Author: Redactor

The proliferation of eminent domain abuse is depressing.

Fake reforms of eminent domain promoted by fans of that abuse are also depressing.

We the people demand positive news on this front. Which I guess means . . . we’ve got to make that news ourselves. As being done in California.

Californians for Property Rights Protection recently submitted more than one million signatures to qualify the California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act for the June 2008 ballot.

The YesOnPropertyRights.com web site tells us: “Property rights are a fundamental, core value for all.” But, alas, government currently has the power “to take private property — our homes, family farms, mom-and-pop small businesses — to build a sports stadium, big-box chain store, or a hotel. Politically connected special interests use and abuse government’s power of eminent domain to take and develop private property.”

According to Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association, the ballot measure would explicitly protect “all California property owners. Never again will government use eminent domain to destroy a person’s home and livelihood.”

Here’s a sample provision of the measure: “State and local governments may not use their power to take or damage property for the benefit of any private person or entity.”

YesOnPropertyRights.com has the text of the Protection Act. Take a look. Especially if you live in California.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Power corrupts. Petty power corrupts . . . pettily?

Some time back I told you about Diane Pharr, whose son’s school records — his private school records — were publicized by the school board . . . just out of petty vindictiveness for her wanting to learn more about the board’s budget.

Now, in Fairfax County, Virginia, public school officials similarly act out. Hunter Mill School Board member Stuart Gibson was forced by the Virginia Board of Education to publicly apologize. That board sided with a local parent defending her son, whose special education history was released by Gibson during — get this — a political campaign. The boy’s father happened to be Gibson’s opponent.

We’ve got to watch out for our rights from local officials just as much as from the big boys.

Vienna, Virginia resident Bruce Bennett was twice forcibly removed from public meetings of the Fairfax County School Board. He had tried to tape the events, you see. The officials said that wasn’t allowed.

Funny thing is, Virginia, like many states — and the federal government — requires open meetings. Mr. Bennett was entirely within his rights. But he was ousted anyway, and a school district spokesman gave a lot of hooey defending those forced ejections.

These are all developments occurring not far from where I live. I bet, if you checked into your local politics, you’d find similar trouble.

So, if you want to make a difference, get involved. There’s somebody’s rights you can defend . . . if only your own.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

What’s the difference between a reporter and a pundit? The reporter looks behind the obvious. All pundits do, most of the time, is belabor the obvious.

Alas, sometimes what seems obvious happens to be false.

Take Charles Gibson, TV journalist. He sort of pretends to be a reporter, right? But when he asked questions, recently, of GOP candidates, he made a statement that set him squarely in the pundit class. And proved him wrong.

He said that “intellectual honesty” required just plain admitting that oil prices can only go up.

Yup, only up.

He thought “honesty” demanded such a statement of the obvious.

But I get the feeling that all Good Ol’ Charlie has proved is he doesn’t have one ounce of skepticism in his head . . . or any decent economic perspective.

Why say this? Well, though it may seem we’ve entered a time of “peak oil” production, much of today’s scarcity has little to do with normal production, but with war and the limitations of supply and delivery caused by war.

Further, throughout much of the world the price of oil has been pretty flat. But because the value of the dollar has plummeted, the prices we Americans have to pay for oil have shot up.

If we weren’t at war, and our government weren’t horribly in debt, the dollar would be better, supplies would be better, and Charlie Gibson would widely be seen as wrong, wrong, wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I misspoke. I shouldn’t have said property owners suffer double jeopardy from eminent domain abuse, as I argued in a recent episode of Common Sense. More like triple. Even quadruple.

Until recently in New York State, for example, government officials did not even bother to inform property owners that an eminent domain action was being undertaken against them. Instead they just put a classified notice in micro-print in some newspaper. Thanks to citizen activist Bill Brody, officials must now inform owners directly of plans to rob them.

Add to such willful violation of due process the fact that you might not get a “just” compensation for the lost property either, and that’s triple jeopardy for property owners.

Now add harassment. It seems some officials are willing to actively persecute you if you want to keep your property. Wyoming rancher Harvey Robbins refused to play along with the Bureau of Land Management’s demand for his land. Bureau officials warned him things could “get ugly.” Then things got ugly. His business permit was revoked, his permit for livestock grazing was revoked. His right of
way on federal land was cancelled, a bogus criminal prosecution was launched.

Robbins sued the agency for violating his property rights, among other things. The case is now in the Supreme Court.

So. Four major ways, at least, government is willing to wantonly violate your rights if they want your property and you don’t want to give it to them. Four too many.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The more we sit in front of visual display monitors, the fatter we get. And kids, who increasingly substitute more and more of their play time outdoors for time indoors with their computers and video games, are especially at risk.

It’s a real problem. But do we need a grand program to solve the problem?

In New Mexico, environmental groups are suggesting busing public school kids to under-visited state parks, forcing them to play in the great outdoors.

And since this costs money, add a “sin tax” to sales of new televisions and video games.

There’s symmetry to the idea, so it almost seems responsible. But it seems something else, too: regimenting kids into play is the kind of thing a popular German enviro-political group instituted in the 1920s and ’30s. It kind of gives me the creeps.

The natural playground for kids is nature — where I spent a huge hunk of my time, as a kid. Kids nowadays suffer from what the professionals call “Nature Deficit Disorder.” Parks provide nature and order in a neat little mix. But a freer mix would work better: letting the kids out again, to play near ponds, in creeks, culverts, and briar patches.

This is something parents should think about.

Meanwhile, a cheaper get-kids-walking program would be to park buses half a block further down from the school door. No new tax or grand scheme necessary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I talk about pork a lot not because I’m obsessed with pigs, but because I cover Congress.

I talk about pork spending not because it’s the worst spending the federal government does, but because it should be the easiest to stop.

And yet it goes on and on. Pork spending is snuck into legislation as “earmarks.” The President of the United States explained it to Congress last year:

Over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate. They are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn’t vote them into law. I didn’t sign them into law. Yet, they’re treated as if they have the force of law.

Actually, the prez went on to say the practice must stop. Congress applauded. But they might as well have been snorting, we’ve seen tens of thousands of earmarks since.

I have mentioned before that the President could simply sign an Executive Order telling his branch of government to ignore earmarks not actually placed in the legislation.

And so he did, on January 29th. All earmarks not voted on by Congress from now on will be as if nothing. Further, the president promised to veto any bill that did not cut the amount of earmarks actually voted on by Congress in half.

So is the stalemate over pork  . . . over? Well, with a cut in half of earmarks as the goal, we seem set to go only halfway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Good news for political bloggers and other practitioners of non-mainstream media.

The Freedom of Information Act has been expanded. Apparently, it means that uncredentialed folks will have an easier time learning what the dadblasted government has been up to.

The expansion gives agencies just 20 days to comply with information requests. If there’s foot-dragging, we’ll be able to point to this law and say, “Hey, it’s been 20 days! Where’s that info I requested, Mr. Stonewalling Bureaucrat?”

It also broadens the definition of who is a representative of the news media. The new definition is “any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience.”

One reason this is important is that members of the “official” news media typically get waivers of certain fees associated with these requests. Until now, bloggers and other non-traditional journalists couldn’t get the same waiver.

How the new law plays out remains to be seen. But anything that helps put the amateur citizen journalist on the same legal footing as the New York Times sounds like good news to me. It helps us do what we’ve gotta do to change our country for the better — that is, it helps us compete with a journalistic establishment that too often plays yes-man to the political establishment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Seems every November in Washington state, Tim Eyman of the aptly named Voters Want More Choices has an initiative on the ballot that’s dramatically outspent by the powerful interests who dominate the state’s legislature.

And yet his initiative still wins.

In recent years, each January, as the legislature convenes, here come bills to “reform” the initiative process. Reform meaning kill.

This year’s bills seek to force citizens collecting petitions to register with the government and be licensed. Forget the fact that requiring a license to use one’s First Amendment rights is about as American as Joseph Stalin.

One bill makes sponsors of initiatives liable for any mistakes made by those petitioning. Better to scare away the citizen leaders. Mostly, the goal is to invalidate perfectly valid voter signatures on some technicality committed by the person circulating the measure.

The excuse for these bills, we’re told, is to fight fraud. But Washington’s Secretary of State, in response to a public records request, disclosed they “have no instances of verified forgeries or fraud in the signature gathering process for initiatives in those years (1999 through 2006).” That’s over eight million signatures with zero instances of fraud.

The real reason? The politicians and special interests that live off of our hard work won’t come out and say it, of course, but they figure that if they can’t win a vote of the people, then they’ll find a way to stop the people from voting at all.

That’s just wrong. It’s a fraud.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Do we have the right to say things only when other people can’t hear us?

Such seems to be the principle informing an attempt by the government of St. Louis. The city’s trying to force citizen activist Jim Roos to take down a sign that allegedly violates the city’s zoning laws.

It’s a special sign: painted on the side of an apartment building owned by a “housing ministry” founded by Mr. Roos. The city claims the sign is too big. It’s special in another way, too. It says: “End Eminent Domain Abuse.” Mr. Roos has been fighting such abuse by the city. And now, along with the Institute for Justice, he’s fighting for his freedom of speech.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says there’s a “tricky” constitutional issue at stake — “fighting clutter versus protecting free speech,” supposedly. As if somebody’s ability to call your communication unsightly might justify tossing out the Constitution and our individual rights.

Meanwhile the city has no problem granting exemptions for signs it has no disagreement with. It allows a gas company with downtown offices to display a sign over 1,000 square feet.

So how do we resolve this “tricky” problem?

Simple: Uphold the right of individuals to exercise their freedom of speech and property rights. End zoning laws that violate these rights. And advise persons who don’t like the sign that they are free to look in other directions entirely. Presto, problem solved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.