Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Initiative Killers

parchment limits, term limits, citizen's initiative, law, politicians

“Almost nothing is more sacred for the voters,” says Sam Reed, former Secretary of State in Washington State, “than their right to petition to change laws or to refer laws to the voters.”

He reminded members of the Senate State Government and Elections Committee that “the initiative process is utilized by progressives, conservatives, and nonpartisan individuals.… For over 100 years, the initiative process has served our citizens well and any changes made to it must be justified.”

Reed argues that the changes in Senate Bill 5973 (as well as in House Bills HB 2599 and 2260) are in no way justified.

“The stated reason for this bill is to stop fraudulent or forged signatures from being counted. But that’s already being done. Besides substantial penalties deterring such actions, the Secretary of State is extremely diligent and reviews every petition sheet and every signature and any that are even remotely questionable are set aside and never counted.” This means that “all of SB 5973’s requirements will substantially burden the Secretary of State’s already overworked staff and the citizen signature gathering process without any added benefit.”

The bills add more requirements that end up being more burdensome on an already high-​hurdled petitioning process.

“All aspects of the proposed bill (SB 5973 /​ HB 2599) impose severe restrictions, limitations, and onerous requirements on circulators and ballot measure campaigns,” adds attorney Nicholas Power, pointing out that the bill’s intent section “admits there hasn’t been any fraud for 12+ years.”

What’s really going on with these bills?

Politicians generally don’t like citizens creating laws any more than they like citizens limiting their terms in office. It really cramps their style.

So, they want to kill the initiative. Instead, let’s keep cramping their murderous style.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Robert Sheckley

Man is the only animal whose fear of embarrassment can overcome his instinct for self-preservation.

Robert Sheckley, Game of X (1965), Chapter Six.
Categories
Today

Spain & Bagehot

On February 3, 1783, Spain recognized the independence from Britain of the United States of America. 

Walter Bagehot (pronounced “badge-​it”), famed editor of The Economist and author of Lombard Street, was born on this date in 1826.

Categories
Accountability folly ideological culture responsibility

Everyone Dies?

AI, Artificial Intelligence, prediction, action

After Friday, when I worried about robots taking over, I was glad to read a debunking of the AI Will Destroy Us All meme, so in vogue. In “Superintelligent AI Is Not Coming To Kill You,” from the March issue of Reason, Neil Chilson argues that we shouldn’t freak out.

Not only do I not want to freak out, I don’t want to use AI very much — though I understand that, these days, sometimes it makes sense to consult the Oracles.

Chilson is reviewing a new book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, who argue that “artificial intelligence research will inevitably produce superintelligent machines and these machines will inevitably kill everyone.”

Just like I feared on Friday!

Where the authors go wrong, Chilson argues, is that by “defining intelligence as the ability to predict and steer the world, Yudkowsky and Soares collapse two distinct capacities — understanding and acting — into one concept. This builds their conclusion into their premise. If intelligence inherently includes steering, then any sufficiently intelligent system is, by definition, a world-​shaping agent. The alignment problem becomes not a hypothesis about how certain AI architectures might behave but a tautology about how all intelligent systems must behave.”

Today’s AI’s are “fundamentally about prediction. They predict the next element in a sequence.”

They aren’t necessarily taking action.

I hope Chilson’s critique holds true.

But we’ve caught AI lying, “just making stuff up” — though considering the nature of “Large Language Models” (the method by which modern AI works), “lying” may be the wrong word. Still, it just seems to me that at some point somebody’s — everybody’s! — gonna link the predictor to some sort of truly active mechanism. 

Like street-​ready robots.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Richard Whately

There is no fear that we shall ever in practice have too little call for deliberation — too little need of judicious conjecture. Science does not enable us to dispense with commonsense, but only to employ it more profitably; nor does the best-​instructed man necessarily deliberate the less; only he exercises his deliberation on different points from those that occupy the less-​instructed; and to better purpose; he does not waste his mental powers in conjectures as to his road, when he has a correct map in his hand; but he still has abundance of other inquiries to make as he travels over it. The adoption of the Arabic numerals and of the Algebraic symbols, does not supersede calculation, but extends its sphere.

Richard Whately, Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1832), Lecture III.

Categories
Today

Beyond the TrillionZ

In 2009, on February Second, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe officially devalued the Zimbabwean dollar for the third and final time, making Z$1 trillion now only Z$1 of the new currency, equivalent to Z$10 septillion before the first devaluation. Politicians in Zimbabwe looked up, saw their shadow, and realized that they had only a couple months more of their inflation binge. Indeed, the legalization of trading currencies, the previous month, had sealed the fate of Zimbabwe’s independent dollar. The Zimbabwean dollar was abandoned officially on the Ninth of April.

Categories
Update

The President Comments on Poorly-​Run Cities

February 13, 2026

“I have instructed Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, that under no circumstances,” Trump posted on Truth Social, “are we going to participate in various poorly run Democrat Cities with regard to their Protests and/​or Riots unless, and until, they ask us for help.” 

“Later Saturday night, Trump said to reporters as he flew to Florida for the weekend,” explains the Associated Press, “that he felt Democratic cities are ‘always complaining.’

“‘If they want help, they have to ask for it. Because if we go in, all they do is complain,’ Trump said.”

But that doesn’t mean federal property won’t be protected. “We will, however, guard, and very powerfully so, any and all Federal Buildings that are being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists.”

But does that include vehicles? A video of a man who looked like Alex Pretti — who was shot on the 24th of January by Border Patrol agents — surfaced last week, showing the protester kicking the right-​rear lights of an ICE vehicle. Though many suspected the video to be AI, it has been confirmed by Pretti’s parents as of their son. The video-​recorded event took place on the 13th, according to The Epoch Times. 

Trump addressed this video directly in a Truth Social post, where he claimed that Pretti’s “stock has gone way down” due to the footage of him “screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces.” Trump called Pretti an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.”

The post has been widely reported in major legacy media stories.

Categories
Thought

Milton Friedman

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather ‘What can I and my compatriots do through government’ to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Introduction.
Categories
Today

Touching Upon Slavery

February First in History

1835 — Slavery was abolished in Mauritius.

1861 — Texas seceded from the United States.

1865 — President Abraham Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, finally abolishing slavery in all United States.

Categories
Update

What May Be Done in Minnesota?

It is well known that the several states cannot be commandeered to carry out federal law. 

So however much President Trump and his followers may demand aid from the state of Minnesota in the business of carrying out federal immigration law — which has long been held constitutional from multiple rulings as a federal, not a state, matter — the federal government may not compel such aid. 

Everyone should know this. It is a firmly established principle.

This would mean Governor Tim Walz and the State of Minnesota are under no legal obligation to cooperate with the federal government’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in removing criminal aliens (or alien criminals) from within the state’s borders.

But must the state protect the agents as they go about their duties? 

Probably not. Remember that the police are under no obligation to come to the aid of any citizen in any or all moments of crisis. This was firmly established in the District of Columbia District Court of Appeals ruling in Warren v. the District of Columbia. There does not appear to be case law that indicates a duty of states to protect federal agents as if they were body guards, for example.

Federal agents are protected under statutes like 18 U.S.C. § 111, which criminalizes assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers in their duties. If citizens (including protesters or rioters) harass agents — through physical obstruction or threats — agents may use reasonable force in response.

This is why U.S. Border Patrol agents (part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP) were called in to protect ICE from Minnesota mobs. It was not ICE agents who shot and killed Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026. It was U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Joe Rogan has described the activities of the mobbing “protesters” as a coordinated “color revolution”; his guest Andrew Wilson insists that the mobs are being directed and supported in part by Minnesota state officials. If this proves true, an insurrection may technically be in progress.

And then the legality of federal crackdown in Minneapolis and St. Paul would become quite clear.