02/04/15 – Mike Maharrey – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
On the line, I got Mike Meharry from the Tenth Amendment Center.
And also offnow.org.
We'll get to the off now stuff here in a minute.
But first, geez, yeah, better do it that way.
I got this great email the other day.
I almost can't believe it.
Mike, states considering more than 200 bills to block federal power.
You know what, my man?
I don't care if you're defining that broadly.
Go ahead and define it and tell me what all you're talking about.
Give me 200 examples or as many as you want.
Welcome to the show.
Good to talk to you again.
Hey, Scott.
It's good to be on.
Yeah, 200-plus bills.
Isn't that crazy?
That's so great.
I mean, what are we talking about here?
Just to give people perspective, just three years ago, I was able to pretty much keep up with every nullification-type bill that was introduced in any state legislature.
And I could say, oh, Arizona's got this going on and Vermont's got this going on.
I can't do that anymore, obviously.
I mean, it's just amazing how much this has grown.
And we're talking about bills that run the gamut.
I mean, we've got legislation that would end state cooperation in implementing or running Obamacare.
We've got bills that would deny any material resources to the NSA.
We've got bills that would prohibit any state agency from cooperating with anything that violates the Second Amendment.
We've got these right-to-try laws, which basically allow people in a state that are considered terminally ill to try experimental medications, even though the FDA hasn't approved them, basically saying, screw you, FDA.
We're going to let people in our state have access to these treatments if they want them.
We've got the continuing push to legalize marijuana, both recreationally and for medicinal purposes.
We've got NDAA detention bills where states won't cooperate with federal kidnapping.
I mean the list just goes on and on.
It's a broad range of subjects, but all with the same basic premise that the state is saying we're not going to cooperate with you, federal government.
We're going to do everything in our power to make sure that you can't carry out these actions within our state.
And I know one of the things on the list there too, and I saw a great write-up about this the other day, I think at rare.com maybe, about top five ways that states are pushing back against the militarization of the police and basically attempting to nullify the 1033 program.
Can you talk a bit about that?
Yeah, and those bills that we're seeing introduced, basically what they do is they either put severe limits or outright bans on the procurement of military equipment through these programs.
I think there's four or five states that have introduced this type of legislation, and some of them are broader than others, but all of them are basically the same thing.
They disallow the local law enforcement from getting machine guns and tanks and these crazy things that Lord knows they don't really need.
And this is – basically you can look at it and say, well, it's only operating on the state level.
It's prohibiting the state and local law enforcement.
How is that really nullification?
But here's the thing that people need to understand about the whole police militarization thing.
This is a huge incentive for police departments to cooperate with the federal government in other ways.
They love getting the toys.
They love getting the asset forfeiture money.
And when you start breaking down these incentives, then you're less likely to have the police lobbies pushing back when we try to say, hey, we don't want you enforcing these federal gun laws.
Right now, every time that we try to pass these type of bills, the police lobbies come out and lobby against them because they don't want any federal-local partnerships.
So basically it's putting a wedge between the state and local law enforcement and the federal government, and that's a good thing because it de-incentivizes the police department and refocuses their attention on doing what I guess they're supposed to do within the borders of their own state, not perpetuating a drug war or a war on terror or whatever war they've come up with.
I want to see a ban on police lobbying anything.
What the hell right do they have to insist on any particular policy?
If they want to say we want to wear light brown shirts instead of blue, I guess that's within their purview.
Otherwise, shut up and do your job.
Or actually, better yet, don't.
It comes out – any action to limit drones, any action to limit cooperation with indefinite detention, any action to limit the cooperation with the NSA, any action to limit state cooperation with enforcing federal gun laws, police lobby always comes out strong.
And unfortunately, a lot of legislators get all sweaty and nervous when the police lobby shows up because we all love our cops I guess.
So we need to do everything we can to try to limit and to, like I said, put a wedge between the local and state law enforcement and the federal government.
Those things are not supposed to be connected.
The police departments aren't a standing army, and they shouldn't be viewed as such.
Right.
Yeah.
All right.
So now, of course – and we've got to talk about this, and it's important I think for listeners who – they like one thing and they don't like the other, but the doctrine is important.
And here we have, for example, supposed right-wing issues, although any good liberal progressive socialist or anything else who read Marcy Wheeler would know better than to support Obamacare I think.
Right.
But anyway, you've got a supposed right-wing issue like Obamacare, like guns, with supposed left-wing issues, although the militarization, that kind of cuts both ways.
Yeah, it really does.
Populist right-wingers oppose that as well.
But the NSA, that kind of cuts both ways as well, NSA being a bipartisan issue.
I guess we tend to think of legalizing pot as more of a left-wing issue.
But then again, a hemp farmer is probably more likely to be a Republican.
So in other words, this is just about us.
It's really much more a question of the people versus the centralized power.
And I think people have noticed – people of all stripes and ideologies and backgrounds have noticed that the centralized power doesn't have the people's interests at heart.
They only have the interests' interests at heart.
And if we can decentralize a little bit, then regular people can have a little bit more of a fair shake.
It's not a magic cure that the government of Texas can be just as completely crazy and irrational and harsh as the national government.
It's just a little bit easier to petition is all.
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
And at least if you've got 50 states that are operating in a more decentralized way, at least you have some recourse.
If they get nutty in Texas, you always have the opportunity to move to a state that's less nutty.
So it kind of creates some competition in that old – what do they call it?
– the laboratory of ideas.
When you have a centralized power dictating everything for 350-plus million people, well, I don't have much of a way to get away from it.
I guess I can try to go to Canada or something, but the IRS is still going to tax me.
So I think decentralization is the key.
People want liberty.
The first step is decentralization.
Here's when we need to see nullification of the IRS.
Hey, Amendment 5 seems to preclude the idea of something like this, and so your powers are null and void in our state.
One of the things that has come up – and I don't really think that the legislative will is there for this kind of thing quite yet.
But if this movement keeps growing, maybe it will be.
But it's the idea that the state will start collecting federal taxes and holding them in escrow and then giving the federal government the amount of money necessary to do what its actual enumerated powers are.
And then the rest of it would go back to the people.
So that would be really a way of nullifying the IRS in a way, basically giving the state control and saying, hey, we're not going to give you tax money to do things that you're not authorized to do.
All right, good times.
Hey, more with Mike Meharry from the Tenth Amendment Center.
Especially we're going to focus on the NSA in Utah and, well, a lot of other things too, man.
Good stuff.
Mike Meharry from the Tenth Amendment Center and offnow.org.
We'll be right back.
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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
I'm talking with Mike Meharry from the Tenth Amendment Center.
You know the Bill of Rights, right?
Yeah, that's the one that says, just in case you want to try to misinterpret anything in the previous articles here, you only have the powers expressly delegated to you, national government.
The rest belong to the states and to the people.
And so, like all laws, it's not really the law unless people make it the law in practice.
And that's what Mike Meharry and the guys at the Tenth Amendment Center do.
They're trying to bring this long, lamentedly lost amendment back to life here and try to put the national government a little bit, well, torrid back in its place anyway.
It won't be finished until the dollar breaks, Mike.
But you guys are doing a great job of – and I think this couldn't possibly be overstated, really.
It's all about just getting the word out that, yeah, nullification.
What?
Supposedly somehow before that was a politically incorrect thing to say or some kind of thing.
But even on political – on local and state levels, the political class is open to this idea.
Geez, we are kind of tired of paying for this and that.
Maybe we could do it a different way.
And thankfully, the lack of respect for the national government at this point kind of – there's an atmosphere where, yeah, why not?
Let's just go ahead and challenge them.
And especially then as we're talking about where you have – sometimes it's gun laws.
Sometimes it's pot laws that are being nullified.
It creates this much kind of sort of better atmosphere, I guess, for people to understand the issue in.
As I was already saying, I guess – I'm sorry.
I'm just repeating myself.
I'm just really excited, and I'm excited for you because I think that you guys deserve a ton of credit for really pushing this as a popular topic, getting people in state capitals all around the country interested in accentuating their own power and authority at the expense of the national government if that's what it takes.
Like in Federalist No.
10, ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
So there you go.
That's my rant.
Thanks.
That was an excellent rant, and I think you hit a good point.
There is that level of disgust, and some of these things are a slam dunk.
When you start talking about – I mentioned the right to trial a few minutes ago.
When you have federal bureaucrats telling a sick person, hey, you can't have this treatment because we haven't undone the bureaucratic red tape yet, I don't care whether you're a lefty or a righty or in the middle or what political persuasion you might be from.
Anybody can look at that and go, that's dumb.
And so there is that disgust.
Why should the FDA deny people treatments that could possibly save their lives when they're going to die anyway just because they want to have people jump through their hoops?
And when you have those type of things and you have that type of overreach that is so glaring, it really does raise the disgust level, and I think that's part of why you're seeing this movement grow.
People see those kind of things, and they start to look at other things and say, you know what?
There's a lot of things the federal government is sticking their nose into that they shouldn't be.
All right.
Now hit them real hard with the latest from Utah.
Well, we're excited about what's going on in Utah.
We had the interim committee hearing back in November, and that went real well, and it was very clear.
The room was packed, and it was very clear that there's a lot of support for turning off the water to the NSA facility in Bluffdale, Utah.
The sponsor of that bill, Mark Roberts, he's reintroduced the bill.
He's cleaned up the language a little bit, and he seems to feel like it's got a good shot at getting a committee hearing and moving forward.
And we cleared one little political hurdle just last week.
They have these things called fiscal notes that they put on bills, and basically it's an analysis of how much a bill will cost, how much it will cost the state government, how much revenue they could lose if they pass it into law, etc.
And sometimes these things are used to kill bills.
They'll stick a huge fiscal note on it and say, oh, this bill is going to cost $100 billion to implement, and so that kills the bill without even any debate.
And the fiscal note that was put onto the Utah Turnoff the Water bill basically said it's not going to cost the state any money.
It's not going to cost city governments any money, and that's a good thing.
It takes away that argument and that little way of killing a bill.
So nice little political hurdle that's been cleared, and now we're just gearing up for a committee hearing.
Right on.
And now, so what about the discussion in Utah?
Because that's where the national government happened to choose to put it.
It's sort of up to them.
Does it seem like the people slash and or the political class really have much momentum one way or the other on this?
Well, I think there is.
I think a lot of people have – I think there's a lot of awareness that what the NSA is doing is way out of bounds.
We can thank Edward Snowden for that and the media that's done its digging in the wake of all the revelations.
So I think there's a pretty strong basis of the NSA shouldn't be doing this stuff.
And when it comes to Utah, I think a lot of people that are there are kind of like, why are we helping them do this?
Especially when they found out that the NSA got a really good water deal and is basically paying less than the average resident is to get the water.
So yeah, I think there's momentum.
I think there's a lot of popular support for this idea.
I think the pushback is going to come from people who view the NSA as an economic engine.
They're excited because it's going to create jobs or whatever kind of economic crap that they think it's going to bring, and that's pretty easy to defeat.
You're not going to give up your rights to make a few bucks if you have any sense.
So I think that the popular opinion on the ground is strong.
I think there's a lot of legislators who, judging from the interim committee hearing, there's a lot of support for the idea.
We've virtually eliminated – when we first brought this up last year, we started talking about turning off the water.
There was a lot of, you can't do that.
And we've completely eliminated that.
Nobody is questioning whether or not this is a viable thing to do.
The really only question left is, are we going to support the NSA in Utah or not?
The whole argument about whether it's legal or about whether it's feasible or any of that stuff has all been pretty much wiped away.
There's been a huge advance in the argument.
And so now basically we've just got to get these folks to go on record and say, hey, we either support you being spied on or we don't.
Right.
Okay, now, so what about all the liberal college professors listening saying, nuh-uh, because the supremacy clause?
Well, hopefully even the liberal legal professors know about the anti-commandeering doctrine.
And they know that the Supreme Court has held since 1842 that the federal government cannot force states to provide resources or manpower or anything else to advance a federal program… … or to carry out a federal edict.
This is well-established.
And that's all these NSA bills are, saying the state is not going to provide material support, and that's well-established.
The federal government, if the NSA can, if they want to carry buckets of water up there and cool their towers, they're welcome to do it.
But the state is not going to help, and this is well-established.
A few years ago, they tried to put a nuclear waste dump on Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and Nevada basically followed this exact same strategy.
The Environmental Protection Agency bent a bunch of rules for the energy department so they could put this nuclear waste facility on what was essentially unstable ground.
And Utah was like, we don't want this, and Congress said you're going to get it anyway.
So when they started to try to build the thing, the Utah government said, we're not going to give you these water permits.
We're going to deny the permits for you to even have the water to build this thing and do the drilling that's necessary.
And it went to court, and the federal court actually found in favor with the state in Nevada.
They said, you know what?
It's Nevada's water.
We can't make them give it up.
And so eventually that whole waste dump was abandoned by the Obama administration because the state was willing to push back.
So we know this will work, and we know that it's already been tried and it's been legitimized.
So all of these arguments just fall away.
Again, the question that anybody has to ask themselves is, do you support your government spying on you or not?
And if you don't support it, then you should support turning off the water.
And if you're for spying, then go on record and say it, and then let the people decide whether they want you to remain in office or not.
Right, yeah, absolutely.
Man, that is so great.
I almost can't believe it, but I know you, and you're telling it to me, so I believe you.
But otherwise it's unbelievable.
It is.
Well, it's almost unbelievable to us.
We started seeing all these bills rolling in, and if you go to our blog at the Tenth Amendment Center, at tenthamendmentcenter.com, you can just go through and look at all the bill reports that are on there.
And it's like, oh my gosh, we're putting dozens of these up every day, and people are just cranking these reports out.
And it's amazing.
All right, that's the Tenth Amendment Center and offnow.org, tenthamendmentcenter.com and offnow.org.
Mike Meharry, thanks so much for your time.
Appreciate it.
Thanks, Scott, as always.
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