Author: Redactor

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The Fix Is In

Congressman Randy Kuhl had an idea: Ask his constituents what legislation they would like him to propose to fix Washington. Out of many suggestions, he picked five for constituents to vote on. Whichever proposal got the most support would be submitted to his colleagues as legislation. Over one thousand voters in Kuhl’s district participated.

He called it the “Fix Washington Project.”

While the contest was still underway, I reported that 12-year term limits on Congress was one of the five options. Throwing caution to the wind, I predicted term limits would triumph. Was I right?

Before I answer, let me say how much I like the idea of voters getting involved in proposing legislation. In fact, I think voters should have a way to bypass legislators altogether and pass laws directly. Half the states of the union have a formal process for enabling this. It’s called “citizen initiative.”

Okay, enough suspense. Congressional term limits collected 43 percent of the vote in Kuhl’s contest, winning the greatest support of any of the five alternatives.

I’m no soothsayer. Term limits have always been popular with voters. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll shows 83 percent support for congressional term limits.

So hats off to Congressman Kuhl. But your term limits legislation is no doubt going to be more popular with your constituents than with your colleagues back in Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies Tenth Amendment federalism too much government

Unbefreakinlievable

Now what?

Well, now the governors are going to Washington to beg for bailouts. New York Governor Paterson and New Jersey Governor Corzine have schlepped their way up to the Hill to explain that they are “cutting all [they] can” from their bloated budgets, and to demand some “relief.”

I don’t believe that the notoriously corrupt governments of New York and New Jersey have pared their budgets to the bone. Or that the only way to cut another dollar is to throw some little old lady out onto the street.

I also don’t believe that the federal government has some magical way of getting money that state governments don’t have. It all comes from the same group of us taxpayers. Unless these governors are talking about taking cash from other states, where else would the money come from? Where but out of thin air — borrowing plus the trusty old printing press?

The feds are wearing the same blinkers as these gubernatorial guys. For example, the wizards at the Federal Reserve are struggling to bring interest rates to zero — as if cheap credit in the past had nothing to do with all the misbegotten easy mortgage loans spawning the present crisis.

Now, I put it to you: If fiscal irresponsibility can be increased from mammoth to infinity, will that, at last, solve the problem? If the Fed were to drop-ship crates of cash and credit cards onto every neighborhood in America, will that, at last, solve the problem?

Unbefreakinlievable.

We need some Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

An Unfair Doctrine

What is the “Fairness Doctrine”? And would it be fair to bring it back?

The Fairness Doctrine is a kind of assault on broadcast speech that has not been enforced since the 1980s. It compelled broadcasters to give so-called “equal time” to the so-called “opposing viewpoint” . . . as if there were only one. We may have a two-party system in this country, but we don’t have a two-opinion system.

Of course, the doctrine is nothing but a club for clobbering freedom of speech, not expanding it.

At National Review Online, Barbara Comstock and Lanny Davis note that all manner of absurdity erupts when equal time to somebody else’s podium is guaranteed by law. In 1978, NBC aired a program about the Holocaust, then spent three years in court dealing with a lawsuit brought by a group which believed the Holocaust is a myth and wanted NBC to give it “equal time.” Only “fair,” right?

Today, many believe that the Fairness Doctrine would be used against conservative talk radio, which happens to be a lot more popular than liberal talk radio, and that this is why some on the political left are talking about restoring the rule. But nobody who talks in public for a living, or even as just a hobby, would be safe from harassment if this monstrosity comes back to life. Comstock and Davis say Congress should bury the Fairness Doctrine for good.

Yes, with a stake through its evil heart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom insider corruption

Beating Up Joe the Plumber?

When Samuel Wurzelbacher hit the news as “Joe the Plumber,” his story played well. Presidential candidate Barack Obama had been going door to door, with cameras, in an elaborate meet-and-greet binge. When he got to Wurzelbacher’s door, he got an earful. And John McCain got one of his few opportunities to really do some damage to the Obama juggernaut.

Now, the election is over, and new causes will be celebrated and reviled. But Joe’s right to speak his mind remains a live issue, one that we should all worry about.

Yes, there’s more to this story than you may have heard.

Here’s the rest of the story: Soon after his newfound notoriety, the real Joe, Mr. Wurzelbacher, found himself under investigation by the local police.

It’s an old, ignoble tradition throughout much of the world: A person speaks up, out come the billy clubs.

Fortunately, the investigation into his private records was nipped in the bud. The records clerk who actually made the inquiry has found herself under investigation. She’s even been charged with “gross misconduct” for allegedly making an improper, politically-based inquiry.

We’ll see if the investigation goes further than just this one clerk. The higher-up who approved the probe, Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, has defended her move. Will her maximum contributions to Mr. Obama’s campaign be judged irrelevant?

We’ll see.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

The Day After

Not thrilled with the election results? Don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not even the end of the battle.

Traipsing off to the polls every few years does not exhuast our duty as Americans. In addition to voting, we have to keep learning, stay informed about what’s happening in our government. We must also provide constant feedback, writing to newspapers and websites, or speaking out on your favorite talk radio program.

Citizenship means going further, too, joining with groups already fighting for accountability, or tackling problems ourselves by organizing friends, neighbors and co-workers. We can overcome abusive government policies and protect the right of citizens to speak out, to petition their government.

The national media may obsess with whatever is going on — or not going on — in Washington, but we don’t have to. We can look to the state and local arenas, where citizens are better able to reassert control over out-of-control government.

As early as next year this time voters can be deciding new statewide ballot measures in Ohio and Washington. Such measures crop up even sooner at the local level . . . but only if concerned citizens get together to do the hard work of petitioning reforms onto the ballot.

Politics can be more than a spectator sport. In fact, it must be much more than that if we aim to leave freedom and prosperity to our children and grandchildren, rather than bondage and debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Wow, This Job Is Tough

It’s a dirty job, kicking voters in the teeth. But somebody’s gotta do it.

I speak of the craven marionettes of the New York City Council, complaining how tough it is to abet Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s assault on democracy. Bloomberg demanded a third term in office. He pulled strings.

Polls show that voters like the two-term limit that they twice endorsed at the ballot box. So instead of asking voters to change their minds, city politicians connived to ignore them.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn explained that ignoring voters is demanded by these hard times. Weakening term limits is a “vote and a choice” that is “a difficult one,” but you know, the city is now, she says, “facing the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression.” Ergo voters must be treated like chopped liver. Sequitur, meet non. Non sequitur.

Councilman Simcha Felder concurs.

“Before us today is a very difficult decision, and one which we have been elected to make,” Felder told his colleagues.

You see, voters elected Felder to ignore the voters and keep himself in power longer against their wishes. So what else could he do? Why oh why can’t the stupid voters protesting this unilateral overthrow of term limits understand this?

The poor politicians. Nobody understands how tough they have it, serving their narrow political self-interest and sticking it to the citizenry. It is the weight of the world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Socialism Fails . . . in Hawaii

We may have dismal years ahead of us. Democrats ruling Congress while Barack Obama, Mr. Redistributionist, will preside over an attempt to move in lurch step to massive new amounts of spending and taxes.

I write these words before the election, so maybe by the time you hear them, the electorate will have proved me wrong. But, hey: Under a McCain administration the federales would still not likely shy away from big government insanity.

There is, however, hope. When wishful thinking slams head-on into practical reality, sometimes we take stock. Sometimes we even say things like, “Know what? This is dumb and destructive. Let’s stop.”

We saw this in the 1980s and ’90s with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the turn toward freer markets in many former Soviet or other tyrannies (and near-tyrannies) around in the world.

And we’ve just seen an example here in the states, in Hawaii. There the state is ending its universal health care plan for children. Why? Because it was getting too expensive.

A government doctor in Hawaii named Kenny Fink reports, “People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free.” He adds that that this was not the purpose.

Of course not. Socialism is never supposed to kill economic incentives and self-responsibility. It just always does.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom property rights

Barbed Logic

Bill Malcolm has grown potatoes, onions, asparagus and other veggies in his garden in Marlbrook, Worcestershire, for eight years. Unfortunately, in the past four months he has been burgled three times. Thieves stole £300 worth of garden tools. (That’s not weight, that’s British currency.)

So Mr. Malcolm erected a wire fence with a row or two of barbed wire on top. To discourage thievery.

A professional thief could make short order of the fence. But our English gardener figured that it wasn’t the pros who had stolen from him. So he proceeded.

And then came the Bromsgrove district council, which ordered the gardener to take down his fence . . . or have it be taken down by force of law.

Why?

The local government was afraid it might get sued by a thief who scratched himself on the barbs of the wire.

The fact that the thief would have been in the wrong, for trespass and for intent to steal, that didn’t matter to the council. They were only afraid of being sued.

They gave friendly advice to Bill Malcolm: Not to leave his tools at his garden, in the shed, but to take them home with him.

If you think this is idiotic, I haven’t told you the punch line. That same government, a few weeks before, said not to lock sheds, in case burglars damaged them while breaking in.

It’s nice to know what government is for, eh? That is, insanity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

Light Rail, Too Heavy for Developers

American city planners tend to obsess over trains. Though not nearly as economical as buses, light rail trains are regarded as the gold standard in public transportation.

But ten years after Portland established its westside line, just how bad an investment light rail can be is becoming clear. So argues John A. Charles, Jr., president of the Cascade Policy Institute.

The area’s light rail system is called MAX. The westside line put up in 1998 maxed out at $963 million. Taxpayers nationwide footed nearly three-quarters of the bill, which went through over the protests of the Federal Transit Authority.

The FTA didn’t like the route, because it was run through a lot of empty area. Why? Because planners hoped that developers would build high-density housing along the line, thus justifying the route as time went on. It was a grand experiment in metropolitan planning.

Metro planners then cajoled and forced various city governments to redo their zoning laws to make the high-density developments more train-dependent. They specified an extremely scarce supply of parking.

And the developers? They stayed away in droves. As a landowner put it, “it’s never been developed” because of that very “mandated lack of parking.”

Government geniuses might think they can force people into the types of communities that people don’t want, like people were lab rats. Peculiar thing is, folks just naively thinking they are free, tend not to jump aboard that train . . . so to speak.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall

Why the People

Some people wonder at my support for initiative and referendum. They don’t place much trust in their neighbors to run their lives. They fear what de Tocqueville called “the tyranny of the majority.”

And hey: I don’t trust fellow voters to run my life, either. But I trust voters to let me be free to run my own life more a lot more than I trust politicians.

Voters will choose less government more often than their representatives will.

And less government, in today’s context, means better government.

This was most notably demonstrated in late September. The U.S. House of Representatives voted on the Bush administration’s proposed bailout of the mortgage industry, the biggest takeover of private property in world history.

To politicians, it made a whole heckuva a lot of sense. To Americans who wrote and phoned Congress, the bailout appeared just as it was: a quickie, panic “fix” that merely lined the pockets of a sector of the investor population.

It was a subsidy, socializing risk while letting profit remain private.

Enough Americans notified enough of their reps to convince them to take a stand, defeating the bailout. The letters came in, ten to one against the bill.

Of course, the next week Congress voted in the bailout, adding injury, in the form of a bigger price tag, to the insult of ignoring constituents.

Once again, politicians ignored the people. That’s never good government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.