►

series. What you’re pointing to is

01:11:49 ►

things that weren’t free that have become

01:11:52 ►

more free.

01:11:53 ►

Recently. Gay marriage.

01:11:57 ►

Uber.

01:11:59 ►

Homeschooling.

01:12:00 ►

There’s these breakthroughs

01:12:01 ►

that we’ve had

01:12:02 ►

and giving people more liberty and more opportunities to structure themselves the way they want to.

01:12:12 ►

Do we have a lot to do?

01:12:14 ►

Yes, that’s what I do for a living.

01:12:15 ►

I fight against all the stupid things they’re still doing.

01:12:19 ►

So why do both major parties want to raise taxes?

01:12:23 ►

Actually, we’ve had some success with the Republicans.

01:12:28 ►

At the national level, we haven’t had a Republican vote for a tax increase since 1990.

01:12:34 ►

That’s my project.

01:12:36 ►

Don’t do that.

01:12:37 ►

Now, they may invade small countries they can’t pronounce.

01:12:40 ►

That’s true.

01:12:41 ►

But they won’t raise taxes.

01:12:44 ►

If somebody would hurry up and get organized on the

01:12:46 ►

please don’t invade small countries if you can’t pronounce them movement,

01:12:50 ►

that would be helpful.

01:12:52 ►

Wars are very expensive.

01:12:55 ►

The question is what about a gas tax that’s a percentage of the cost of gasoline

01:12:59 ►

rather than a fixed dollar amount?

01:13:01 ►

I would look at that and say we passed a law in 1931 called the Davis-Bacon Act.

01:13:07 ►

It was a federal law.

01:13:08 ►

It was an explicitly racist law

01:13:10 ►

to keep black people out of competing

01:13:12 ►

with white unionized labor in New York.

01:13:14 ►

And on the floor of the House and Senate,

01:13:16 ►

that’s what Davis and Bacon said the law was about.

01:13:21 ►

It’s called the prevailing wage law.

01:13:22 ►

It’s very similar to what South Africa had

01:13:24 ►

to keep blacks out of the mines or the better jobs in mines. And that law has been there

01:13:32 ►

since 31 in the United States. South Africans finally got rid of their law. And that increases

01:13:39 ►

the cost of building roads in the United States by somewhere between 25 and 40 percent. There are many Davis-Bacon laws at the state level. They just repealed theirs in West Virginia. They

01:13:51 ►

just repealed them in Wisconsin and dropped the cost of building roads 10 percent at the

01:13:57 ►

local level. When they did it in Ohio, they dropped the cost of building roads and hospitals.

01:14:02 ►

It’s not just roads. It’s hospitals. It’s anything the government builds.

01:14:07 ►

It drops the cost at the state level about 10%. So the idea that we should figure out how to raise more money to build roads

01:14:11 ►

when we’ve got a rule, a law, a racist law that was designed to be racist.

01:14:16 ►

And when I went and met with the lead Republican,

01:14:18 ►

I’m trying not to give enough information.

01:14:22 ►

One of the key Republicans who was in charge of roads,

01:14:26 ►

and I said, you want to raise taxes, I think you shouldn’t.

01:14:30 ►

Let’s get rid of Davis-Bacon.

01:14:32 ►

And he looked at me and said, you want all the roads built by Hispanics?

01:14:37 ►

So it’s still a racist law.

01:14:41 ►

It’s just anti-Hispanic instead of anti-black.

01:14:44 ►

I think the first thing you do is get rid of the racist laws. You drop the price

01:14:47 ►

of building roads and then you decide, do we really need more money

01:14:52 ►

or by having a third less expensive roads have we solved

01:14:56 ►

some or much of the problem? So I would

01:15:00 ►

not think of raising taxes until after Davis-Bacon is dead, buried, and

01:15:04 ►

spit on. All

01:15:05 ►

50 states, national level,

01:15:08 ►

and then we can

01:15:10 ►

have a conversation.

01:15:13 ►

No, then

01:15:13 ►

you take a look at what they did

01:15:16 ►

in New Jersey or

01:15:18 ►

South Carolina recently,

01:15:20 ►

and you said you want to spend more money

01:15:22 ►

on roads? Yes, we want to spend more money on roads.

01:15:24 ►

Okay, we’ll raise the gas tax and cut sales tax or the income tax. Oh, no, no, no, no,

01:15:30 ►

we just wanted more money. And that’s where you, you said the same thing with cigarette taxes.

01:15:35 ►

We’re going to have cigarette taxes so the kids don’t smoke. Okay, South Carolina said, well,

01:15:41 ►

raise cigarette tax, cut the income tax. And the politicians who were pushing that said, well, raise cigarette tax, cut the income tax. And the politicians who were pushing that said,

01:15:46 ►

we don’t care about the kids that much.

01:15:48 ►

We don’t really care about their health.

01:15:50 ►

We wanted more money.

01:15:52 ►

They said, okay, well, now that we know that’s what you wanted,

01:15:55 ►

and it’s not about health, it’s just about money,

01:15:57 ►

the answer is no to your more money.

01:16:00 ►

And the same thing, we’re going to build roads.

01:16:02 ►

No, you’re not.

01:16:03 ►

The last 12 times we gave them more money for roads,

01:16:06 ►

they didn’t spend it on roads.

01:16:07 ►

In Wisconsin, over 10 years, they spent a billion dollars.

01:16:12 ►

They took in tax money for roads and they spent it on other stuff.

01:16:15 ►

So they take your money on roads.

01:16:17 ►

They say, we’re going to build you roads.

01:16:18 ►

And they put it into other things.

01:16:19 ►

Never went into roads.

01:16:20 ►

A billion dollars.

01:16:21 ►

They had finally passed a constitutional amendment.

01:16:23 ►

Any gas tax money goes to roads

01:16:26 ►

in Wisconsin. They passed

01:16:28 ►

that locally in Maryland as well.

01:16:31 ►

politicians are very good at

01:16:34 ►

coming up with new reasons why they

01:16:35 ►

want to spend.

01:16:38 ►

They take the things you want.

01:16:40 ►

They don’t spend on

01:16:42 ►

that. Then they say if we

01:16:44 ►

raise taxes, we would spend on it

01:16:46 ►

and I say BS

01:16:48 ►

like if somebody says

01:16:50 ►

I’m going to go to the gym for two years

01:16:52 ►

and they never go to the gym

01:16:54 ►

I don’t believe them when they say they want to go to the gym

01:16:56 ►

if they say they really want

01:16:58 ►

to build roads and for two

01:17:00 ►

years or twenty years they don’t build

01:17:02 ►

roads with the money

01:17:04 ►

I don’t believe that if you gave them a dollar, they’d build roads with it.

01:17:07 ►

Because they didn’t.

01:17:08 ►

When you’ve been to the gym and you show me you go to the gym every day,

01:17:12 ►

then I’ll believe you want to go to the gym.

01:17:14 ►

But don’t tell me that you really, really, really want to go to the gym.

01:17:19 ►

Not net. Not net.

01:17:21 ►

Raise one tax, cut another.

01:17:23 ►

That’s the difference.

01:17:24 ►

Yeah.

01:17:25 ►

Could you answer the earlier question about Edward Snowden?

01:17:29 ►

Oh, yeah.

01:17:31 ►

I don’t…

01:17:33 ►

I think it’s been very interesting what he put forward.

01:17:37 ►

I hesitate, since it’s not my area of expertise.

01:17:40 ►

I think we’ve learned a lot of things that our government does

01:17:42 ►

that I wish they didn’t do.

01:17:46 ►

And those – when they came up with what was the Patriot Law, right, Patriot Act, I testified the week after September 11th.

01:18:02 ►

They had me and like three communists um arguing about that maybe the

01:18:07 ►

Patriot Act wasn’t the way and they were desperate to have some guy who was vaguely right of center

01:18:11 ►

question the Patriot Act so they they moved the whole schedule around um got the mayor uh

01:18:17 ►

Senator Leahy of uh Vermont and I said, look,

01:18:25 ►

I’m concerned

01:18:27 ►

about anything that has to call itself the

01:18:29 ►

Patriot Act. Because I think

01:18:31 ►

when you label things like that, you’re hiding

01:18:33 ►

something. Two,

01:18:35 ►

I realize you guys

01:18:37 ►

are in a hurry, but I think you

01:18:39 ►

should read it before you vote for it.

01:18:42 ►

All the senators laughed.

01:18:44 ►

I said, okay, you’re not going to read it. It’s 300 pages. You’re going to vote for it. All the senators laughed. I said, okay, you’re not going to read

01:18:46 ►

it. It’s 300 pages. You’re going to vote for it. It comes out of the bowel of the Justice Department.

01:18:54 ►

It’s the same law Clinton tried to pass word for word after the bombing in Oklahoma.

01:19:01 ►

And all the Republicans said, are you kidding? Never. Never going to give the executive this power.

01:19:08 ►

You’re crazy. Then when Bush asked the same question, they said, looks pretty good,

01:19:12 ►

doesn’t it? And I said, third, I said, I’m not a lawyer.

01:19:16 ►

I haven’t read the thing. You’re not going to read it. I’m not a lawyer. I can’t tell you

01:19:20 ►

if it’s a smart, you know. Pass it for three years.

01:19:24 ►

Because you’re determined to pass know. Pass it for three years because you’re determined to pass something.

01:19:27 ►

Pass it for three years.

01:19:28 ►

Then in three years, let’s look at it and say,

01:19:30 ►

this was dumb, this was useful,

01:19:33 ►

this is a maybe.

01:19:34 ►

We do triage.

01:19:37 ►

And we almost had it except for Daschle

01:19:42 ►

because I sat in a room with the Republican House

01:19:46 ►

members with the ACLU

01:19:48 ►

the NRA, Bobby

01:19:50 ►

Scott, Daryl Issa

01:19:52 ►

and the guy from Oklahoma

01:19:54 ►

Utah

01:19:55 ►

sorry I’m from Boston they all sort of mesh together

01:19:58 ►

and

01:19:59 ►

they sat around and they did they did triage

01:20:02 ►

they said this is a very bad law

01:20:04 ►

never this only if it’s They sat around, and they did. They did triage. They said this is a very bad law, never.

01:20:05 ►

This, only if it’s for terrorism.

01:20:09 ►

And this, this is a good law.

01:20:11 ►

This is a good law.

01:20:11 ►

This is a good idea.

01:20:12 ►

One, two, three.

01:20:13 ►

Good idea, good idea sometimes.

01:20:15 ►

No, never.

01:20:16 ►

And we had a third, we had most of the real problems in the Patriot Act pulled out in the House bill.

01:20:23 ►

And my advice to Leahy, not in the congressional testimony, but afterwards, was take a out in the House bill. And my advice to Leahy, not in the congressional

01:20:26 ►

testimony, but afterwards, was take a look at the House bill. Take that. Pass it for

01:20:32 ►

three years. Put a term limit on it. They took most of the toxic stuff out. And again,

01:20:36 ►

I’m not a lawyer. I’m going on the basis of what the ACLU and these other guys say were

01:20:40 ►

bad laws. And I saw fine gold at one of these bipartisan dinner things that you do.

01:20:50 ►

And I went over to him and said, look, I really want to thank you for being the one vote

01:20:55 ►

against the Patriot Act, because none of these other guys read it. They didn’t term limit it

01:21:00 ►

like they could have. Why in the world didn’t you guys do take the House version, the House committee version, which

01:21:08 ►

was not perfect, just much improved or less horrific?

01:21:13 ►

And he said, ask him. And the guy

01:21:15 ►

points to us like right across the table from us.

01:21:19 ►

He can hear us here.

01:21:22 ►

He did it, meaning the Democratic leader, Daschle,

01:21:28 ►

because he was just terrified of being called not patriotic by passing the Patriot Bill.

01:21:35 ►

So there was a lot of real problems there.

01:21:38 ►

And I don’t understand enough about the Snowden thing,

01:21:43 ►

which is why I said, look, term limit it.

01:21:46 ►

Not no, not yes,

01:21:49 ►

but term limits so you can make a decision

01:21:50 ►

and smart lawyers can look at it.

01:21:54 ►

I worry about accretions of power

01:21:57 ►

in the hands of the state.

01:21:59 ►

I worry about laws that are passed as emergencies.

01:22:04 ►

Emergencies meaning

01:22:05 ►

don’t read it.

01:22:07 ►

Do what you’re told.

01:22:10 ►

You know, we should.

01:22:11 ►

I have somebody who works with me who works on

01:22:13 ►

the internet stuff and we just generally

01:22:15 ►

side with the guys who say

01:22:17 ►

we ought not to be having the government

01:22:19 ►

getting

01:22:21 ►

additional powers on the internet and the

01:22:23 ►

powers they have perhaps ought to be lessened.

01:22:27 ►

I think those are very, very real concerns.

01:22:32 ►

Because this is now the First Amendment,

01:22:35 ►

that the Internet is how we talk to each other,

01:22:38 ►

and the government shouldn’t monitor or control it.

01:22:40 ►

Yeah.

01:22:42 ►

Can you comment a little bit on what you’re seeing

01:22:44 ►

and what’s your views regarding

01:22:46 ►

the central bank, especially, you know, they have the quantitative easing and such low interest

01:22:51 ►

rates for so long. I mean, this is also affecting taxes in a lot of ways. You’re getting into a zone

01:22:59 ►

that I don’t feel expert on. I wish the government didn’t run our money. I’d be much happier. I don’t think the government should run marriages either.

01:23:07 ►

So when you go, but if the government ran marriages,

01:23:10 ►

how should they do it?

01:23:12 ►

I don’t know.

01:23:14 ►

If the government ran the money supply,

01:23:15 ►

how should they do it?

01:23:16 ►

I wish they didn’t.

01:23:18 ►

I’d be much more comfortable with people,

01:23:22 ►

Bitcoin and others deciding here,

01:23:24 ►

various monetary units

01:23:26 ►

you want gold, you want silver, you want bitcoin, you decide

01:23:29 ►

I guess the second best is to have

01:23:33 ►

a bunch of stupid governments doing it and let people

01:23:36 ►

decide what to write their contracts in, dollars or

01:23:39 ►

rubles or something else so that there’s a

01:23:42 ►

competitive nature there

01:23:43 ►

I don’t trust the government to or something else, so there’s a competitive nature there.

01:23:50 ►

I don’t trust the government to maintain the value of the currency.

01:23:53 ►

That’s not what they’ve done over time in the past.

01:23:56 ►

Governments inflate.

01:23:59 ►

I mean, going back to the Romans and before the Romans,

01:24:02 ►

it’s just one of the tendencies that they have.

01:24:07 ►

How can we do a better job at ending the drug war,

01:24:09 ►

at the drug legalization movement?

01:24:12 ►

What lessons do you have that you can teach us about how to move issues like this in politics?

01:24:17 ►

I think the approach that Colorado and others have taken state by state,

01:24:23 ►

and there needs to be more information flow

01:24:28 ►

out of Colorado, out of Oregon, out of Washington.

01:24:31 ►

Because I’m in D.C., and we have a meeting every…

01:24:33 ►

in a room about this size, 150 people, every Wednesday.

01:24:38 ►

30 people present, three minutes each.

01:24:40 ►

What’s going on?

01:24:42 ►

And law enforcement against prohibition

01:24:44 ►

is one of the groups always there.

01:24:46 ►

We don’t have any

01:24:47 ►

prohibition structures. There’s some guys who

01:24:49 ►

show up every once in a while when they

01:24:51 ►

hear that somebody interesting has been

01:24:53 ►

presenting at the meeting and they’ll show up

01:24:55 ►

and yell at everybody but

01:24:57 ►

they’re not part of the movement.

01:24:59 ►

Which is

01:24:59 ►

and their answer is

01:25:02 ►

because we say so.

01:25:07 ►

Which is not a strong argument but I have asked them when they come and say

01:25:10 ►

is everybody dying in car crashes in Colorado?

01:25:15 ►

What’s happening?

01:25:17 ►

And both teams should be out talking more

01:25:21 ►

but the anti-prohibitionists

01:25:24 ►

I think would do a good job. I don’t see

01:25:27 ►

the one pager on how the number of car accidents has gone up or down or the people stopping

01:25:36 ►

using heroin because they can self-medicate with marijuana. The cleverest, I don’t mean that in a bad way the most effective

01:25:45 ►

thing I’ve heard coming out of Colorado

01:25:48 ►

is the explanation

01:25:50 ►

that there’s less heroin use

01:25:52 ►

in Colorado

01:25:54 ►

because

01:25:56 ►

people self-medicate with marijuana

01:25:58 ►

for pain and other things

01:26:00 ►

so that marijuana is an exit drug

01:26:02 ►

not a gateway

01:26:04 ►

drug which is what I was told when I was drug, not a gateway drug,

01:26:05 ►

which is what I was told when I was 12, right?

01:26:08 ►

It’s a gateway drug.

01:26:10 ►

People use marijuana, and then they decide they want heroin.

01:26:13 ►

Oh, heroin’s bad.

01:26:14 ►

So you skip over whether marijuana’s bad, right, too, because it’s a gateway drug.

01:26:19 ►

But if it’s an exit drug, if it’s an off-ramp,

01:26:22 ►

it changes the whole nature of the debate.

01:26:21 ►

drug, if it’s an off-ramp,

01:26:24 ►

it changes the whole nature of the debate.

01:26:27 ►

I think the more you can document

01:26:30 ►

that it’s worked well,

01:26:35 ►

getting into arguments with

01:26:38 ►

the liquor industry about who kills more people

01:26:39 ►

is not constructive.

01:26:44 ►

I would just,

01:26:46 ►

because the liquor people

01:26:47 ►

can be an advocate

01:26:48 ►

in terms of,

01:26:50 ►

they’d like less regulations.

01:26:52 ►

I’m not big on the people

01:26:53 ►

who go,

01:26:53 ►

marijuana should be regulated

01:26:55 ►

and taxed like liquor.

01:26:56 ►

Are you kidding?

01:26:57 ►

That’s one of the worst

01:26:58 ►

treated industries in America.

01:26:59 ►

We have a constitutional amendment

01:27:00 ►

that says you have to have

01:27:01 ►

interstate commerce

01:27:03 ►

for everybody except liquor.

01:27:05 ►

It’s the one thing that the federal government is completely allowed to

01:27:07 ►

screw around with. Locally,

01:27:09 ►

if you’re in one of these states with liquor

01:27:11 ►

stores, like Bulgaria

01:27:13 ►

in 1956. I live in

01:27:15 ►

Virginia.

01:27:17 ►

We have stores run by the government

01:27:19 ►

that sells liquor.

01:27:21 ►

They’re closed on

01:27:23 ►

normal days, holidays, anytime you might want to go visit a liquor store. They’re closed on normal days,

01:27:25 ►

holidays,

01:27:28 ►

anytime you might want to go visit a liquor store.

01:27:29 ►

They’re not open.

01:27:31 ►

And they’re all unionized bureaucrats with jobs for life.

01:27:32 ►

So they’re like surly

01:27:33 ►

and they can’t be bothered.

01:27:36 ►

Bulgaria, 1956.

01:27:39 ►

How did this happen?

01:27:41 ►

Because when we ended prohibition,

01:27:43 ►

they stuck that other stuff in

01:27:44 ►

to make certain

01:27:45 ►

people happy. I think the other, we should remind people of the history of prohibition

01:27:49 ►

prohibition. I mean, we got organized crime and all sorts of things and the IRS putting

01:27:56 ►

people in prison and gun laws all because of prohibition. And so when you’re trying to enforce prohibition against liquor,

01:28:07 ►

they then decide, well, if it’s illegal,

01:28:11 ►

contracts can’t be enforced except by violent people.

01:28:15 ►

So then they want to take away their guns

01:28:17 ►

because they were enforcing liquor contracts

01:28:20 ►

that were not enforced by judges.

01:28:23 ►

You create one problem, you keep getting more and more problems.

01:28:26 ►

I do think we need to remind people of the history of prohibition

01:28:29 ►

because the country really was fairly united about getting rid of prohibition quickly.

01:28:35 ►

And yet we never came to that.

01:28:37 ►

And there was also the cultural things.

01:28:39 ►

We don’t like drugs because we don’t like the people who use drugs.

01:28:41 ►

That’s exactly what they said about liquor.

01:28:44 ►

They didn’t like the Irish, they didn’t like the Catholics, they didn’t like the people who use drugs. That’s exactly what they said about liquor. They didn’t like the Irish.

01:28:45 ►

They didn’t like the Catholics.

01:28:46 ►

They didn’t like black people.

01:28:47 ►

There was a whole series of ethnic things that were in on, you know, they drink too much.

01:28:54 ►

Ditto certain drugs.

01:28:57 ►

What do you think about that posthumous quote from Ehrlichman that said, you know, oh, yeah, we knew exactly what we were doing

01:29:06 ►

when we outlawed these drugs. We were trying to get

01:29:08 ►

at the blacks and at the anti-war

01:29:10 ►

hippies. And they were

01:29:12 ►

the two constituencies the Nixon administration

01:29:14 ►

was having trouble with.

01:29:16 ►

Ehrlichman said that?

01:29:17 ►

Yes, just recently.

01:29:19 ►

He’s still alive?

01:29:22 ►

They found a quote by him

01:29:23 ►

somewhere? He died in the last

01:29:26 ►

few years, but there’s this

01:29:28 ►

guy who interviewed him for five years

01:29:29 ►

before that, wrote the book on his

01:29:31 ►

life, etc. Didn’t put

01:29:33 ►

that quote in the book, but put it into a

01:29:36 ►

magazine article later after he was

01:29:37 ►

dead. Oh, wow.

01:29:40 ►

Okay. I didn’t know that, but that’s

01:29:41 ►

exactly the sort of thing that

01:29:44 ►

helped discredit prohibition against liquor because it’s seen as anti-German beer, anti-Italian wine and so on.

01:29:52 ►

And yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

01:29:56 ►

We need to make that case.

01:29:58 ►

And I think the less harm and the criminal justice reform issue, you know, who do you not want in prison?

01:30:09 ►

Well, people who engage in victimless crimes or where the crime is you hurt yourself.

01:30:17 ►

That’s not a crime.

01:30:18 ►

That’s a sin or it’s a bad idea, but it’s not a crime.

01:30:23 ►

You know, if you chop your finger off, it may be dumb, but it’s not a crime. If you chop your finger off, it may be dumb, but it’s not a crime.

01:30:26 ►

If you hurt yourself, why should the state

01:30:28 ►

hurt you also?

01:30:29 ►

And if the state has given up

01:30:32 ►

on saving your soul,

01:30:34 ►

because they’re not going to have a monopoly on

01:30:36 ►

religion, which only took a thousand years

01:30:38 ►

of killing each other in Europe for people to agree

01:30:40 ►

on, how about

01:30:41 ►

leaving you alone with your own body?

01:30:45 ►

I think that’s a completely winnable argument

01:30:48 ►

over time.

01:30:49 ►

We just need to

01:30:52 ►

take it step by step.

01:30:55 ►

Also,

01:30:56 ►

people are worried about their kids.

01:31:00 ►

You just need to

01:31:00 ►

make it clear, why is this

01:31:03 ►

not going to bother your kids?

01:31:05 ►

Why does this make your kids safer, not less safe?

01:31:09 ►

I’d take a look at what the gun rights people did over the last 20 years.

01:31:13 ►

They used to get massive majorities in America, 80-20 in 1990 for stricter gun laws.

01:31:21 ►

And now it’s 60-40, enforce the ones you got, no more.

01:31:26 ►

Okay?

01:31:27 ►

And what happened was

01:31:29 ►

15 million people got concealed carry permits,

01:31:32 ►

and crime went down more quickly

01:31:35 ►

in states with more guns

01:31:37 ►

and people carrying guns than not.

01:31:41 ►

And there’s just enough documentation

01:31:43 ►

and personal knowledge

01:31:44 ►

and people knowing guys who carry guns. Is that okay? Is that safe? Can you really do that? That’s not a problem. not and there’s just there’s just enough documentation and personal knowledge and

01:31:45 ►

people knowing guys who carry guns is that okay is that safe can you really do that that’s not a

01:31:49 ►

problem and then they got used to this okay and it went step by step to where you normalize something

01:31:55 ►

that used to be considered i remember i mean i grew up in boston and i was out in idaho and

01:32:02 ►

the boyfriend of this guy i was working with in politics,

01:32:06 ►

the boyfriend of the daughter comes in, and like emptying his pockets,

01:32:09 ►

and this luger bounces across the table.

01:32:12 ►

He’s, car keys, luger.

01:32:14 ►

And I’m going, whoa, nobody else in the room bats an eye.

01:32:18 ►

Because you’ve been out shooting coyotes, of course,

01:32:20 ►

which we don’t do a lot in Massachusetts.

01:32:22 ►

of course, which we don’t do a lot in Massachusetts.

01:32:28 ►

But when people feel comfortable that you’re not making their life more dangerous, you’re making it safer,

01:32:32 ►

then you win, step by step.

01:32:36 ►

And all the groups that want to be left alone have something to teach

01:32:40 ►

each other. I love Uber, which we’re

01:32:43 ►

in your city. it’s completely illegal what

01:32:46 ►

we’re doing, but I think you’ll like it, and then we’ll have a conversation with the idiot

01:32:51 ►

politicians about their stupid laws. If more companies did that, they’d be winning. Instead

01:32:58 ►

they go, mother, may I? Can we do this? If Uber had asked permission, they wouldn’t be in business because no consumer knew they needed it or

01:33:08 ►

wanted it until it was there. And then they decided, I can’t

01:33:13 ►

live without this. So it’s

01:33:16 ►

getting from here to more liberty takes longer than you’d like

01:33:21 ►

but I think we have more opportunities and more success stories

01:33:24 ►

in recent history

01:33:27 ►

than I think people focus on.

01:33:33 ►

It’s 8.30.

01:33:36 ►

Thank you. Thank you guys. Enjoy the opportunity.

01:33:39 ►

We’ll get there. And we’ll even get the BLM people to leave us alone.

01:33:48 ►

You’re listening to the Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time. As I said earlier,

01:33:55 ►

while I may disagree with many of Grover Norquist’s political positions, I want to be clear in saying

01:34:01 ►

that I do believe he is a very honest person. He and I may be on opposite sides of some issues,

01:34:07 ►

but for what it’s worth, there was a time in my life when I too was a conservative Republican.

01:34:13 ►

But my more liberal friends didn’t give up on me,

01:34:16 ►

and by engaging me in non-toxic discussions over time,

01:34:20 ►

well, they brought me around to their way of thinking.

01:34:22 ►

Of course, in their opinions, I’ve now gone too far by turning into an anarchist.

01:34:29 ►

But that’s another story.

01:34:31 ►

My point today is that I’m hoping you will open yourself up enough

01:34:35 ►

and listen to what your political opponents are saying,

01:34:38 ►

but do so without animosity.

01:34:41 ►

I hope that you will try to find some common ground

01:34:44 ►

between you and those who absolutely

01:34:46 ►

drive you mad with their fixed political positions. The entire world is changing right before our eyes

01:34:53 ►

and well it seems to me that we should all give some consideration to changing a few of our own

01:34:58 ►

dearly held positions just to see if there isn’t a better way for all of us to get along, rather than to simply take one side or the other in every situation.

01:35:08 ►

Again, I like the way that the Burning Man vibe can change the world.

01:35:13 ►

There are a lot of people who I encountered during the years that I attended the burn myself

01:35:17 ►

and who I saw as complete jerks, people to be avoided.

01:35:21 ►

So that is just what I did.

01:35:23 ►

I let them do their thing but without me becoming

01:35:26 ►

involved in their antics. Black Rock City is a big place as is this world that we’re inhabiting.

01:35:32 ►

We don’t have to change every culture that bothers us. There’s plenty of room and enough

01:35:37 ►

resources to take care of all of us with well without all of these wars and cultural infighting.

01:35:43 ►

Being your brother’s keeper doesn’t mean that you should be his jailer.

01:35:48 ►

To me it means that we should look out for one another

01:35:51 ►

without getting directly involved in their personal business.

01:35:55 ►

And for me, Burning Man is one of the best places on earth to learn that lesson.

01:36:00 ►

In the Wikipedia entry for Grover Norquist, there is this paragraph.

01:36:03 ►

In the Wikipedia entry for Grover Norquist, there is this paragraph.

01:36:11 ►

Norquist and his wife attended the annual Burning Man Festival in August 2014 in Black Rock, Nevada.

01:36:15 ►

Norquist explained that he wishes to attend because, and I quote,

01:36:19 ►

There is no government that organizes this.

01:36:22 ►

That’s what happens when nobody tells you what to do.

01:36:32 ►

You just figure it out. End quote. Well, today I think that the ancient Gnostic symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail,

01:36:38 ►

is a perfect image of what must be done to begin bringing our world civilizations back together.

01:36:44 ►

The question, of course, is whether, as the Gnostics use this symbol,

01:36:48 ►

it represents eternity and the coming into being of the soul of the world.

01:36:53 ►

Or is it to become the symbol of a species devouring itself?

01:36:59 ►

The good news is that, since reality is created by people like you and me,

01:37:04 ►

then we have it in our power to come together with parts of our world soul that we may not be all that comfortable with.

01:37:07 ►

Our role is to find common ground between our opposing views of culture

01:37:12 ►

and at long last get busy solving some of the real problems like race relations and climate change.

01:37:19 ►

Well, just to get started.

01:37:21 ►

But for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:37:26 ►

Be well, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

523 - Coalitions for Freedom

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