Philip Blumel: Speaking Truth To Power. Hi. I’m Philip Blumel. Welcome to No Uncertain Terms, the official podcast of the Term Limits Movement for the week of May 9th, 2022.
Stacey Selleck: Your sanctuary from partisan politics.
Philip Blumel: Self-interested politicians and their cronies in Michigan are trying once again to overturn the popular voter-approved term limits law in that state, but the people won’t take it. With the latest, here’s Nick Tomboulides, Executive Director of US Term Limits. Take it away, Nick.
Nick Tomboulides: So we have some great news out of Michigan where state term limits have been under attack. They were enacted by a 17th point margin of victory back in 1992, and since that point, the Michigan political class has been just relentless in trying to repeal those term limits. But thankfully, some good news coming out of Michigan today. A group of citizens who care about protecting the term limits which have served the state so well have formed the Term Limits Defense Fund. That is a new group. It will be raising money. It will be spreading the word. It will be conducting grassroots activities to help protect Michigan term limits, and they have announced a goal of raising $1 million for this effort.
[applause]
Nick Tomboulides: I have some quotes here from the organizers. This is a quote from Rena Baker who was actually one of the two women who was instrumental in helping pass term limits in Grand Rapids, Michigan by ballot initiative. Rena said, “Term limits have been a tremendous success at opening doors to women and minorities. Before term limits, we had exactly zero female governors. Since then, we have two of three. Before term limits, we had zero female attorney generals. After term limits, we have two out of four. Weakening term limits would turn the clock back on this progress, making it harder for people from under-represented groups to win political office. We can’t let that happen.” Amen. Amen.
Nick Tomboulides: And this is a quote from Greg Schmid, who is another member of the committee. He said, “Millions of Michigan voters overwhelmingly imposed term limits on their law makers not to make incumbents happy, but to control their instincts to amass and keep power for themselves and their cronies. The people knew that insiders in the political class would hate term limits, and did it anyway. Lawmakers, lobbyists, special interests, capital staffers enjoy special access and all the privileges that come with power, and they will try anything to gut term limits. In this case, they present a proposal mischaracterized as improving term limits complete with the loss leader of a deceptive transparency measure, and are prepared to say anything, do anything, spend anything necessary to get back to the good old days when Michigan had the best government that money could buy.” Wow, that’s powerful, and it’s right on the money.
Nick Tomboulides: I wanna talk about the Michigan term limits situation for a moment, because this is truly… This is… It’s one of the biggest scams of modern American life. These sophisticated and highly dishonest schemes that politicians come up with to try to trick voters into either getting rid of term limits or preventing term limits from coming into existence in the first place. I would say the three biggest scams in America right now are, number one, the guy calling about your car’s extended warranty, number two, the Nigerian Prince, and number three, politicians cheating and lying to get rid of their own term limits. You know the Nigerian Prince. He emails you, he says, “If you just give me money, I’ll give you a lot more money.” Come to think of it, that’s exactly what politicians say as well. Nevertheless, the anti-term limit scam is well underway in Michigan right now. We’ve covered it before. You’ve got this basically rogues gallery of Michigan lobbyists, ex-politicians, union leaders, party bosses, crony business people, they’ve come together and they’re trying to put a measure on the November ballot that would completely destroy Michigan term limits.
Nick Tomboulides: It would change the limit from six years in the State House to 12 years. It would change the limit in the State Senate from eight years to 12. So that’s a 100% increase in the State House in terms of how long a politician can stay, 50% increase in the senate. And you know what, it’s their right to ask the voters for that. This is a free country after all, but they are not asking in honest and transparent way, and there in lies the problem. They aren’t asking in an honest way, because they know if they asked in an honest way, voters would send them packing six ways to Sunday. Their measure omits the fact that it would make turn limits longer. It omits the fact that it’s going to empower career politicians, create more career politicians, and instead, they tell people it’s going to create transparency. They’re using flowery fake language to hide and conceal the attack on term limits. What’s worse is they need to collect around half a million signatures to put this on the ballot, and they’re going around telling people this reduces term limits. They’re misrepresenting what it really does because they are so desperate. They know the voters have to pass it, and the voters will not pass it if they know what it really does.
Nick Tomboulides: Let me give you an example here. Imagine if some wack job in your town or city wanted to get rid of all the town parks, get rid of all the green space, wanted to sell those to big developers so they could build an oil refinery or something. Obviously this person would be free to have that bad idea, to get rid of your parks. And the first amendment would protect his right to express it, but if he went around with a petition and said to everyone in the town, all the towns folk, “Hey, please sign this, it’s a petition to create more parks,” and got lots of folks to sign it and changed the law. The next day after the election, everyone wakes up and all the parks have disappeared. What has just happened? Fraud, fraudulent conduct, people were conned thinking their vote would help build more parks, and they wound up abolishing all of the parks by mistake.
Nick Tomboulides: Now imagine if the guy who wanted to get rid of the parks had named his group, “Build More Parks”. Wouldn’t that really be confusing. That’s no different from what’s happening here in a term limits context. The Michigan political elite are conning people into thinking they’re voting for more term limits, better term limits, when in reality, they are unknowingly voting to abolish real term limits. The lobbyists have even named their group “Voters for Transparency in Term Limits” to help perpetuate the lie. They are masquerading as a pro-term limits group.
Speaker 4: This is a public service announcement.
Gov. Ron DeSantis: Hello, this is governor Ron DeSantis from Florida. Florida’s legislature was the first state in the nation to pass a resolution calling for an article five term limits convention, giving state legislators a way to make term limits on Congress a reality. And I’m so encouraged to hear that Idaho is working on the same term limits resolution. Idaho could be the next state to get it done. Now, we have a divided country on many issues, and it’s remarkable to me that on virtually every demographic you look at, Americans support term limits on members of Congress. And I just want you to know that you have my full support for this initiative, and you will not only be doing the business of the people of Idaho, but you will be doing a great thing for the vast, vast majority of the American people. Thank you, and God bless you for what you’re doing.
Nick Tomboulides: A retired Mathematician was actually tasked with looking at this Michigan term limit issue because… Look, I’m a guy in a podcast, I’m not a statistical expert, but an independent academic analysis was done on this by Professor Robert Printer, who’s a Math professor emeritus from Long Island University. This guy’s got great credentials, and Dr. Printer’s analysis confirmed what we are all saying. He wrote a memo which I submitted to the Michigan ballot board, so the decision makers would have that. It says, and I quote “Years of service under this new proposed amendment will be increased, not slightly, but for most in the range of 50% for Senators and 100% for Representatives. That’s doubling term limits. Any description… ” printer goes on, “of the proposed change should refer to it as repealing or lengthening term limits, not as strengthening or reducing the length of term limits.” That’s a professor of Mathematics reporting that this proposed measure is a fraud. It’s a long recap, I know, but the news this week is, as we alluded to earlier, different groups in Michigan are starting to take sides.
Nick Tomboulides: The Michigan Chamber of Commerce, for example, has endorsed the scam. And when we say Chamber of Commerce here, we aren’t talking about the guy who runs the ice cream shop in the town square and sponsors the Little League team, we’re talking about mega corporations. Some Fortune 500 corporations that get enormous subsidies and benefits from the state of Michigan, that’s who controls this chamber. And it’s understandable that they dislike term limits because it means less access, it means law makers are gonna answer to the people rather than lobbyists. It’s what James Madison said, “we need law makers who are dependent on the people alone”. Big business hates that. They wanna lock in one guy for 40 years and they wanna keep going back to the well for bigger favors. They’re looking not for public servants, they’re looking for an ATM machine in every legislative seat. And can they admit they hate term limits for self-serving reasons? No, of course not.
Nick Tomboulides: Instead, they come up with absurd and phony reasons for why term limits are bad. Here’s an example, this quote I have here appeared in Crane’s Business Journal, a major Michigan business publication. It comes from Maureen Krauss, the CEO of the Detroit Regional Partnership. She says it’s her job to recruit companies to Michigan and quote, “They do ask about the political divide. It makes a difference where companies choose to invest,” she said. And she’s referring to term limits there. A supposed business leader is blaming Michigan’s term limits for the fact that more companies won’t invest. She’s saying Term limits are responsible for the hyper-partisanship. Yeah. Okay. We don’t see that anywhere else. Does anyone believe that though? Does anyone really believe that some CEO told this woman, “Well, yeah, I was gonna put 10 factories in Michigan, but then I heard about that whole term limits thing and changed my mind. I think I’m gonna go to Togo instead.”
Nick Tomboulides: This is absurd, what she’s implying. This is a conspiracy theory, that it should be scrolled on a toilet stall and at a truck stop somewhere, not repeated in the pages of a respected newspaper. And here’s a question, “If term limits have such a negative effect on the economy, why hasn’t anyone told Ron DeSantis? Why hasn’t anyone told the people of Florida? Why are hundreds and hundreds of businesses re-locating to Florida constantly? Why are 1000 people a day moving to Florida?” Florida has term limits that are substantially the same as Michigan’s nearly the same as Michigan’s, and our economy is thriving. So what gives? Why are term limits to blame for Michigan’s economic problems, but Florida seems to function perfectly well with term limits? On the other side of the coin, there’s Congress, it’s a legislative body which has never had any term limits, and it’s begun to resemble an assisted living facility, you know it’s top people, they’ve got an average tenure of nearly 40 years, average age of 80.
Nick Tomboulides: If Michigan political elites were even slightly correct about term limits, Congress should be a well-oiled machine, it should be completely free of partisanship and it should be the envy of the world, but nope, Congress is a punch line, because the conspiracy theorists have been debunked, career politicians suck, citizen legislators rock, and anyone who says otherwise is trying to hide self-interest inside the facade of objectivity.
Philip Blumel: Thanks for joining us for another episode of No Uncertain Terms. The terms 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: Find us on most social media, at US term limits, like us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and now, TikTok.