Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Grinding Down Democracy

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.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Fighting Taxpayers

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.Fighting Sioux

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.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Trick and Treats

After more than a year of big labor throwing industrial-size kitchen sinks at Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s Republican governor became the first of the three governors in U.S. history to face recall and retain the office.

Walker more than survived; he prevailed, beating his Democratic rival by seven percentage points, 53 to 46. In a light blue state, it was a thorough thwacking of the public employee unions, the biggest, bluest special interest.

According to exit polls, Walker even won better than a third of union households.

The man had kept his word not to raise taxes. Further, ending collective bargaining for most government employee unions, along with other reforms, saved lots of money for state and local governments and school districts. This, it turns out, prevented public sector layoffs and helped secure future health and pension benefits.

Walker’s success will be repeated elsewhere.

Hey, already happened! On Tuesday, in San Diego and San Jose, California, voters overwhelmingly passed measures to get a handle on out-of-control public employee pension costs. These measures were, of course, fiercely opposed by government unions.

As cities are cutting programs to pay pension benefits for retirees, a post on the Calpensions blog explains, “Public pension amounts in California are based on what unions are able to obtain through collective bargaining, not what is needed for a reasonable retirement.”

Among Tuesday’s many treats, there was one really rotten trick. California’s Prop 28 passed, weakening the state’s legislative term limits. Most voters, misled by the official ballot summary, thought the measure would result in tougher term limits.

Can’t wait until the next election, which falls nearer Halloween. Hope for more treats than tricks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits video

Video: California Term Limit Scam

CAUTION: A carefully concocted measure designed to fool the voters. Pass this on. It is important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruTn1kkvv6Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

Rocky Mountain Low

In the closing days of this year’s legislative session, Colorado Rep. Lois Court sponsored a bill that would have amended the state constitution to require a 60 percent supermajority to pass any future constitutional amendments. This issue had previously been floated to — and defeated by — voters in 2008, as Referendum O.

In 2009, 2010, 2011 and again this year, this attack on the citizen initiative had been introduced in the Legislature, but beaten back by a coalition of citizens and policy groups, including Common Cause and the Colorado Union of Taxpayers.Louis Court, Colorado

This year, Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels informed us that Court’s bill had been “hijacked.” Republican Rep. Jon Becker amended it in committee, requiring the bill’s 60 percent supermajority to apply to any amendment to the state constitution — an idea so repulsive that even Court voted against her own bill.

But there, oddly, is where Bartels’s explanation ends.

You see, Court’s legislation mandated a supermajority to pass a new constitutional amendment, but not for repealing past constitutional amendments — at least, not past amendments proposed by citizens.

Why? Look no further than TABOR.

Passed by citizen initiative in 1992, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment requires any increase in overall government spending, or any tax increase, to be approved by the politicians’ boss: the people of Colorado.

Therefore, Court and her fellow legislative Democrats seek a supermajority to block any future amendment like TABOR, while at the same time allowing TABOR to be more easily nixed with only a simple majority. They want two sets of books, two sets of standards, one for the people and another custom-made for them.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Don’t Blame Me

Some folks are quick to blame the voters for the mess this country is in. Not me.

In 2008, Americans overwhelmingly opposed the TARP bailouts. Which candidate — Democrat Obama or Republican McCain — represented the majority of us on that central issue?

Neither.

This year, President Obama promises a significant tax increase and more government investment in crony capitalism. Republican nominee Mitt Romney pledges he won’t raise taxes and he’ll reduce at least the growth in spending via Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan.Initiative sign

But who would be surprised were Romney, even given a GOP Congress — especially given a GOP Congress — to fail miserably on his promises?

Voters choose candidates for the right reasons only to see those candidates, from both major parties, jettison their campaign promises, ad nauseam.

We aren’t mind readers. We’re simply not to blame for good-faith decisions in a bad-faith system.

We are to blame, however, for not taking the initiative to change the rottenness in the system.

Yet, how best to get outside this box, to effect real change, to take the initiative?

Why, the initiative, of course!

Twenty-three states have viable processes for citizens to put initiative measures on state ballots. Even in states where no statewide initiative or referendum exists, like Texas and New York, most local jurisdictions have the initiative.

National changes can come from local action.

Increasingly, we must use the initiative not only to change the law, protect freedom, hold government accountable, reform the system, but also to set the political agenda directly from the grass roots.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Spending Cuts, Seriously

Taking on the government employees’ unions was a gutsy move for Wisconsin’s freshman governor, Scott Walker. Now facing recall, he’s caught in a swarm of controversy, his opponents as angry as bees near a kicked hive.

Nick Gillespie and Jim Epstein, in a Reason TV video segment called “3 Lies About the Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Recall,” look behind the hysterical denunciations and at the facts. All three of their points deserve consideration, but I’m most interested in the first, their debunking of the “lie” that “Gov. Walker Cut Spending.” Surprise, surprise — total spending in Wisconsin is going up:

Gov. Walker has cut the rate at which Wisconsin’s state budget is growing, but he hasn’t actually cut spending. In fact, the state’s biennial budget is scheduled to increase by about 3 percent on Walker’s watch, rising from $62.6 billion (2009-11) to $64.3 billion (2011-13).

We see the same disconnect at the federal level. A few Republicans present budgets that slow growth in spending, yet do not decrease spending in total. But, since we do see cuts here and there, to this program or that, Democrats take each minor cut as an occasion to scream and holler about how indecent and heartless “greedy Republicans” are for cutting spending.

And yet spending has gone up.

The complainers, by focusing on those few actual cuts, ignore the overall increases. They thus effectively demand that government spending increase always and everywhere.

While talk of Republican “cutters” must be taken with a grain of salt, it’s impossible to take their critics seriously at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Professional Politicians & Crony Capitalists

Yesterday, I explained how the official title for California’s Proposition 28 tricks voters who favor tougher term limits into supporting a measure that will dramatically weaken those limits.

The title’s slipperiness is anything but accidental. It was designed to fool, hiding the fact that the measure doubles the time legislators can park themselves in the state assembly and ups senate tenure by 50 percent. Instead, voters read that Prop 28 “reduces” (ever so slightly) the time a politician can serve in both chambers, from 14 years to 12 years – something affecting less than one in ten office-holders.

“The proponents of the measure are longtime opponents of term limits who have long wanted to roll back California’s voter-approved legislative term limits,” says Jon Fleishman of the Flash Report, who serves as volunteer co-chairman of “No on 28.”

Still, the sham ballot title is only one part of the Prop 28 scam.

The biggest financial backer behind Prop 28 has been billionaire developer Edward Roski. While at the very same time legislators were awarding Roski’s company the special environmental exemptions he needed to build a sports stadium, Roski just happened to plunk down over a million bucks to the politician-prized petition drive, helping the measure get on the June 5th ballot.

“That’s crony capitalism and that stinks,” argues Fleishman.

“In a state with a 12-percent-plus unemployment rate,” Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, points out about legislators, “the jobs they’re fighting the hardest to keep are their own.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall

Between a Rock and Our Rights

It’s heart-breaking to read the daily accounts of the Syrian government shelling neighborhoods and snipers gunning down protesting citizens in the streets. Syria, sadly, is hardly the only place where speaking one’s mind or seeking political change can be met with threats and violence.

Sometimes the brutality comes from the government itself. Sometimes the acts of intimidation and bloodshed come from extra-legal gangs acting in concert with those in power.

Thank goodness we live in a country where one doesn’t have to fear violence for one’s political beliefs and activities.

Or do we?

Like many cities and states in our land, Colorado’s public employee pension system is woefully underfunded, $21 billion behind, putting taxpayers and/or retirees in grave jeopardy. In addition to the financial problem is a serious lack of accountability.

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton sits on the board of the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA). But when he asked for some basic information about benefits, the board refused. Stapleton complains that “it seems their objective is for all board members to operate in the dark and act as a rubberstamp for their executives.” He’s filed a lawsuit seeking the information.

Luckily, Colorado citizens have access to the initiative petition process. Recently, Carol Baum and Karen Stauffer filed initiatives to reform PERA, including requiring greater transparency. Last Friday, they attended the first hearings to finalize their measures.

That’s when the threatening phone calls began. And then on Sunday, Karen Stauffer’s car window was smashed out by a large rock.

Something is rotten in Denver. Tyranny is wielding its most powerful weapons: fear and intimidation. The only antidote is courage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall

Running Democracy’s Red Light

In the traffic snarl of political ideas, the liberating concept behind America seems as straightforward as the freeway: The people are the boss, with rights above government, and “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The people have a green light to pursue happiness, provided that in their liberty they don’t diminish someone else’s equal right. Conversely, government is limited, facing red lights, and flashing yellows, from the people.

In theory.

Too often our judges and our “elected” representatives don’t get it. They shine red lights at the people. Just happened in Washington State on the issue of . . . well . . . red light cameras.

In dozens and dozens of public votes held across the country on the issue of red-light cameras, voters have a 100 percent track record of saying “No,” to those Orwellian contraptions. That’s what happened in Mukilteo, Washington, thanks to a referendum pushed by Tim Eyman. It’s happened in numerous other Washington cities and localities.

So American Traffic Solutions, the company providing this cash-creating “service,” formed a front group and sued to block local citizens from petitioning the issue to the ballot box.

In a narrow 5-4 decision, Justice Barbara Madsen wrote for the majority: “The legislature granted to local legislative bodies the exclusive power to legislate on the subject of the use and operation of automated traffic safety cameras. The legislature’s grant of authority does not extend to the electorate.”

Say, what? The very power granted by the legislature, and now denied the people in court, came from the people. The voters are the ultimate “legislative authority.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.