Author: Redactor

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Pensacola Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party wasn’t about tea. It wasn’t even about high taxes.

“The Boston Tea Party happened during a time of very low taxes,” explains Eric O’Keefe on the Heritage Foundation blog, “and the tea in the harbor had the lowest price of any tea from Britain for years.… But the patriots viewed their local control of government and taxes as an essential anchor for their liberty, so they rebelled at a violation of a basic principle.”

The Tea Party — the American Revolution — was about government. Self-government.

The same issue has surfaced in Pensacola, Florida, where ten citizens are circulating a petition there to challenge a “design-​build” contract the City Council approved in May to develop a park and build a stadium.

The Pensacola News Journal headline reads: “Petition drive won’t stop park, CMPA attorney says.” The CMPA is the Community Maritime Park Associates. Their attorney, Ed Fleming, says “Even if they did collect enough signatures and it does get approved by voters, the park has passed a point of approval that it is going to be built now.”

Hmmm?

One of the petitioners, former City Councilman Jack Nobles, said, “I would hope they would re-​evaluate their positions based on the wishes of the public.”

It’s not about a stadium or a park construction process. Or tea or taxes. It’s about self-​government, about keeping citizens in charge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Categories
judiciary Second Amendment rights U.S. Constitution

Advance for Rights

Next to the Bill of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment might well be the most momentous Amendment to the Constitution. Here’s the most interesting chunk of it:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Before this amendment, adopted after the Civil War (mainly to keep white southerners from tyrannizing ex-​slaves), the Bill of Rights had applied to individuals only against the federal government. After it, states were required to follow the Bill of Rights, too.

This week, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, five of nine members of the Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own guns against prohibitive regulation by states. In Heller, two years ago, the Supreme Court had applied the Second Amendment to individuals only against federal government regulation.

McDonald is a major advance for gun ownership rights. But the most interesting thing about the case is Justice Clarence Thomas’s separate concurrence. Four of the Justices decided that the 14th Amendment’s “due process” clause applied. Thomas argued, instead, that it is the “privileges and immunities” clause that matters. 

Why care? Well, “privileges and immunities” is just a fancy way of saying “rights.”

That’s why we have courts. To protect our rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
porkbarrel politics

Fitting Tribute

Senator Robert Byrd has passed from this world, ending a 58-​year perch in power, the longest stint in the entire history of Congress.

Politics isn’t a sport, though sometimes it’s blood-​sport … thus there’s no jersey to retire.

So what do you offer to the memory of a man who in life already appropriated nearly everything possible? What’s the proper homage to the King of Pork?

Retire the earmark, once and for all.

Congress had a good run with earmarked pork barrel spending, and Byrd was that run’s poster boy. He had bridges named after him, highways and freeways and a stadium or two. Airports. Special rooms in the legislative wing. All paid for by taxpayers, most often funded by Congress through sneaking said projects into legislation without requiring a separate, conscious and above-​board vote.

You might think it nicer, if not wiser, to commemorate the man for his habit of keeping a pocket Constitution on his person at all times. Or for his knowledge of history. Or arcane Senate rules. Certainly, it wouldn’t be polite to mention his “youthful” organizing of his state’s KKK.

But West Virginia’s senior senator was so closely associated with self-​aggrandizing earmarked spending that no other honor comes close — we should push for a true monument to outshine all others. And that’s why I suggest cutting out the earmark.

Make the porkers squeal.

And let the tumult stand as a salute to Sen. Byrd.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights incumbents national politics & policies

The Kill-​Political-​Discourse Act

Sometimes politicians name their legislation the better to hide what they are trying to do. The name fails to disclose, you might say.

Consider the so-​called DISCLOSE Act, which just passed the House of Representatives by a mostly party-​line vote of 219 – 206 and is now awaiting action in the Senate. The full name of the monstrosity is the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act. It should be called the Democracy Is Undermined by Rigging the Game to Favor Incumbents and Especially Democrats Act.

The goal is to hamper political advertising by independent groups and corporations by requiring disclosure of the names of contributors who give above $600 a year. The new rules would harm corporations more than unions, and would foist anew some of the same burdens on First Amendment rights just overturned by the Supreme Court. The same court that threw out chunks of McCain-​Feingold on free speech grounds would also likely find DISCLOSE unconstitutional.

But could the court do so before the 2010 elections? Democrats like Hank Johnson ― who told fellow partisans that the Act, if passed, would stop Republicans from being elected ― are betting that it can’t. Their hope is that with the speech-​shackling new law skewing things in their favor until the high court acts, they’ll be more likely to escape political annihilation in November.

No, we can’t wait for the Supremes on this one. Call your senator.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

E‑Power to the People

Disagreement is simply an inescapable part of living with one another. But we should all agree on one thing: The people are sovereign.

The practical question is, how is that sovereignty best instituted? Our experience with those organization and rules we’ve come to rely upon is that, too often, they work against our interests, even working mightily to limit our sovereignty.

Earlier this week, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that electronic signatures should be counted in a case involving an independent candidate for governor who was required by law to gather 1,000 official voter affirmations on a petition.

Of immediate concern is whether the same standard on e‑signatures should apply to initiative petitions, which in Utah are required to number over 100,000. Utahns for Ethical Government is asking the AG to count electronic signatures on their measure.

There are certainly issues as to how best to authenticate e‑signatures. But can there be any doubt as to the desirability of making it easier for voters to sign petitions and place issues they deem important before their fellow sovereign citizens?

There’s entrenched political opposition to that, though. Utah Governor Gary Herbert says “electronic signatures are part of the future” — but he hopes that’s the far distant future. He wants the legislature to weigh in. Which it may do, working around the judgment of the State Supreme Court.

Will popular sovereignty make it to the Internet, today’s dominant interactivity realm?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

The Maywood Solution

What do you do when your town’s politics has been bitter and internecine for years, when your police force is best known for hiring disgraced cops from other departments, and when your town budget is nearly half a million bucks in the red?

Give up.

Well, not quite. The town of Maywood, not far south of downtown Los Angeles, was in just such a pickle, and resorted to a rather extreme solution: The elected officials, town manager, and city attorney kept their positions, but everybody else was let go.

The move was forced by the fact that no insurance company would guarantee the burg. The town had grown so iffy on all counts that it would have been crazy to bet on it. Thus placed in legal jeopardy, the town’s leaders decided that the only way to keep their jobs was to get rid of all others.

No. Wait. That’s too cynical. With a civic culture so corrupt something had to be done to move forward.

That makes Maywood’s next step almost sheer genius: Contract police, fire, everything else to neighboring, better-​run jurisdictions. The county Sheriff takes over police patrols. Bell, a neighbor city, takes over the bulk of municipal services.

The new arrangement begins July 1. This makes Maywood one city to watch. Could it be a bellwether? In collapsing California, very likely.

And what about other cities in other states? It might mean a revolution: Economic competition for public services.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.