This week Paul Jacob is traveling down south — way down south. Here he reports from the Lima, Peru, airport, explaining what he’s up to:
If all goes according to plan, he’ll report a few more times while in South America, and after.
You can view this video in HD, here.
Though centralized power, coalescing in Washington, D.C., has increased in recent years as a bipartisan effort to grow government, it’s worth noting that true federalism is not dead.
Take one of America’s longest-running atrocities, the “War on Drugs.” The American people are rebelling, leaving their political representatives, state and national, in the back seat. The recently successful marijuana legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington State are already taking effect, thus marking a major retreat in the once-popular, now increasingly hopeless war.
Last Friday, The Seattle Times reported that King County has dismissed 175 cases involving people over 21 and possession of one ounce of cannabis or less. “Although the effective date of I-502 is not until December 6, there is no point in continuing to seek criminal penalties for conduct that will be legal next month,” explained the county prosecutor.
A smaller number were dismissed in Pierce County, with its prosecutor saying that, “as a practical matter, I don’t think you could sell a simple marijuana case to a jury after this initiative passed.”
In Colorado, a major drug task force has been disbanded. The excuse is lack of funds, but I suspect that Colorado officials had read the writing on the wall, and it wasn’t “Mene, Mene, Tekel, u-Pharsin” — it was the wording of Colorado’s Initiative 64.
The federales don’t have the manpower to enforce federal law in the 50 states, or the constitutional authority to dictate state enforcement of either federal law much less the nature of state criminal laws.
Courtesy of the citizen initiative, we could be seeing the next major devolution of power away from the nation’s capital.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
A lot of people, Democratic and Republican, have been saying that yesterday’s election was “the most important in our lifetime.” It wasn’t — and wouldn’t have been had the presidential race gone the other way.
But as it is, the outcome was hardly shocking. An incumbent got re-elected. Wow.
The Senate solidified its Democratic position; the House remained solidly Republican. America after Election Day looks almost exactly the same as America before.
So, why so little change?
Blame it on “hope.”
Face it: in electoral politics, fantasy sells. Mainstream politicians love to promote The Dream. Not the American Dream, which is about hard work and honest dealing, but the Changeling Dream, about getting something for nothing. Or getting ahead at others’ expense. At present, this Dream rests upon spending more than government takes in forever and ever, believing that somehow there are no disastrous consequences to the resulting accumulation of debt.
Democratic politicians may be better able to describe their lavish dreams for all that government can do, but Republican office-holders sure seem to hang out on that same street in Dreamland.
Now they’ve just about all been re-elected to go back and hang out for another term.
What can we do? Hope they change their spots?
No. That’s too passive. “Cast your whole vote,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.”
How? In 2013 and 2014, citizens can petition to put important issues on state and local ballots. We change the terms of political debate; we gain the upper hand — and put common sense back into government.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
There they go again!
You’d think after Nebraskans voted three separate times for eight-year legislative term limits that the state’s legislators would finally accept the vote of the people they claim to serve.
But you’d be wrong.
The limits passed in ’92 and ’94 were struck down in court rulings that re-wrote the state’s initiative petition requirements. Voters responded to that judicial tyranny by booting out a supreme court justice in a retention election for the very first time in state history. A second justice resigned the day after that 1996 spanking by voters.
In 2000, citizens gathered enough signatures to put the limits back on the ballot and again they passed.
But that hasn’t stopped State Sen. Tom Carlson and his fellow legislators from placing Amendment 3 on tomorrow’s ballot. If passed, Amendment 3 would allow Carlson & Co. to stay in office 50 percent longer.
Strange, we limit the president to eight years; George Washington stepped down after two four-year terms to set that example. But somehow eight years isn’t enough time for a state senator.
In a last minute radio ad campaign by a purposely mis-named Nebraskans to Preserve Term Limits, Sen. Carlson says that he and his gang “believe in term limits.” But seconds later Carlson mentions “coaches, teachers, doctors” and suggests, “It is unlikely we would consider limiting their service to eight years.”
Well, he’s right that we don’t limit brain surgeons to eight years. But then again, being a legislator isn’t brain surgery.
As Nebraska voters will remind members of the state’s Unicameral Legislature tomorrow — for a fourth time.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Why call it “political correctness,” when it’s simply “political” and so terribly incorrect?
Whatever we call it — “a totalitarian impulse” comes to my mind — placing Angela McCaskill on administrative leave from her job at Gallaudet University is just flat-out wrong.
“It recently came to my attention that Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as Chief Diversity Officer,” Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz wrote, last week, on the University’s Facebook page. McCaskill’s alleged transgression was to sign a petition to refer the Legislature’s same-sex marriage law to the ballot for Maryland voters to decide, and potentially overturn.
Hurwitz didn’t mention any specific policy violated by McCaskill. Worse, while acknowledging her “right to sign a petition,” Hurwitz added, as if in clarification, that “many individuals at our university were understandably concerned and confused by her action.”
There appears to be much confusion at Gallaudet . . . about the meaning of freedom.
President Hurwitz, who faces criticism from both proponents and opponents of the same-sex marriage referendum that started this fracas, claimed to be confident that a “resolution of this matter can be reached,” hazarding that it “will require that she and the university community work together to respond to the concerns that have been raised.”
A “resolution”? McCaskill has an attorney, and the greater likelihood is a large lump sum settlement for violating her civil rights.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
When I think of Oregon, I often think of Don McIntire. Last Friday, 74-year-old Don died from a heart attack suffered at home.
I knew him as a great storyteller, with a Mark Twain sort of wit. But McIntire was best known in the Beaver State as a longtime taxpayer activist, specifically the main proponent of Measure 5, a 1990 citizen initiative that limited the state’s oppressive property taxes.
Then-Governor Barbara Roberts hyperbolically predicted that if voters passed Measure 5, “people would die.” Nonetheless, voters enacted the citizen initiative . . . and lived to tell about it.
Learning of McIntire’s passing, Jason Williams with Oregon Taxpayers United recalled the many phone calls he’d received from senior citizens, expressing their “heartfelt gratitude for Measure 5” and saying, “If it wasn’t for Don McIntire, I wouldn’t be able to live in my home today.”
Radio talk show host Lars Larson recognized McIntire as “a tax hero to millions of Oregonians whose taxes were reduced by literally billions of dollars because of the tireless efforts of this man.”
“Don McIntire was a giant in Oregon’s limited government movement,” said Cascade Policy Institute founder Steve Buckstein. “He gave tirelessly of himself for literally decades to reign in the government he thought was too large and too intrusive. . . . Every Oregonian who wants to keep government in check owes Don McIntire a huge debt of gratitude.”
Thanks, Don, for siding with taxpayers. Rest in peace.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
It’s the silly season in politics, that special time when politicians pretend they like us better than the special interests that fund their campaigns. They bombard us with bold and expansive promises of their incredible abilities; they pledge their future fidelity to principle. From bitter experience, oft repeated, we know those promises tend to evaporate faster than warm spit on an August sidewalk.
Regardless of what happens in the presidential race or in the pitched battle for control of the U.S. Senate (and possibly even the U.S. House of Representatives), voters will also be deciding 157 ballot issues in 34 states this November. As Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, once quipped, “One big difference between initiatives and elected representatives is that initiatives do not change their minds once you vote them in.”
Here are this year’s top ten ballot measures most critical to … [read the rest of the column on Townhall]
NOTE: For a run-down off all 157 ballot issues in 34 states, consult Ballotpedia.
“Democracy should be for everyone,” says Michelle Romero of the Greenlining Institute. That sounds right.
She also argues that “California speaks 200 languages, but our initiative petitions speak only one. We can bring millions of voters fully into our democratic process, and it will only cost about a penny per person.”
Romero is talking about Senate Bill 1233, authored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), which mandates that the California Attorney General translate every citizen initiative or referendum or recall petition into nine languages: Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.
More people able to get involved politically? I like that.
Still, it was strange to see California legislators, who regularly scheme to wreck the initiative process, passing legislation to enable more participation. Well, it was strange, until I learned that SB 1233 doesn’t simply provide citizens with petitions in various languages, as an option. No, this legislation would force citizens to carry petitions not only in English, but also in those other languages.
Accordingly, SB 1233 forces initiative proponents to spend the money to print their petition in ten languages. Of course, for well-heeled political groups that’s a minuscule cost, but it makes it that much more difficult for less well-financed grassroots groups to participate.
Cesar Diaz, Legislative and Political Director of the State Building and Construction Trades Council, said, “It’s just common sense to give all voters an equal say in deciding what goes on the ballot.”
Forcing cumbersome requirements onto citizens petitioning their government won’t give voters a say. It’s just another sneaky measure devised by political insiders to make sure citizens have less input, not more.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
California’s Democratic legislative majority is anything but lazy. On July 3, when most politicians had long-since left their posts to begin vacationing, California legislators kept their collective nose to the grindstone, busy trying to grind down the right of citizens to petition their government.
Again.
Last year, California’s initiative process withstood multiple attacks. One would have required petitioners to wear signs on their chest stating whether or not they were paid. Another would have outlawed paying petitioners per signature.
Nary a Republican voted for these bills; thankfully, Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed both. He suggested government shouldn’t force citizens to wear signs on their chests and noted, “It doesn’t seem very practical to me to create a system that makes productivity goals a crime.”
Undeterred, the Assembly Elections Committee passed ACA 10, which would require constitutional amendment initiatives to qualify by running petition drives in 27 state senate districts. This, on top of the current requirement to gather more than a million voter signatures statewide,
Well-heeled interests would be able to afford the higher costs. Grassroots groups? Not so much.
Further, ACA 10 mandates that constitutional amendments proposed by citizens through the initiative must garner a supermajority of 55 percent to pass. This would allow big spending-unions or wealthy individuals or big corporations to defeat reform measures even when a majority of voters favor the measure.
Legislators claim the constitution should not be changed by a slim majority. Yet, ACA 10 doesn’t increase the simple majority currently required when it comes to amendments that legislators propose.
Legislators are working overtime to get those pesky citizen reformers out of their way.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Some opponents of citizen initiative and referendum argue that voters will always opt for tax cuts. I only wish.
Yesterday, North Dakotans decided not to eliminate their state’s property tax. Measure 2 wouldn’t have lowered property taxes, it would have abolished them. Even in a land booming with new-found oil and gas, and a state government surfing in surpluses, a whopping 78 percent of voters weren’t willing to go that far.
Chalk it up to fear — unfounded fear. North Dakota State government is running a surplus bigger than the state’s property tax take.
As is too often the case, voters saw a one-sided campaign, with spending by the forces of big government — public employee unions and those extracting financial gain from the political status quo — completely outmatching the resources taxpayers had to get their message out. On Measure 2, the No side outspent the Yes side by more than 26 to 1.
Empower the Taxpayer, led by Bob Hale and Charlene Nelson, made the argument that property taxes are particularly malicious because people can lose their homes and farms if they can’t afford the taxes. That argument did not win the day.
But there will be other days. I often tell the story of a 2002 Arkansas initiative campaign to “ax the food tax.” The measure to end the sales tax on food and medicine was slaughtered at the ballot box. Still, now a decade later, the tax has been reduced from 6 percent to 1.5 percent.
North Dakotans voted to keep the state university’s Fighting Sioux mascot. The Fighting Taxpayers may be around even longer.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.