The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Stolen Government: Why Your Representative Cannot Represent You and How to Reclaim Your Voice by Charles Key

Episode Date: October 26, 2024

Stolen Government: Why Your Representative Cannot Represent You and How to Reclaim Your Voice by Charles Key Amazon.com/dp/B0CS1HD4PK Do you ever feel like this? Politically powerless? That elected officials aren’t listening? That legislators don't care about what you think they should prioritize? Former Oklahoma State Representative Charles Key exposes the uncomfortable reality that many citizens suspect but few truly comprehend: the erosion of our democratic ideals within the very institutions designed to safeguard them. Key embarks on a compelling journey through the corridors of power, unraveling the intricacies of a system that has deviated from its founding principles. Through meticulous research and insightful analysis, Key shines a spotlight on the mechanisms that render our representatives incapable of authentically representing the people. Drawing on his personal experiences in the political arena, he unveils a narrative of systemic dysfunction, cronyism, and a loss of accountability that has left the average citizen voiceless in the halls of power. However, "Stolen Government" is not merely a diagnosis of the problem; it is a roadmap for citizens seeking to reclaim their voice in the democratic process. Charles Key outlines practical and actionable steps to restore transparency, accountability, and genuine representation. Rooted in a profound belief in the resilience of democracy, this book serves as a rallying cry for citizens to actively participate in shaping the future of their government.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the hour lady sings, and, makes an official welcome to the big show.

For 16 years and over 2,000 episodes, we've been doing the Chris Voss Show, and we bring you another today. So 2001, no, we're actually headed towards 2100, the way we're going. Anyway, guys, go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss. Chris Voss won the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Today we have an amazing young man on the show with us today. We're going to be talking about his new book that will come out January 8, 2024. It is called Stolen Government, Why Your Representative Cannot Represent You and How to Reclaim Your Voice. Charles Key joins us on the show today.

We're going to be talking to him about his insights. He is a former Oklahoma State Representative with over two decades of experience in politics and advocacy, known for his relentless pursuit of truth. He was the leader of the Oklahoma City Bombing Investigation Committee. He challenged the official narrative and uncovered hidden details through his book, Stolen Government and the Final Report. His work is a testament to standing firm in the face of opposition and advocating for government accountability no matter the cost. With his ability to dissect complicated topics and offer real-world examples, he's an invaluable voice for anyone who wants to understand how to bridge the gap

between government and the people. Welcome to the show. How are you, Charles? Great. thank you for having me chris glad thanks for coming we certainly appreciate it give us your dot coms where can people find you on the interweb sir real simple my name charles key singular not plural dot com charleskey.com all right so give us you need to go so give us your 30,000 overview. What's inside your new book? This is something, a little background. I was first elected.

I first ran in 1984. Lost like a lot of people do when they run the first time. Won in 86, served for 12 years. Called the Oklahoma City bombing during that time. Was defeated in 98. That's why I stopped in that period of time. But I came defeated in 98. That's why I stopped in that period of time. But I came back in 2006. There's always a lot of stories behind these kind of things, of course,

until 2012. And so the Republicans took over in that last six years. That first 12 was in a minority capacity. So there's a perspective there that's a real value in answer to your question. This issue started back when I started, when I was 28, 30 years old, and came in as a very informed, I think, much more than the average person about our type of government, the history, a lot of things like that, legal constitutional issues but i had not looked at the rules or focused on it or been informed by someone that maybe i should until i got there oh this book is about the rules but not the rules in a boring way it's really about kind of like lord of the rings It's about the rule that allows them

to control most of everything that goes on in a legislative body. And who's they? And tell us about the rules. Those that we refer to as leadership, the speaker, the speaker pro tem in most states, like in Oklahoma, the speaker and the speaker pro tem, the top leadership position in each body, they actually choose in our state, it's like this. They choose both the chairman and vice chairman of every committee, determine the membership of every committee, also determine the assignment of bills to every committee. I'd assume, but most of us don't think about it like I did until I got there, that actually there's some rules that set everything up so that it runs, you know, like a well-greased machine or something along that line.

But there's actually not in most states. There's just the top people and then whatever rules they put in place or whatever they determine or decide to do to how they run things it's kind of the way it works so i i know that when you go to congress and stuff they have hierarchy rules so you know being on communities has more power right and and And, you know, it has more, you know, saying you're on a committee helps you back home, I guess. Is that, are those kind of some of the rules you're talking about? They have these hierarchy rules where, you know,

you've got to be up to a certain level to have more power? Yeah, you know, those kind of, these things are really interesting to consider and debate. Like in our state, we don't have any rule like that whatsoever. Now, they may have some unwritten rule. In other words, a speaker and a leadership team, whoever that may be from time to time, may decide that they will give preference to people that have seniority over other members. All things being equal or something like that. Lots of game playing.

And I imagine committees and majority, minority rule, all sorts of different things. So the premise of your book, you say it's a stolen government. How do you tell us why you call it the stolen government? When I first became aware of this, I was a freshman. I forget exactly what bill that I had filed. I'd probably filed several like members do. But when I had a committee chairman say, no, I'm not going to put your bill on the agenda, just not going to hear it, that was a real surprise to me, almost a shock, because, again, I had made some assumptions, and especially someone, I've kind of referred to myself, someone that had this picture of this American experiment

and this type of government unique in world history and various themes like that, and then you get elected like every other member of the House, and. It's 101 members. So it's got nice math number to use for math. You get elected just like everyone else. But then some guy that gets named as a chairman of X can say no, not just to you, but he's saying no to all those people that sent you up there. Wow. They don't have a voice or they have less of a voice than others do. Is one of the, I don't know what some of the problems are, but it's one of the problems that people really don't pay attention to what's going on in their state legislatures for the most part.

I know a lot of people are just oblivious to it. Oh, yeah. What they're doing on a daily basis. Definitely. I would say that's the number one problem. Yeah. And then a lot of people don't watch the news i mean there's some news channels that really cover local legislative things there's

some great tiktok accounts and facebook accounts and different things that follow i think podcasts and blogs that follow you know what the local legislatures are doing if you want to tune in but a lot of people are oblivious that they. They just kind of pay attention to what the national noise is and use of the national noise is, you know, some of the most toxic people in any given party. Now, with your book, you talk about how to reclaim your voice. A lot of people feel frustrated in politics right now. They don't feel like they have a voice. Give us some of the samples, tease out some of the samples if you would, of how people

can reclaim their voice that you talk about in the book. First, you have to have knowledge first. And so if you're listening to a podcast like this, that's a good thing. You know, really that's, I like to break it down that simply, you have to have knowledge first, but then you have to take some kind of action and multiple kinds of action in the realm of politics and government is very beneficial. All I mean by that is if you're going to write a letter or make a phone call to a state representative, you might as well reach out to your state senator while you're at it. Whoever your city councilman is, maybe your U.S. House member or senator, begin to do those things. And they will, you know, you'll get a response and you'll be able to have a dialogue to the extent that you want to have it. It's important to make that connection so that they know that you're watching.

Hey, we're paying attention, folks. You know, I often say you get the government you deserve and you get the government you vote in. You know, a lot of people, you know, part of the problem is we live in this emotionalism society that doesn't take accountability for anything and just loves to be victims. But, you know, a lot of people,

they want to sit around and complain about government it's like you guys elected them and 50 of the people don't vote so whether you vote or not you still have made a choice and so if you don't like the government you have go look in your mirror and so people people just want to sit around armchair the government and you know just be like i don't know they like they openly lie to us we allow them to openly lie to us they know they can openly lie to us you know maybe if you change the standard where you're like we're not going to put up with your bullshit we're going to pay attention to what you guys are doing in government

we're going to watch you like hawks we're going to make sure you're managing our money the government's money you know then you'd have a different government if you had 100 of people showing up to vote caring about who they're voting for getting educated as you say you know then they can take their government back but until until people just stop voting and throwing away the key and checking in two to four years later depend upon the race, they're always going to have a shitty government because the people in government just seem to know that they're not really paying that much attention. I don't know.

Is that my opinion or valid? No, and that's what this book really does. It doesn't get into all the rules. It doesn't get into many of the rules. It really gets down to one rule, and that is the ability of the speaker and then his circle of appointees, which would include those committee chairmen, can pick and choose what gets actually heard and

then therefore voted on. And to get even a better picture, that makes it either very easy or very hard for the public to see what their elected representatives and senators are doing and what the rest of them are doing what they're really doing because a lot of the the things that do or that that go on up there are hidden you know their cast. And so therefore you can't see if your state representative or your state senator is doing what he's said he was going to go up there and do or not do, whatever the case may be. And so we're talking about openness, transparency, the public being able to see more of what's really going on. Here's what really happens is a chairman or a speaker,

for example, or a floor leader, they won't deny a hearing just because they don't like a bill. Once in a while, they may do that, but they're usually doing it when they do it because there are special interest groups behind the scenes and or large donors that are having more influence than the constituency. And so that's what it really gets down to is who's really having the most influence. There's more influence, and we all kind of know this inherently, or many of us think we do. I would say it is true, and there's too much evidence to prove it. The special interest has so much influence, even beyond what constituencies do. And a lot of times we see this manifest, you know, openly in the public through the media when an issue gets really big and explodes or something.

That's really what this gets down to is kind of trying to just equal and level the playing field between special interest and big money to interest with the people. You know, we see that right now. I think one of the most egregious, gross examples of that is of Elon Musk trying to buy votes by offering a million dollars to anybody who signs up for a GOP thing. I mean, I don't know. Hopefully the justice department is going to look at this. This is crazy, but you know, a citizens United, a ruling from SCOTUS and a couple other rulings they did really created so that corporations and billionaires can just buy your own fricking politician. You know, you've got, you know, you, you can evidently just with a cheap RV, you can buy your own SCOTUS.

What are you going to do now? And it's really out of control. And people don't realize, you know, a lot of these billionaires, you know, they all are on different sides of the process. But a lot of them are influencing government, corporations, you know, influencing government. And people got to really pay attention and get wise to what's going on. Here's a subject that is difficult to talk about. But when you think about the last time that we had a true reapportionment at the federal level, in other words, when we determined what the overall population was

and how that should break down in terms of the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives. We haven't done that since, I understand it's been since 1900. If we followed approximately the same formula and applied it to the current population, we would have a very much larger number than 435 members of the house at the at the federal level that starts drawing pictures if you think about growing it significantly you know it it scares even me i i wouldn't want that but what the flip side of that that we don't think about is what's been diluted over that time is there's so many more constituents to one Congress member, U.S. House member, that it's almost impossible for any of us to have any influence over that member to go talk to them or anything like that. Wow. And so we know how much special interest and moneyed interest give compared to the average giving individual to those people so those large

givers which we call special interest groups or individuals have i'm sure of the influence that are you know our institutions you know at the state and federal level yeah it's it's it's really interesting how what about like these small donor types? Evidently, a lot of the toxic politicians in the U.S. Congress, you know, they've learned to live on these small dollar donations. And evidently, you know, that's why they do that performative toxic stuff that they do is because they know if they pull some toxic stunt in Congress when the mics are on and the cameras are on they can you know they can rally a ton of money to come in from local donors and some of them I guess make quite a bit of money off of those off of those local donor runs and usually they have to pull some sort of toxic stunt to get it to happen which is kind

of interesting when you think about it and they don't provide a lot of legislative work like they don't introduce bills and stuff i don't know if you have thoughts on that i i'm not that familiar with that i haven't had that much i don't have that much knowledge about it yeah are there any specific organizations or particular, what would it be, legislation or something that might come to mind? I mean, term limits, other things like that would be ideal, I think, at this point. I think most people agree that we really shouldn't have people there for life. I mean, the joke right now is that, is that, you know, it's basically a rest home for rich people, Congresses. And, and I think a lot of people feel that, but again, people don't show up to vote 50%

of the time people, you know, vote very poorly. I mean, the fact that we can have, like right now, we have two very glaring differences between the,aring differences between Trump and Harris that are running right now. For context, we're two weeks before the election of 2024, if you're watching this video 10 years from now. But the fact that we can have two completely opposed candidates that are clearly very different I mean a lot of similarities I think I think we can honestly say and the fact that there's still undecided voters I mean it's almost it's almost like to be an undecided voter in this country you almost have to be like that person who always shows up for jury duty in California let's OJ off you know it's

like you have to be somebody on jury duty who doesn't watch the news who doesn't have a fucking clue what's going on in the world those are the people who are going to decide you know whether oj gets off or not and you're just like what what are we doing so basically you got to be some of the most i don't know you got to wonder about how much you're really paying attention in life and and so this is our problem people don't care i mean i have a lot of people they love to blame the government for everything and i'm like did you vote and they go no and i'm like it's your fucking fault you know i mean even it kind of like it's how there's a lot of analogies of course that have been used forever but

it's why it's so important that we pay attention to who's there and who we're putting up there. Once they get up there, it's supposed to run on its own. And if you put the right kind of people in there, the right profile, there's too many people that are being told what to do, obviously, just to break it down. And that's the result of what we're getting. We're getting a watered-down version of what the people really want. Most polling right now is showing people want less government than what they're getting as far as it comes to them. But we're not getting that. And the question is why? And so what happens is trust starts breaking down, and people don't trust the system and the process. So people vote, and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. I mean, it makes all the difference if people show. If they know people are watching, you know, it's basically, you know, leaving the hen house unattended and unguarded if you let the house run. You know, it's interesting how many of these folks in federal government, I mean, they're just the ultra-rich people. And, you know, I think, what is it? I think we're spending a trillion dollars or something on, I don't know, maybe that's out of control. But we're spending billions on presidential races. Oh, maybe a trillion dollars on a presidential race. I don't know maybe that's out of control but we're spending billions on presidential races maybe a trillion dollars in a presidential race

I don't know but I mean you look at the money you have to raise and the power you have to have you know it's almost like a game for the rich basically to get into congress now oh yeah yeah it's just you know and I'm a conservative I'm more like a conservative

libertarian. But as I've thought over the years and as time has gone by, I think more kind of lean this direction. I, by nature, because of my political philosophy, wouldn't be for public funding of campaigns or anything like that. On the other hand, it's so out of hand. It's so out of control. In this small book, Stolen Government, it's only about 100 pages long. We wanted to keep it simple. I wanted to get into the financing part of it as a separate issue and talk about that. Others have done that in great detail, but it's so much related to this subject. I wanted to do that,

but also look at the federal rules that we've kind of been talking about a little bit, but decided not to do either one of those because this subject matter gets, and politics in general, you know, people's minds can turn off and ears can turn off really quickly. We're going to focus on this one issue that these people that end up getting in power have, and that is to just totally deny duly elected representatives and senators, as we call them, of the people just no voice at all. And they also, you come into the game and you're told either directly or indirectly, get in line with the leadership's program or you'll be marginalized or you'll have no voice. So, you know, we've got to pay attention or others will take over the system to the extent, either completely or to the extent that effectively they have.

And I would say that's where we're at right now we're in a window trying to correct this and if it gets worse it's just going to be harder to correct it if at all yeah most definitely and it seems to just get any worse as you say i mean it's it's you know corporations just buy whatever they want. They get influence. Sometimes they're put into positions of power. I mean, right now, the quid pro quo that Donald Trump is offering Elon Musk to try and buy votes. Literally, I mean, that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to buy votes and win Pennsylvania by offering a million dollars a day or week.

I think it's every day to people on the thing. I think there's calls now for the Justice Department to look into it. Hopefully they're doing something about it. Merrick Garland has been just the worst AG ever. I don't know if that's the worst AG ever. I'll leave that to Bill Barr. But he's been so passive. I think I can say that because evidently it's come out

recently joe biden's really been pissed about appointing him i think that's come out woodward's but bob warden's book war we're trying to get him on the show too but but a lot of the a lot of this stuff that's going on like people should be aghast at something like that like people are buying our elections we have people mucking with voter rolls trying to kick people off you know all this gamesman that's playing people should be aghast but you know most people are just so broke they're so just trying to get by they don't they don't want to pay attention to it and of course their priorities are with watching the bachelor and the kardashians every day and whatever murder police tv show is on and so people don't care i mean they just don't

put forth the time and effort but they need to care you know when you talk to people in politics they always have an opinion but you're just like hey if you don't vote or if you vote for dumb people then you get what you deserve like i showed up to vote i'm a moderate democrat i try and see both sides i didn't always used to be i've been on both sides of the political spectrum party wise but you know when when i saw you know i showed up to vote for hillary and when i saw that a lot of women didn't show up to vote for hillary and then they were all complaining about how scotus overturned abortion you're just like did you show up to vote for Hillary? Oh, no, you didn't?

Shut the fuck up. I mean, what did you expect? I mean, anybody could see what that was that was coming that had any political savvy. And, you know, anybody who knows, I mean, we've had tons of authors on the show that have described, you know, the Betsy DeVos Citizens for National Policy, I think it is, and her umbrella organization, 200 plus organizations that are trying to overthrow democracy for theocracy. That's been going on since Nixon, if you pay attention.

But people just don't. They'd rather watch the Kardashians and let everything go to fucking hell and and then sit around and complain about it so you give a lot of tips in the book on how people can take their democracy back how they can get involved and i think like you say just letting them letting them know that you're keeping tabs on them that you're you know make them sweat make these politicians sweat you know all that good. Anything more you want to tease out before we go? You know, you've got to, yeah, make them sweat. I like, that's a good place to end. Make them sweat. Because what this, this is proposing to change, not just the rules, because we don't trust them to change the rules. They've never been changed and they're never going to reform themselves. So

it has to be done either statutorily or through a constitutional amendment in oklahoma we have a citizen's petition the statewide referendum ability to go out and get signatures and force a vote on a proposed law and it's not infrequent that we do it here it's both been done for conservative and quote liberal issues like the legalization of marijuana medical marijuana here in oklahoma it's only got on the on the book so to speak but my point here is that some i found out in doing the book and talking to many people around the country a lot of states don't have that ability so we also have a very active grassroots organization in oklah. It forces a lot of change and it's forcing this change as it appears right now. And if we don't see some change in the next 12 months of significance in the legislature, we're already poised

to do a statewide petition and put up the ballot, which would not be until 2026. But that's what we're looking at doing. People can contact me at the website. I'd be happy to work with anybody, consult with them. I work with a lot of other state legislators about how they can do things to address problems in their states. And so there's a lot of activity going on right now.

Yeah, yeah. Hopefully people get more involved. I mean, I imagine it it's gonna be interesting what happens in this election whether people are gonna give a shit it seems like they're showing up in record numbers in states like georgia and other states to vote so it seems maybe people more fired up about this election than anything maybe that's a a good step in the right direction to get people involved or i don't know maybe they'll just elect somebody and go back to sleep that seems to be what they do every four years they just go back to sleep and you know i'll talk to people i'll be like what are you doing in the you know what

are you caring about government they're just like i don't know i don't worry about it until you know every four years you know one thing one thing i love about this and and there's only a few issues fundamental kind of issues like this that are out there that really they cross party lines and they cross these philosophical barriers that we talk about and actually exist even i mean in other words most issues i would propose or at least a lot of them aren't really conservative liberal or, or anything like that. It might just be basic civil-type rights that are being violated or maybe being tilted one side or the other. So it's important to know how and why things are happening,

but then know how to fix them and who's doing what. That's what this book addresses. Demand more from your government. You get the government you deserve. You get the government you earn. That's really where it comes down to. charles thank you for coming on the show give us your.com one more time as we go out charleskey.com just like it sounds k-e-y charleskey.com order up the book folks wherever fine books are sold you can find it on amazon or other places

stolen government why your representative cannot represent you, and how to reclaim your voice. Let's get the average people interested in government and paying attention to what's going on, not just the billionaires, because billionaires really don't care about you. One of the most astounding things that I see in today's marketplace is people really believe that billionaires give a shit about them. It's just astounding. There's people who worship Elon Musk, and they're like, he cares.

It's like he doesn't care about you. You're a cog in his wheel. He's a, you know, anyway. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.