Q: How could such a law as the Honor In Office Act be enforced?

JERROL: There are some legislators who will perjure themselves day in and day out. There is no hope for them, unless someone reports the violation. However, we are dealing with partisanship. That means that 45-55% are Democrats and 45-55% are Republicans, typically. The Honor In Office Act plays very nicely into that. Newly elected lawmakers might be far more conscious of the new rules. There are other lawmakers in office who have lost their way, because they have had no way to protect themselves from the less scrupulous.

Those lawmakers, can now say, “I won’t perjure myself. If that vote is today, I will have to either abstain or vote ‘no’ because I haven’t had the opportunity to read it.” Because of partisanship and majority vote, we only need a very small percentage of those lawmakers to follow the rules. Now, all of a sudden this small percentage on either side of the aisle is actively reading the bill, and they will find problems with the bills and seek to get them fixed and it will force others to read it too. Just from this one simple common sense law, we could totally change the political landscape.

Q: Is the Honor In Office campaign focusing only on the California legislature?

JERROL: We are starting with California and doing this at the state level. However, we have volunteers from just about every state in the nation, and we plan to get this law passed at the state level nationwide.

Q: Those proposed measures would not affect federal lawmakers. What about Congress?

JERROL: Congress makes its own rules of conduct in the same way as state legislatures. Fat chance we would ever get Congress to pass a law that factually keeps them in line. However, consider this. Almost all of our members of Congress were state lawmakers first. It is at the state level where they learn most of their bad habits, which they then carry with them when they become members of Congress. What we are doing at the state level is teaching them some good habits, which will hopefully carry through at the Congressional level. But by passing this law at the state level, we make it possible at some time in the future for a similar law to be passed by Congress.

Q: How has being involved with Honor In Office affected your ability to run InkTip? In other words, has this campaign affected your business any? Are there any Hollywood pros or others looking unfavorably on your efforts? Or do most in the biz support you?

JERROL: It’s a non-issue, really. Just about everyone can agree on the fact that lawmakers who pass laws that affect the lives of millions of people, even hundreds of millions for generations to come, should know exactly what he or she is signing into law. We all expect due diligence from those we elect to look out for us. That’s just common sense. And I have found that this is the way the entertainment community feels. So InkTip is doing just fine. Producers continue to use our site to find the writer or script they need.

Q: How far along are you with the Honor In Office Act? Fundraising? Signatures? How far do you still have to go to make a real impact? Do you feel you are making one now?

JERROL: I’m routinely in 4-8 publications and radio shows a week, so I am most definitely making progress. However, there is still a long way to go. I haven’t pursued getting the signatures yet, because I have to get 700,000 valid signatures correctly categorized by county and submitted within the space of 5 months of beginning the process. Also, not every signature will be valid. That means in order to get the 700,000 valid signatures I need, I have to obtain a total of 1.2 million signatures in the space of about 100 days. That comes to about 12,000 signatures a day.

As far as I know, in the history of California no initiative that has made it to the state ballot has ever been able to do this based upon volunteer support only. So that means I have to hire a company to get those signatures, and that requires a couple million dollars. I have plenty of volunteer grassroots support, but getting 6000 volunteers to each get 200 signatures is a logistical nightmare, and extremely unreliable if they aren’t professionals in getting signatures and doing the paperwork.

While the grassroots campaign is getting larger and larger, we need some heroes to step forward and finance it. It would be a selfless act in the extreme. There are no financial gains or tax deductions. I am doing this because I believe our country and our state need this, if for no other reason than self-preservation. But once our signature campaign is financed, the odds of it not getting on the ballot are remote.

Who doesn’t want their lawmakers to do their jobs? Who doesn’t want their legislators to honestly represent them? Who doesn’t want their representatives to read, understand and perform due diligence before passing any law? Who can’t see how these corrupt practices have decimated California when we should be thriving? Or how they continue to decimate California today?

In that regard, I believe it is time to go back to the high moral and ethical standards our Founding Fathers respected while conducting the most crucial business in America there is: the passing of critical legislation that affects us all in every possible way.

For those of you who would like more information on Honor In Office, you can visit the website at www.honorinoffice.org You’ll find a wealth of information on Mr. LeBaron’s proposed Honor In Office Act, as well as detailed assessments of what Mr. Lebaron sees as both advantages and disadvantages to the Honor In Office Act itself. Mr. LeBaron has given due diligence to every aspect of his proposed ballot measure. All he asks that you review his proposed measure in its entirety, then make an educated decision of your own. Is the same really too much to ask of our lawmakers?

Q: Can you describe for me, specifically, what Honor In Office is all about?

JERROL: If you look at the header at the Honor In Office homepage you will see the phrase, “There was a time in this country when our leaders’ signatures meant more.” Be it the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or bills passed by Congress to conduct the People’s business, our Founding Fathers and early members of Congress drafted, read in full, debated at length, and either passed or rejected whatever legislation was before the Congress.

Today, elected representatives in Congress and our state legislatures routinely vote on and pass massive draconian bills that no lawmaker has read or fully understands. If you saw the “musical votes” video I’ve linked at my website, sometimes they don’t vote at all. Who among us would trust or hire lawyers who routinely sign off on massive legally binding contracts without even having read them first? That is a serious dereliction of duty on the part of lawmakers, whom we elect and entrust to represent our interests.

The first step in that reform process regarding Honor In Office is the placement of the Honor In Office Act on the California ballot. In essence, the Honor In Office Act would compel every California lawmaker to legally affirm in writing that they have read and understand a bill in full before voting on its passage. A lawmaker’s vote in favor of a bill would not be counted without this confirmation.

This is standard procedure for every American citizen who enters into a legally binding agreement for a bank loan, a mortgage, even something as simple as a cellphone service contract: read, then sign. Upon signing, we are then held legally accountable to the terms of that contract. Given the major social, political, financial, regulatory and even Constitutional ramifications of binding legislation that affects us all, should we expect any less from our duly elected lawmakers?

Q: How can lawmakers be expected to read every bill, especially when some are so huge?

JERROL: They aren’t expected to read every bill. Aides are supposed to read them first to find entries the legislator fundamentally disagrees with. Once found, the legislator can communicate the various problems with the bill and wait for those to be resolved. If major sticking points remain, there is no point in reading the bill. However, for any bill a legislator plans on voting to pass, he or she must read the final version in its entirety, then legally affirm that they did in fact read the entire bill.

This helps to make sure the bill is as good as it can be. It helps to ensure pork hasn’t been inserted. It forces common sense into the equation. After all, how can anyone competently debate the validity of a bill if it hasn’t been read? In effect, just by 400 legislators reading a bill, any number of them will come up with the same comment: “This doesn’t make sense.” That can’t help but happen, and it brings the quality of the legislation way up. To further emphasize the point, I recently received an email from one of our California legislators, which read, “We do pass a lot of silly laws.” Excuse me?

Q: Still, that’s a lot of bills and pages to read, wouldn’t you agree?

JERROL: The legislature sets its own rules. This is very important to understand. They set their own guidelines and procedures. They have the power to change them at will. It is a very sad state of affairs that our legislators are either so corrupt or so dense that they can’t change their rules and procedures to allow them the time to do proper due diligence. That’s far more important than press conferences or meeting with special interest groups.

Q: You mentioned a $350B bill used to pay off only $272B. Could you describe the details of that bill?

JERROL: This has to do with TARP, the $700B Bush bailout bill, where 442 pages were written and passed into law in a little over a week. Based upon the response our two California US Senators received, 94% of Californians opposed it. Yet both the House and Senate passed it. So not only did they not read the bill, they didn’t even listen to their constituents.

In short, that $350B was used to purchase $272B worth of stock. In the blink of an eye, the American people lost $78B. That is according to Elizabeth Warren, the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. You can watch both parts of her interview on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. As I am sure you’ve heard in the news, all sorts of things were added to that bailout bill that had absolutely nothing to do with bailing out or saving the economy, and everything to do with scratching backs.

Q: Speaking of scratching backs, you talked about the trading of votes on the House floor, i.e. legislative back-scratching. Many might consider those normal political tradeoffs that happen in politics all the time. That doesn’t make it right, but are you saying lawmakers should be legally compelled to vote their conscience? Or at least what’s in the best interests of their constituents?

JERROL: That is exactly what I am saying. Yet this kind of bartering happens all the time at both the state and federal level. It is illegal to do this in California, but our lawmakers are very shrewd about how this is done to avoid getting caught. A bill should be able to stand on its merits alone. Lawmakers who would vote in favor of funding or a law because someone else voted in favor of his or her pet project are lawmakers who are looking out for themselves, not the citizens they were elected to represent.

In Part Three of this interview, Mr. Lebaron will address what he sees as the cures for these legislative ills as embodied in his proposed Honor In Office Act, which he seeks to place on the California ballot.

To be continued tomorrow with Part III of the interview with Jerrol LeBaron…

From all appearances, Jerrol LeBaron’s life is both a classic American and Hollywood success story. Having started out in the construction industry in and around Los Angeles, Mr. LeBaron became restless and purchased a small jewelry business, which he owned and ran for seven years. In 2000, after dabbling in screenwriting and discovering just how difficult it was to market scripts in Hollywood, Mr. LeBaron sold his jewelry business and started the online Writers’ Script Network, now known today as Inktip.com.

Today, InkTip is the most successful venture of its kind in Hollywood, matching spec screenplays with prospective studios, producers, and other film industry insiders looking for new material. An average of twenty films a year are made from scripts discovered on InkTip. Mr. LeBaron’s bi-monthly magazine, containing the loglines of hundreds of screenplays in the InkTip database, is distributed industry-wide. Having optioned a script off of InkTip myself, I can personally testify to its success.

Like all of us, I’m sure Mr. LeBaron would much rather be splashing around in the Hollywood pool than jumping into the shark-infested waters of politics. Yet that is exactly what Mr. LeBaron has done by launching his Honor In Office website and campaign to reform the way California legislators do the People’s business, and regardless of political affiliation. It is the corruption of the legislative process which Mr. LeBaron sees as the real problem, not only in Sacramento but across the US.

One prominently displayed video link on the Honor In Office website catches Texas lawmakers casting electronic votes on a bill for up to five absent members. That musical chairs of voting would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. It is, in fact, a shocking wake-up call as to just how far our lawmakers are abdicating the public trust We The People have bestowed upon them.  Should any one of us cast illegal votes for five other people on a ballot referendum, we’d be looking at jail time and rightfully so.

Is voting on key legislation that affects us all in so many profound ways any less crucial? Or should I say, not voting? Or jamming telephone directory-sized bills down our throats that no lawmaker has even read? Sound familiar? The first goal of Mr. LeBaron’s campaign is to place the Honor In Office Act on the California ballot. If passed, the Honor In Office Act would compel California state reps to legally affirm that they have read a bill in full before voting to pass it, just as every attorney in America closing any kind of legal contract is paid to do. Know the paperwork inside out before signing off.

In short, full accountability in all lawmaking by those who represent the People of California in the state legislature. Mr. LeBaron has chosen for himself perhaps the dirtiest job since Hercules was assigned the cleaning of the Augean Stables. Yet it is a public duty Mr. LeBaron feels compelled to perform. He has already done so in numerous media interviews, promoting his Honor In Office campaign out of pocket, even venturing into the lions’ den of Sacramento politics to make his case.

I’m sure Mr. LeBaron would much rather be chasing the Hollywood Dream than wresting in the political mud, as do we all. Yet here he is. The rest I will leave for Mr. LeBaron to explain.

THE INTERVIEW

Q: What was it, specifically, that compelled you to start Honor In Office?

JERROL: Our nation isn’t the great country it once was, and as goes California, so goes the nation. California is the seventh-largest economy in the world. We have phenomenal natural resources, no military to support, yet have one of the highest tax rates in the nation and are virtually bankrupt. That doesn’t make any sense. Then I was reading about the Patriot Act. In four years (Oct 2001-Dec 2005) with the help of the Patriot Act, federal agents have executed self-written search warrants called National Security Letters on over 120,000 unsuspecting Americans.

The Fourth Amendment clearly states that only a judge can authorize a search warrant. If search warrants are needed and they are just, there is no reason why a judge wouldn’t sign off on it. A law like this gets passed when our legislators don’t feel they have a moral obligation to read and understand what they are passing. In the case of the Patriot Act, a 315-page bill was presented to the House and passed in about 30 minutes without debate, and without even having been read. The Senate then passed it with token debate. This is what first got me all fired up.

The key issue here is that our legislators, both at the state and federal level, have almost complete autonomy. In actual practice, other than bribery and perhaps a few other rules, there are no laws they have to follow which help protect us from them. What that means is that the legislatures set their own rules, and a lot of the time even they don’t follow them. You can see a perfect example of Texas legislators doing just that in the “musical votes” video I linked at Honor In Office.

The main problem is that our legislators are not reading, understanding or doing their own personal due diligence with bills passed into law. This results in laws which are impractical, gross wastes of taxpayer dollars, downright silly, or even in direct violation of the Constitution itself. In addition, without the bills being read, special interests are then able to very easily slip in their own self-serving laws and amendments. How does that serve us? It doesn’t. And that’s the main point here.

–

In Parts Two and Three of this interview, Mr. LeBaron will go into far greater detail into the maladies that ail the California State legislature, and how We The People may begin to cure them. You are free to investigate further at Mr. LeBaron’s Honor In Office website.

To be continued tomorrow with Part II of the interview with Jerrol LeBaron…