Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Creating Wealth Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, and this is episode number 279. Thanks so much for joining me today. Well, gosh, lots going on nowadays as you can see in the news media, the real estate market is booming. I am by no means saying this is some sort of economic recovery, I don’t think it is. As you know, I’m not an optimist anymore, I’m just an opportunist and I encourage you to do the same because we can’t control so many of the things going on out there in the economy and we can’t control ridiculous, obnoxious, irresponsible government spending and the mismanagement that is occurring out there, but we can act and plan and take steps according to our goals, and boy, there is a lot of opportunity out there right now, just an amazing, amazing amount of opportunity in the investment market. Income property is just doing so well, I mean, look at all the factors that we have that are coalescing to just form this perfect opportunity and we’ve been talking about them on the last 278 episodes no doubt, but you’ve got the largest demographic cohort in American history moving into their prime rental years, that’s great for us as investors because we have this huge pool of renters but they are saddled with huge student loan debt, meaning they probably won’t be able to be buyers as soon as the prior generations were. They will have to put off that. They’re putting off marriage, they’re putting off family formation, so that’s good news. Prices are increasing, new home construction is coming back. You can still buy properties below replacement costs which that opportunity is disappearing very, very quickly. So, I encourage you to take advantage of that. Last month actually, home sales were down ever so slightly, they were down just a little bit from the prior month but the reason that is, is it’s interesting, it’s because the resale inventory has been gobbled up like crazy, and I just saw a report on this this morning on CNBC of how the resale inventory has been gobbled up and there has been virtually no new home construction in the past several years. So, the point is, there is not enough inventory, and without inventory, you can’t have sales. So, there is definitely an inventory shortage, yet, at the very same time, and this is how Target sort of makes sense out of all this, isn’t it? The very same time, we still have people talking about the inventory hangover, or really more appropriately, should be called the overhang, but this inventory hangover as everybody keeps referring to it, is about all the properties that are either on their way to foreclosure now. A lot of those properties are going to be turned around because we’re seeing this new bubble inflating. Again, I just want to go on record. I’m not saying this is logical, I’m not saying it’s a healthy price increase or recovery or anything like that, I’m just saying, look, we’ve got QE3, quantitative easing number three upon us, then Bernanke just said a week and a half ago, he just said that he will basically create money out of thin air until the cows come home. That’s an old expression if you’re not familiar with it. But he’ll just keep doing that forever as long as he needs to. This is the big balance to win elections and the pressure on from the White House on Bernanke is create jobs, and how do you create jobs? Well, you lower on employment by pumping a bunch of fake fiat money into the system. As you do that, it creates this wealth effect where people feel, and I want to stress the word feel, they feel wealthier. That doesn’t mean they are wealthier, they just feel that way.
So, the first part of that was that they turned around the stock market. I mean, remember the gloomiest days when President Obama was elected and right after that, the Dow hit a low of like 6,400 and I actually predicted it would go to 6,000. So, I wasn’t too far off, was I? I mean, we were talking a huge decline and when it was it around 10,000, I predicted 6,000, so, not bad. But they re-inflated that bubble pretty quick, didn’t they? So, we saw the stock market back, now, they’re re-inflating the real estate bubble. That took a little longer, remember, real estate prices are a lot less volatile. It’s a much less liquid asset so it moves more slowly. I was listening to one of my old recordings about how Leslie Appleton-Young, the Chief Economist for the California Association of Realtors, in fact, I’m not sure if she still holds that position but she used to hold that position. I haven’t kept up with her lately. You know me, I’m not much of a California fan, and oddly, even though California prices are increasing a bit, but that doesn’t mean I’m a fan. Now, why is that? I’m not a fan because the cash flow doesn’t make sense and because the state has just far too many problems. So, even if prices go up, you know me, I don’t invest for price, I don’t invest for appreciation, I invest for solid fundamentals, and the fundamentals of income property are buying at or below cost of construction, if you can, again, an opportunity that’s disappearing quickly, and investing for income. As the name would imply, look, folks, get the word real estate out of your vocabulary, it’s hard for me to get out of my vocabulary. Let’s not call it real estate, let’s call it what it is. The way we look at it is it’s called income property, and it’s got to produce good income in comparison to the price of acquiring that asset, the rent to value ration or the RV ratio that I created many years ago, just as a very simple quick rule of thumb metric to evaluate deals, I mean that’s really easy. Now, by the way I want to make sure if you’re checking my facts here, the RV ratio or rent of value ratio has been used by other people, but never in the way I calculated. Mine is the simplest method. I’ve seen Money Magazine or USA Today, do this RV ratio thing and it’s so complicated and convoluted that you got to keep things simple, otherwise, you make too many mistakes if it’s not simple. Simple is brilliant. So yes, I’m not a California fan but even there we’re seeing prices go up. We’re seeing big, long waiting lists for new homes. It is stunning what is going on. It is absolutely really, really crazy. So, these fundamentals of investment, that’s what we’ve got to follow as inventors. If you’re a regular long-time listener, you are following those fundamentals. So, my hats off to you, congratulations, you’re much, much, much, much, much less likely to ever get yourself into trouble if you’re following the fundamentals that are really outlined in my 10 commandments of successful investing. So, go and review those old shows where I talked about that if you wish. So, a couple of things here, we’re going to go off track on our guest today by the way. We’ve got a guest that is going to talk to you about the presidential debates. Now, why would I do that? I’ve had some criticism by the way over the years with my political comments, many of them rather snarky, I realized that. You got to realize folks, some of this I do for a little bit of entertainment value by the way. You got to have a little entertainment value, this is not just pure news. I’m not a news reporter, I’m a commentator. I’ve had some criticism, like people sent me some emails saying, “Hey, I love your show, I love your philosophy on real estate. Stick to real estate, get off the politics.” Well, hey folks, I’m sorry, I have news for you, politics are inextricably intertwined with our real estate investments, our investment strategy, our investment philosophy and our whole economic lives. They have so much to do with the whole thing. But we’re going to take a look today, I have a non-partisan view of the presidential debates, and I learned a lot of stuff from the guest that’s coming up here, the author of a book called No Debate, how the presidential debates are completely read. They are just a total scam, to keep out third party candidates, whether they be Ralph Nader or Ron Paul or Allen Keys or Ross Perot or whomever, you’re going to be amazed what you’ll learn from this guest today and it’s so timely because we’re about to go in to a round of debates. We’ve got our election coming up in a very, very short time here, just over a month. Again, a good question would be, how does the election influence our investment strategy? Well, honestly, and I’ve said this before, I don’t really know if it matters too much, Democrat, Republican, two sides of the same coin, two flavors of the same ice cream. They’re a little different. It does matter who is president in my opinion. It matters a lot, but is it going to massively change our investment strategy? I don’t think so. Look, frankly, I don’t like Obama. You know that, I’m sure you’ve heard that before. I don’t like any big spender. I didn’t like the way Bush spent. Bush was a Democrat who was called a Republican. You’ve heard the term RINO, Republican in name only? Bush was a Democrat basically who believed in God. Most Democrats don’t. He was like a religious Democrat, and all of them are going to be warmongers, get it out of your head that Bush is the warmonger, that Democrats are the peacemakers, Obama has been just as much in favor of increasing the war machine. The reason they do this? I think you can listen to a lot of this on my holistic survival show, but the reason they do this is because look, wars are profitable for the military industrial complex and they’re profitable for central banks. It’s really sad, it’s really unfortunate, but as long as those groups are running the world, as long as the Bilderberg, the conspiratorial group, the secret society, the trilateral commission, as long as these groups have a big influence over our politics, we’re going to have wars, and wars, they’re inflationary, because what do they do? They force us to spend money on things that create no economic value in the world, and they force the prices of commodities up, because war-torn areas need to be what? Rebuilt. And guess what? That all consumes more commodities, and those are the commodities we as investors own a lot of. If we got to rebuild buildings, what do those buildings consists of? Let me think here, lumber, concrete, glass, steel, energy, petroleum products, copper wire, those are all the packaged commodities we own as real estate investors. So, the war machine is actually I hate to say it, it’s benefiting us. The natural disasters benefit us as investors. We want to control these commodities. So, I think if Romney wins, the government will become a little more responsible, not much. I think ultimately, every politician is a big spender, except Ron Paul. If Obama wins, it will be even worse than Romney and will spend more and cause more inflation. So, not optimist, opportunist, that’s the thinking. Hey, before we go to our guest, and I think you’ll find this interesting, again, enough of the partisanship here, you won’t hear it in the interview with the guest. It’s just an interesting look in how the debates work and basically what a scam the two-party system is, frankly. Our Atlanta tour is coming up this weekend, looking forward to seeing all of you there. We’re going to meet Friday evening at 7:00 P.M. in the hotel lobby of the Grand Hyatt Atlanta and we’re going to go over to Buckhead Pizza for dinner. By the way, that is not a pizza joint. It’s a nice place. It’s just a short walk from the hotel. That’s where we’ll be for dinner and then we will start Saturday morning. We’ll have coffee and continental breakfast about 9:00 A.M. and then we’ll start the Creating Wealth in Today’s Economy Seminar at 9:30. That will end at 6:00 P.M. and then we’ll have dinner Saturday night, probably about 7:30 or so, we’ll announce that that day. And then, Sunday morning, we’ll meet and we’ll have a little talk before the tour, we’ll get on the luxury motor coach that we have reserved for us and we will tour distressed properties in the Atlanta market, one of my favorite markets. That will be very exciting. If you want to plan a couple things just tentatively, I know several of you have asked and we’re looking to get these things inked and formally announced and on the website at JasonHartman.com as soon as possible, but we are pretty sure, it’s pretty likely we’re going to do a Memphis property tour, and that would most likely be the first weekend of November. So, if you want to put that on your calendar just as a tentative, that would be great. And then, our Meet the Masters event that is no longer twice a year, it’s going to be once a year and that will be in January. Start your year off right and we are probably going to do that at the Hyatt Regency Irvine, California as we have done it there so many times and it’s been a great location and a venue for us, and that will be the third weekend of January. So again, that’s a two and a half day event. We meet Friday night, go all day Saturday, all day Sunday with a whole bunch of speakers. By the way, I think we’re going to have a great we’re going to have some new speakers at this next Meet the Masters event in January, but one of them we’re going to have is a company that one of our clients and our local providers, Fernando, just kind of vetted and found for me, so Fernando, thank you so much for this. It is a company that does nationwide insurance, where you can have one insurance policy and you can insure all your properties in all the different states and all the different cities, talk about simplicity and convenience, what a great opportunity. This is a policy that is designed for real estate investors who are following my ten commandments, who are diversifying, who are being area agnostic and understand that all real estate is local and you got to be in different markets. So, very convenient and I think they’re going to be speaking at our Meet the Masters event in January, and probably have them on an upcoming show as well. So, some great stuff coming up. We will be right back with our guest talking about the presidential debates and how they are a rigged game, the author of No Debate here in just a quick moment.
Be sure to call in to the Creating Wealth Show and get your real estate investing and economics questions answered by me personally. We’d love to have you call in, share your experiences, ask your questions and a lot of other people listening have those very same questions. So, be a participant in the show at 480-788-7823. That’s 480-788-7823 or anywhere in the world via Skype, JasonHartmanROI, that’s JasonHartmanROI for return on investment. Be sure to call into the show and we are going to enter all of the callers in a drawing for some nice prizes as well. So, be sure to call in to the show and I look forward to talking with you soon.
It’s my pleasure to welcome George Farah to the show. He is the author of No Debate, How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates, and he’s also the founder of an organization called Open Debates, and it’s a pleasure to have him join us from New York today. George, how are you?
George Farah: I’m fine, thank you for having me.
Jason Hartman: Good, well, the pressure is so mine, this is so topical right now. What goes on in these presidential debates? Are they just a rigged game?
George Farah: Well, the presidential debates are governed by an organization called the Commission on Presidential Debates. It sounds like not part of a government agency, has a fancy neutral name but the reality is, it’s a private corporation that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties, is financed by corporations like Bush and it exists to allow the Republican and Democratic nominees dictate the terms of the presidential debate. So, what happens is every four years, negotiators of the Republican and Democratic candidates get together behind closed doors and hammer out a secret contract. The contract decides who gets to participate, who will ask the questions, how the debates will be structured. They give the contract to the commission and the commission obediently implements that contract and the result we have, all these disappointing debates that has still took formats, the exclusion of viable third party challengers, and oftentimes, there’s just not enough of them. The candidates just don’t want to engage in multiple debates and that’s all we have, a very disappointing presidential debate process.
Jason Hartman: I remember when Ralph Nader was trying to get into the debates, is this why third parties are just excluded basically because they’re not in the commission?
George Farah: Exactly. When you have two of the major parties running on most important public forums, the tools absolutely are going to do whatever the two parties wants, and the number one thing the two parties wants to make sure no viable third party challengers emerge that can displace the position in a political process. So, they have time and again excluded viable third party voices, even though the vast majority of voters want to see those candidates included. In 2000 as you made reference to, 64% of the public wanted to see Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in the presidential debates, but they were summarily excluded because Gore and Bush reached the agreement to exclude all viable third party voices. A great example is 1996. In that year, Ross Perot was running for election the second time. He had $29 million in tax spare funds, out of money to support his campaign. 76% of the public wanted to Ross Perot on the presidential debate, but Bob Dole and Bill Clinton reached a secret agreement to keep them out. Dole was desperate to kick Perot out of the debates because he was scared that Perot would take more votes away from him, and Bill Clinton was leading in the polls by about 20 points. He didn’t want anyone watching the debates. So, they reached the following agreement, they would exclude Perot on the condition that there were only two debates, not one, they cancelled one debate. All follow-up questions were banned and the remaining two debates were scheduled opposite the World Series. That way, no one watched them and Ross Perot was not in the debate. So, the voters at home were watching TV, they started two debates with three, they had to pick between the World Series or the debates, no Ross Perot on stage and very few voters actually watched the debates, it attracted the lowest audience in history, all because the commission, allowed the candidates to engage in this secret negotiation which the public was never informed.
Jason Hartman: What a complete scam. Now, I want to get into how the questions are phrased and the questioning rules and who comes up with the questions and so forth, because I’m sure that that’s a whole another area of scamminess. But, talk if you would just a little bit around this time around in this election season about Ron Paul. Ron Paul was in the debates, up until the primaries. I think he was in all of them, wasn’t he? Between the candidates, so, do they get involved in the primary type side of it, this commission, or just when it’s over?
George Farah: Yes, that’s a good question. The primary debates this year were actually pretty spectacular events because you had not one, two or three debates, you had 27 primary debates. By comparison, the debates are going to see between Obama and Romney, there’s just three of them. And the reason you had 27 debates with different formats and an inclusion of multiple candidates like Ron Paul, is because you did not have an entity like the commission on presidential debates running them. Instead, multiple organizations, civic groups, press entities, television networks, all hosted their own debate. And the result of that kind of democracy where you’re having countless number of debates on varying degrees of formats, the inclusion of multiple candidates, you actually saw a shift in the polls as a result of debate performances rather than yearly money. So, guys like Ron Paul’s number soared. People like Herman Cain rose from nobody status to co frontrunner status. Rick Perry’s campaign tumbled due to his debate performance. For the first time in decades, money was not the principal consideration in determining the viability of candidates, outside it actually attracted substantial poll numbers due to debate performances, and we think that is a very healthy way along the democracy. It’s a shame that when you graduate from the primary process to a general election debate that we’re going to see, still get 27 debates, you get a three, they don’t have to create a format and they’re managed by the candidates, hey, you don’t have multiple candidates on stage, you just have two.
Jason Hartman: Now, give us an example of a stilted format versus a creative format. What are the different debate formats that are available or that have been done in the past?
George Farah: I’ll give two really good examples I think of how the formats have become sanitized as the commission allows the candidates to control the process. The first is the town hall. So, the first town hall ever was in 1992. Bill Clinton was on stage, the first President Bush was on stage and it was a really creative idea, let’s get a bunch of audience members in the room, undecided voters and let them ask whatever is on their mind. And that’s what actually happened in 1992 when it was first introduced. A woman got up and asked a question that stumped President George Bush. She asked him how does the federal deficit affect you personally. He didn’t really get the question, he started talking about numbers and data
Jason Hartman: Is that when he was looking at his watch?
George Farah: Exactly. He got stomped, he looked at his watch and it really caught him off-guard. Well, the candidates didn’t like that. So, in 1996, they banned audience members from asking questions and then in 2000 and in 2004 for that matter and 2008, the candidates required every single question the town hall audience wants to ask to be submitted in advance to the moderator on a little note card. The moderator throws out the ones he or she doesn’t like, points to the audience member during the debate that’s going to ask the question and then turns off the microphone when the question is asked. In other words, the moderator is simply asking all the questions he or she is picking them all anyway before the debates, so, to me this is ridiculous. The candidates are scared of spontaneity, are scared of questions they can’t predict and that’s why they’re taking these kinds of steps. One other thing to keep in mind is every single contract that I’ve seen, and we’ve seen four of them through whistleblowers, or because the campaigns actually released them, every single contract says the candidates cannot ask each other questions and one of them even says the candidates cannot even talk to each other. This is not really a debate if you don’t allow the participants
Jason Hartman: It’s a television show.
George Farah: Right, it’s a joint news conference. It’s ridiculous.
Jason Hartman: Unbelievable. That is just amazing. How can they get away with this?
George Farah: They’re getting away with it because of the secrecy of the commission. If tomorrow, the candidates wanted to host their own debates, they could run out a gymnasium in D.C.
Jason Hartman: I’m sure the media would be there.
George Farah: Exactly, everybody in the country would cover it, tens of millions of voters would watch it, but at least under that kind of microscope, the candidates will be held accountable for the debates they’re creating. If they tried to exclude a popular third party challenger like Perot, they pay a price in the polls. If they try to get rid of difficult questions, they pay a price in the polls. But what the commission allows the candidates to do is to manipulate the process without ever paying the price for it because the commission takes to it.
Jason Hartman: Unbelievable, this is just crazy. It’s crazy that this can happen. So, how long has this commission been around?
George Farah: Since 1988 and the history of it is really fascinating. If you don’t mind me just delving a little bit?
Jason Hartman: No, I would love to know the history because maybe before ’88, debates were more legitimate but they’ve just been sanitized and turned into Hollywood production since then, it sounds like. But go ahead, tell us what the history.
George Farah: You’re exactly right. As voters ran the presidential debate from 1976 until 1984, and the league is a non-partisan group. They don’t care about the major parties or the third parties, they care about democracy. They actually had the guts to stand up to the candidates whenever the candidates tried to manipulate the debate. For example, in 1980, independent candidate John B. Anderson, a former Republican Congressman ran for president. The majority of voters want to see him in the debates, so the league insisted that he be included. President Jimmy Carter said, “I’m not going to show up on the same stage as this third party candidate.” The league said, “Too bad,” and they hosted a presidential debate with John Anderson without the president. Fast forward four years later, 1984, the Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan campaign, the Republican and Democratic nominees, tried to get rid of the difficult questions. They vetoed 80 of the proposed moderators that the league had suggested to them. The league said this is unacceptable, they held a press conference and the candidates publicly for trying to get rid of difficult questions and of course, because of the public outcry, the candidates had to upset the moderators. And then you fast forward one more time to 1988, that was the first year that the Republican and Democratic parties tried to negotiate a secret contract. They gave it to the league and they said, “Hey league, here’s a 12-page document that dictates how the debates will be structured, implemented.” The league said, “Are you crazy? We’re not going to do that.” They made the documents public and they issued a press release saying they refused to be an accessory to the linking of the American people and accused the candidates of perpetrating a fraud on the American people. Well, conveniently, the commission was waiting in the wing. The Republican and Democratic parties were so sick and tired of the league standing up to their candidates that they created this private corporation called the commission and it was co-chaired by the heads of the Republican and Democratic parties, and the commission said, “Hey, we’ll happily implement the contract the league announced,” and they implemented the 1988 contract letter and it had a monopoly on the presidential debates ever since.
Jason Hartman: Unbelievable. That’s just insanity. That is incredible that they can do that. It just reminds me of the Federal Reserve. I mean, they implement a private corporation to filter the information between the candidates and basically it’s just a rigged game by two parties. Can it ever change?
George Farah: That’s a tough question. Just as you feel, the only way really to break the monopoly of the commission is to create a viable alternative sponsor that has overwhelming public support. And my organization in the debates back in 2004, we put together something called a Citizen’s Debate Commission. It had 17 civic leaders from all over the political spectrum, libertarian, green, left, right, Democratic, center, Republican. It was backed by 60 civic groups, 17 major newspapers like The Los Angeles Times endorsed our Citizen’s Debate Commission, but it failed ultimately to convince the major parties to participate in any one of its debate. This doesn’t mean that we can’t break the monopoly. The commission just means we have to do a better effort, it has to be a bigger effort with even more civic support, because the reality, if these candidates are and if enough voters demand that the candidates participate in real debates rather than these sanitized debates, we will win. It just takes a long time to build that kind of public expectation.
Jason Hartman: Incredible. So, 1988 is when it all changed and ever since then it’s been downhill and do these candidates, when they agree, they basically are signing contracts where here’s what I’m kind of getting at here and I don’t know exactly how to ask you but what I’m getting at is this, I would think that one candidate at one time or another wanting to win would maybe in the heat of the moment, disobey the rules and break the contract and say to the other, “Hey, look, bring something up,” or ask a question of his opponent. Is that just never going to happen?
George Farah: It’s a great question. Unfortunately, in the world that we live in, candidates are so often managed by high-paid consultants and risk averse campaign managers who do whatever they can to prevent their candidates from stumbling in front of tens of millions of voters. They’re not exactly risk-takers. And so, they have trained their candidates, they have demanded these rules and then train their candidates to comply with them. But the interesting thing is, a couple times, that has erupted, for example, Al Gore in one of the debates against George W. Bush tried to pose a question to him. But Jim Lehrer was running the debates, said, “Hey, wait a minute. You’re breaking your own rules that you yourself established for these debates. I think they’re silly rules but you’re breaking your rules and I can’t let you do that.” In other words, because the candidates has written the rules of their own debates and even if they’re brought in the hue of the moment to position a passion and actually want to engage a real debate, there’s many of them doing so. They’ve done themselves. So, it’s really difficult to imagine a candidate who agrees to a contract and yet tries to break it. Are we ever going to see a candidate who doesn’t actually like this kind of contract to begin with? I don’t think so. So long as the commission exists, I don’t think it’s likely because they are too frightened. These are two important events, they’re decisive in election processes for the campaigns not to try to manipulate them.
Jason Hartman: Yeah, if the stakes are just too high, so they’re going to play it safe at every turn when they can. The commission is basically a conspiracy. That’s basically a conspiracy to limit information and to just sanitize the whole thing. It probably fits that definition pretty perfectly, doesn’t it?
George Farah: I agree. I happen to be, in addition to running over debates and writing a book on this, I actually also happen to be a lawyer and I practice law and what I do is I fight licensing agreements, these conspiracies and I fight monopolists. That’s exactly what we’re seeing here. If you’re engaging in a conspiracy to exclude other voices and difficult questions, and the commission is exercising an unlawful monopoly. I completely agree with you.
Jason Hartman: Do the broader media know about this? I mean, certainly they know about the commission, any reporter following presidential politics knows about the commission exists, I’m sure, but do they know the depth of the conspiracy here?
George Farah: You know, what I really find frustrating is this is an issue that captures the attention of the media, only for a couple months every four years. So, what you have is reporters might come into the election process, they cover the story for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, we get a spasm of substantial press. We make the issue public, they put some pressure on the commission, but then, of course there’s filing on the issue after the election. A whole new group of reporters come in, they’re uninformed about this process and we have to kind of reeducate them all over again about what’s really going on. There are of course some veteran reporters who have learned, I mean, please forgive me for treating the horn of our organization, but because of our work and the book, have learned about what’s really going on, but by and large, the young new reporters who come in accept the commission at face value and have to be retold every four years about what’s really happening. There’s not much of an institutional memory in the press on this subject because it’s so rare an issue.
Jason Hartman: But similar to that question that I asked you a few minutes ago about maybe one of the candidates speaking up or lashing out in the heat of a moment in a debate wanting to win, it would seem like the media, there would be some reporter out there who would want to break the story or inform their audience about what is going on and be very critical of the debate process, but it seems like they all go along. You watch left wing MSNBC, you watch right wing Fox which I don’t think it’s that right wing frankly but that’s what everybody says. I have to throw my two cents in there. But you watch balanced Fox maybe. They are all just playing. It’s like this the whole media has been totally corporatized and sanitized too. It’s as if they’ve signed a whole another sort of a contract that they’re going to tow the party line. It’s not even a party, it’s just sort of the they’re going to tow the two party lines maybe is a better way to say it.
George Farah: Yeah, I agree with him and we have had a couple reporters that they break stories effectively and our workers have been featured on some television programs that explained what actually was going on. But by and large, there is kind of a resignation on behalf of the press, that, oh, okay fine, there are two parties out there and they’re going to try to manipulate the debates. They don’t understand the extent of it and they don’t think it’s as an extraordinary a story as it should be because they accept the presumption that third party voices are marginal and they don’t belong on the debate stage and they kind of associate this entire issue with that issue. So, we have definitely found some reporters who have demonstrated interest and outrage and I’ve written some fantastic pieces on it, but it feels a lot between. It’s kind of exactly what you’re saying. There’s an acceptance of the status quo and advising of the two parties the way it’s going to be and that makes them less likely to report on the outrage of the commission.
Jason Hartman: You have on your website, which is opendebates.org, you have a story about a court, and I don’t know which court it is yet, but has ordered the Federal Election Commission to investigate the exclusion from a senate debate. What’s going on there? I mean, maybe there are some good news.
George Farah: Yeah, I know, it’s very good news. Whenever do we see an actual legal remedy to the exclusion of a viable third party challenger? Debate sponsors that want to host residential debates are obligated, under the Federal Election Commission guideline to use what they call pre-established objective criteria. That is, you can’t just automatically invite the Republican and Democrats only, you’ve got some sort of criteria to determine which candidate is viable, which candidate isn’t. In 1996, after Ross Perot was excluded because Bob Dole and Bill Clinton hatched a secret agreement, an investigation was launched by the lawyer from the Federal Election Commission and he said, “Wait a minute, we’re going to find out what’s going on here. This doesn’t smell right.” And he ended up reaching the conclusion that something was wrong, they had violated the rules of the Federal Election Commission and he recommended to the Federal Election Commission that they take matters very seriously and pursue an even broader investigation. Well, the commission is comprised of three Republicans and three Democrats, all of them are appointed by the President and ratified by the Senate.
Jason Hartman: How convenient.
George Farah: Yeah, they said, “We’re not going to touch this.” They said, “Nope, too bad, we’re going to reject the recommendations of our own lawyer.” Well, what happened recently in Ohio as a socialist candidate actually was running for office as a senator, tried to get into the Senate debates. The Ohio News Organization that was sponsoring those debates presumptively excluded him, there was no consultation, there was no criteria and nothing. He filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. Again, the Federal Election Commission said, “We don’t see a problem here.” But the court said, “Wait a minute, Federal Election Commission, you can’t just dismiss this complaint. There’s real violations going on here. At least conduct a legitimate investigation.” So, we consider this to be a victory. We don’t care of course which candidate it is that was actually excluded, the point is, is the court is demanding that the Federal Election Commission investigate a debate sponsor for violating the commission’s rules, which the commission has always been uncomfortable doing. So, it is a victory.
Jason Hartman: Yeah, well, that’s good. So, there are some signs of hope there for sure. Well, your book has five star reviews on Amazon and the book is entitles No Debate. Anything else you’d like to say in closing? I know you’ve got a conference call you’ve got to attend to, but just wrap up the subject for us if you would.
George Farah: I want to say that this is the only thing I really want to remind you listeners is this is the most important election forums in our country. It’s the most decisive events. It’s the only time tens of millions of viewers are watching the candidates on the same stage at the same time and it’s critical that we’re protecting integrity of these debates, so, I just encourage them to visit our website, sign up for action alerts, you could follow me in Twitter at @farahfindings and help us build a grassroots movement to displace the commission.
Jason Hartman: Well, George Farah, thank you so much, keep up your good work and again the website is opendebates.org and the book is entitled No Debate. That’s of course available on Amazon and all the other usual places I’m sure. Thank you again for joining us and doing this work, it’s important.
George Farah: Thank you so much for having me. (Top image: Flickr | mrdorkesq)
The Jason Hartman Team
Transcribed by: Renee
