(((My Fellow Americans))) #101: For All Tennessee

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i’ll be buried in my grave before i become [Music] that is [Music] but it seems like since that day yeah we have solely changed [Music] before i become a that is [Music] but it seems like since [Music] change [Music] [Applause] oh and now live from beautiful myrtle beach south carolina you’re watching my fellow americans with your host spike collins so that would be that hello hey hi there now you can hear me but i think this is going to continue being a problem moving forward but we’re going to find out thank you for joining me on this wednesday wednesday evening to talk about something that’s really incredible that has been happening this month with some incredible people that have been doing some amazing things in tennessee uh we’re gonna be having a great time tonight uh especially once i figure out what kind of audio issues we’re having this is a muddy waters media production check us out on facebook youtube instagram anchor twitter periscope everywhere check us out on all social 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for 10 off right now you can do exactly that that i just said joe soloski who’s running for pennsylvania governor for the libertarian party joe siloski is the key to pennsylvania’s success and if you want to help him in his run go to joe salaski that’s j-o-e-s-o-l-o-s-k-i dot com to see how you can help him take back pen pennsylvania for the people the pennsylvanians i think that’s what they’re called mud water the most appropriately named product that we will ever sell on any muddied water thing because it’s literally mud water can’t see what that says there we go coffee alternative if you woke up today drinking coffee and said damn it i’m sick of all this nonsense i want something that instead has a bunch of stuff in it masala chai cacao mushrooms turmeric sea salt cinnamon and that’s it well what a what a coincidence that is that you’re not watching this friend because if you go to muddy waters media.com mud you can get literally every single thing that you said earlier this morning in one delicious convenient package it looks like coffee it tastes it i guess similar to coffee in that it just tastes like you put something in water that isn’t delicious but it is not terrible and it will help wake you up and give you the power of mushrooms i don’t know you should probably look into what’s in this but it’s it’s really good stuff and i use it and as you can tell it certainly hasn’t affected me negatively in any substantial way so mud moneywaters media.com that’s like the worst advertising i’ve ever done for anything jack casey the author of the royal green and silver throne two books about rings butterflies and knives they have a new book coming out this summer crowned by gold which if a thousand muddy waters peoples buy this these books and buy these two books here by going to jack or jack k i think it’s jackie i should probably look that up jack no the royalgreen.com uh then he will change the name of his book to crowned by mud that is the power that you have as a consumer as part of muddy waters media family be sure to get these books i’m sure i mean look at the title the covers i know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but i haven’t read these so i’m going to do that and i’m judging that they’re not terrible so therogreen.com and personal injury attorney chris reynolds attorney at law if it turns out that the book is terrible and you want to sue me go to chrisreynoldslaw.com and you can do exactly that you can sue me you will lose because i’m jewish but you will lose but if you want to sue someone else that you can actually beat go to chrisreynoldslaw.com and and you can do that today he is a great attorney he won’t sue me he knows he’d lose uh but he is uh definitely going to help you for anyone else please don’t try to sue me that’s ridiculous uh the intro and outro music to this and every episode of my fellow americans comes from the amazing talented mr joe davey that’s j-o-d-a-v-i check him out on facebook and on his soundcloud go to his band camp go to joedavymusic.bandcamp.com buy his entire discography it’s like 25 it’s great music some of the best music you’ll ever hear be sure to do that today i’d like to thank libli for this empty bottle of water i don’t have any water i don’t i don’t have any water i’m probably going to get water when they start talking about something in a bit because there is water in this room but it’s nowhere near me right now and i needed to start the show because we’re already running late but i’d like to thank the blue for this bottle it’s good i actually take these to the airport because you’re not allowed to bring water because it could be a bomb so instead they have you leave it in a trash can right next to them with all the other potential bombs and so i bring this and i can fill it up with water i don’t know why i’m still talking about this thank you leble shout out to taron turks’s mom and him as always folks my guests tonight are two really good friends of mine and the reason they’re friends of mine is because they’re incredible people or is it that they’re incredible people because they’re friends of mine well you can judge for yourself they are the president and executive director of foreal tennessee which is a grassroots lobbying group and i know what you’re thinking lobbying group spike that’s terrible no they’re a good lobbying group they’re one of the good guys they’re one of the good guys they are in tennessee legislature pushing for changes that put the power back in the hands of the people at tennessee and help scale back some of the abuses that are happening in tennessee they have an incredible model i don’t even want to say anything more about it because they’re going to say it so much better than i possibly ever could so ladies and gentlemen my fellow americans the executive director and president of uh for all tennessee please welcome my net my guest tonight joshua eckel and justin cornett folks thanks for coming on again thanks for having us mike thanks again spike okay great they can hear you look at them you know that nailed it we did it boom i knew you’re so good at this [Music] yes thank you for that affirmation uh and folks be sure to chime in with your thoughts and questions and joshua justin and i will tell you if you are right or wrong now joshua justin um we actually had you on uh the show back in march when we were talking about some of the stuff you were getting started with but for those who missed that first of all how dare you miss an episode of my show but for those who did miss it maybe some new people maybe weren’t they around back then that’s fine uh why don’t you tell us a little bit about what pharrell tennessee is what is it that your your you know your mission what you’re trying to do yeah so spike firstly i will say we have some good news for you last time we were on your show uh we were talking about some of the shenanigans we saw in subcommittee killing our bill uh for ballot access but we’ve had some good news to share so we’ll get to that in a minute but at the high level um uh for all is a 501c4 political non-profit and we were established to mobilize tennesseans around policy that empowers people and limits government um our model is a little bit different than other 501c4s that you find a lot of the times it’s very top down you’ve got these big donors at the top coming into a state and kind of jamming their own opinions into the legislature for all’s is completely different we flip that model upside down we’re a member-driven organization the issues that we work are issues that our members pick every year um and we’re being democratized for that reason so we’re not working anything unless our members authorize it and they’re the ones that drive the policy they’re the ones that drive the agenda and obviously they’re the ones that get stuff passed really people are the ones that do it so we want to try to mobilize people around those ideas right you would think most people would have some interest in empowering themselves or limiting government’s effect over their lives so uh we think that we can build a lot of really big strong coalitions with people from all walks of life uh around this principle as opposed to around party politics now let me get this straight because this sounds insane both of you are you telling me that you trust the people of tennessee to decide what their priorities should be in lobbying to their elected officials and if so how dare you please explain yourselves now it’s crazy i mean the idea is if you’ve got any given day at the our state legislature there’s you know 50 to 100 lobbyists strolling the hallways working a number of different bills all that benefit people that you know have business interest corporations there’s a former official in the state that is trying to move his baseball team um and has had some success lobbying on the hill to help him facilitate that not to mention the slew of taxpayer-funded lobbyists that go there to uh you know the sheriff’s association or the department of safety they get to lobby on your tax dollars which right has it that’s a double-edged sword like so many things are though i mean uh the bottom line is uh you know we are hoping to genuinely create something where people’s opinions can be represented in the policies that we work and we’re trying to put in and perfect systems that will facilitate that i mean we’re actively going out uh seeking uh speaking opportunities and meetings to have discussions about what democrats want to see and what republicans want to see and what gun owners want to see and you know what moms against drunk drivers want to see and everybody in between the idea the idea for us though is if we can get trump supporters democratic socialists moderate republicans moderate democrats and centrists to all come into agreement and say we want to work these issues that we have some we have gold there yeah and those are those are the issues that need to be worked and that’s kind of the basis of what we’ve been doing from the lobby perspective right that is incredible it is amazing and we’re going to talk a little bit later on about uh how people can get involved and how they can actually be a part of uh helping you depict the type of legislative priorities that you have for the future but let’s talk about why you’re here and some of the incredible stuff you’ve gotten done including apparently some breaking news on on ballot access but let’s talk about uh i my understanding the the three main things that you’ve been able to accomplish and let’s get you guys started win again uh a week after session started i think we’re about 122 days old spike something like that and if i recall you said in the last episode and i might be paraphrasing slightly but that you were motivated solely by my words and call to action to bring the power back to the people expand upon that slightly i told the story about um the ideas origination and me bouncing it off of you in dallas at the convention yep and that i think that was the end of last year and after he spoke to you it was about two or three months of prep work and we launched second week of january 122 days later i mean spike at the beginning of the year we set a goal for ourselves that we wanted to have one legislative win and for us a legislative win was a bill that made it to the house floor another building passed little did we know we were gonna have three solid bills that protect liberty protect tennessee into rights get through the legislature this year all three of which with really massive bipartisan support so we’re we appreciate the ideas [Laughter] otherwise you would have been wondering what to do this year and you know i’m gonna reinvent myself it would have been a whole mess if nothing else i gave you guys something to do for the this was in the first session that you’ve been involved that you were able to get this done i mean okay so let’s talk about it tell us about these things that you’ve been able to help get taken care of some with broad and even unanimous passage in the uh tennessee legislature so um oh yeah so we had three different things that not only made it to floor votes passed and passed in a big way we have bill we had a bill that originally the bill prevented any state executive office holder from labeling businesses as essential or non-essential the governor wasn’t incredibly pleased with that so it was amended so that the governor no longer he was able to continue doing what he wanted to do whereas cities and counties were not uh and the bill was able to get on through 72 to 19 in the house and 27-3 in the senate uh we’ll try on the governor next year well i mean we got to build the coalition you know uh maybe when he’s on his way out and that bill would basically say yeah counting cities executives cannot make a business essential or non-essential they can’t deem it that way because in our opinion we saw the shutdowns as basically the biggest wealth transfer from small businesses to multinational corporations in the history of this country everywhere in the history of the u.s yeah yeah actually in human history yeah yeah they’ll be it’ll be 10 years down the road we’ll get really good studies on what exactly happened here but i mean yeah it’s a catastrophe i mean just in the last year 1200 small businesses in tennessee were completely shut down and that information is six or eight months old yeah i was going to say it’s probably way worse than that because that data always has i mean even in the best of reporting times there’s always at least a few months of lag on that so i would it’s probably closer to double that especially when you factor in that so many companies try to see if they’re able to get back into the black during the holiday season and that did not happen this year it could be three or four times that it’s that i mean it is really really bad so you were able to do that it wasn’t everything you wanted the governor still is able to declare uh companies to be essential businesses and and meaning people to be essential or non-essential uh but uh he uh he took away the authority from anyone else so now when something like this happens again there’s at least a single point that everyone can put pressure on to say no you can’t call us essential as an essential as opposed to like a rogue uh you know city that’s imposing that on everyone and no one’s able to really stop it so it’s a step in the white freight direction huge step in the right direction yeah but we got that one done we got one that retains the civil asset forfeiture laws here in tennessee um in tennessee uh these hearings are not conducted in the courtroom they’re conducted in the administrative setting which basically means the department of safety is judging whether or not you get to get the property back that the department of safety took from you it’s uh really good times but i you can hire a lawyer and the seizing agency whatever law enforcement agency that sees the property is responsible for reimbursing attorneys fees previously that cap was at 25 of the property value or 3 000 as a cap and we were able to get this bill through which removed the 25 language which was awful uh and raised the cap to ten thousand the average size of the forfeiture in tennessee at least at the last one it’s like twenty two hundred dollars yeah yeah yeah this 500 worth of legal expenses covered which means you get something nothing yeah yeah yeah and that is that’s an hour and a half yeah yeah yeah you know in fact that’s one hour of legal counsel uh pretty much so big deal for sure yeah and and for for those who who don’t know when we hear about civil asset forfeiture you know they try to make it sound like this is for drug kingpins where we can take their millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains and they can’t use it to hire hit men to you know knock off all the witness this is more often than not used against people that are suspected of committing a crime and have like 800 bucks in their pocket or have you know four thousand dollars worth of stuff in their house and they take it from them without them being convicted of anything and then even if they are found not guilty or the charges are dropped or the judge throws it out they still have to go through this process to get their stuff back even though it was just proven that it should have never been taken in the first place so now at least they’re able to get an attorney if the state wants to do this garbage then they can pay for the attorney for them to have the due process to get it back yeah and as josh said the average uh forfeiture is somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 to 2500 in the state of tennessee um so you’re not knocking down kingpins with that i mean and there are seizures that are in the you know hundreds of thousands of dollars or maybe even millions of dollars every year and it’s bringing that average up uh so yeah it’s we’re not knocking down king pins with it and if i could add one more thing to you justin the you know there’s a perverse incentive baked into the law the way it was written right it basically incentivized the department of safety to extend trials because yeah i don’t know if you have anything yeah well i i didn’t mean to interrupt i really did but um the law as it was had a negative incentive for law enforcement if you can just stall all of a sudden they can’t afford to defend themselves whereas the new law changes the incentive completely and now the question is does an officer pull in somebody with a 2500 car that they’re going impound when there’s a risk that they pay out ten thousand dollars an attorney exactly so this might end up uh really raising that average and maybe we actually do knock down some kingpins but we reduce the overall number of seizures no that and that’s exactly it this makes the state via its enforcers say is this worth it right is this worth taking this guys because 2200 is the average the median is probably like much lower than that because once you take out those multi-million dollar impoundings or 100 000 you’re probably talking the average time this is being used is like around a thousand bucks or less it’s someone having a few hundred bucks or a couple grand being taken from them and now the state has to say is it even worth going through that or do we just worry about that after we get a conviction if you get a conviction for something and again we’re you know i’m against the war on drugs and all of that stuff but as long you know something is on the books right now it’s you can’t argue it’s hard to argue that the state can’t take something to reimburse for cost once it’s proven they did it but this uh was absurd and and the even though this doesn’t end civil asset forfeiture it certainly ends or at least greatly disincentivizes the abusive predatory civil asset forfeiture that so often then forces people to plead guilty because they can’t afford an attorney they’re getting railroaded these trumped-up charges are being dropped on them uh and and they’re being told and because of cash bail they can’t get out uh and and uh you know if they have been over criminalized uh a lot of bail bondsmen don’t want to touch it so now they’re stuck in jail until they just plead guilty to it so it’s it is this is this at least helps fray that and and and make it a lot more prohibitively expensive to go after people and and predict predat um right predator predate them avoid predatory policing yeah get away predatory prey on them it makes it yeah that was i knew there was a word for that to disincentivize preying on you know these these small fries that may or may not have even done anything wrong yeah unfortunately we had a bill that was a reporting bill that would have given us mean and median and where the dollars went and demographics on who was being involved in civil forfeitures unfortunately that one died in large part thanks to a uh state-funded lobbyist which is a whole nother story that uh next year it’s a step see guys this it’s a step in the right direction right sure these are the last two things these in these last two things you didn’t get everything you wanted but you are much further along than you were and that’s because of the direct work that you are doing building relationships not just complaining there’s a place for complaining but actually going into where it’s happening going into the rooms where these things are being done into the buildings in the halls where these things are being done putting up with some of the nonsense that happens in there we can if you want we can talk a little bit about it there’s plenty of room yeah uh but but uh you know but and still going through it and saying you know what i’m still gonna try to get whatever i can and so i i know i’m grateful to you and i know the people of tennessee are grateful to y’all what you’re doing there to get that done now let’s talk about the big one where you got pretty much i as i understand pretty much everything you wanted uh and in a broadly broadly bipartisan manner uh i i’d say i dare say nonpartisan like it was just passed uh as a sort of a you talk about it it literally had zero no votes in the house or senate but it’s uh no knock rates uh and a lot of other reforms positive reforms to policing here in tennessee specifically banning uh yeah it bans the issuance of no knock warrants so under no circumstance can a judge issue a warrant that authorizes a no knock surge it also uh restricts the use of choke holds uh it limits the ability to fire at moving vehicles uh it requires de-escalation training uh a and it also uh and arguably most importantly um it requires officers to intervene in situations of uh excess use of excess force and report on situations that they are aware of of excess force yeah that that piece right there cannot be underestimated that possibly even though it kind of buries the lead that one possibly long term is the biggest one because at least the way it’s written and should be interpreted it is now a big it is now a crime to not intervene when a fellow officer is using unnecessary force so when we talk about why don’t the good cops stop the bad cops this makes them yeah and it prevents any kind of retribution from anybody that might be higher up the food chain yep that’s uh so yeah it’s a it’s a really good build it’s uh one of the strongest bills in the country there are five other states that have a ban on no knox maryland virginia florida washington tennessee five states total sorry um and then you got kentucky and new mexico they have uh also banned no knocks but with the exception of if the police think that evidence might be destroyed which is pretty much the premise for all known all known off raids yeah it means it’s not an interesting van yeah um so but the bill that tennessee has is one of the strongest ones in the country by a long shot we’re glad to see our state lead in the way and if it prevents you know one more brie on a table or one life safe is by far not you know it makes it worth it well this is really the dream legislation i mean there are a couple other things that you could ask for you could ask for you know a um amount of time before um between a knock and an injury uh which is you know something that’s a real concern just a lot of people but uh at the very least uh we got a ban on the issuance of the warrants uh and um right we’re moving in in the right direction i mean this goes a long way to allaying some fears in some communities of police we hope uh and uh maybe makes it a little bit more of a uh voluntary exchange between police and the people they’re supposed to serve yeah yeah this is this and this is where again when i was reading through the details of this and i saw a duty to intervene and i said i that can’t be what i think it is and i’m reading it i went that’s what i think it is and this is where once this is pat now this is uh has the governor signed it at this point or it’s still on his desk yeah yes sir so this is the law now okay okay all right so now that this is the law the next step is educating the public in tennessee that when you are witnessing you know detainments or anything like that and you’ve got your camera out don’t just record it if you see uh improper use of force remind the other officers there of their legal duty to intervene just in case they forget because you know it’s new just in case they forget remind them of their legal duty to intervene in the crime that is happening in front of them absolutely i mean the back the blue thing isn’t entirely horrible it’s back the blue that does its job for people as opposed to those that you know take advantage of their position or whatever yeah bad police are the re i mean bad police really reflect poorly on the good police no you fix that problem you get rid of the bad apples and you hold them accountable and then it’s easier yeah it’s easier to please communities it’s easier to have healthy relationships so we’re really excited to see tennessee leading the way on this and um you know more to come in the near future 123 out of 133 uh people in the two chambers voted yes and there were zero no votes which means all the other 10 weren’t there that is now there were a couple people that that that voiced a little bit of disagreement in subcommittee but they eventually won yeah one the leader of the leader of the house the republican majority majority leader that’s what it was yeah but you know what that was a little bit opposition but he eventually voted for it so when went and in his opposition his opposition was that um the no knock raids had a really high bar based on judicial statute in the state uh so tennessee wasn’t super bad about this as some other states have been um but he he was hoping to get just the basic legal statutes codified into law whereas this is an outright ban on it so this was more of a procedural thing than anything also he’s signaling a little right like it’s like well for those who think that i’m anti-please i’m not which meanwhile again this is not anti-police this is anti-abuse um one of the and we talk about this a lot uh not just for this but in general when you get rid of the things that make so many people angry at the police there’s less anger at the police so get rid of no knock raids make it so that bad apples are are rooted out because what do they say the bad apples spoiled a bunch so get them out of there and if the problem isn’t just that apple but it’s the barrel that the apples are in as a recent guest of mine said then fix the barrel so that we don’t have that anymore because then the good apples are when they drive down the street people are cheering that they’re in that they’re driving by because they know that they’re not there to enforce victimless crime laws they know that they’re not there to give them a hard time or hassle them they’re certainly not there to abuse them they’re not there to break into their house they’re there only to protect them exactly servant protect the public against the bad guys and so that’s that’s what we want um derek rhodes says he’s liking what he’s hearing especially since he’s um he’s going to be moving to tennessee in a couple years so you guys you guys are helping lay the groundwork for a better tennessee 4ltn.org go to the website there’s a contact us and let us know how we can get you involved absolutely that’s yeah that’s fantastic so let’s talk about the other thing so the last time that you guys were on the show and i don’t even know what you’re about to tell me because this is this is not uh uh this is this is nothing that’s on the in that i knew about uh the last time that we were on the show that you guys were on my show and we actually played it on the muddy waters of freedom as well you had a situation where you introduced a bill a ballot access bill and you can get into the details but the long story short is it would it would have made things more fair for ballot access for third parties to get on the ballot along with the the republic rats and um it had the votes to pass and by voice vote it was passed except the uh the guy in charge of that subcommittee he heard this these three and four votes slightly differently than literally every other person that heard it tell us about that and i guess tell us what your big news is yeah i mean that’s that’s exactly what it was uh yeah no i mean the bill that we just for our audience’s sake the bill that we we promoted and in tennessee if you want to run as a third-party candidate you know libertarian green uh kanye west birthday party you’ve got to collect 56 082 signatures get on the ballot the republicans democrats in independence is 25 signatures so we wanted to take that down to something a lot more in line with the national average which was about 11 000. yeah so uh that bill as you as you said exactly as you said went through your subcommittee um and we had the majority vote going into it we had the we had to vote passed by voice vote you have to the chairman gaveled it for the maze um but this is one of the lessons learned that we had from session and this wasn’t the only time that this happened um this same thing happened three or four times including to the person that did it to us yeah the person that did it to us and his his situation was actually quite a bit worse he walked in you know procedurally he’s walking in to roll a bill uh to put it off for a couple of weeks right and instead of taking the vote on that the chairman allowed some testimony and then there was somebody that caught the question and the next thing you know he doesn’t get to say anything else except for i want to roll the bill and they’re voting on his bill and they kill it yeah and it was a similar situation where um they the voice vote sure sounded like it was a yes vote uh right it was definitely called for the nose but that was a lesson that we learned this session and next year we’re going to be bringing a bill to our members obviously they have to authorize us to work this but we’re going to be bringing a bill to our members that basically requires a voice requires a roll call vote in subcommittee committee uh session so it should mitigate that problem in my mind it makes sense for people to go on the record when they vote it keeps obviously we have a problem right the only question is can we get somebody to run it that’s going to be the tough part who wants to sponsor yeah who wants to go be the bad guy and basically ask everyone to go on the record that’s going to be a tough one whoever takes that bill uh pay attention because they they care about you know they care about the process more than they care about their seat because they’re going to catch the need for it and there’s a good chance they’re not even running for re-election this is their this is their their bridge burn before they drive away bye everyone and uh and and kind of push this through because the thing is you know you can this can be easily a a again non-partisan issue that why should we not be finding out exactly how every single one of the the representatives and senators voted or didn’t vote because many of them often don’t vote how what they how they voted on a thing because you can say stuff all day long but if it was passed by voice vote uh or or failed by voice vote uh then uh then it’s you know it doesn’t matter don’t even lie you can literally lie it’s not on the record and that’s why and that’s actually that’s why it exists that way and that’s why it’s protected is because it gives leadership that extra degree of wiggle room like if they want to kill something or kind of shoot something down it just gives them more flexibility and more power to like subversion yes to subvert the will of the committee or the constituents that are represented on the committee and so that’s a problem um that needs to be fixed i mean there are state legislators across the country legislatures across the country that require roll call vote why it’s not an abnormal thing um i mean all we got to do for the lights on the desk with the technology now there is zero reason not to have this you could literally just have them press a thing we do it at our conventions where it’s literally you know people writing on a sheet of paper and collecting it we sit there and talk to each other but not too loudly because we don’t want to distract the people that are counting some people talk loudly but you know we’re just sitting there waiting for however many minutes it takes voting on all this stuff there is no reason they can’t just have you know boo and and you see how they voted or didn’t vote you know yes no abstain that’s that is easy and and unnecessary but you know what else to spike it’s more efficient it’s faster it’s easier uh there’s no re there’s no real case for it the only case for it is i want to keep more power and i want to have the ability to vote the only case is yeah i want i want it for reasons that you know are not about getting the vote correct and that’s why i mean at the very minimum spike this is what we’ve had we’ve enjoyed this element of it or we’ve been we’ve been having when you put a p when you put a bill like that it really forces people to go on the record when you bring it up in subcommittee there’s conversations that have that happen you can watch the recorded voicemail the funny thing and this is kind of a a pivot uh but real quick all year we’ve been in pandemic mode people wearing masks right in the past you used to be able to watch the committee hearing video and see people voice yes or no and now they’re masked so it gives them even more latitude and if they keep if they keep this whole mass except going on the legislature it’s going to continue to be a problem so it’s got to be fixed [Laughter] one of the best ones he’s ever done because he’s not yeah no that’s good that’s good you can say hey how’d you guys like to not have to worry about we’re in the mask anymore now you can just press this thing no it’s uh it’s it’s a that’s a that’s a big deal so you just got to find someone that’s ready to jump on that landmine um we gotta research the legal on it too because i mean i think the senate does this already but i’m sure it’s senate rules versus house rules uh oh so the senate already has where it’s by some kind of like but there’s only 33 in the senate there’s a 99 on technology we haven’t even heard of yet to go from 33 to 99. no it’s yes i mean it’s different but there’s no reason not to have it there is literally it is everything is astounded it is astounded me that when you talk and then you said this actually isn’t uncommon there are other states that that do this too where they will literally have the votes to pass something and the person in charge doesn’t like it so they go no no they said no i or they i’m not gonna throw any accusations but if you want to be conspiratorial uh there was a guy that walked out right before the vote um to make the margin closer so i mean it’s just that much closer that was intellectual so i i don’t know if there was a powwow important scene and say yeah let’s make this a little closer so we can call it not catch as much heat i don’t know what it was maybe it was nothing but it no reason i i ended up having a conversation with the chairman that gaveled it incorrectly or presumably incorrectly uh and uh you know let him know that we had conversations with our yes votes and they all said they voted yes we’ve got emails from them through constituents that all say that they voted yes uh and asked him if he would reconsider it and he’s like it’s not what i heard and none of the members of the committee brought it up to him meaning no one was willing to stick their neck out for us on this bill to jeopardize upsetting the chair and putting any legislation that they might have in jeopardy um so there’s not a whole lot you can do there’s not a whole lot of recourse there you know except for bring the bill back next year and assuming our members offer us to do so um we will um right and i don’t know spike if you mind if if i pivot to another point that’s kind of related to this one if we’re talking about lessons learned this year we learned a lot um etiquette and not pissing off leadership is is uh is is way more uh deeper rooted and important than you would think so i i don’t know if you want to tell the story of representative griffey what happened to you because i think it really should i think i think that’s very much worth talking about it goes right along with everything else yeah um so yeah there are i’ve had a number of conversations with legislators on uh you know this etiquette type topic and uh none of them are really willing to challenge chairs in any given situation um and there was one particular guy um who had a bill that he ran on he was trying to you know he campaigned in his district on trying to get this bill through and he found himself in a similar situation uh where it sounded like a yes vote but it was a no it got gambled for the nose um well he complained apparently there was a complaint then and that there was uh a conversation from leadership about how when a bill dies bill is dead let’s move on right he this guy got onto the house floor and motioned to bring his bill back and when he did that the speaker of the house immediately i mean so fast it genuinely makes your head spin uh words weren’t even all the way out of the dude’s mouth and he picked up the gavel he slammed it down fails no no motion no second and the next day wow that guy’s key card to the building didn’t work he was taken off of every committee that he was on and it stayed that way for a week or two probably he was on punishment for this to send the message yeah and and that is a process problem because what that does is it basically what that basically says to me is that leadership sees going along to get along more important than representing the people that you that are that put you in that seat so you will actually get punished for trying to represent your constituency by the leadership in the tennessee general assembly that is not most of them let’s be real right and maybe legislatures across the country i’m only we’re only talking about tennessee here that’s a real problem i mean and if that continues to get worse and worse um leadership continues to consolidate more power people are less represented it it just it’s it’s not a system that needs to continue and i think a good step is um you know we’re looking at reforms to try to fix that the voice vote thing was or the roll call voting was one of those things but we’re keeping a close eye on it because it’s it’s not getting better it’s getting worse even the subcommittee leader who did the thing to you he had it happen to him exactly right and that’s why they’re not willing to yeah there’s always a bigger dog at the chain right and he did nothing about it i assume he just oh well then i guess that’s not happening and he turned around and did it to you so this is a culture of this right this he doesn’t want to get primaried he said that he didn’t do it they he brought that up when i was talking to it it’s like it happened to me the day before yeah i wouldn’t do it like that because i didn’t like it but it was done to me he said he promised he wasn’t trying to work against me he swears that he called it the way that he genuinely thought he heard it seems like the other is true but we will leave it we’ll leave you guys to make that you know what let’s make it easier for him to not have to worry about how he heard it by just making it where you can see how everyone voted and it’s recorded now that just it’s one less thing on this poor man’s uh docket that he has to deal with figuring out you know eight people voted uh by voice that are sitting right next to him how they we can just take that right off his plate what what a perfect opportunity so some other lessons learned here you know what are some of the other things that you learn in your in very productive first session here i just got one more and if you don’t mind i’ll touch on it so we talked about this a little bit earlier taxpayer funded lobbyists are a very very big problem and we saw it with um i think it was hb 409 which was justin lafferty’s reporting built for civil forfeiture justin and i if you’re curious you’ve got our website quality and we actually broke down the hearing to kind of show you the misrepresentation that was coming from the sheriff’s association and the department of safety but these people are lobbyists that typically work for state agencies like the department of safety these people get paid to go into subcommittee and basically work against bills that are brought by um reps that are there to you know represent their constituents theoretically at least so it happens all the time with silver formature the example that i give you and justin touched on this earlier with hp 409 all we were trying to do was ask the department of safety to tell the public hey how many times when you do a seizure how many how many times does that end in a criminal conviction and that was our first step to like lay the foundation and start figuring out the scope and of the problem of civil force of the problem to begin with yeah right so they showed up now you think this is simple and it is simple we have uh county clerks and judges on the record that we’ve spoken to across the state that refute the claim i’m about to reference the department of safety said it was going to cost them millions of dollars in committee to facilitate this request because they would have to build a software system from scratch to aggregate all the cases across all the counties in all the states um you know again we have very very uh acknowledged people on this that are on the record saying that’s a complete jam it’s simply asking a question um yeah so so that that’s the bigger problem is these people are getting paid by you the taxpayer to to lie often lie spread misinformation and work to empower the state so you’re basically paying the state’s lobby itself how screwed up is that um it’s and the problem is so much deeper than that too i i mean the the the lies is simply a consequence their role is to have information that is relevant to an issue and give accurate representations of that information and when they do that they provide a really good service because no legislator can know all the ins and outs of all these different departments and they’re legitimate questions but i you know we we did our homework on this one uh and we have a number of people including the guy on the ground the court clerk we have court clerks that we have talked to on this on how does the system work what if you need to add new things to the system how does that work how complicated is that right and you know it’s the answer is it’s not uh and uh the idea that they needed a million or two dollars it was uh nonsensical and scared everybody off the boat and the taxpayer funded lobbyists to be honest with you spike are one of the biggest barriers to civil forfeiture reform in the state they always come out law enforcement and department of safety and always come out to lobby against pretty much any reform opportunity um and they get paid by you to do it and we think there’s something wrong with that and those relationships get developed through those conversations so when it comes down to it if there’s a dispute in something the state funded lobbyists that they’ve talked to a thousand times is going to be more trusted than my work in this case it was really ironic because the department of safety was arguing that the fiscal note should be more in the one to two million dollar range it had a fiscal note on it at 34 000 or something like that right yeah meaning that’s how much additional funds it was going to cost the state so you had the state fiscal review board arguing with the department of safety on how much this was going to cost and this fiscal review board said thirty four thousand dollars but the department of safety gets in there and says million two million dollars and the legislators are all like they obviously know what does fiscal review know uh all they do is review every freaking bill that costs money yeah how could how could the actual accountants who do nothing but do forensic accounting on what things will cost at the absolute granular level all the way up to the macro level how could they possibly know better than a lobbying group who has a vested interest in not being held accountable that this is a problem with really taxpayer-funded lobbies taxpayer-funded unions which i mean thankfully you at least don’t have that there but the lobbies are essentially working as a union when it comes to this type of stuff lack of accountability in in from a legislative standpoint uh just the police department unions the the law enforcement uh unions and lobbies across the country uh if all combined amount to the second largest lobbying concern in the united states second only to the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry um if you then add all of the teachers unions and lobbies and all of their and i shouldn’t even say teachers the education complex unions and lobbies and all of these different things they’re easily the largest law being concerned the tax payer the we want more taxpayer money and less or at least no more accountability lobbying that exists in the in congress and in all of the state legislatures and city-wide uh uh you know halls of power in the country are easily the largest concern and because it’s a because it is taxpayer-funded lobbyists working with taxpayer-funded politicians about taxpayer-funded initiatives and the only disincentive built in is to not go with the flow and get kicked out and primaried and not be able to continue being there meaning there’s no real incentive for them to do that it leads to this kind of closed-loop gravy train that just gets worse and worse and worse and that means function it’s a good old boy system it’s it’s uh it’s a lot of things it’s all the things that george washington prophesied about his great work george washington’s farewell address right right so do you have a an idea for let me be a legislative fix to that or is it really just a vigi vigilism and and i mean you could go all out and try to ban taxpayer-funded lobbyists i’ll be honest with you though um i we are still um wrapping up sessions so as we go through this summer we’re engaging our research team and our legislative team to try to come up with a legislative solution to address that problem and we present it to our members i haven’t seen model legislation on this but to be honest with the spike we started seeing the scope in this problem about 60 days ago right and so we’re still um we’re still collecting data to figure out the best way to address it i think one thing that they are apparently able to do that no one else is able to do is they can simply request to be heard on a piece of legislation um and i think if that was not the case and everybody just like everybody else they had to be asked uh to uh come and testify on a bill i think that that would be a small change that actually made a pretty big difference right actually have them on the record for it instead of just in the back halls doing stuff right right well that’s good so here you know you guys are just getting started uh with what you’ve been able to accomplish and uh you know you’re already looking forward to what the next legislative session is but like you said that’s not entirely up to you it’s up to the people that are becoming a part of forall tennessee tell us about this how can people get involved and actually help you pick legislation to decide what what does that process look like and how can people get involved in it yeah so it’s kind of a multi-phase process so between now and the end of the year we’re surveying our members and we have um a list that we’re putting together of issues that are within that scope and we are polling our members constantly and saying hey you know what issues do you care about what reform missions do you want to hear that information goes into basically a master list of a variety of different reform opportunities and then at the end of the year when we get to q3 q4 we basically put it to a vote so if you paid this 60 a year minimum to be a member and you’re included in that distribution list you’re going to get a ballot that it’s basically a ranked choice ballot that says you know out of these issues what do you care about um and and and the the issues that make it to the top of the list are the issues that we’re going to work um the one other thing that we do um and when you look at the most part yeah exactly there’s got to be there’s got to be some caveats there isn’t we we have to be mindful of how many bills we take on yeah you know how many bills we can kind of combine together uh it’s where you know we’re not working we’re working three things at once and you know it makes it a little bit easier so we got a good job with the stress load that we can have that’s right and we also have an advisory committee and the advisory committee that we have is made up of elected legislators phd professors foreign former lawmakers and it’s evenly split between republicans democrats and centrists so there’s a balance there in the sense that the advisory committee basically has to sign off things on things just like the membership does so the advisory committee basically is the check step to ensure that we stay true to our mission we listen to our members and it’s also a bipartisan and it’s about bipartisan action because these people are actually multiple it’s actually multi-partisan exactly we want everybody represent we want to show that we can get people of all kinds of different political ideologies in the same room and come out with a lot of really good ideas that we can get done in tennessee that empower tennesseans or limit the government uh when it comes to their restrictions over their lives and if you if you look at our website it’s on the very front page of our website we focus on principles and not personalities policy not personality so we are focused on trying to get rid of the absolute bombardment of out-of-control political personalities that seek to divide people put you in boxes make you scared of the other side and we want to look at both sides and we want to say what can we agree on and if we can find things that both sides agree on then we know we have something that works and that’s the core of this entire organization is we’re not going to work it if it’s a we’re not going to grip to one side or the other it has got to have consensus or it’s not going to get worse and the stuff that bubbles up is is really good good legislation typically so so what are a couple examples of some potential bills and again i know you have to take it to the the floor for your your your people to be uh uh because you don’t just do voice vote in in for all tennessee what uh what are some examples of things that you think uh that you’re going to present for potentially uh being some of the things you’re going to do in the next session there’s so many things i mean i’ve got a wish list that’s miles long but i mean i can tell you what i’m hearing the most i mean we’re hearing a lot about qualified immunity we’re hearing a lot about medical marijuana uh ranked choice voting uh money bail um you know reforming that system um occupational licensing i’m trying to think i’ve got a list here of some of the stuff our members have given us those are the big ones um you know i i’ve heard also about uh reforming the death penalty um you know we’ve heard about tax reform ending marriage licenses was a bill that was actually ran this year that we would like to see come back and uh put some work in on we got in late and didn’t realize it was there until it was too late yeah 1500 bills to go through but there’s there’s a hit list a mile long and you’ll probably gather some of these are a little bit more partisan uh some of these are a little bit less partisan we’re hoping that once we get this master list compiled this year and we throw it through the system the process that we put together it will be a very solid us you know list obviously i i’m going to tell you right now spike i’m i’m very confident that we’re going to be working something on civil forfeiture again next year and i’m pretty confident that we’re going to be working something on ballot access as well just due to the nature of our membership but um that remains to be finalized and if you want to get involved in that for the people listening for alltn.org membership you could pay 60 bucks you get included in that distribution list and we’ll be pulling you through the summer yeah name another organization that says what do you guys want us to do for you yeah that’s that’s 60 bucks um a a year a year a year a year yeah five bucks so for five dollars a month for less than the price of like a cup of coffee a week yeah you can be a part of and do they don’t have to call mcdonald’s coffee yeah i was going to say it’s not even even a lavish coffee and now they uh uh people do not have to be residents of tennessee or they do nope they do not have to be residents of tennessee to vote no we and we don’t we’re hoping that we can expand this to other states so we appreciate anything that we can get uh from that people want to see this organization succeed and come to them i do have followers outside of the united states they do have to be american citizens uh check with legal on that i need to check legal on i’m guessing that they do most anything that has to do with legislation or lobbying or political parties or anything like that almost i i’m not sure i know of an example of one where it isn’t so ours aren’t tax deductible or able to be hidden either though yeah okay okay if you are if you are out of this country and you want to donate money shoot us an email at info 4lcn.org i’ll be with my legal counsel and i’ll have an answer on the website and we’ll see we’ll see if we’re able to but for all americans certainly anyone who wants to be a part of this for like a buck something a week you can be involved in the process of setting tennessee free at the grassroots right there in the halls of power in a in a process that you’re staying accountable to your own ideas it’s not just about telling the legislature what they need to do but also being in total control of your lobbying group it’s about creating the model for what you want to see in the in your group and then exporting that out to what you think that the the people need to have in there in their uh elected officials in the legislature basically the anti-party is what it is it is a way to have political momentum and avoid the bs that you get in the partisan system and uh if we can grow this our target goal is 2 000 members this year we’ll be ready to spread this to other states we already have about two or three states in the wings ready to go as soon as we give them the green light and we want to make this a national organization that um that focuses on healing the wounds of partisanship and we need we really need your help so you’re very well freed i lo i love it this is what we talk about on the show and i i talk about on the trail you know going to different conventions and events every single i was just in uh i just got show you guys uh what the weekend before last and uh this this is what i talk about the partisanship is intended to create division in order to distract people from the fact that they are being robbed by everyone in positions of power and instead to fight each other when we’re all victims here to varying degrees and if instead we turn that around and unify against the people that are actually doing this to us we can very easily remove them from power but we have to come together to be able to do that once we do that then it’s it’s all it’s all smooth sailing after that well said brother well said yeah and again we’re very intentional about trying to make sure that we are not only bringing and getting real unity and diversity of thought in this project but trying to show that we’re doing that i mean we want to set up events with democrats and republicans getting along on stage and not attacking each other talking about things that they can work together on that fit inside the wheelhouse of empowering people and limiting government yeah and if you’re in the nashville area we’ll be having an event um second week of june um we’re hoping to have a couple lawmakers here to talk about the very minimum we’re going to be giving people just a really brief synopsis on for all having a lot of one-on-one conversations having a couple of beers um and we’d love to see you can get alerted on that by going to 4ltn.org and just getting on our mailing list here at the bottom of the page so love to see you i i love it guys so for all tennessee.org eventually you guys are going to be when i saw the branding and everything else when i saw the branding and everything else i’m like you guys are already you’re you’re you’re working grassroots you guys are already positioning yourself for making this a statewide and eventually national or multi-state and eventually national thing and i love it because this model is going like you said anti-party this model eliminates the whole purpose of what the political parties were supposed to represent were well this will give the people a chance to come together and and voice their concern no it doesn’t it gives people a pa it just centralizes things even more before they even get to government this does the opposite of that it puts the power back in the hands of the people which is all we preach on this show and and everything else we’re doing and every single person and every single organization that exists is a potential ally as long as they’re okay with empowering people or limiting government everybody it doesn’t matter who ever we’ll work with anyone to do good no one to do harm that’s the rule so we’re not ex you want to talk about a big tent it’s one principle and everybody can find something i love it i love it guys for all tennessee uh if you want to stick around i’m gonna just go through a couple of these comments here uh before i give you guys the uh the final word here uh i have been asked to make you say something that i had to say on the last episode which i’m i’m definitely not gonna make them say that um jenny moore uh two things from jenny moore jenny moore uh says that texas is listening and learning but she also asks uh and we we talked about this earlier on uh so she may not have heard it does tennessee require filing fees for ballot access or or or signature or just the signatures just the signatures okay um i got a question from from what’s that i said a lot of signatures but yeah yeah like just the filing fee is the all the money you’re spending having to get those signatures um uh liberty shamrocker asked me spike any news on ohio’s qi bill actually no and i need to reach out to them and see where we stand on that um they were supposed to we’ve already reached the point where the attorney general has to either uh say one way or another uh that the qi the qualified immunity bill that was presented to be added to the legislature to the ref the ballot in uh in ohio for the voters to vote directly on uh whether that the wording in the uh description was was fair and balanced um and uh and represented the actual wording right correctly um my understanding was that if the if the attorney or attorney general did not rule one way or another it automatically did get registered but i will follow up and find out um and uh someone says uh i made it how boston let you know that he made it um hey what’s up uh let’s see uh jack casey saying if you need to sue someone uh get in touch with chris reynolds um he’ll help you sue um and uh denise uh cox denise housley cox says my heroes great work guys um i don’t see any questions here i just see a bunch of people saying how fantastic you are and i certainly agree um i mean that’s good but we must prepare questions brent says he loves your tie joshua and uh okay well great so literally everything everything that i’m seeing here uh is uh is just people saying how fantastic you are so clear uh clearly uh you guys have won over the followers before i let you go uh i want to give both of you guys a chance to say anything you feel like we didn’t get a chance to say tell us about anything upcoming i think we cover most everything but i want to give you the chance joshua eckel and justin cornett the floor is yours i get one thing and i just i i’d be a jerk if i didn’t mention it here um one of the things that we are hoping to start next year is something that we’ve tentatively dubbed the repeal project um this being a libertarian audience in general should appreciate the idea of repealing bills repealing bills so the idea would be to have 10 15 20 make whatever are the worst most egregious things that are in code like can’t take a fish off another person’s book or some stupid right right laws like this and just start getting them going and every year keep getting keep repealing more and more things condition everybody to kind of accept that and think hey this is a avenue that we can use for a lot of different things right right things that really matter and if you’re and just to recap in mind if your audience is interested in sharing a law that they want to see repealed or if they’re interested in having a vote as i said earlier for altean.org go to the bottom of the page sign up there with the get involved section and then if you want to become a member you should see a 4ltn.org membership we’d love to have you and then you can always reach out to us i’m at joshua on twitter i think he’s justin c on twitter i don’t even know you’ll find that links are on the list he is j cornette with two t’s one two two five uh on twitter and i know this because i just had to tag him and boy was that difficult uh but he uh uh but it’s if you go to the for all tennessee page and i think in the about section it has uh all of yeah it’s got all social links yes yeah all the social links are there so stay in touch with these guys uh uh joshua and justin thank you again so much for being on stick around i want to talk with you during the outro um folks thank you so much for watching this amazing episode of my fellow americans i love the rare times that we’re actually able to talk about things happening government that aren’t uniformly terrible so here was a great opportunity for that and how uh some information on how you can help do more uh in the future um so uh join me tomorrow night uh well join first on thursday at eight tomorrow at 8 p.m eastern join um matt wright for his show the money the the writer’s block it’s just his show it’s not our show his show the writer’s block and uh his guest i don’t know who the hell his guest is but you’re not gonna believe who it is it’s the best guest that he could ever possibly have tomorrow so uh be sure to tune into that and then immediately after that ends at 10 pm uh tomorrow night on thursday join me i’m picking up my phone because it’s on club join me on clubhouse if you are on clubhouse i’m gonna be on there i don’t understand clubhouse i’m gonna be on clubhouse someone else is hosting it they’re doing what i’m gonna be on clubhouse join me on clubhouse whatever that even means i’m at spike cohen on clubhouse whatever that even means and just just i’m on you’ll hear me on clubhouse just join me on that’s all i can tell you i don’t know anything past that if you go on a clubhouse and follow me then my understanding is you will be told when i start talking at 10 or not i’m pretty sure that’s how it works just join me on clubhouse i’m not selling this very well but i don’t understand clubhouse this would be like me talking about being on tick tock or something okay so join me on clubhouse and i will see you there or actually you i won’t see you there you won’t see me either you’ll hear me uh on clubhouse join me on clubhouse that’s i don’t know i’m still talking about this then on friday uh join me in uh golden colorado i’ll be at the libertarian party of colorado’s 2021 convention and 50th anniversary extravaganza that’s what i’m calling it go to lpcolorado.org to sign up today if you live anywhere near golden colorado just outside of denver and we will be having a fantastic time there i will be speaking we’ll be participating in workshops there will be all sorts of other libertarian superstars there including giving uh going to be part of a uh charitable uh event happening there in lp colorado tasha cohen my wife she’ll be there so everyone seems to care more about that than me so she’ll be there and uh be i will be putting out information about how you can help with a charitable effort that we are putting together there uh so more on that later so bring uh money to give to this charity uh or bring some uh non-perishable goods uh more on that later this weekend golden colorado lpcolorado.org then join me right back here next week on tuesday for the muddy waters of freedom where uh matt matt wright and i will parse through the week’s events like the sweet little monkeys that we are and then join me right here uh on wednesday same spike place same spike time for another fantastic episode of my fellow americans who’s my guest gonna be i don’t remember but it’s gonna be amazing so join me next week folks thanks so much again for tuning in i’m spike cohen and you are the power god bless guys [Music] yay [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] brings light to kindness all you need is a sign put a cease to the crimes put an ease of the minds like mine sometimes darkness is all i find you know what they say about an eye for a night in a time when the blood is is [Music] tell me why [Music] make a change we will make the change [Music] you