Author: Redactor

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary

Rights and Democracy

Democracy and constitutional rights fit together better than some people think.

Most people don’t think of democracy as some hyper-​pure system where two wolves and a lamb decide whom to eat for dinner. They envision a constitutional republic that protects fundamental rights while also democratically controlling government’s legitimate decisions and policies.

Increasingly, our representative bodies — from city councils to Congress — have attacked both our rights and our votes.

We need a direct democratic check on government; we need voter initiative and referendum.

Yet, even when citizens vote directly on an issue, the courts remain there to provide an additional check. Recently, Federal Judge Vaughn Walker struck down California’s Prop 8, a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He said the measure violates the 14th Amendment’s requirement of “equal protection of the laws.”

Controversial? Yes. Sensible? Also yes.

Not so sensible, though, have been some criticisms.

My friend Joe Mathews, no initiative enthusiast he, wrote in the Washington Post: “Perhaps the spectacle of a federal judge overruling such a momentous electoral result will force Californians to reckon with the fact that their initiative process is at odds with norms of American civil rights and government.”

But this is about rights, not procedures. The vast majority of states have bans just like California’s. Banning same-​sex marriage has been popular with both legislatures and voters.

Politicians can be wrong. Voters can be wrong. Judges can be wrong. But with each checking the others, we will be better off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability local leaders too much government

Ed Koch’s Friends and Enemies

Ed Koch has an enemies list. He also has a friends list.

Now in his mid-​80s, the former New York City mayor has emerged from political retirement to take arms against the sea of troubles flowing from the dysfunctional New York State legislature.

A few months back, the octogenarian citizen activist founded New York Uprising, which asks lawmakers to sign three pledges committing themselves to major political reform. One pledge focuses on toughening up ethics regulations, another on reforming the state’s budget process, a third on putting an end to gerrymandering.

Any state lawmaker who fails to sign is, to Koch, a “bum”: “Throw the bums out!” is the electoral fate for non-​signers and pledge-​breakers that he enjoins upon New Yorkers. Reviewing the details of the pledges, I’m not sure that if I were a candidate I’d endorse every provision myself. Maybe I’d sign two out of the three pledges, or something. And I wish Koch were promoting state legislative term limits and voter initiative and referendum as well.

So far, 91 lawmakers have signed on, 210 have declined. But the campaign has been getting decent coverage in the media, including a recent article in the New York Times. One thin-​skinned assemblywoman threatened to sue in response to being called an “enemy of reform,” which is the kind of publicity you can’t buy.

Reforming Albany was never going to be easy. But the iron is hot. Good luck, Mr. Koch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Categories
Common Sense

When Voting Means “Nothing”

Last week, nearly a million Missourians tramped off to the polls to choose candidates in the primary as well as decide ballot issues. One issue, Proposition C, the Healthcare Freedom Act, made history, if not the news.

Missouri became the first state to vote on a specific repudiation of a key element of the healthcare legislation, namely the federal government’s mandate forcing individuals to purchase medical insurance. Prop C passed with a whopping 71 percent of the vote. It wasn’t close — even though opponents of the measure, Missouri’s Hospital Association, outspent supporters by better than three to one.

At The Missouri Record blog, Patrick Tuohey argues that “the vote in Missouri will have powerful repercussions.” Obviously, when Missourians voted they wanted their votes to count, to matter, to mean something. But according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, the Missouri vote meant “nothing.”

Funny, you probably didn’t hear about Gibbs’s dismissive comments. You might not have even heard about the Missouri healthcare vote. For some reason, the three dinosaur television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, didn’t even mention the vote on the following evening’s broadcast.

The Missouri vote suggests the Democrats’ healthcare legislation is none too popular.  But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered, “It’s very obvious that people have a lack of understanding of our health care reform bill.”

While the people are speaking up loudly and clearly, the response of government officials in Washington is to cover up their ears.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Bill With No Name

It’s not legislation out of a Clint Eastwood western. It’s a congressional bill with the somewhat sketchy cognomen of the “_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ Act of ________.”

This non-​name may also front the law as eventually foisted. The Senate is in recess until September, so there might not be a chance to correct the title in both houses. To be signed into law, a bill must pass both chambers in identical form.

WashingtonWatch​.com reports that HR1586 would “impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients” — referring to the controversial Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion bailout program of October 2008. But the nameless bill has morphed somewhat. As Jim Harper of the Cato Institute observes, it was “introduced as one thing (TARP taxes), became another thing (an aviation bill), and is now a batch of spending policies.”

Maybe it should be called the Still More of Your Money Down the Drain Act.

Merits of this $26 billion bill aside, there’s the hardly incidental question of why. The title of the Bill with No Name is the exception that symbolizes the rule, i.e. that bill-​passage is typically a rush job even when bills are thousands of pages long.

We know that many politicians want to run every aspect of our lives. Apparently it scarcely matters to them how they go about it, just slap together greater restrictions on our liberty combined with grand authorizations to spend additional billions and call it a law.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Move On to the Poverty Line

According to a recent email bulletin from Daniel Mintz of MoveOn​.org, Republicans and running-​dog Democrats are gearing up to “slash” Social Security benefits.

The tone of the bulletin? Strident hysteria. How can anyone even think of such a thing in hard times like these, when “no jobs bill can pass congress”? 

Well, we’ve had stimulus bills up to our nostrils, but hope of “recovery” remains just that, mere hope. Mintz, who denies that Social Security is in anything like a crisis, ignores the devastation to the system caused by its Ponzi nature, Congress’s longtime plundering of the program, and the current depression.

He wants you to sign a pledge for no cuts and no raise in the retirement age. He says it would easy to “strengthen” the program by “making the rich pay their fair share.” 

Of course, the effect of raising the maximum FICA payment (their “fair share”) without correspondingly increasing benefits to those who pay extra (no one’s proposing that!) would turn Social Security into a blatant welfare redistribution program. All ties to investment? Severed. 

Further, it would signal politicians that their sins can always be covered over with a tax.

Worse yet, it would soak up huge hunks of wealth from those who do the most investing and turn a pension system — ideally a huge source of capital — into one humungous capital drain. 

Making us all poorer. MoveOn​-to​-the​-poverty​-line​.org.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Metro Plays Hooky Roulette

Government-​run mass transit is not merely a tragedy of inefficiency, in Washington, DC, the Metro has proved itself a danger to life and limb.

Five Metro workers have been killed on the job in roughly the last year. Before that, a June 2009 Metro train accident that killed nine people and injured seventy more. In a June 27 Townhall​.com column, I lamented that even after all these deadly accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board complained there remain “significant deficiencies in their safety culture.”

Now, thanks to a Washington Examiner report we find out that Metro’s deficiencies start right at the top. During the last 18 months, six of Metro’s 14 appointed board members have no-​showed for at least 20 percent of the meetings.

Vice Chairman Marcell Solomon, the board’s highest paid member, missed over half the meetings. Of course, D.C. Councilman Michael Brown was worse, skipping out on two-​thirds of the meetings in the same 18-​month period.

If this were a private business it would be going belly up from paying out large settlements for the death and destruction it has wrecked across the region, or shut down for gross mismanagement equal to gross negligence.

But Councilman Brown says he’s improved this year, only missing half the meetings. “My attendance hasn’t been great,” Brown concedes, “but my engagement has always been there.”

Metro trains keep rolling dangerously down the tracks with a politicized management that is asleep at the switch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.