10/12/07 – Paul Jacob – The Scott Horton Show

All right, my friends, welcome back to Anti-War Radio, Chaos 92.7, 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
And my next guest, or my only guest today actually, is a special request from my boss Eric Garris, a guy I hadn't known of before, Paul Jacob, a long-time libertarian activist, writes for townhall.com, is a senior advisor to the Sam Adams Alliance, a former director of the National Libertarian Party, and he's facing some legal troubles that I think will interest you guys.
I have to admit, I procrastinated researching and preparing for this interview until this morning, and I started Googling around and reading these articles, and I'm sitting here with my jaw hanging open.
I cannot believe the legal trouble that this guy, Paul Jacob, is in for participating in democracy.
Wow, look out.
Paul Jacob, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Scott.
Thanks very much.
Yeah, I read your article, the Oklahoma 3, at townhall.com this morning.
Wow, I can't believe it.
Give us the background of this case.
What's going on here?
I've spent a good bit of time pinching myself, kind of hoping I'll wake up, but I think I'm actually awake, and I'm in an America that I would like to see be a lot different.
It may be that you and I are having the same dream, dude, but I'm pretty sure this is real.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm afraid it is.
Let me give you the background.
I worked with a group called Americans for Limited Government a year or so ago, and we were involved in supporting a petition effort in Oklahoma on two measures.
One was an eminent domain fix and regulatory takings, a pro-private property measure, and the other was a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which sets a spending cap and then allows the voters to alter it, but only through voter approval.
You know, surprise, surprise, the powers that be in Oklahoma didn't like this measure.
Yeah, I was going to say, it sounds pretty good.
Yeah, but so during the course of that petition drive, and I've been involved, I've worked with term limits for a decade and have been involved in an awful lot of initiative petition drives, and I just have never seen anything like what took place in Oklahoma.
They had hired a woman, Jeannie Berg, out of Oregon to run a full-scale blocker effort.
This is where they hire people to swarm petitioners, create street theater chaos, scare people, spill coffee on petitions, and in many cases go into stores and lie that the person cursed them out.
The list just goes on and on.
Not quite gangs in New York, but still pretty tough for a local petition drive.
I don't think I've ever seen blockers hassling people walking down the sidewalk with petitions in my hand before.
No, it's a somewhat new phenomenon, and very disturbing, because the goal, really, if someone wants to go and hand out literature or talk to people against a certain petition, that is absolutely their right to do so.
But frankly, it doesn't prevent them from having their time to talk to people to gather signatures and put a measure on the ballot.
What does stop it is when you create a climate of fear and intimidation and threats, and of course someone going to the grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk might be willing to stop to listen about what you're doing, but they're not interested in getting in a street fight, and so it was a very devastating effort that was launched there.
And during the course of the petition drive, one of my roles was just to advise, to monitor, and it got to a point where I told the petition company, I just don't see how we make it unless there's some way to get a lot more petitioners.
One of the things, in most of the states in the country, anyone can petition, just like anyone could be your campaign manager, they don't have to live next door to you, they don't have to be a resident of the state.
Most states now allow anyone to collect signatures.
Only if you're in Oklahoma, for instance, only an Oklahoman would be able to propose an initiative, only an Oklahoman would be able to sign the petition, and only Oklahomans would vote on it.
But anybody could collect the signatures, take the petition to people and ask them to sign.
So the petition company checked, what are the rules there, and Oklahoma does have a residency requirement, but they were told that the residency requirement is of no duration.
In other words, anyone can move to the state of Oklahoma and immediately declare themselves a resident and collect signatures.
That's what the petition company operated under.
In the course of it, I even asked, are there any legal cases in which there's some idea of where the court comes down on this, because, as I'm sure your listeners can well appreciate, sometimes the law seems fairly simple, but when it gets in the court, it can get awfully complicated.
So in that, I was sent some materials showing that in a previous challenge, no one who had come to the state and been there for a short period of time, many living in hotels or staying with friends, none of them had been struck down as out-of-state circulators.
To make a long story short, a number of people moved to Oklahoma, declared themselves to be residents, petitioned, all told.
Now, I don't know how many people had lived in Oklahoma all their life or moved or what, because obviously I wasn't in a position to know that, but over a thousand people worked on the petition drive, and it collected on the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which was then challenged, 300,000 signatures.
Nobody really questions that those signatures were of registered voters in Oklahoma, and that was plenty to put the issue on the ballot, but a challenge that was not only brought by some of the people you might suspect, public employee unions, alphabet soup groups that get money from state government, they all opposed it, but what was surprising, at least to some, was that a number of conservative, wealthy, CEO, Republican-donating folks also were against it, and as I like to point out to people, there are sometimes folks who don't like mommy welfare but sure are fond of daddy welfare.
That's a good way to put it, yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all that usually it's the richest people are the first ones collecting the welfare checks.
No, that's exactly right, so this was a very powerful coalition of folks, they challenged, and the Supreme Court came back and said that unless you can show an intent to reside permanently in the state, that you're not a bona fide resident, and threw out all those signatures.
Threw out 300,000 signatures?
Well, they threw out enough, basically, and in fact, one of the people that was thrown out and had 3,000-some-odd signatures, which made the overall effort 1,300 signatures short, was a gentleman who had moved to Oklahoma in September of 2005, apparently, from Missouri, had petitioned throughout the 90-day period, and was still living in Oklahoma in July of 2006, ten months later, and this person was ruled not to be a resident.
Okay, now, let's sum this up a little bit to make sure, a little recap.
Basically, you have these laws you're trying to get on the ballot, basically, and they're for good purposes to put a cap on growth, to put limits on the state's power to seize people's private property, to give it to other private property owners, and so forth, and the establishment, basically, in Oklahoma, decides they don't like it.
They hire people to harass and block the petitioners, so the petitioners go to the length of hiring people from out of state.
You say you checked with all the rules and regulations and guidelines about what it takes to be a petitioner, all the people fulfilled all the technicalities they needed to fulfill.
I think I read in your article that you checked the last time a judge ruled on a case like this and went by what he said, too, and you got 300,000 signatures, more than enough to have the measures on the ballot for a referendum statewide.
Basically, they changed their mind about what qualifies someone to be a petitioner to go around to collect signatures, and then their case rests upon a guy who actually was a resident even under their new bogus definition.
Do I have it right?
You have it right.
Under their new, what I would consider a bogus definition, this person would be thrown out because even though he's lived in the state for ten months, he doesn't have some evidence that he plans to live there the rest of his life.
And that's the new definition, then?
Yes.
To me, the underlying residency statute in Oklahoma is now in federal court being challenged on constitutionality, and I think that the idea that you have to intend to reside some place permanently is just not going to stand because obviously, you know, people go to school, sometimes out of state.
People are sometimes relocated in their job for a couple of years.
They're not supposed to be voting in their old state where they're not a resident, don't pay taxes, don't have a home, so on and so on, and obviously, if you're relocated to Oklahoma for three years or five, you're not supposed to sit there and not have any rights as a voter.
You've summed it up, and I think that it was a travesty when they threw out enough signatures on these bogus claims to stop a vote of the people on these measures, but what's even more of a travesty now is that the attorney general is following this up by threatening the proponent of the measure, myself, Susan Johnson, the woman who is the head of National Voter Outreach, the petition firm that worked there on a felony charge which carries a ten-year prison term in Oklahoma.
If we made a mistake, we did it looking at what are the rules and how can we follow them, and the charge is conspiracy to defraud the state of Oklahoma.
If there was a conspiracy, it was to figure out what this law was and to follow it.
To me, it's a bad law, but I want to be very clear, we did everything we could to follow that law.
You know, this sort of political heavy-handedness, and heavy-handedness somehow doesn't do it justice.
There's a heck of a threat that I can feel personally, but I think it's also a threat that's aimed at anyone else out there who might dare to put something on the ballot that the powers that be don't like, and frankly, that's what the ballot proposition process is all about, is putting stuff on a ballot like that.
Hang on, Paul, let's stick to the facts, and we can talk all about the chilling effect and all that, and that's a great point, and I want to talk about that, but the new definition as you described, the new definition of what it means to be a resident of Oklahoma, they basically just made up this interpretation that you have to intend to stay there forever just for you, in order to say that that's the law that you broke, and now they're charging you with a felony for conspiring to break that law, but as you said, this doesn't apply anywhere else.
All the other states, if I move to another state for six months, I've got to get a driver's license there and everything else.
Right, well, and it's interesting that actually in some states, as I understand it, there is a period of time before which you have to be there for 30 days or some period of time to establish residency.
In Oklahoma, the law is that you are a resident the moment you step foot on Oklahoma soil and say, I am a resident, and that hasn't really changed.
What has changed is that they're now saying that you have to have this intent to reside permanently, which, you know, frankly, the only place we're going to reside permanently, sad to say, is six feet under whatever state we happen to be in.
And even then, there could be an earthquake or something.
Right, that's right.
Wow, so now, these guys, I'm sorry for joking around, because the punchline here is that you're facing 10 years in prison and $25,000 in fines for trying to get some measures on a ballot?
Yes.
You make enemies much?
Apparently so.
Golly.
I worked for years on term limits, so I've seen that folks in power don't like it when the people want it one way and they want it another.
Certainly, there are a lot of folks in Washington and in other state capitals where we've done term limits who are not very fond of me.
You know, people can agree or disagree with a certain position.
It seems to me that the whole essence of this country is agree or disagree, but at the end of the day, there's no knock on the door that says, because of your political beliefs, you're in trouble.
I can't see this any other way.
This is an attack on myself and two other innocent people for doing nothing more than trying to be politically active, trying to follow what were admittedly somewhat vague rules, but following them using the advice of state officials and then doing some due diligence to look at what, you know, has this been adjudicated before?
It seems to me that this is aimed not just at me, I'm sure they'd like to knock me in the head, but I do think that it's aimed at anyone else in Oklahoma who might try to use this process.
I've been contacted by a number of people in Oklahoma, some folks who are working against this trans-Texas corridor, which, frankly, I'm getting educated on as we speak, but don't know a whole lot about it except that it would be a huge use of eminent domain, and a number of people have said, Scott, that the only place it can be stopped by the voters as opposed to politicians is Oklahoma, because it's the only state, you know, that it's going through Texas, doesn't have the initiative process, they can't stop it there if the legislature approves it, but they could stop in Oklahoma, and more than a few people have suggested, this is another thing, that the powers that be in Oklahoma want to send this message, don't mess around with the power.
And you say these people are calling you, concerned, saying, hey, Paul Jacob, I'm running a petition campaign, can you help, you know, make sure I stay out of jail?
Well, and it becomes extremely difficult, there is a civil rights petition on the street there, there's a petition for easier ballot access for independent and third-party candidates, and they're scared, and of course, they're smart to be scared, because there is nothing, you know, in the old days, before the Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court struck down voter registration requirements for petition circulators, at least you could get a slip of paper that said this person is indeed a registered voter, now, there is no way for anyone to determine whether the person applying for the job of a petitioner is indeed a resident, because there's no state agency that hands out little cards that say you're a resident, you could have an Oklahoma ID, and not be an Oklahoma resident.
It's all ridiculous, I know someone who, oh, they have an out-of-state driver's license, but they want to get a Texas ID for, you know, money transfer, ease, purposes, and so forth, and they said, well, you can't get your Texas ID until you show us your social security card.
So, well, I don't have it, but I got a passport, how's that?
That's from the national government, has my picture and everything.
They said, nope, you need your social security card, the social security card doesn't even have a picture on it.
He says, well, what I got to do to get a social security card?
They said, well, just go downtown and show them your driver's license.
Now I'm sorry to go off on that tangent, but it's like that movie Brazil, you know, where everybody's just, you know, doing their little job and not paying attention to how irrational it is.
It's a great movie, and for anybody who hasn't seen the movie Brazil, it's a, when I first watched it years ago, it was a movie about the future.
Now I'm afraid it's a movie about where we are right here and now.
Yeah, you got that right.
Yeah, and in fact, some places you've got the air conditioning tubes everywhere and no, okay.
We don't have centralized communist air conditioning yet, thank God, but we're headed that way.
It seems like, and I think you're right that this really, you know, I'm not usually the type to go around getting too much involved.
I've done a little bit of ballot access for the libertarian party and stuff, but I'm not really a petitioner type who goes around trying to get laws on the ballot and that sort of stuff.
You know, that rubber meets the road stuff to people like you, Paul, but I can see it.
You know, I have my own little flash of intimidation myself as I'm reading this, you know, and I think we all know this, right?
You try to take part in the process and you know going in, there's so many, that's probably why I don't participate more.
There's so many rules and regulations and loopholes and things that written in legalese that might as well be Greek, that the average guy figures that if he does get involved and he pisses off the wrong group of people with power, they can, you know, take some loophole that, where he made a mistake and use it as a noose.
Right, right.
And you know, it would be one thing if someone violated clear rules or if someone purposely violated clear rules, but to have vague rules that folks, and you know, I was an advisor on this effort.
I didn't speak to the state officials.
I didn't, you know, I didn't run this petition drive.
I spoke with the people who were doing it and helped them make decisions and kind of looked at numbers and you know, that was my role.
But the idea that people can do due diligence, trying to figure out exactly how to do a petition drive within the rules, speaking to state officials and making certain that that's right, and then be, you know, later have the rug pulled out from under them and lose all those signatures, that's terrible.
But then to have, you know, on top of that, to be threatened with 10 years in prison, you know, there's something going on there, and it's not the America that we grew up thinking we lived in.
This is something that I just hope it wakes up a lot of people to, one, how important it is that we have a process where we don't have to beg and plead with politicians to do the right thing, where we can go straight to our neighbors and say, here's the idea, it's in black and white, vote yes or no.
I think that's a critical process, but I think it's also critical to show people, look at the way the powers that be respond to this process.
After term limits swept the country, virtually every state with the initiative process passed new restrictions, new laws that make it tougher to get on the ballot.
They're constantly trying to find ways to stop people from hiring petitioners, even though since 1905 they've been paying people to collect signatures.
There's numerous new laws that try to stop that.
New states passing these residency requirements, which frankly, to me, are the initiative equivalent of Jim Crow laws.
I mean, they are designed to do what the folks in Mississippi in the 60s wanted to do with the freedom riders, which is to stop them from getting involved and to stop the so-called outside agitator.
This is a situation that most Americans don't see on the news, don't read in their paper, and frankly just don't know anything about for those obvious reasons.
And that's why I think it's so critical.
I have a couple of attorneys who have advised me, don't talk too much.
Well, I'm sorry, I can't help it.
This is something that has to be talked about.
Our ultimate salvation in terms of as a body politic is critical here.
And if people don't know that this is going on, we're going to see more of it, not less.
Well, you have me wondering how often this happens to people that I have no idea.
You know what I mean?
Honestly, the only reason I know about your case is because you're friends with my boss Eric Garris, and he told me about it.
How many different municipal utility districts and cities and counties and different local governments around the country do people get punished for attempting to participate in?
I have no idea whether this is, you know, wow, that's just a bad thing that happened to this one guy, Paul, or whether this is an epidemic across the country or what.
Well, you know, I have to tell you, Scott, I don't really have some tremendous, you know, I haven't seen studies or anything else.
My sense from from being involved in this process a lot around the country is that prosecutions like this are unheard of.
I've had talked to people all over the country.
They've never they just can't believe it.
They've never heard of anything like this.
Well, at least that's good.
Well, it is.
It is.
But but I see it as for years, they have sought to somehow block this process, hiring paid blockers, using the legislature to pass all kinds of restrictions.
Those have not stopped us.
They haven't stopped the people, whether it's an issue I agree with or not.
People are getting things on the ballot and able to make a difference.
And so I see this as an escalation of the same desire to stomp on democracy by the powers that be.
And so I don't think this is something that's happened oftentimes, if at all around the country, but I have real fears that if it's successful here, you'll see it plenty.
Well, you know, the blockers that you talk about, some guy, imagine a guy walking down the sidewalk, you know, take a look at my petition, I'm trying to get this law on the local ballot or the state ballot, what have you.
And he's got a bunch of the opposition following around heckling him all the time.
That sounds to me like the kind of thing.
I mean, we're talking about government, so-called property, public sidewalks and so forth.
But it seems to me like a judge somewhere would put an end to that, no?
It's interesting.
They should.
It's difficult because, you know, you can't have police and judges at every street corner and you have an absolute right to go out and hand out literature against a petition effort to speak against it.
You know, that's fine.
You don't have a right to heckle and threaten and intimidate and jump in between people who are trying to talk during the last election cycle in Nevada.
There was an effort by the Taxpayer Bill of Rights folks there to get a temporary restraining order against the blockers who were using these tactics.
And the judge said to the blockers, I don't want to go to a TRO.
I want a simple agreement that says you will not interrupt and so that both sides cannot interrupt if the people who are against the petition speak to someone.
They will finish their conversation before the petitioner talks to them.
If the petitioner engages someone in conversation, they will have that conversation uninterrupted and then the person against the petition can talk to them.
And she got both sides to sign an agreement that they would be polite and decent and not interrupt.
And you know what?
The blockers were off the street in a week.
Because if all they could do was to speak out, most people liked the petition and signed it.
It was only when they could harass and scare and intimidate that they had the effect that they wanted.
And so all of a sudden the blockers were gone.
And that's a good tactic by the judge, too, to avoid a court ruling about a speech issue on a sidewalk like that and just get them to agree sort of out of court kind of.
It was a very common sense solution to the problem, but again, it really pointed up that their real plan was to stop people from signing the petition, not to get their message out to people.
And now, in terms of being an activist, you really go back a long way.
Eric Garris tells me that he kind of feels responsible for getting you thrown in prison back in the day.
What happened then?
Well, I don't know, I've never quite held Eric responsible, but many, many years ago when I was a college student, got involved in both libertarian politics and very active against the draft.
And I've been a critic of U.S. foreign policy, just beside myself with the idea that I now live in a country that I think kind of secretly arrests people and tortures them.
So I don't think the frightening aspect of our government is limited to my case, that's for sure.
But I've been a critic of foreign policy, but my effort against the draft was really on basic principles.
I'm not against the military, I like the military, I think America has been well served by our military.
Not by our politicians, but well served by our military.
But I don't believe in conscription, in forced service, and I think that we've always had enough volunteers.
I happen to agree with what Ronald Reagan said way back in the day, which was, the draft or draft registration destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.
So that was my beef against the draft.
I was very public, and Selective Service System and the Justice Department used their selective prosecution to go after people like me who were speaking out, and ended up going to trial and serving five and a half months in a federal re-education camp, which I like to think didn't take.
Well, it sounds like you still take responsibility for your own actions, so it doesn't sound like they work too well on you.
No, no, and it's funny because I can't help but kind of think back to that, but in a sense that was so much different, in that I confronted a law, said this law is wrong, I'm not going to go along with it, and so in some ways I did have a little bit more control of dictating the action, I guess, and of course this is just out of the blue.
This is a law that we sought to abide by, and so it's just, you know, it's much different in that sense.
Yeah, and this isn't civil disobedience, you're just being persecuted is all.
Yes, and this is one that, you know, you just, I have to tell you, the other one I knew was reality from the get-go, but this is one where you just sometimes wake up and think, you know, is this really happening?
Yeah, well, and you know, there's kind of a common theme here with the draft and with eminent domain and the rest of this stuff.
To me, it's just a question of basic American principles.
If you own yourself and you own your property, then it's not okay for a local government to steal your property and give it to someone else.
It's not okay for them to steal you or steal your kid and put them in the army if that's not what they want to do.
You know...
This is America, right?
Absolutely, and I've always thought, Scott, you know, there are so many countries, if you like countries where you're forced into the military or your property is stolen willy-nilly because someone in power says they'd like to give it to someone else or you're taxed at incredible rates or your, you know, every aspect of your life is dictated.
There are just a plethora of countries out there where you can go to to get exactly that.
There's only really one country in the whole world, and you know, there are some democracies and some, you know, Western Europe and Australian, these are decent places to live, I'm not saying they're not, but they're not the same as America where the individual is sovereign and where you have people constantly saying, wait a second, you can't do that because you, the government, work for me, not the other way around.
And if we ever lose that, there is nowhere else on this planet to go to get it, and that's why I just think it is so critical.
And what we're talking about in my case is not a lower tax rate or, you know, more accountable government or this or that, we're talking about the very essence of America, that you don't have to fear the knock in the night, that you can say what you believe without fearing persecution.
And you know, frankly, if we lose that, there's just, you know, it's hard to think of anything fatter than losing that essence that is America.
It's what we all love about being in this country.
We have a nice economy, we're a wealthy country, gee whiz, I would trade that in a New York minute to make sure that we keep the essence of what is America, which is, this is a place where you are safe from thugs and tyrants.
Sounds right, basic American principles, and you know, we all only live a few decades each I guess, but it seems like these are kind of lessons I learned as a kid, not from any ideological libertarian source, but just, you know, basic, this is the way things are.
In Russia, they own you and they tell you what to do here, you do whatever you want as long as you don't commit a crime against somebody else, and just kind of basic rules of the road.
This is what we all learn as kids, and it seems so soon to abandon it, you know, while we even still remember what the principles are.
I mean, maybe in 50 years or something, I don't know.
There is a heck of a battle going on, you know, we hear so much politics of the presidential race and so on, but in people's local community, in their state, there is a battle going on, and the ballot initiative process is a huge part of that, and I'm convinced it is our only real way to check the excesses of politicians.
At the national level, I mean, think about the fact that this is a brand-new Democratic Congress.
They haven't been in power one year yet, and already they're hitting the lowest approval ratings of any Congress in the history of the poll, and, of course, the obvious thing, you know, some partisan Republican might say, oh, well, see, they don't like the Democrats.
None of this sentiment is for bringing the Republicans back.
You know, we're living in a time in which we have such opportunity with the Internet, with technology, the economy is good, but almost all of us recognize that the underpinnings are not healthy, that we have a political system that is divorced from us, that we have two parties that are both, frankly, crooked as the day is long, and not trustworthy, not principled.
So how do you get a handle on that?
Well, to me, the best way to get a handle on that are things like term limits, other type of restrictions on government where you empower citizens.
One of the things I loved about the Taxpayer Bill of Rights is it really put the voters in charge of the decision to spend more, and frankly, as you know, Scott, I'm libertarian, I'm not a big fan of government spending, but if the voters vote for more government spending, then so be it, but at least then the people who are paying the bills are making the decision, instead of having it foisted on them, by politicians who, frankly, don't represent them one iota.
And we've got to start making more people aware of some of the ways to right the ship of state, because I think virtually everybody recognizes we're in a heck of a lot of trouble.
It's not about dollars and cents, it's about principles, and it's about freedom, and it's mainly about citizen control of government.
We the citizens controlling the politicians instead of the other way around.
Well, it sure seems to me like 2007, 2008 is a perfect time for a Ron Paul campaign for presidency.
I saw in your Wikipedia entry, I hope you can confirm it for me, that in 1985 when the state was persecuting you for refusing to be conscripted into their military, Congressman Ron Paul came and testified on your behalf at your trial, is that right?
He not only came, he was fantastic, fantastic, and, you know, I had never met the man at that point, he flew in, my defense fund had agreed to pay the cost of his last minute private, you know, he had a pilot who flew him up for the trial in Little Rock, somebody contacted him afterwards and he said, no, no, no, that's my donation.
A heck of a guy, happens to be right on the issues, but I think also anybody who's ever met him, whether they agree or disagree with his policy positions, would be very impressed.
This is a heck of a nice guy, a heck of a committed, principled guy.
Went to testify against conscription at the trial of a man he's never even met, and that was twenty years ago.
Yes.
So, look at the excitement he has caused, he's not getting a whole lot of coverage in the mainstream media, but thank goodness, with the internet, people can get information and get together in ways that they couldn't years ago, and he has gotten a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, and I think part of that is, people know he's telling them straight.
He's addressing what you identify as the crisis, it's not, you know, an immediate Great Depression or anything like that, it's the whittling away of our Bill of Rights, of the separation of powers, the checks and balances, the old forms of our government that kept us free, and the granting of unlimited power, basically, to those who police us, and that's what he's running against, and that's why people are latching on as well, I think.
Yes, and in fact, I think because of his principled stand against the war in Iraq, you have an awful lot of people who might not agree with him on other stuff, but you look at the Democrats, and you know, even though they sure sound like they oppose the war, when push comes to shove, none of them can say that they'd end it.
The issue I'm involved in, it's not about whether you're for the war or against the war so much as we need people in public office who actually believe in what they say and will act on their beliefs, because that's the only way we, the voters, get to really have say.
So if when we elect people, they ignore us and go huddle with special interests, which is, of course, exactly what happens, then our votes really don't matter that much, and in the last election and the election before that, the presidential elections going back, it really didn't matter who you voted for in terms of most of the major policies.
With someone like Ron Paul, you know he actually believes what he's saying, and so it will make a difference, although I have to say, chances of him being elected president are pretty slim, and for folks who are as frightened as I am about what's happening to our country, we are all going to have to get in the game.
We're not going to have somebody on a white horse save us.
My favorite guy on a white horse is Ron Paul, but he's not going to solve the whole problem.
It's going to take all of us getting engaged and speaking out and not being afraid to take part in our politics and in our government, and I would urge people to help me.
I don't know how else to say it.
I need your help, because I'm facing an attorney general who has pretty unlimited resources, and I think this is a threat not just to me, but to everybody, and I'd urge people to go to FreePaulJacob.com, and you can get all the information, you know, the legal documents will be put up there, the indictment's already up there, all kinds of explanation, and just an ongoing information on the case, so I urge people to let you use this Internet.
Is there a trial date set at this point, Paul?
There is not.
In fact, they haven't even had the first scheduling hearing.
My attorney is telling me that it's likely to go to trial about a year from now, and of course my druthers would be that it never goes to trial, because the powers that be in Oklahoma realize this is not the type of prosecution that they should be engaged in.
But I don't expect them to kind of come to that conclusion, and so we have to face that.
There's also an underlying federal court challenge to this law, which I'm very hopeful our side will win.
Not only, of course, would it mean an end to this prosecution, but it would also mean, I hope, an end to these types of laws around the country, which are designed to do nothing but to separate us, to stop people who are working at the most grassroots level of a petition drive ballot measure from communicating and working with people who happen to live across the border.
Let's take our corrupt system and export it across the world with force, because it's so perfect.
Let me ask you about one more thing real quick before I let you go, Paul Jacob from townhall.com and the Sam Adams Alliance.
You wrote this article about hotlining bills in the Imperial Senate, and I've never heard of this before in my whole life.
Can you please explain this outrage in two minutes or less?
I'll do it.
I'd never heard of it either until I read something in the paper and I thought, oh my goodness.
In the U.S. Senate, they have this procedure called hotlining.
There's a phone in every Senate office.
If the majority leader and the minority leader agree that a bill should pass, they can call all the senators' offices, and they often give the senators 15 minutes to object.
If they don't object, and of course they may be out to lunch, if they don't object, then the bill passes without any debate, deliberation, or a real vote.
It'd be one thing.
Sometimes they use this for naming post offices.
I don't know why they're naming post offices to begin with on the floor of the U.S. Senate, but okay, that's not a big deal.
Other times, they use this to pass bills that spend hundreds of millions of dollars.
I've been supportive of these efforts to get Congress to actually read the bills they pass, and I think they ought to actually vote on them, too.
I don't have the Constitution in front of me, but I'm thinking, isn't it Article I, Section 3 or something has language that mandates that they have to actually vote on their laws?
I would think it does.
I'm not sure, Scott.
That Constitution that many of us revere is a relic in Washington, D.C.
It's good for a laugh every once in a while when a constituent calls and says, hey, what about the Constitution?
You can count the folks on one hand in Washington who really care about what it says in the Constitution and pay any attention.
And of course, Ron Paul is one of those people that you'd count.
Yeah, they like the part where it grants them all this power, but they don't want to pay attention to the rest of it.
It's a wonderful document, shorter than most of the bills they passed, and yet I wonder how many of them have read it.
No doubt.
All right.
Thank you, Jacob, I'm really sorry to hear about the state of Oklahoma persecuting you like this.
I hope we can stay in touch.
You can keep us up to date on your case here.
Well, I sure will, and Scott, I appreciate the opportunity to speak out about it, because I think people need to hear about it.
I urge people, take a look at FreePaulJacob.com, and I think maybe you'll be as sickened and scared as I've been.
All right, thanks very much, and good luck to you, Paul.
Thanks, Scott.