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Welcome in everybody on the great low torch of the plains.
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You are listening to the wanted Iowa Law Talk with Messers, Nicholas Critelli, J.D.
Esquire and Joseph Piper.
J.D.S.
Squire here the Catbird seat Saturday.
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Guys, it's so great to be back with you today.
Nick Cratelli, what are we going to talk about this Saturday afternoon in Iowa?
I got a complaint.
Yes, sir.
OK, so last Tuesday, I was walking down to the courthouse.
It was in trial Monday and Tuesday.
And my co-consul, who was a witness in the case, and I left the building out.
Folks, we're in downtown Des Moines, right in the heart of the capital city, where all the big buildings are and all the magnificent
Business used to be kind of like not that now since covid it's a lot of people have moved But we're right downtown Des Moines into capital cities.
I walked out of the building to go down the courthouse two blocks I get accosted by some of the local residents now I don't mean residents in the buildings or hotels, but they sleep in our alleyway They you know, they're just kind of like hanging out across the street is a
one of the convenience stores.
That is making a small fortune selling small bottles of booze.
But the bottom line is that's where these folks choose to live and to hang out now.
That's their choice, I guess.
When I come out of my building with my witnesses and I get accosted by some of the locals, I get a little nervous about it.
It was raining.
I had an umbrella.
I thought, well, if push comes to shove, Joe, I'll use that umbrella.
The guy was quite insistent that we listen to him, that we hear his plea for money, and that we honor and respect him.
So I give him all the honor and the respect that he felt he was due, et cetera, but the guy won't leave us alone.
And now he's jumping around, getting in front of us and coming at me.
And I've got this umbrella.
I'm going, so do I use this thing?
What do I need to do?
I got to get to court.
I got to protect ourselves.
So finally, I talk him down.
I say, look, buddy, you're going to get in a lot of trouble.
You know, there are police cars that are going to be coming.
You don't want to spend the night in jail.
Go away.
Of course, he didn't like hearing that.
He was after money or whatever it was.
I couldn't get shake the guy loose.
Finally, I talked him out, got him away, and we went on down the court.
On the way back from court that afternoon, a similar situation occurred as we're coming back.
I'm looking at this going, wait a minute, what is going on here?
Now, this happens, guys, at the wrong time, because we just got our tax bill, okay?
Our property tax, I'm going, holy cow.
I expect some kind of service from the city.
So then I discussed, I thought, well, what does cities actually do?
What services do we get?
We get streets, good.
We get fire, we get police protection, etc.
And on the news is the fact that we've got to cut back on this because we don't have enough money.
But we've got a world-class skating, you know, skateboard rink up here and a variety of other fun stuff for people.
But we're not really protected, the citizens.
About the same time, I'm watching the national news.
And I'm hearing about tariffs, I'm hearing about...
all the different things that we're doing at the national level and quite frankly, even the international level.
And I thought, well, this is interesting, but I really care a little more about being able to walk down the courthouse without being accosted.
Because it wasn't, I'm not over exaggerating this.
I mean, it was one of those situations.
Which led me to think about the doctrine of subsidiary.
And I'm wondering if maybe we've lost our focus in our debate with regard to what the citizens expect from government and what duties and responsibilities government owes to us.
And the conclusion I came to is that we've all forgotten what the doctrine of subsidiarity is.
And we may want to revisit that.
John, you were the
legend.
You're brilliant, Nick.
You're brilliant.
And you're prescient.
You're a true man for all seasons and a wise philosopher king.
The principle of subsidiarity goes back theologically as well as philosophically.
And I would call it a core tenet of justice.
You know, justice breathes with two lungs.
Solidarity of course a solidarity with our fellow man.
I'll use the term man mankind.
I mold school But also along with that solidarity is subsidiarity decision-making is best when it is made not in ivory towers by pointy-headed intellectuals spinning their bow ties like Point Dexter's thousands of miles removed from the real state of affairs No, the decisions are best made for how to help people
by their family, by their neighbors, by their schools, by their churches, by their municipalities.
And yes, Nick, I spent time in Des Moines.
And Des Moines is a different creature than typical cities in Iowa.
And Nick, if you think there's problems in Des Moines, hold my beer.
Let's talk about Kansas City.
well you know this is the problem that I'm seeing is that you know we're focusing on the national debate uh who's going to be in the senate who's going to be in the house or who's going to be the governor I'm concerned about who's going to be the mayor and make sure streets get cleared up so I don't get a cost to when I walk down to the courthouse Nick I'll go
further Nick I'll go further and say that I believe
school board is probably arguably as important of an office to vote for than even president of the United States, the United States Senate, your local school board officials.
And Joe knows this to be true because there's been a lot of kerfuffle.
Both and I was sitting in the Lin-Mart district of issues that have bubbled up.
And it's about, you know, if you want to have a say,
Uh, you need to vote in school board elections, right, Joe?
It's been a lot of, uh, a lot of people have discussions about what should a school do.
Should a school have a, um, should they say that, uh, you can come in and have people, uh, working in, you know, the guys going into girls' restrooms, for example, because they now identify as a woman.
So if they're identifying as a woman, they should be able to go into a woman's restroom.
Back at one point, that was, as I recall it, a stated principle.
and that a kid decided they wanted to have a sex change operation.
The staff at the school wasn't allowed to tell the parents about that decision.
Now, isn't that one of the most important decisions that an individual could be making?
Is that, do I have an identity as a male or female?
And maybe I want to change that?
There was a lot of ballerall about that.
That was a problem for people.
So we had thinking about that.
The school board's very important because, you know, we need to talk to our people.
and you know what are you gonna do?
You get down Iowa City right now and they've got the problem that for many years they did not balance the checkbook and they overspent and they overspent and now the question is how do we get out of the hole that we've dug ourselves into and they've dug themselves in their very people they had to borrow money so that they would have money to pay wages before the property taxes come in so now we're gonna be having a lot of people discussing about
Well, wait, you told us that our property taxes can only go up by a maximum of 2% a year.
Now, I believe on Wednesday, I heard that the Fed increased the interest rate because we're looking at an inflation rate of 3.8% per year.
So now we're going to let the property taxes can only go up by 2%, but the inflation is 3.8.
Something's got to give at that point.
And so now what are we going to do?
I hear Des Moines is looking at now eliminating 23 positions in its city employees.
To the extent it's getting rid of 23 employees, why is it doing that?
State agrees and we can't raise enough money because the property taxes are limited and capped at a 2% growth rate.
So how do you decide what do we need?
Now, next challenge me a priority ought to be keep the people from accosting him and I don't disagree.
It used to be a really nice area town.
Now to get into Nick's building, I can get into the first floor of the building, but Nick has to send somebody down from his office to escort me up to his office.
That's a big change.
You know why Joe?
They're living in our bathrooms up here.
We're on the ninth floor and I walked in there and I got put into the bathroom.
You got a nice bathroom up there Nick.
And they also have electricity.
So they plug their phones in, and that's where they live.
Now, the problem with that is this.
I'm in business.
This is a bit of practice.
People come in.
How do you hold a deposition up here, or a client meeting, or anything of that nature with that lunacy going on?
Yet I keep paying taxes and taxes.
Here's my concern.
They're not acting responsibly with respect to the money that I give them.
And now they want more and more and more.
It's OPM, Joe, other people's money.
Well, I get it on the national level, but at the doctor in a subsidiarity, the lowest level happens to be my pocket.
Yeah, Nick and John, that reminds me.
I was on a mask for the real life.
here this morning and Archbishop Zinkiel was there and he reminded us of something that fits in here and he said, you know, there was a busload of politicians and they crashed in a farm field in Iowa.
And by the time the emergency response people got there, they looked on the bus, there was nobody in the bus.
Well, they saw the farmer out in the field with his big loader on to say, uh, sir, was there anybody in that bus?
Well, yeah.
Well, where are they?
I buried them all.
What do you mean you buried them all?
Was anybody alive?
He said, well, a couple of them said they were alive, but you can't believe a damn thing the politicians tell you.
But
you know,
Joe,
as much as
it becomes, we're hearing all the political rhetoric.
We've got ads all the time.
Both sides are attacking the other.
Hacks are attacking the other.
How do we determine and sift out truth from crack?
And how do we discern which candidates
will deliver on what we want.
We as the electorate, if we don't go speak to these people, where do we get a good source that we can trust?
We've got a lot more AI BS out there than we've ever had, and it's becoming ever more difficult to get to the bottom and understand what's
true.
Joe, you raised some very salient questions, and Nick has too, and I'd like to tie it together as we progress forward like this.
So, you know, my father would always advise me very well,
with a giant task at hand to break it down into components.
And that was always really great advice.
Nick used that buzzword, subsidiarity, and it's a great concept at law and at moral philosophy.
Using Wiki here is background.
I would just remind our audience, for those that are just plugging in, subsidiarity is an organizing principle that says that matters ought to be handled
at multiple levels of organization and not just by a centralized authority.
Political decisions should be taken at a local level, if possible, rather than by a central authority.
Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.
And I would point out
that the word subsidiarity is derived from the Latin word subsidiarius, and that has its origins in Catholic social teaching, as Wikipedia correctly points out.
Back to you, gentlemen.
Nick, you've used that term.
You've phrased the question.
Joe has hung great ornaments on the tree in terms of decor.
Let's proceed forward because we got a problem.
And how indeed do we attack this?
Is it always
DC that's the answer or You know have we met the enemy and it's us sometimes by not doing our due diligence is as Joe says we need to do to separate the week from the chaff in terms of even that the the electoral Information that we're being bombarded with and are we doing a good enough job at the local level to deserve that primacy of decision-making and How do we progress forward?
We'll start kick it off at Nick
Well, I'll just give you my rules.
And this is just personal to me, John.
Okay.
I'm not trying to voice this on anybody, but I have a couple rules that I want to live by.
Number one is the doctrine of subsidiarity.
Okay.
I ought to be more concerned about what happens in my front yard, backyard, street, in my city.
than I am anywhere else at this point, because that's what affects me.
I know from a military standpoint, if you want to get the people upset and revolt, don't pick up their garbage.
Or your Chicago
is Mayor Jane Byrne found out, if you don't shovel the snow, you're gone.
The fact of the matter is is we all got to live and we have people who we elect to help us live Okay, that starts with our village in our city first if you elect idiots to that job Then you can't expect greatness out of them.
We've had situations here where we elect people because of philosophy I don't care what their social philosophy is that's up to them But at least show up for the job, you know attend the console meetings
Okay, and when you're there, you understand what the role is.
Well, they don't get that.
They're pushing social justice on us.
Great.
I'll listen to social justice.
I appreciate social justice.
But take care of us first, okay?
Make sure that our fire department works, our police department works, our streets and roads work, our sewers work, and all the stuff that city's supposed to do.
So when I get that all sorted out, then I can think higher.
I can get into the philosophy, the theology, and do that.
But I'm telling you, if I got to worry about self-protection in our office building, or on the way to the courthouse, or on the way home, I can't think high thoughts, John.
So some sitiarity works.
Yeah,
Nick, it does come down to the local level.
And the oblique reference I made earlier, very famously in the city of Chicago, Jane Byrne became the mayor
because Michael Belandek, the prior mayor, was seen as being completely ineffective during a blizzard.
Literally, it is about garbage and streets and not getting accosted on your way to work.
And there is a failure of government.
And in this case, you can't blame the feds for this.
That
is a
breakdown of even your local actors.
So the argument for subsidiarity sometimes is
Militated against by the poor performance of local actors who can't even make the local Basic decision-making correctly and that's where it's so disheartening to see failure at the school board and mayoral and city council and county commission level because at those levels Those are supposed to be the people under the principle of subsidiarity It should have more of an impact and yet if they do it poorly Then where do you go to the centralized
authority
who ultimately
I think what happens is that they take on the persona
and the theme of what the national political elections are doing.
So if we're talking about whatever theory that the government, the federal government's throwing out about borders and security and all that, they'll pick up on that.
Well, leave that to the federal government.
I can turn it off to garbage.
Things like that.
Yeah, exactly.
So they do that.
The other thing that the rule that I have is I don't buy negative ads.
I'm a salesman.
I'm a trial lawyer.
All I am is a salesman, okay?
And rule number one, you sell your product because of the benefit that it has.
You don't sell yourself by downgrading the opponent.
There may be a place for that.
But when I look at the ads that the politicians are putting on now, I'll give you an example.
All I know about one candidate is that he's got an airplane and flies to Kansas.
Okay.
Great.
Thank you.
But what are you going to do for me?
Okay.
Likewise, all I hear about another one is he doesn't have any experience or whatever it is.
Great.
But what are you going to do?
Where is your program?
Sell me your product.
And none of them are doing it.
Republicans and Democrats, as you know, I'm an independent.
But I'm not going to, I'm looking at, do I really want to
vote for any of these people?
Well, Nick, that's fascinating.
I want to bring Joe in on this, because Joe, you and I, and Nick are of a certain age.
I recall vividly the elegant statesman-like debate in 1968 between Lyndon Johnson's forces and Hubert Humphrey's folks and Eugene McCarthy's folks and Robert Kennedy's folks.
There was not argumentum ad hominem.
There were very serious statesman-like debates about Vietnam policies.
As a matter of fact, it was a masterful joint appearance.
I call it the first Zoom meeting, the CBS
special with Kennedy and Reagan.
Bobby Kennedy Sr.
and Ronald Reagan in the late 60s against essentially a panel of Oxford or Cambridge University students in Britain.
And then I also recall Ronald Reagan when he challenged Gerald Ford, a fellow Republican for the presidency in 1976.
I've seen he was baited and baited by the news media.
to make dispersing comments against your old Ford.
And although he had policy disagreements, Reagan always invoked the 11th Amendment.
Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.
Joe, what has happened in a generation where we've gone now?
I mean, my goodness, Nixon, Agnew, McGovern, Scoop Jackson, Hubert Humphrey look like giant statesmen today.
compared to the milieu that we're swimming in right now.
Well, one of the things
that's happened is that the attention span has gone from being 10 minutes to about 10 seconds.
So you've got to catch them fast and you've got to say something that makes them remember you.
So I think that's one of the first things that's happened.
A second thing that's happened right now is Supreme Court decision that unlimited the amount of money that hacks can spend in advertising.
So because of that,
We don't just have the candidate fund raising.
We now have PACs that are raising money and they're doing all these ads that we come in.
So now we're saying that this ad has been sponsored by XYZ PAC, which is entirely responsible for its content.
Well, that's nice.
We know that the PACs did it.
What do we know about the PAC?
If we don't know much about the PAC, we're not sure what their philosophy is and what their bent is.
We know they don't want candidate A.
because they're saying candidate A did something or failed to do something.
I've been listening to one of the ads a lot where they talk about a gentleman having missed 58% of the votes in the Iowa legislature.
He was off fundraising out in DC and in California.
And they say, Iowans deserve better.
I'm not in his district.
He doesn't owe me anything.
He owes his constituents something.
So he happens to be a Democrat.
and in a strongly Republican legislature, is his vote going to affect anything?
Probably not.
So then, we have them saying, he misses over half the votes, and he's wrong on the votes he does take.
Wait, again, the next point.
We're saying something negative about somebody, and even the candidates' ads in that, there are a few, but there aren't much.
The candidate ads do a little bit.
of saying what they want to do, but not as much as we used to.
I mean, you go back in the 60s and in the 70s, we were spoiled by what we would say is high statesmanship in it.
Yes, you could object and you would, the people would be staunchly opposing in it, but they didn't attack somebody personally.
They said, I disagree with you because, and here's what I'm going to do about the problems that we find.
Think back to the ads you've seen,
in the last month.
How many ads take a positive fat portrait and say, here are the problems we have and here's what I plan to do to fix the problem.
If we start doing that, now we're going to be in a spot
where we're actually getting a better idea of what can happen.
It goes down to the new diligence, the candidate.
Joe, do you think they don't do that because they don't want to be responsible?
I'll give you an example.
It's one thing to criticize my opponent.
He's a jerky, she's a this, or whatever it is.
Okay, but if I go the next step and say, this is what I'm going to do, this is what I stand for,
And if I get elected and I don't do it, I've shot myself in the foot.
So is there a theory here that you never make a promise, because it may come back to haunt you, okay?
And all you do is shoot at your opponent.
Is that what modern political campaigns are about?
Well, there seems to be a
lot
of that.
And the question, and I think the electorate needs to figure out, and perhaps we need some public education on what's the duty
of we citizens in the electorate.
Should we be pressing people on this?
I saw news reports in Dubuque and they're having questions about a data center there.
We have a lot of data center debates here around the country and the every candidate was being pressed.
What is your position on the data center about use of utilities, use of resources, scarce resources like water?
What is your position on it?
And they said,
We want everybody that shows up under these bright lights to identify and articulate their position so we can see that they do what they say they're going to do if we elect them.
I found that very refreshing.
Yeah, you guys, you know, when I ran, and of course I term-limited myself and won all of my contested races.
Wait a minute.
I thought Deb term-limited you.
Your wife.
Enough of it.
George Washington, for example, term-limited me, but I will say this.
When I ran against my beloved colleague, Ray Stevens, we ran against each other twice in races.
We sang karaoke together at events.
We would slap each other on the back.
There was jocularity.
There was conviviality there.
And I always ran positively on television, on radio, et cetera, et cetera.
What I find
to be so corrupt is the lobbying money and Joe really hit on it is just a corrupting pervasive influence even at the state level and the idea even of a political party being able to have something called a
legislative majority fund and expecting you the candidate to turn over your donors money to your campaign to the big wigs in Des Moines to decide how to reallocate those dollars to different races that they favor.
First of all, I think it kind of betrays your own donors, but also I would say that I think how generous you are in giving your money back to the authorities in Des Moines.
to make the decision of how to reallocate monies for a race, even impacts committee chairmanship.
And so I think it's an astoundingly, astonishingly grave problem that I don't know people even trodely appreciate at the statewide level.
At the federal level, and just look at the big Senate races across the country right now.
The Senate is teetering, it's 53 to 47.
There are five races that are going to decide the US Senate, Maine.
Ohio, Iowa, Texas, and maybe Alaska possibly with ranked choice voting and the way they've got things set up there.
Guys, tens, dozens of millions of dollars are flooding in from out of state from all of those races begging the question.
Are people from Maine?
Are Iowans?
Are Ohioans?
Are Texans really deciding on who their own senator is when they are bombarded with monies from outside of their own state?
trying to influence them.
Joe, if I had a do-over on any amendments to the U.S.
Constitution, this sounds undemocratic of me and perhaps a little more Republican.
I'm talking lowercase D and lowercase R here, not political parties.
But Joe, I think maybe we whiffed on the 17th Amendment.
I would tell you this.
When we had the legislators choosing our senators, you at least knew you had senators whose sole allegiance was to your state.
and not a senator who'd been funded or a senate candidate who'd been funded by dozens of millions of dollars from outside their own state.
Of course, that presupposes that the legislatures are not tainted by lobby money and special interest money, which I've already said is a prominent of itself.
But Joe, you nailed it.
The gigantic money pot is, I would say, the single biggest corruptor right now without question.
And now that you've got media that can put out these messages backed by
millions of dollars of negative ads.
It's hard for people that are working, trying to support families, holding down second jobs.
How they sift through all of this.
You know, it's like you can't expect them to manage a stock portfolio.
They can't spend three hours a night on news.
It's a conundrum, guys.
Back to you, Joe.
You talk about that and all the money that's coming in, and how do we change it?
How do we make it better?
You know, we're in this world to do good.
And can we make this world a better place than we found it?
I think the three of us are lamenting the denigration of accurate political campaign, wishing we could go back to the good old day.
Joe, go back to the governor's race in Iowa with Harold Hughes or Robert Ray.
Those guys were giants.
There was not this slinging of mud.
These were races that were, they would be talking about labor issues or how big the semis should be rolling down the road.
And it's really amazing to go from the Harold Hughes-Bob Ray paradigm to where we are today.
Yeah, it certainly
is because we talked about issues.
We talked about solutions.
And candidly, we had a good debate on those.
And then the public could listen to the news.
They could read it in the newspaper.
And they took position.
That'd be very refreshing.
But you know what, Sean?
Not Sean, but John, we got to remember, this is Iowa Law Talk on KXEL, 1450.
105.5 FM.
We're here at the Catbird seat, a noon on every Saturday.
We love having you all as an audience.
You got that down so well, Joe Piper.
Isn't he a great quick study?
Critelli, no wonder
he's such a great attorney at
Ag and Business Legal Solutions.
He's an uncommon lawyer, that Piper.
That he is.
Very uncommon.
So you're asked your question, Joe.
How do we fix this?
Can we do a better job?
Obviously, that's something we all ought to be looking at.
So when we look at what needs to be fixed, what we see is this.
In November, another campaign for presidency starts.
Truthfully, folks, it started already.
It's like a person on the national level gets elected president, and as soon as the balloting is over and they're sworn in, the next campaign starts.
You know, we're constantly in campaign mode over here.
That's got to stop.
That's ridiculous.
And it's been going on far too long.
If it were up to me, I would say campaigns are six months long, period.
Your party holds its convention, it chooses who it is, and that's when the campaign starts.
Prior to that, okay, there is no campaigning.
Now, other countries have run that.
Let's not forget English Barister talking about parliamentary elections to me
by any means.
It works.
Okay, this is nuts.
We have endless campaigns.
For what purpose, listeners, it polarizes us.
We're all being used, okay?
We're being used because if they can polarize us, then they can get our money, they can get our influence.
You know, campaign people are after two things, your money and your influence.
That's it.
So give them six months to get at it, okay?
Prior to that, no.
Why?
because it's polarized.
Secondly, look at what Congress is doing.
You elect Congress to legislate.
All they do is investigate.
There are more congressional hearings today than there's ever been, and they're poor.
I can't watch them on TV.
They drive me up the wall.
They're listening for what they consider to be questioning and cross-examination.
Do not judge the court system and lawyers by that.
This is terrible.
Go back to legislating.
You know, if I'm going to elect somebody to the Senate, I want to know how many bills have you introduced?
You know, what have you signed on?
Don't tell me how many investigations you've done.
Tell me how much legislation you have put forth.
They will say, well, we can't put forth legislation until we do the investigation to get to the core of what is corrupt.
Strangely, every time somebody does that, what is corrupt happens to be somebody from the other party.
OK?
It's the campaign never end.
Recently you've seen a television where it's a congressional hearing and these questions are just speeches.
In that trial that we had Monday and Tuesday, but a situation where a lawyer, that's the type of questioning that was being asked.
Okay, and you look at that and you go, why is this lawyer doing that?
That's not what this is about.
When one of the witnesses says, are you asking a question or making a speech?
It's even infiltrated down into that level.
So this has got to stop.
Okay, that's at the national level.
Now, you mentioned the 17th Amendment.
What he's talking about, folks, is prior to the 17th Amendment, we had a situation where it was the United States of America, which meant this.
The states elected the senators, not the people in the state.
The Senate was the house of representatives for states.
State legislatures elected who was going to represent the state's interest, states as a government.
So you had the people's house representing the people.
You had the Senate representing the states as a separate entity.
And together they then put forth the federal
issues.
Well, we decided we didn't want to do that because it's government by the people, for the people, etc.
But they forget that state is a sovereign government.
So we did away with that with the 17th Amendment.
Now everybody elects the Senate.
We have two houses that are elected directly by the people.
As a result, your states have become like counties.
They have no power.
They have no autonomy.
They have no subsidiarity.
Read COVID.
When the COVID thing came in, national guidance is telling us what we're all going to do on the national level.
Some of our states said no.
We're in the state.
We're going to determine what's best for our people.
And the fight began.
The theory was, you know, I'm a governor.
I know what's best for the people of Iowa.
What goes on in Washington?
Okay, it's great for Washington, but it's not good for the people I'm chosen to represent.
And that's when the subsidiarity fight began with respect to the federal government and the state government.
And then it goes downhill from there, the state versus local, et cetera.
So all this stuff gets important, but the 17th Amendment, I think the effect was wrong, John.
Well, Nick,
it's
so important, and I'll just give you just a glancing anecdote.
Having been on the border,
of Nebraska and Iowa in serving on the Iowa side in the legislature.
I, along with a consortium of physicians, tracked COVID response in Nebraska versus Iowa.
Each state had a different public policy approach to dealing with COVID.
And when you do a statistical analysis and let's just say made it apples to apples, there are population differences between the states and therefore that the number of incidences would be
You'd have to wait things and get it statistically to apples to apples.
I'll just tease you guys by saying that Nebraska had a far better record than Iowa did in saving lives during COVID and it directly redounded to public policy decision making.
So Nick, it is a life and death issue.
What we're talking about is not merely some theoretical, uh, little, uh, uh, you know, hanging out there.
like a wraith.
This is Blood, Sweat, and Tears we're talking about.
These are huge issues.
And why does the Constitution matter?
17th Amendment.
That was a huge decision that we made, but it made an incredibly huge alteration in the construct of our federal system.
Joe, what say you?
You took all the power away from the states.
Yeah.
To tell me is that back in 1913, the United States made a big mistake.
As you remember,
two-thirds of the state legislatures had to approve this amendment.
Well, we also banned alcohol at one point constitutionally.
You and I are from Dubuque.
Our forebears are.
We know that was a terrible mistake, Mr. Piper.
Absolutely.
As I recall it, there was the nice hotel, Hotel Julian in Dubuque, had a famous gangster that's hung out there quite frequently.
Well, he was a social justice warrior, too.
He did a lot to help the poor in fairness.
Did he employ them?
He ran some very good soup kitchens.
Well, I think he probably employed them as well.
Yes.
There's been talk.
I can't say it's so, but I won't say it's not.
But there's been talk.
So,
you know, John, I looked into that 17th Amendment figure.
Why would we do that?
It was 1913.
You're coming off a war in the middle.
But why would we change the basic structure of the United States of America?
by doing it.
I haven't come to any conclusions on it other than there was some concern at the time that the states may not have been doing their duty in actually holding the elections, and I can't imagine that ever happening, but I think it might be worthwhile to take a little deeper dive into that.
Well, what's pivotal to understand... What I'm seeing here
as I'm looking it up is that there was concern that the
parties weren't resolving their conflicts within the state.
So they were having conflicts and they weren't getting things resolved.
And so then the question came in as to, uh, was there money in political ambition coming in the electric election process?
And they thought they could avoid that by throwing it to us as electors.
Uh, I think we've seen that that's probably a misjudgment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Joe, Joe, I'll go further.
And I'll say that the the political context of the era on both sides of the political party spectrum, I believe, fed into this concern about the parties not getting the job done.
You had the advent of Woodrow Wilson, who literally from the civil war until the ascendancy of Wilson, we had had a Republican executive branch nonstop in this country with basically the exception of Grover Cleveland.
And Wilson broke that stranglehold.
He definitely had more of a
national, federal, big government approach, both in international foreign affairs.
He was definitely an internationalist, as well as with domestic policy.
The income tax came in during his era.
Just opposed with that at the same time, you had, the reason Wilson won the election was you had that terrible international warfare between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, once closely bonded together as political running mates,
than the enmity and the split of Roosevelt and the bull moose party, which denied Taft reelection, giving the election to Wilson.
And so you could see why people were even thinking, well, it's dysfunctional Republican party, internecine warfare within the GOP through it to Wilson.
So I think you had kind of a perfect storm.
Disgruntled Republicans, while Wilsonian
Idealism and that idea that big government can solve a lot of problems was in the ascendancy for the first time in perhaps half a century.
Well, that's federalism.
We've always had a battle between federalism and states rights to 1776.
Yes,
and every opportunity a federalist has to push forth its position.
It will.
Yeah, like, you know, the problem is the state's organizations or the state philosophy
Okay, uh, is not as strong as the federalists.
Right.
Right.
And if any, which makes sense because obviously if you're going to have a federalist, you're going to be more well organized.
Well,
and if the
other, the other problem is, uh, and this gets down into, uh, uh, the whole moral philosophy again, hyper ascendancy of states rights devolves into secession during the civil war.
And, uh, you had the southern states through all of segregation.
which still relied upon states' rights as the reason for not being progressive at all or fair to the African-American and the black community with respect to integration and their full rights even after the civil war.
So part of the reason that federalism has taken an upper hand sometimes is the failure of the states' rights arguments because of maybe regressive
attitudes on race and even going back civil war slavery itself as an institution.
John, that's true, but there was always a buffer and the buffer was a supreme court.
Right.
Right.
Which is what you wanted the court to do to act as a modulator with respect to these two often conflicting situations.
But when the court
doesn't do its job in that regard, okay?
Then you end up with the ground rules for, okay, let's change the system.
It's revolution in one form or another, and that's what we experienced in 17th Amendment.
You know, the three most dangerous colleges or majors in a university, do you think what they are?
Let me tell you.
The three most dangerous, political science, law school, and education.
Now, a full disclosure.
I was involved with all three.
Real danger here.
I had a combination of political science and education and I went to law school.
Why are they the three most dangerous?
Well, think about it.
Young person or older person, whatever it is, these are the three majors that have the greatest impact and influence on all of us.
So you got to be cautious when somebody like me shows up.
It's all three of them.
You know, Nick, Nick, what you say is true because the reason for the success and the great integration and ascendancy of the Irish Catholic immigrant wave in the 18th century was because the Irish Catholics who came to the United States went to cities like Boston, etc.
They basically gravitated toward holding political office
and being teachers and being in law enforcement and by being so involved in those institutions they immediately became seamlessly integrated with the American culture such that far from their patriotism being questioned as it was along with the Italian Americans in the 19th century some of the greatest war heroes like Audie Murphy were
were irish catholic americans in the in the two world wars so nick you're right i mean the irish understood uh be a beat cop uh get elected to public office be a teacher uh get the pulpit or get into a hospital like those good sisters of mercy did and you're an influencer with altruistic intent of course
now isn't it interesting that the influencers of the 18th and 19th century compare them with the influencers today
huh
Interesting comparison, Joe.
Go with it.
Well, you think about it.
You know, those are people that had direct connections with others in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
Subsidiarity.
Correct.
The influences of today are all, we see a lot of it through social media.
And with the social media influencer, you always want to have more followers.
So you're going to do things for sensationalism and
I fail to see the altruism, altruism in many of the influencers of today.
They're in it, what's in it for me, instead of what's in it for thee, or we.
What are your thoughts on that, Mr. Crotelli?
Well, that's a very good quote.
I admit that I am not a social influencer.
More importantly, I don't get involved with social media.
The reason is that as a lawyer, I got to fly under the radar screen.
So...
You know, I make my statements in court.
I don't make them on TikTok.
I don't even have a Facebook or anything of that nature.
And I'll tell you why.
When a witness shows up on a case, I need to know absolutely everything I can about that person, what moves them, what they're all about, et cetera.
I am shocked at the information I get about people.
Just off their posting.
Folks, think about what you're posting before you hit the enter key.
In the past, when you brought a fraud case, and fraud folks was the most difficult type of claim you could bring, because it requires proof of intrinsic intent.
It's called sci-entor.
What goes on in your brain?
And you could rarely prove it.
Not today.
In fact, you give it to me on a silver platter.
Okay?
In your postings, what are you doing, people?
You know, I'll give you three rules to live by.
before you open your mouth.
Rule number one, does it need to be said?
Number two, does it need to be said right now?
Number three, does it need to be said by me?
If you answer those three questions, you can save yourself a world of grief.
Now, in full disclosure, those three questions didn't come from me.
This is from a homily that our young priest at St.
Teresa gave, Father Mahoney.
This is wisdom for a guy that young.
And I used it in court.
After we got to the courthouse on Tuesday, I stood up and was going to say something.
I thought, just do them a holy threesome.
Do I need to be said?
Does it need to be said now?
Does it need to be said by me?
Answer no.
I sat down and didn't say anything.
Okay.
I'm just telling you, folks, just ask those three questions.
Does it need to be said?
Does it need to be said now?
And does it need to be said by me?
Joe Piper, I think this is Nick Cratelli.
It is a fine fellow.
And you know, when he was talking about that anecdote at the beginning about being confronted,
In a difficult situation, you know you think back and I know how Andrew Jackson would have handled it because he had I don't know if it was an umbrella cane, but it was a cane and when someone came after him he beat the guy Senseless with a cane.
That was Andrew Jackson Robert pre-vosed from Chicago who we now know as a Pope Leo his brother tells an anecdote about how they were outnumbered by pretty nasty group of bullies and how
the young the young brother Robert Prevost somehow prevailed with moral suasion upon the bullies to leave the guys alone now if only Ralphie and his gang in a Christmas story could have done that with Scott Parkus and his toadies it would all be a better world so Nick Nick Nick turries with a lot of aplomb and Joe I know you do too we're coming up on the end of our hour already
Can you believe it?
Joe, we got a few minutes left.
Final arguments.
Wrap it up for us.
We're
talking about this and we're thinking about influencers.
We're thinking about politicians.
We're talking about how do we, what should we be thinking about when we go to the polls?
What should we do before we go to the polls to discern the true motivations of those seeking elected office?
We've got a very important election coming up there all in, but this is coming up here.
in early November.
Think about what you want this world to be.
Think about what you want to have happening in your state, in your county, in your city, and yes, even in Washington DC.
If you don't like where things are going, find out from the candidates what they're going to do and if they're going to go your way.
If no candidates go in your way, what if you do a write-in ballot?
At least that's saying
Through both, either one of the bums should get elected.
This person I'm writing in will do a better job.
Some might say that's a waste of a vote, but I think it's making a statement.
And it's a statement that says, neither candidate, if they're two or none of the candidates, if they're more than two, meets my criteria for the office.
Now that's a statement in and of itself.
Others may not pick up on that, but neither one of the parties got the vote, which means you haven't done
what many people feel they've been forced to do, which picked the lesser of two evil.
You know, Joe, I'm going to give Nick the last word here.
You've worn my heart because during law school, one summer after my first year, I helped run a successful campaign for county attorney for a candidate as a write-in to get him on the ballot as nominated.
And his last name was spelled S-T-A-S-K-I-E-W-I-C-Z.
You think running in general is hard, but I'll tell you if you got a Polish surname and you got to have it spelled recently close to get it counted.
That was a fun campaign.
Nick Critelli, you're a man of reason.
I think you would have loved Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater's plan campaign on the same plane together because even though they had diametrically opposite policy differences, they were actually pretty good friends.
And actually Richard Nixon and Jack Kennedy were as well.
Nica, sum it up today, is subsidiarity a way of getting back to that, where all politics is local, as Tip O'Neill once said, Jack Kennedy's good friend.
Well, I think you got to get your priorities
right.
First of all, your local elections are more important to you and your way of life than your national election.
So spend some time looking at these people, okay?
Philosophy is fine, but
at the local level, and the doctor is subsidiary, is get it done.
How are you going to do it?
How are you going to protect us?
How are you going to better this city?
Okay?
Philosophy, social justice, etc.
is fine, but that's not the number one goal at the local level.
The higher up the food chain you go, listen to what they're saying.
When you get to Congress, it's a Congress, not a parliament.
understand the difference between the two, okay?
In a parliament, you can have five different political parties, and in order to rule to perform a government, they have to cooperate.
They don't cooperate, they can't form a government.
Therefore, a parliamentary system forces compromise.
Congress has got the same thing.
You congregate in order to
put a coalition together.
You got to listen to your opponent.
I watch these campaigns.
When I get to Congress, I will make sure that this won't get done or that won't get done.
No, you won't.
You're one vote.
If you think you're going to do that, you're not competent to run.
Okay, I'm I'm gonna vote for you because of your judgment and in that judgment better be Your ability to say hey, I'm willing to sit down and listen to anybody even the other party Okay, you're elected to represent me not your party now realize I'm an independent Okay, but I expect you to sit down and talk to everybody anyway.
Yeah, sorry I got a rant on there, but this
Yeah, you
you brought up a really interesting thing about congress they say the opposite of pro is con therefore the opposite of progress must be congress
and that's a good note to end on
we made a lot of progress today tell your friends about it get on and listen to the podcast kxl.com slash podcast or kxl.com use the drop down menu go to podcasts and look up the episodes of iowa
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In the meantime, right to the show, Iowa Law Talk at KXEL.com.
We will answer all of your questions.
We will be back next week, same time, same network here, Saturdays, right after the noon hour.
In the meantime, for the great...
Messers, Kryptellian Piper, Piper and Kryptellie.
This is John Jacobson with Sean Xavier saying, be safe, be smart, be good, be strong, go hawks, cyclones, panthers, bulldogs, and God bless this everyone.
God bless this great republic and the great ag community in Iowa that feeds the world.
Until we meet again, bye-bye.
