Philip Blumel: The gerontocracy stumbles. Hi, I’m Philip Blumel, welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the term limits movement, for the week of April 18, 2022.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: Our country is being run by the elderly, many of which are entrenched incumbents who cannot lose elections, even if they can no longer recognize their colleagues or their staff. The case of California Senator, Dianne Feinstein is the most obvious instance of this national tragedy, but hardly the only one. US term limits executive director Nick Tomboulides joins us once again with the latest on Senator Feinstein and also some term limits news from North Dakota and Missouri. Hey, Nick.
Nick Tomboulides: Hey, Phil. I hope you had a great Easter.
Philip Blumel: I did. You?
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, I managed to catch some Easter eggs. Find some Easter eggs, not catch them.
[chuckle]
Philip Blumel: Very good, very good. Well, I wanna bring up something sensitive today for this episode. I know it’s one we’ve talked about before, but boy, it’s getting worse, and that is the senior, very senior Senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, a state lawmaker. Four federal lawmakers, and three former staffers have all come out and revealed, they believe that she can no longer fulfill her job duties because of her advanced age, memory problems and encroaching dementia, and these are Democrats.
Nick Tomboulides: Well, I think three of the Senators were Democrats, one was a Republican, they’re all anonymous, so we don’t know who they are. But the message they sent is clear, and that is the Senate is not Feinstein and dandy right now.
[chuckle]
Philip Blumel: No, that’s for sure.
Nick Tomboulides: And we have chronicled this on the podcast, the cognitive issues that she’s having, it’s not fun to cover, we don’t like talking about it, but we have to, because the health of the country comes first. And if a person can vote to start a war, we should probably make sure that they can remember their own name and remember who their staffers are and what bills they’re voting on. And with Feinstein, it’s just been one thing after another. She’s had unexplained absences, memory lapses, repetition, her staff have to take on a bigger and bigger role. The joke in California is that California has one US Senator, Alex Padilla, and then there’s Feinstein staff, because they do everything for her.
Philip Blumel: Oh, right. Wow. Yeah, that’s right. Now, this report came out in the San Francisco Chronicle, it’s very long, lots of… Mostly anonymous, but lots of quotes from people that tell stories about what’s going on, and I wanna share a little bit of this with you. It’s really startling. I’m quoting now from the San Francisco Chronicle. “When a California Democrat in Congress recently engaged in an extended conversation with Senator Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for rigorous policy discussion like they’d had with her many times over the last 15 years. Instead, the lawmakers said they had to re-introduce themselves to Feinstein multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours. And rather than delve into policy, she was like, repeating the same small talk questions, like asking the lawmaker what mattered to voters in their district, etcetera, without any recognition that the two had already had that… Had a very similar conversation, and had moved into the meat of the discussion. I mean, we’ve seen this before in older people that we know, and here it is by someone that’s one of the most powerful people in one of the most powerful bodies on earth.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, and we know that it’s not an isolated incident. Like, we’ve seen Danny Davis, the congressman from Illinois. He falls asleep during committee hearings. Just a few years ago, Thad Cochran, the senator from Mississippi, he didn’t know how to find the committee room, even though he had served on that committee for 20 years, and the staff were voting for him, and they were raising their hands to say, “Oh no, he didn’t mean to vote that way, he meant to vote this way instead,” because he didn’t know what he was doing, he probably forgot where he was. It’s really unfortunate, and we know it’s not an isolated incident. There was the comment from the Congressional pharmacist, Mike Kim, who said that he’s shipping Alzheimer’s medication to Capitol Hill on a regular basis. So, this is increasingly becoming the norm with several of the most powerful people in our country.
Nick Tomboulides: And I’m gonna offer kind of an unconventional take here, I don’t think the biggest problem is age, because if you think about it, as you said, this can happen anywhere. You hear stories about CEOS, actors, journalists, ordinary people who have the same issue, but the difference with that is it typically gets taken care of immediately, when people apprehend that it’s happening. So, I would submit that the real issue here is the power dynamic of Feinstein and the fact that so few senators and staffers are willing to speak out about this for fear of possibly being punished. So everybody is trying to be protective of themselves because everybody is drunk on power in DC. For example, in this article that you just cited, I think it was four senators and one congressman from California went on record saying she’s completely lost it mentally, but they were all anonymous.
Nick Tomboulides: No one was willing to give a name, because this woman has been a powerful politician in California for 52 years. So my question is, why is it that only 4% of senators are willing to say anything about this, and they all insist on anonymity, and why is it that fewer than 1% of house members are willing to say anything? It’s because the political class of DC cares more about covering their own hides than protecting our country.
Philip Blumel: Another reason too is that she sort of represents the gerontocracy that runs this country. I mean…
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah.
Philip Blumel: There’s been a lot of talk about the leadership in the House, because it’s so extreme. I mean, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House is 82, and the majority leader, Steny Hoyer is 82, and the majority whip, representative James Clyburn, 81. They’re right behind Feinstein. Now, just because you’re over 80 doesn’t mean that you can’t do a good job, and that’s why I think sometimes the focus on just age rather than, say these power dynamics and the automatic re-election of incumbents is off-base, because if certain someone is able to do the job, then just because they’re aged, I don’t know that they shouldn’t be permitted to. But the fact is that these problems arise with age, and the reason why that these politicians remain in these offices until basically they fall off this Earth is because of the automatic re-election of incumbents, once you amass this kinda power and money and influence and connections to the special interests that have invested so much in you.
Nick Tomboulides: I would contrast this federal situation of Congress where there are no term limits, with, say, the Florida legislature, where there are term limits. What you see, the Florida legislature is not devoid of people in their 70s and 80s, we have those, but the difference is all of the power is not concentrated with the most senior members as a result of having term limits turnover, open seats, new people, new perspectives coming in every eight years. What you see is the group of leadership is pretty diverse in terms of age and background and experience, and you kinda see this new generation of dynamic young leaders who are stepping up, speakers of the State House who are in their 30s and 40s, sometimes they’re a lot older than that, but it’s a good cross-section of America. It really represents our citizenry from top to bottom, instead of being a gerontocracy. And I think if we had term limits at the federal level, we would see that very same effect.
Philip Blumel: Oh, that is so true, and I’d point out something else about our term limited states. Yeah, sure, there’s some older members, but those older members are having to get elected in competitive elections, right?
Nick Tomboulides: Yes, exactly.
Philip Blumel: In a place like Congress where incumbents are automatically re-elected over 90% of the time, because all the money is behind them and everything else, they just will keep getting re-elected forever as long as they keep making their special interests and their investors happy. Whereas in a term limited state, you’re gonna have open elections every eight years. If there’s a 80-year-old running in that race, they’re gonna be running against someone else who presumably is not 80, and that 80-year-old is gonna have to present themselves as someone that is capable of doing the job and the voters will make a decision. It’s not automatic. That’s key.
Nick Tomboulides: Yeah, it is absolutely key. When you have term limits, every legislator, regardless of age is going to be answerable to the voters, because they’re gonna have to run in an open seat and earn that seat, and they’re gonna have to run for re-election with less incumbency, less wind at their sails, which creates a more competitive environment. It keeps them on their toes. It’s not something we have in Congress. You know, with Dianne Feinstein, they did a little contrast in this article where they said, the Junior Senator from California, Alex Padilla had like 20 town hall meetings in the last year or something, he’s meeting with voters, meeting with constituents, Dianne Feinstein had none. She’s not interacting with people at all, because she’s 88 years old, she’s been in politics for 50 years, she’s an incumbent, she’s gonna get re-elected regardless of what happens, and so she can take this entire thing for granted. They said she doesn’t raise money anymore, she’s raised like $5000 or $6000, which is a pittance for somebody who’s running for Congress. It just seems like, you know, that she’s just completely given up at this point. And the people around her, her inner circle are irresponsible to let her continue like this.
Philip Blumel: I’d point out one last point, that term limits basically give, in fact, mandate that each member of Congress bow out with dignity when their time is up. And it’s not because they can’t do it, not because they’re being pulled off the stage with a hook by their own staff and by their fellow members of their party, but because their time is up and it’s time for somebody else, and that is a dignified way to leave office and would have saved the indignities that Dianne Feinstein is currently facing, if we had such a system in the US Congress and in the Senate.
Nick Tomboulides: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: This is a public service announcement.
Philip Blumel: Last month on the online Belinda Carr show, Belinda spoke with Greg Wilson, the owner of a Kentucky-based company that uses industrial hemp as a building material, called Hemp Wood. Hemp Wood faces a lot of political scrutiny by politicians who have no idea what they’re talking about. Wilson’s solution will not surprise listeners to No Uncertain Terms.
Belinda Carr: So what would you like to see at the federal level to make all this easier for you and everyone else in the hemp industry?
Greg Wilson: Every time I mess around with government, just nothing gets done. So, if I could say that what would help get things done on a macro level in Federal Government, is term limits. [chuckle] Because you’ve got somebody who’s older than my parents trying to regulate something that is the future building material. That’s a problem.
Belinda Carr: Yeah.
Greg Wilson: Whether it’s the President, or the Senate, or Congress, or anything like that, because you shouldn’t have somebody who’s not able to see where things are gonna be 20 years from now. The leader is supposed to be someone who says, “This is where it’s supposed to go.”
Belinda Carr: See the potential in it, yeah.
Greg Wilson: Exactly. As far as on the macro level with hemp specifically, I would say… Oh, and that is not a shot at any of our current political leaders.
[chuckle]
Belinda Carr: Yeah.
Greg Wilson: I’m an independent.
Philip Blumel: Nick, other news this week. We reported in earlier podcasts that North Dakota, the North Dakota Term Limits Group, which is a 42-member committee, includes members of the legislature and public, collected 46,000 signatures, handed them to the Secretary of State of North Dakota with the expectation that they were going to put an 8-year term limit on the ballot that would be imposed on the governor and both houses of their legislature. It looked great. It looked like a done deal. But since then, what happened?
Nick Tomboulides: A lot. So…
Philip Blumel: [chuckle] I know.
Nick Tomboulides: On March 22nd, as you said, the signatures were submitted. On March 22nd, the North Dakota Secretary of State who reviews this stuff, he’s a career politician himself, who’s held his own position since I was in pre-school, this dude suddenly announces he is tossing out, invalidating 29,000 signatures and declaring the measure invalid, declaring the signatures insufficient. As you said, they needed 31,000, they went out and got 46,000. North Dakota, I believe, is the last remaining state in America where citizens could still amend the constitution with a ballot drive, and term limits hadn’t been enacted yet, so it was just a matter of time before this happened. But the Secretary of State has declared that term limits cannot appear on the ballot, and at the same time, he referred the ballot committee and their activities to the Attorney General’s Office for a criminal investigation.
Philip Blumel: Gosh, this is crazy.
Nick Tomboulides: We don’t even know exactly how these two branches of the state government have been colluding, because it’s protected by privilege. You do a Freedom of Information request and they just say, “Screw you. We won’t give you anything.” But we do know that the North Dakota term limits group fully complied with the law, they jumped through every legal hoop, they complied with every little regulation to make sure that the ballot drive was on the up and up, and now it looks like they’re being unfairly targeted, they’re being harassed because these establishment politicians hate term limits so damn much.
Philip Blumel: Right, and what the state is claiming is that these are fraudulent petitions that are being turned in, and I have to tell you that I’ve been a petitioner on the streets, I’ve worked on petition campaigns, and I’ve run campaigns, and I know that when you’re collecting these signatures on the street, there’s a certain amount of ’em that aren’t gonna be any good. And that’s why even though only 31,000 or so signatures were required to put this on the ballot, the North Dakota term limits group went out and collected 46,000, ’cause they know there’s a certain percentage, usually a couple percent that are people that live outside the district or state or people that are actually not registered to vote, and then sometimes you get these collectors on the street that will fraudulently forge signatures and whatnot.
Philip Blumel: And you know that’s gonna be a certain percentage of that, and then you wanna have a cushion just in case, and all these other things. So we go out, you need 31,000, you collect 46,000. For the state to turn around and say that more than half of these are no good, is insane. There is no way that would get past the committee itself trying to put on the ballot, because you realize that the committee itself, it has every incentive in the world to stop this from happening, they will just go out and collect more if they needed more. The last thing they want in the world is to be invalidated by having these things sneak through, and again, that’s why you collect so many more than what is actually required. So this is just politics. If anything criminal is going on, it’s by the State of North Dakota.
Nick Tomboulides: Exactly, and there’s nothing in this ballot drive, nothing in this push for term limits in North Dakota through the petition process, no irregularity that isn’t present in basically every single ballot drive conducted anywhere in the country. Nothing out of the ordinary, they’re just being selectively targeted because they’re a term limits group and the Secretary of State is applying a much higher level of scrutiny, because that guy doesn’t like term limits. I’ll give you the cliff notes version of the Secretary’s legal argument. He is making assumptions without evidence about affidavits by paid circulators and signatures being forged because he doesn’t like the look of the hand writing. It’s a very rinky dink amateur-hour way of conducting a political witch hunt and disenfranchising thousands of people.
Nick Tomboulides: There was one notary who I think notarized enough petitions to account for 15,000 signatures, and he noticed that a few of those petitions had handwriting from circulators that he thought were questionable, and as a result, he threw out every single petition that that person notarized. So he threw out 15,000 signatures because he had a problem with just a couple of circulators, and he had no evidence whatsoever to show that those circulators had committed forgery or anything like that. So there’s a very good chance that this is gonna wind up in front of the North Dakota Supreme Court. The good guys are fighting back, thankfully, the Secretary of State gave North Dakota term limits 20 days to cure any supposed errors and the committee has fired back with a 47-page statement including affidavits that demonstrate those supposed errors do not exist.
Philip Blumel: Right. Well, I’ll tell you what, there’s never been a initiative effort in North Dakota that’s collected more signatures than this one, and just ’cause the politicians don’t want it, they’re gonna have to get it… They’re gonna get it anyways. What do you have to say about that?
Nick Tomboulides: It also doesn’t help that some of the media in North Dakota are colluding with the politicians and are being unfriendly to term limits. The only political journalist out there is this guy who’s like a… Basically a sycophantic doormat for the establishment, he’s not on the side of term limits, he’s already declared his support for the political class, and he’s not waiting for any facts to emerge that might disprove his narrative.
Philip Blumel: Great. Alright. Well, we’ll keep reporting on this issue ’cause it’s ongoing. One last thing, we had some movement in Missouri. Now, we’ve… In Missouri, is one of the five states in the United States that have already fully passed an application for a amendment writing convention limited to the subject of congressional term limits, so it’s one of our winners, and of course, as you know, we’re trying to impose term limits on the US Congress via the convention method outlined in Article 5 of the US Constitution, five states in. But Missouri, we’ve had a little trouble with, but looks like that’s being fixed. What’s going on?
Nick Tomboulides: Well, what happened with Missouri was, back in I believe, 2018, when we passed this, just prior to the term limits convention hitting the floor of the Missouri house and getting passed, a real jackass member of the legislature named Justin Hill, inserted a five-year sunset into the resolution, basically an expiration date that says, “In 2023, if the convention hasn’t been called yet, this Missouri resolution will expire and will be considered null and avoid.” And what we’ve done is we’ve gone back into Missouri and we are advocating for the renewal of the resolution, with no sunset, with no expiration date, so that it can continue into the future, and then when we get to 34 states, Missouri can be aggregated with all the other states in order to call a convention to term limit Congress. And the progress in this area this week, is that we just passed the Missouri Senate with the renewed application, and now it’s gonna move over to the Missouri house, at which point when it gets a vote of approval from the Missouri house, Missouri will be locked in and ready to go.
Philip Blumel: Okay, and the prospects of this look good?
Nick Tomboulides: They look good. They look good. Yeah, we’ve always gotten very encouraging response out of Missouri, we’ve got great sponsors out there and good grassroots activists and a nice team on the ground, so we’re feeling pretty good about it, and we should have another update in the next couple of weeks.
Philip Blumel: Okay, sounds good.
Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. The term limits convention bills are moving through the state legislatures, this could be a breakthrough year for the term limits movement. To check on the status of the term limits convention resolution in your state, go to termlimits.com/takeaction. There, you will see if it has been introduced and where it stands in the committee process on its way to the floor vote. If there’s action to take, you’ll see a Take Action button by your state, click it. This will give you the opportunity to send a message to the most relevant legislators, urging them to support the legislation. They have to know you’re watching. That’s termlimits.com/takeaction. If your state has already passed the term limits convention resolution or the bill has not been introduced in your state, you can still help. Please consider making a contribution to US term limits, it is our aim to hit the reset button on the US Congress, and you can help. Go to termlimits.com/donate, termlimits.com/donate. Thanks, we’ll be back next week.
Stacey Selleck: The revolution isn’t being televised. Fortunately, you have the No Uncertain Terms podcast.
Philip Blumel: USTL.