Jason Osborne

Mark:Free Talk Live. It is Mark Edge with you here doing the Mark Edge Show version of Free Talk Live on the Free Talk Live network. And I've got one of my oldest friends. Longest friends?

Jason Osborne:Yeah.

Mark:Older?

Jason Osborne:Well, yeah. I mean, you're younger than I am.

Mark:That's true. Yes. But a little grayer now than when we first met.

Jason Osborne:Indeed. Yeah.

Mark:And Jason Osborne. Jason Osborne is, well, I'll just rattle it off for you. You went to Hillsdale College. You went to George Mason University. You're a professor in economics. You were a successful businessman and then moved to New Hampshire. After a few years of trying to make things work, you got into the legislature. And then after a couple of years of figuring that out, you worked your way up to the Speaker of the House. I'm sorry, I should say House Majority Leader. Does that sound right?

Jason Osborne:Majority Leader. Yes.

Mark:Majority Leader. Okay.

Jason Osborne:Current title. Speaker of the House one day, I'm sure.

Mark:If you manage to convince the voters. But that seems to be pretty likely. So you did a big speech here at Liberty Forum, and I felt like it was unifying in a way that I've been wanting to hear.

Jason Osborne:Glad you think so, because that's not the only perspective that I've heard.

Mark:I understand. I understand. Well, Eric Brakey gave a speech that any group, you can manage to distinguish yourself in that group. And that's what we all do, right? We vie for status. You can vie for status within a group by either, well, I suppose there's other ways, but he didn't talk about those. What he talked about was purity signaling or achievement. And with the Libertarian Party of the United States, LP.org, there's really no opportunity to achieve much. So you really have to go ahead and purity signal. You could become the chairman or something like that, but you kind of get there by purity signaling. So you say, Jason, I'm a better Libertarian than you are. And you prove it by arguing about these points and this minutia. And pretty soon you've run to the very end of it all. And whereas here in New Hampshire, we have another opportunity and that opportunity is the ability to achieve. And you've achieved at the highest levels within the Free State Project, within New Hampshire liberty atmosphere, right?

Jason Osborne:Yeah. It sounds hilarious to talk about it like that because to me, it was really easy. It's not like I worked real hard at it. I kind of talked about this a little bit in my speech yesterday. It really came down to just having a shift in perspective.

Mark:Okay. So tell me about the perspective shift.

Jason Osborne:Well, first of all, it's just realizing that you cannot change the world, that you have to learn to live in the world that you have and learn to like it.

Mark:Since Ian got arrested, I'm learning a lot about this. This is very, very... imagine. I'm glad I haven't had to deal with that kind of thing yet. FreeIanNow.org.

Jason Osborne:Yes, that would be great. Well, yeah, once you realize you're not going to change the world and you just need to learn how to work within it, life becomes a lot easier. It's a lot easier to sleep at night and just recognize the fact that there are people in Washington, D.C. that you've never met who have no idea who you are, who are going to take half of your stuff every year. And there's nothing you can do about it. It's just not going to happen. What you need to do is just identify the small amount of room that you can move the needle yourself.

Mark:And this is as a legislator in the state of New Hampshire. One would think that that's a position of power of sorts, but is that so?

Jason Osborne:Yeah, it turns out not. I mean, we have a 400-person legislature. So even as a legislator, you're just one of 400. So you have influence, which is basically nothing. So when I say what I've achieved was easy, it was just by saying, hey, I'm not going to try to tell you guys what to do. I have a process that I go through every week, which starts out by asking my members what they want to do. And then I help them do it.

Mark:Okay. So do you have to make these sort of compromises that come up in politics? Are you often saying, okay, well, we don't want to do this distasteful thing, but we will do this distasteful thing in order to get this really delightful thing? Does that happen a lot?

Jason Osborne:So I would like to think that there could be more compromising like that and horse trading, like, hey, I'll give you this if you give me that. Turns out people just aren't really willing to do that.

Mark:When you say people, are you talking about liberty-oriented members of the legislature? Republicans or Democrats or?

Jason Osborne:Both. I will say, the liberty faction-style Republicans have become more agreeable in this regard during my tenure.

Mark:And so that's because what you're doing is working.

Jason Osborne:That's kind of probably been my biggest achievement was just getting liberty people to just be more team. And you'll see liberty legislators vote for things that historically you wouldn't have seen them. Like we undid all the big bail reform that we did during the first Trump administration. I don't know if you remember that when we did that.

Mark:I know you did bail reform, but New Hampshire was a mess with the way it did bail at that time. I mean, it was that way across the country.

Jason Osborne:And during the first Trump administration, we really just opened the door toward just letting people out on the street with no bail at all. And that didn't work. It was a total disaster.

Mark:Okay.

Jason Osborne:It was a disaster everywhere. You end up with just repeat offenders over and over and over again. People, they'll stab somebody in the morning. They'll get back out and stab someone in the afternoon and then do it again in the evening. It was absolutely crazy. And so we went back and we fixed that and libertarians were willing to do it. And the libertarians of 10 years ago probably wouldn't have.

Mark:Yeah. I think that's something that New Hampshire is great about is we have an opportunity to experiment in areas of freedom that otherwise we wouldn't. So it's good to be able to see what works and what doesn't work. I know you guys have had a lot of victories. Specifically, it's hard to keep track of them all.

Jason Osborne:I mean, we do file over a thousand bills a year. As soon as we get done with them, I kind of forget about them because we're already moving on to the next thing.

Mark:Do you trash most of the bills? You just like, this isn't going to go through, this isn't going to go through. You just don't spend any time on them, or how's it work?

Jason Osborne:Too many things get too little attention. Let's put it that way. Some things slip through the cracks. Like this year we passed a paint tax to the Senate and I had a tax on paint. I didn't even realize we did it. It just kind of slipped right by me and the governor had to veto it. But that's the benefit of having all the various branches and chambers of government under the same party control is you can back each other up when you slip up a little bit.

Mark:So the New Hampshire House and the New Hampshire Senate and the governorship.

Jason Osborne:Yes. And in New Hampshire, we have a thing called the Executive Council, which I don't think any other state has. It's five members, one for each district. So there are five even districts that are across the state and each one elects an executive councilor. And their job is to approve every single contract of government. Anything over $10,000 has to be approved by that group of people.

Mark:Is it kind of like a tricameral situation then?

Jason Osborne:Something like that. I don't even know how to describe it because it's so different. But the governor of New Hampshire is the weakest governor in the entire country. Really, the only thing he or she can do is veto bills. Sign or veto bills and appoint the Supreme Court justices. She can nominate, but it's the Executive Council that approves them.

Mark:Wow.

Jason Osborne:Yeah. So it's really the Executive Council that runs everything. And much to every governor's chagrin, because I think every single one gets elected and imagines that everyone just falls in line and does what they say. And they have to be fairly immediately set in their place.

Mark:So I did get a chance to see your speech and you talked a lot about the Overton window. For those who don't know, the Overton window is, well, as Tom Woods calls it, the three-by-five card of allowable opinion. It's the things that we're talking about today, the things that are acceptable to think. So if you think about for a second, what life was like in 1989 when I graduated high school, there weren't a lot of men dressing up as women and demanding that you use their pronouns. But that is much more of a thing that's within the Overton window now. And your opinion on the Overton window and since you've been in the legislature, what was that thought?

Jason Osborne:Yeah. Well, it's basically always moving. And you always have to be prepared for where it is and where it's going to be. I didn't talk about this, but I think this is the difference between good leaders and remarkable leaders. The good leaders are following that window, staying inside of it and not drifting out. And the remarkable ones can visualize where that window is going to be six months from now or more importantly next November when it comes time for election season. And that kind of person, I think of like Governor Ron DeSantis during COVID. Nobody else in the country got it. And he said, we're not doing the right thing here. I'm going to do this. Even though no one else is doing it, even though everyone hates me today, I know that when the history gets written, I'm going to be right and they're going to be wrong.

Mark:Yeah. I was in Florida much of COVID and it was better than when I had gone to other states. Other states were locked down. You couldn't do anything. Businesses were just drying up on the vine. And in Florida, other than a few places, you basically could do what you wanted. And it wasn't worse.

Jason Osborne:Yeah. And here in New Hampshire, we had Governor Sununu. I don't want to talk smack about him because again, he was a good governor. He stayed within the current window, did what the people wanted him to do. He was still pretty bold as New England goes. And relative to most of the country, we were still a net in-migration state during that period because we were more open than certain other states. But yeah, like all the ones that surround us. I was at odds with him through that entire period, fighting with him over what he was doing because it wasn't far enough. And he knew better. I mean, he knew what Ron knew. But he wasn't willing to do it.

Mark:Yeah. It takes a... I mean, it's a gamble, right? You can call it bravery, but you only call it bravery if it's successful. You call it stupidity if it's not. And that's really what it comes down to. So you've been through some governors here and you're kind of, I mean, is Kingmaker a strong term? You're right there with all the people doing the things.

Jason Osborne:Yeah. I wouldn't call it that. Again, I just go along with the program. That's really how I roll. And so I supported this governor and I supported the last governor because that's my job to support the governor. And obviously they do some things you like and they do some things you don't like and you just kind of give them your opinion, but that's about all you can do. And you take grief about it from, especially in a crowd like we're here with today at Liberty Forum. But you have to ask yourself, do you want me to be there in the room having those arguments with these people or not? Because if you want a seat at the table, you've got to be willing to deal with the outcome.

Mark:Speaking of arguments, recently the Democrats offered you an olive branch. They said that they agreed with you on something. What was that?

Jason Osborne:It seemed that way. So some Democrat on Tuesday, he got up and did a press conference promoting an income tax, which, New Hampshire is a state that does not have any income tax at all. Up until recently, we did have a tax on interest and dividends income, but we successfully repealed that. So now New Hampshire is zero percent income tax without the asterisk.

Mark:New Hampshire had a little asterisk next to it, yeah.

Jason Osborne:And so immediately, of course, Democrats know this is just an albatross. Every election season, we try to hang it around their neck. Democrats support an income tax and they go, no, we don't. And of course they were quick to denounce this plan. And they're like, oh no, we do not support an income tax. If there's one thing we agree with Osborne on, it is that we do not support an income tax.

Mark:And you are their favorite whipping boy. They just love to get you out there in the media and beat on you. But here in this case, they were willing to say, we agree with Jason Osborne on this one issue.

Jason Osborne:Yes. So I took advantage of this. I thought, here is an opportunity for bipartisanship if I've ever seen one. I drafted a floor amendment. And a floor amendment means right now. Just immediately, there's been no public hearing on it. I brought it into the chamber on Thursday when we met to add an article to the state constitution prohibiting the state from taxing personal income. And they stated they're against the income tax. They're obviously against it. So they voted to prevent an income tax in the... I thought it would have been a unanimous voice vote. It turns out, no, they all voted against it. And they were shocked and appalled that I would even attempt such a thing. You're trying to work with the other side and they just don't get it.

Mark:I know.

Jason Osborne:There's a lot of talk of process and how dare I give them only 15 minutes to consider these two very short, simple sentences. Like two whole sentences. I heard their words though. I do listen. I take criticism to heart.

Mark:You do take a lot of criticism. That's for sure.

Jason Osborne:So I will be bringing an amendment to a committee within the next couple of weeks. We'll go through the process. We'll have a public hearing. In fact, I've already begun the process of testing the waters in the public. And you'll be maybe probably not at all surprised to hear that it's basically unanimous agreement in the public to adopt this amendment to the constitution.

Mark:I'm sure.

Jason Osborne:And so it'll be really interesting to see how this hearing goes. And I'll be very interested to see how the Democrats vote on the house floor after going through the process. I mean, the only argument I ever hear out of the Democrats, and this is the same one that this gentleman made, was that if we have an income tax, then the property taxes will diminish. And wouldn't that be nice ladies and gentlemen to pay less in property tax.

Mark:But I kind of feel like this is the same old story. Like we've been tricked for hundreds of years with this particular lie.

Jason Osborne:The nice thing about having 50 states is that we have 50 examples of when things like this have been tried in the past. And I, in particular, brought up the case of Connecticut, which back in 1991, the governor candidate ran on no income tax. And then once elected, he didn't just sign into law an income tax. He vetoed three budgets and forced the government shutdown to get the income tax that he wanted.

Mark:Wow.

Jason Osborne:He was, I mean, yeah. A little bit of a reversal there. And it turns out that it started off at four-point-something percent and over the years has grown already to like seven percent. And of course they bill it as property tax relief. And sure enough, property tax went up. At 23 mil points. That's 2.3 percent. Every single year you pay for the joy of living on your own property.

Mark:So pretty soon we'll all be doing Airbnb just so we can live in our place in the week.

Jason Osborne:Right. Exactly. So it didn't work there and it hasn't worked anywhere and it's certainly not going to work here.

Mark:Right. And I don't know why these Democrats are always so hell-bent on taxing all the things that promote human prosperity. Like, why do we tax work and earning and owning and investment and savings? Why don't we tax being lazy, tax sitting on the street corner, tax urinating in public?

Jason Osborne:I think that the best thing you can do to make your life better is to live free. Now that may mean moving. It may mean pursuing the hobbies you want to pursue. And by live free, I mean, do the things that make you happy. But the only Democrats I really get a lot of contact with in New Hampshire are the ones that go to the state house every single week with a new and different sign to protest a new and different thing. The next new thing. I swear they're NPCs. They drew this NPC character off of these people because they literally will protest one thing one day. And then the next day they're protesting the thing that they had just said. It's amazing what they do. And I wonder to myself, we live right next door to Vermont, to Massachusetts, to Maine even. And these places, there's no point in New Hampshire that is more than 36 miles as the crow flies from the state border. It's a small state. You can move to these other places. And then suddenly the government program that you wanted is now in place. It's right there for the enjoyment that you have. But instead they've got to spread their desires all across. They want to paint everything blue. And it just seems like a lot of work for nothing. These people are protesting every single day.

Mark:You'd think that's what they want. That's what makes them happy, to protest.

Jason Osborne:Well, I think that this is their kind of last dying gasps of breath. I mean, probably literally and figuratively, right? These are all old people. And if you're protesting in New Hampshire in the wintertime and you're 80 years old, your life is probably very miserable because you have not gotten to the point where you're able to snowbird in Florida like normal old people. And it's cold out there and your bones ache and you're going to slip and break something on the ice and all kinds of things. And not only that, every year, more and more of these leftists are moving out of New Hampshire and more right-leaning people are moving in.

Mark:Right. I track this very closely. How do you track that?

Jason Osborne:You have national change of address information. Also all the state voter registrations are public. So you just correlate those two things together and you can just watch the Democrats move out and the Republicans move in.

Mark:Really important.

Jason Osborne:And so these old people, they're seeing all of their friends move away and all their friends who've saved properly are going to Florida and they're stuck here. And eventually they'll be gone too, one way or another.

Mark:So the ongoing story by the cranky Yankees that I've always heard is that the Massholes, people from Massachusetts, move up and they bring their politics with them. What you're seeing is in fact the opposite of that, because there's Republicans in Massachusetts and frankly, there's millions of them. And not to say that Republicans have the answers every issue, every time, but Free Staters and libertarians have managed to work way better with the Republicans in New Hampshire than we have with Democrats for whatever reason. And these people who are moving up are Republicans then is what you're saying.

Jason Osborne:Yes. And also keep in mind that normal people don't have politics like you and I have politics. Because this is kind of our life. Normal people have other things on their mind. And they probably couldn't tell you who their elected officials are, but they don't want an income tax. They know that much. And that's why they're coming here and escaping Massachusetts.

Mark:And as long as you're in office, you draw breath and you're doing what you do in New Hampshire, there will not be an income tax.

Jason Osborne:Yeah. I don't believe in taxing things that are good. I do need to figure out how to not be taxing the property as much as we do. There's always going to be something. One step at a time. And I actually have something in the works right now.

Mark:Jason Osborne, people can support you and your efforts in what way?

Jason Osborne:ElectHouseRepublicans.com.

Mark:ElectHouseRepublicans.com. I can give my endorsement to this organization. This is the smartest way to make New Hampshire more free. ElectHouseRepublicans.com. What they do is they apply the money that's donated to the proper race. How many races matter in a given year? How many house races matter?

Jason Osborne:Yeah. Remember there's 400 house districts. About a third of those are safe Republican seats. Third of them are safe Democrat seats. The other ones are kind of up in the air and are subject to the winds of national politics, whichever way the winds are blowing. And we have to target our efforts to precisely 60 to 80 races that are influenceable.

Mark:Right. So I could give money to my favorite politician, Mark Warden, right? But he's probably going to win his district. So giving him money might just cause him more reporting. He makes some more signs. He keeps them in his garage for next year. Whereas if I give the money that I was going to give to him to ElectHouseRepublicans.com, then it gets applied to a race where it can actually make a difference.

Jason Osborne:Yep. And people like Mark Warden know that if you did give him money, he would just forward it to ElectHouseRepublicans.com anyway.

Mark:I didn't know that. Maybe he has. ElectHouseRepublicans.com.