Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The Gig Is Up

California, gig, freelance, law, control, interference, intervention, labor,

Eventually, champions of government intervention, of all forms of thwarting independent judgment and killing dreams, find themselves under assault. From the public.

And you don’t need an economics degree to grasp why.

Initially, an intervention prevents other people from pursuing projects, getting jobs, earning a living. Then, finally, government meddling goes a step too far. Maybe lawmakers had “good intentions,” but hey! This is me now!

Your legislation needs tweaking!

This is where we are in California’s attack on the so-called gig economy. Hatched to “protect” Uber drivers or some such nonsense, Assembly Bill 5 makes it massively harder for companies to classify freelancers as independent contractors. After it was signed into law, many companies — from blogs to transcription services — told California-based freelancers adios.

Millions of people lost work and options.

What walks of life are affected? All.

“California’s new gig worker law is … threatening all performing arts,” complains Brendan Rawson at CalMatters.org. California has “overreached.” Gotta nip-and-tuck that otherwise “worthy” bill! Use only the magic arbitrary intervention in our lives that works!

Not everybody now being hurt was previously okay with pushing other people around, of course. I’ve never been a fan. One of my missions is defending the right of citizen initiative. Well, AB5 makes it much harder and more expensive for petition campaigns to hire people for such gigs as collecting signatures for an initiative in California.

AB5 attacks earning a living, speaking freely, associating freely, and petitioning one’s government freely. Maybe the law will be rescinded. But there’s more mischief where that came from.

So let’s protect other people’s freedom … and stop the overreach before it reaches us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo by Dairo Cervantes

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Tags California, control, freelance, gig, interference, intervention, labor, law

initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Extraordinarily Unusual

“It’s a government-on-government fight,” reports Seattle-based KOMO News, as the Pierce County Council voted 4 – 3 to provide assistance in defending Initiative 976 in court.

The ballot measure, which limits car license fees among other provisions, passed 53 to 47 percent statewide last month, including a whopping 66 percent affirmative vote in Pierce County. And — you guessed it — I‑976 was immediately swarmed by life-devouring locusts — er, I mean, sued by “a handful of counties, cities, transportation agencies, and one transit rider.”

In short, many governments seek to undo a vote of the people … along with a lone citizen to serve as fig leaf.

Against only one government, Pierce County, now joining the voters.

Late last month, a judge in King County, one of only four counties (out of the state’s 39) to vote against I‑976, issued a preliminary injunction blocking implementation of the initiative, while the case is being adjudicated.

The voter-approved measure does have Attorney General Bob Ferguson lawyering on its behalf. But Mr. Ferguson has been engaged in a multi-year civil lawsuit against Tim Eyman, the sponsor of 976. The two aren’t friends. And the AG is no friend of lower taxes, either. No surprise, then, for Eyman to talk of “sabotage” and Ferguson’s mere pro forma defense: “he truly doesn’t want it to succeed.”

This isn’t a government-on-government fight, but governments-versus-voters. With the wonderful exception of Pierce County, where political representation still lives.

“This is the first time a government has ever actually done something to defend a citizen initiative,” remarked Eyman at a Tuesday news conference.

“It is really extraordinarily unusual,” he added.

That’s how out-of-control government in our “democracy” is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

My Favorite Control Group

Post author By Redactor
Post date November 14, 2019
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Tim Eyman strikes again.

In deep blue Washington State, the ballot measure activist celebrated another Election Day victory last week with Initiative 976, limiting vehicle taxes. Not to mention Referendum 88, whereby voters kept a ban on government use of racial preferences, enacted via an initiative Eyman had co-authored two decades ago.

And still, there were a dozen more issues on last Tuesday’s statewide ballot thanks to Mr. Eyman’s 2007 initiative, I‑960, which mandates “advisory votes on taxes enacted without voter approval.” (Also thanks to state legislators, I guess, for racking up 12 new tax increases this year without bothering to ask voters!)

Yet, perhaps it matters not at all. Nearly two million votes cast on each of these measures? Three supported by a majority? Nine rejected? Two esteemed Evergreen State newspaper columnists pooh-pooh them as “meaningless.”

“The Legislature has never taken the voters’ advice when they say a tax should be repealed,” writes Spokane Spokesman Review columnist Jim Camden.

That’s a failing of the Legislature, Jim,* not these advisory measures … which you seem to acknowledge when you write that these votes at least “provide a good control group for any experiment on the voters’ knee jerk reaction to higher taxes.”

If legislators cared to know.

While dumping on the dozen measures as “an empty remnant of an earlier initiative,” The Columbian’s Greg Jayne noti ces that “their presence on the ballot this year reminded voters, over and over again, of the Legislature’s spendthrift ways.”

Helping create an anti-tax mood that spurred support for I‑976.

Not bad for being meaningless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I use his first name because I know Mr. Camden from decades ago when he was a reporter covering House Speaker Tom Foley, who after suing to overturn the 1992 citizen initiative for term limits became the only Speaker defeated for reelection since the Civil War.

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Tags democracy, initiative, tax policy, Tim Eyman, voting

initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Blue Colorado Big Spenders

Post author By Redactor
Post date November 7, 2019
6 Comments on Blue Colorado Big Spenders

“The Trump years may have cemented Colorado’s blue-state status — time will tell,” writes Alex Burness in the Denver Post, “but voters in the Centennial State continue to hold a hard line on anything that has even a whiff [of] new tax.”

Burness is talking about Proposition CC, a measure placed on Tuesday’s ballot by the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature, which would have allowed state government to keep and spend $37 million annually coming into government coffers over the state’s constitutional spending cap, rather than refunding those dollars to taxpayers as required by the Taxpayer Bill of Rights passed back in the 1990s.

The elite supporters of Proposition CC devoted more than $4 million to promoting the measure, outspending opponents better than two-to-one and arguing that government desperately needed the money for education and transportation. Opponents cried foul over the official ballot summary voters read, which began with the words “Without a tax increase …”

“But the measure lost,” Burness informs, “and it wasn’t close.”

“The measure’s failure amounts to a significant victory for supporters of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights,” Colorado Public Radio reports. “That constitutional amendment requires voter approval for all tax increases, sets a revenue limit for every government in the state and requires any surpluses be returned to taxpayers.”

“Who’s in charge?” TABOR author Douglas Bruce asked years ago. “We, the people, who earn the money, or the politicians who want to spend it?”

The answer from supposedly blue-leaning Colorado voters was unequivocal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credit: Pictures of Money

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Tags Colorado, Douglas Bruce, elections, tax policy

general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Today’s Trifecta

vote, election, initiative, referendum, Washington, New York,

Three measures on ballots today are particularly worth watching.

Two issues in Washington State represent the only citizen-initiated measures out of 32 propositions voters will see in eight states: Washington Referendum 88 allows voters to re-decide the issue of racial and gender preferences, so-called “affirmative action,” while Washington Initiative 976 offers voters a chance to cap their vehicle taxes.

More than two decades ago, in 1998, Washingtonians passed Initiative 200 to end racial and gender preferences in state employment and education. This year, the state legislature enacted a virtual repeal of I‑200, by allowing the state to employ such a preference provided it was not the “only factor” used.

Washington’s vibrant Asian-American community, which stands to be discriminated against should affirmative action return, rose up to petition Referendum 88 onto the ballot. A “yes” vote upholds the legislature’s new pro-preference policy; a “no” vote restores the prior voter-enacted policy prohibiting such preferences.

Initiative 976 is yet another effort from Tim Eyman, the state’s most prolific initiative practitioner. “This measure,” as the official summary states, “would repeal or remove authority to impose certain vehicle taxes and fees; limit state and local license fees to $30 for motor vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or less, except charges approved by voters …”

Like virtually every Eyman initiative, powerful opponents have dramatically outspent supporters — by greater than a 6‑to‑1 margin — funding ads that have been less than truthful. Additionally, government officials have broken campaign laws in pushing a “no” vote.

Nonetheless, a mid-October poll showed 48 percent of voters support I‑976 against 37 percent who oppose it. Could Eyman again thwart the state’s behemoth Blue Establishment?

Lastly, New York City voters will decide a ballot question on whether to use ranked choice voting in future primary and special elections for mayor, city council and other offices. It would mark a major victory for a reform growing in popularity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags election, initiative, New York, referendum, vote, Washington

initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

Revolt of the Desk Jockeys

Our Constitution guarantees that each state of the union provide a republican form of government.

Does that mean that all that is prohibited is … monarchy?

No.

One very common form of modern governance is deeply anti-republican, requiring — at the very least — strict regulation to prevent it from usurping our form of government. And what is this dangerous variety? The kind an economist defined centuries ago: “We have an illness in France which bids fair to play havoc with us; this illness is called bureaumania.” He called it “government by desk,” or, “bureaucratie.”

Yes, bureaucracy.

You might think I’m about to launch into another attack upon the Deep State, perhaps in relation to the ongoing coup-by-desk of the Trump Presidency.

But no. Let us turn to the other Washington, the one with the capital named Olympia.

In that hotbed of politics-as-usual, the city government printed out and mailed — on the public dime — a pamphlet entreating voters to vote against I‑976, a state-wide initiative that had been advanced onto the ballot by Tim Eyman* and hundreds of thousands of voter signatures.

Even if it had been a broadside for the initiative this would have been very, very bad.

In republics, those who inhabit public desks must not be allowed to hijack election campaigns from those who are, ultimately, in charge: the citizens.

And in Washington State by law: RCW 42.17A.555 broadly and strictly prohibits using public resources for campaigning.

Apparently, public servants in the Evergreen State (as elsewhere) do not see that they themselves can corrupt our form of government.

Which makes this government-printed pamphlet a very serious breach of law indeed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* You may remember me talking about Eyman before — often. I have called him the most effective limited-government activist in these United States. And it is from Eyman himself that I learned of this story.

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