Platform Committee - 2022 RPT State Convention

I'm Paul Morengrill. I'm from Georgetown. In 2013, the effects of the America Invents Act, I think named by Orwell himself, killed my company. And I don't know what you guys did the last time the government killed your company, but I hopped in my truck and I drove to Washington. I thought I was alone, but effectively what they've done is destroyed the patent system. And by destroying the patent system, you destroy investment in early stage startups. What used to be 84% of early stage funding in the United States has now gone to China. I'd like to add a plank in the Republican platform. I've emailed it to everybody here. It's entitled Reaffirming to the Inventor the Exclusive Rights of Their Discovery. This is a federal issue, but it belongs in the state level. Well, just today, Senator Cornyn and Senator Leahy dropped legislation to make it even worse. I need that plank so I can put pressure on Senator Cornyn to fix this problem rather than making it worse. I certainly hope that we can add this to a plank. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Paul. Ray Smith, then Jay Chance, and the last person to testify in this session will be Susan Hamilton. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to second the resolution that Mr. Paul Morneville just introduced into the record. I will tell you that our schools, our school boards, universities, state and federal agencies have been taken over by an enemy within. In 2012, under the Obama administration, the American Invents Act was passed. And since 2012, the U.S. patent system, the U.S. patent office and the patent system has been run by, run and operated by Big Tech, Big Business, and China. And I will tell you there is no differentiation between the three. They are running the patent office. Case in point, the last three, the current, skip one, and then the third one back, we're talking in terms of is it being run by Big Tech? Well, of the last three, two patent directors have been in-house attorneys for Google. They are in control. Big Tech is in control of our patent system. They have destroyed it. In September 2019, I was invited, along with eight other inventors, to have a meeting with then Director Yonkun of the patent office. And the director, after a 45-minute meeting that went an hour and a half, the director told us that 2019 was the first year in the U.S. patent history that fewer patents were filed in the U.S., this while technology is exploding around the world. And he was deeply troubled. I'm going to meet with now, on Tuesday next week, I'm meeting with the current patent director, along with four other inventors. This is an in-house attorney for Google, and we're going to be discussing this very matter that Paul introduced. This is innovation, this is investment, this is business, and the patent system is destroying that in America. And it's a secret. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Smith. Jody Chance, next. Hi, I'm Jade Chance, SD16, and I'm here to address the lack of security, which covers all borders of the Internet of Things, and by that I mean a capital I of capital T things. It's actually academically and scientifically defined as absolutely every device that can be controlled, possibly remotely, by the Internet. This power could easily be turned against any person, place, or business in Texas, which means your homes, your businesses, and your kids. This borderless cyber world known as the Internet of Things, please look it up, it's a real actual thing, I'm not just speaking generally, it destroys the possibility of national and state security, including our federal space force, and it would address all the planks, the infrastructure, the resistance to the reset, the patents, all of which just needs to be included in the language of the legislation immediately and regulated for the businesses that use the Internet of Things, and I would just like you guys to thank you all for your time. Thank you, Jade, and thank you for coming from SD16, which is my SD, so thank you. We did have one person who had signed up on this list, but they signed up on the wrong list, so we are going to have time for one more person, Art Brown, is Art Brown in the room? Art? If not, we'll move to Joe Pogiamont. Joe? Is he still here? Joe Pogiamont. Palmer. Joe Palmer. Okay. Joe Palmer. Sorry, got your name wrong. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Palmer, Poiman, you know. I'm very grateful for the work that this committee has done. Joe Palmer, SD9. Very quickly, there's something that's important in this category to me. It's called the standard presumptive value law. As the report states now, we're calling for the repeal of the standard presumptive value, and there's not much clarification in the language, so I wanted to provide very briefly what that is. When you buy a car from a dealer, there's no disputing what you paid for the car. The tax process is pretty well cut and dry, the registration process. However, when an individual buys a used vehicle from another individual, you may well know this, you take the documentation to the tax office, and you pay tax on what is called the standard presumptive value. This is a database that tells them what to charge you. It's not related to what you paid for the vehicle at all. You could have dredged the vehicle up off the bottom of the ocean. They're still going to rely on the database. They say blue book, it's not blue book. So this started in 2008. Before that, you buy a car from somebody, and you go in there, you tell them what you paid, and they charge you tax on that amount. Well, I asked Joe Pickett, who's chair of transportation committee in the Texas legislature, about this, and he said, yeah, you know what was happening was people were going in there and saying they were paying 50 bucks for a Ferrari. And I said, okay, so your remedy for a few people shy-sting the state is to turn around and have the state to shy-st everybody. I'm more concerned about the state ripping me off and fleecing me than people fleecing the government out of money that they're going to just waste. So I'm just, again, very grateful for your work, and that's a primary issue to me, and I just don't want it to be overlooked or removed. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Palmer. All right, that concludes our testimony in business and commerce. The next category in the platform where we will hear testimony is finance. We have Mark Boeferding, Ruben Daniel, Doyle, Deborah Damon, again, Maybeth Yenawono, and again, Joe Palmer. So, Mark, if you'll come forward. Thank you. Mark Boeferding, SD24. I believe you've got the little strips of paper. I'm a fiscal conservative, so I cut up a whole bunch of little ones for you there. I'd like to talk about reinstituting the 2020-178 platform under finance, and basically this is to amend the property tax exemption statute to allow all taxing authorities to freeze the property taxes on homeowner residents for homeowners who are disabled or 65 or older. While discussing property tax relief at their public hearing, the Upper Brushy Creek Water Control and Improvement District considered a local option property tax ceiling for taxpayers 65 and older and disabled. They reported, however, that per Section 11.261 of the Texas Taxable Property and Exemption Statute, they are unable to implement it. The statute at this time only allows counties, municipalities, and junior college districts to implement this local option tax ceiling, commonly called a freeze. Legislation to accomplish this goal has been partially successful. In 2013, Senate Bills SB489 and SGR32, sponsored by Senator Ken Paxton, passed the Senate without opposition but didn't make it through the House. In the 2021 regular session, Representative Craig Goldman's HGR 141 passed the House, but HB3437 consideration did not make the midnight session deadline. I believe by having this in our platform and reintroducing both the House and Senate Bills in the 2023 session, that we'd be successful in amending that property exemption statute to give all taxing authorities this optional authority. Property appraisals statewide have been rising significantly for years for taxing entities, and taxing entities sensitive to the burden on the elderly and disabled should have the authority to help those taxpayers by freezing their tax assessment. Thank you, Mr. Beaufort, your time has expired. Thank you. Next up is Ruben. Hi, my name is Ruben Danze from SD11. Good morning. I am here— Good afternoon. I'm here again to expand on the Federal Reserve and the mechanism that actually today, it's all-encompassing. So as your bill says, to audit or oversee the Federal Reserve, it is fundamentally bringing us communism by proxy and its adjudication of fiat currency. It is propagated by the administrative—propagated by media and enforced by the unelected state. Going to taxation, no matter how much we lower taxes, the more money that is printed, the more it is adjudicated to the black rocks of the world, and then it is artificially causing inflation. The Constitution calls for lawful money to be gold and silver, neither of which are fiat currency. And even if we go by some of the updates, it would require for it to post 35 percent gold and silver. So I call for the state of Texas to at least require that anybody that is buying property or operating with fiat currency to the degree by which these large-cap corporations, banking institutions are, to at least have the reserves of gold and silver of 35 percent in order to operate, in effect issuing a margin call. Most importantly, what we understand of multinational corporate personhood, and the Fourth Amendment is predicated on jurisdiction thereof, which was built on the Civil Rights Act, which is contingent on no foreign allegiance. When we have the black rocks of the world and these multinational corporations like Raytheon and their primary shareholders investing primarily in China, doing so at the expense of our troops, at the blood of our troops, fundamentally I don't see how it's not treason. And long story short, we really need to curtail multinational corporate personhood fundamentally, as it is a diametric opposition to we the people, and they are acting against all of us, not only buying our property, but also in provoking, causing wars at their personal and financial benefit, and then giving money to our politicians to keep these wars, again, on our blood for multinational benefits, profiting off enemy-laying territories. Mr. Chairman. Thank you, everybody. Mr. Chairman, Tony Robertson, SD3. Can I get him to restate those corporation names? I missed them. Sure. Raytheon's primary shareholder for Raytheon is, I believe, SSAV, and their primary investments they're after are in China. So, again, they're using our blood, sweat, and tears for the financial benefit of multinational corporations and their shareholders, which are non-American. Thank you. Tony, if you ever want to know who the big... Hold your applause, please. If you ever want to know who the major shareholders are, you can look online. There's SEC disclosure forms, where if you own more than 5% of a publicly traded company, it's mandatory that you disclose the amount of interest you have. So, those are easy to research. If you ever have a question, just call me. Next up is Deborah. Hello, again. Thank you for having me again. I am talking about repealing taxes, and you do have listed in the repealing tax portion on the finance area.