Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
free trade & free markets initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

The 22 Franc Minimum Wage

Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney agree with America’s progressives: raising the minimum wage is common sense.

The Swiss had a chance to prove their solidarity with that notion yesterday, when they voted on whether to establish a minimum wage in the country, a rather high one of 4000 francs per month (something close to 22 francs per hour). They voted the proposal down.

Overwhelmingly. By over 76 percent.Frederic Bastiat's classic essay, What Is Seen and What Is Unseen

Unlike in America, this minimum wage would have affected a huge hunk of the population. One out of ten Swiss workers earns less than the proposed minimum. In America, only about a single percentage of workers earns close to the national minimum.

This matters, as Frédéric Bastiat clearly explained, because price regulations can have two effects: a loss of production, or none at all — “either hurtful or superfluous.” No effect, when the price floor (as in a minimum wage) is set lower than the level most prices are already at (or, for which workers already work). But when the price floor gets set higher, goods go off the market — with too-​high wage minimums, workers with low productivity cease to get hired.

Swiss voters could scarcely afford to risk the jobs of ten percent of the workforce.

In America, raising the minimum wage is usually a matter of sacrificing a few people (whom voters mostly don’t know — Bastiat’s “unseen”) while rejoicing in the higher wages of those workers retained (the “seen”).

In Switzerland, the government declared the down vote a victory for common sense.

Which it was.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Term Limits Now

Government of, by and for the people.

Yeah, right.

If government were “of, by and for” us … well, for starters, we’d have term limits.

Especially in Illinois. The Land of Lincoln has become the nation’s capital of corruption — four of the last seven governors went on to serve time in prison.

The state’s most powerful politician is House Speaker Michael Madigan, the longest-​serving speaker in state history. Madigan is powerful, yes, but not at all popular — rated negatively by a substantial 65 percent of the public.

So much for popular government.

But yesterday, the negativity of Illinois politics was met quite positively — and head-​on. The Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits delivered to the state Board of Elections a 36-​foot long box, weighing nearly two tons, filled with 68,000 pages of petitions containing nearly 600,000 voter signatures.

That’s more than enough signatures to place the constitutional amendment onto the ballot. The measure will limit state legislators to eight years in office. It will also reduce the size of the state senate and increase the size of the state house, while upping the legislative vote needed to override a governor’s veto to the same two thirds threshold found in 37 other states.

Yet, hours before all those voter signatures were presented to officials, an attorney connected to Speaker Madigan filed a lawsuit hoping to block the vote. The news report on the lawsuit quoted “sources who asked not to be identified for fear of risking their ability to secure state grant dollars.”

Term limits. Now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Pension Quake Prevention

Some say a mighty enough earthquake on the San Andreas Fault could dump much of the California coast into the Pacific Ocean. Could the state’s perilous public employee pension problems cause even worse damage?

State and local governments in the Golden State have underfunded their golden-​parachute pension promises by a terrifying half-​a-​trillion dollars, with an incredible 20,000 public employees currently receiving yearly pensions of $100,000 or more.

In Ventura County, north of Los Angeles, the problem was highlighted last fall when a retired sheriff, Robert Brooks, sued the county claiming he was owed an additional $75,000 a year. On top of his already substantial $283,000 annual pension, which is a whopping $55,000 more than Brooks’ highest-​ever salary.

In the last 15 years, pension costs as a percentage of the county’s budget have shot up an incredible 1,600 percent.

What can an outraged citizen do?

Take the initiative! On Wednesday, a group of men and women in beautiful Ventura County brought officials over 40,000 voter signatures demanding a vote on reform.

The people “made it clear they want a decisive say in their fiscal future,” said co-​chairs David Grau and Dick Thomson, standing with other volunteers.

The ballot initiative proposed by the Committee for Pension Fairness would create a 401k-​style retirement plan for new county employees. An independent analysis of the measure says it will create enough savings to shore up the woefully underfunded pensions of current employees and retirees.

“People are so excited that finally somebody is going to do something about this problem,” says the Ventura County Taxpayers Association’s Jim McDermott.

You can’t keep a good citizenry down.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary U.S. Constitution

Spring’s Decisions

Spring is in the air, and old men’s hearts turn to thoughts of … law.

Yes, Supreme Court Decision Season has begun. Yesterday, two decisions were handed down.

In Schuette v. BAMN, Justice Kennedy “announced” the decision to reverse a previous court’s determination overruling a citizen-​initiated constitutional amendment in Michigan. Kennedy (joined by Alito and Chief Justice Roberts) found that the people could prohibit race-​based affirmative action policies in their state. After all, the Supreme Court had merely allowed such practices in previous cases. It did not require them.

This shouldn’t be controversial — indeed, it was decided 6 – 2 with liberal Justice Stephen Breyer joining conservatives. Still, Justice Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench, saying “without checks, democratically approved legislation can oppress minority groups.”

The democratically approved legislation in this case prohibited discrimination on the grounds of race — hardly a source of oppression for anyone. Ilya Somin’s prediction of this decision last October is worth contrasting to Sotomayor’s worry: “In no conceivable world can the Equal Protection Clause — the constitutional provision that bans racial discrimination — prohibit a state law that bans racial discrimination.”

Justice Scalia (joined by Clarence Thomas) used his concurring opinion to make some sense of the constitutional status of race in American higher education with “It has come to this.” It’s quite a read.

But there was no joining of Thomas and Scalia in Navarette v. California. Thomas wrote the opinion, deciding that a traffic stop drug bust was okee-​dokee, even if initiated by a 911 caller complaining of a truck-driver’s alleged bad driving. Scalia called the decision “a freedom-​destroying cocktail.”

So much for the lock-​step left-​right divide on the High Court.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall links

Townhall: Freedom with an Exception Clause

It’s an old trick: make the exception clauses completely transform the principles involved.

In Colorado, a politician is trying mightily to transform the nature of citizen involvement in state government. She thinks she’s an angel, of course. But if you think of her as a devil, I’d completely understand.

Click on over to Townhall for this week’s Common Sense column. Come back here, of course, for a little more context.

For other recent Common Sense columns on Townhall, you can view them on this site, as well as on Townhall​.com itself: click here for the index.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders obituary

The Lion of Woodinville

Mike Dunmire passed away last weekend. Mike helped me form the Liberty Initiative Fund, serving as an original board member. But he was best known as a key funder of Tim Eyman’s Washington State ballot initiatives.

Indeed, Eyman’s incredible success at the ballot box — I once called him “America’s Number One Freedom Fighter” — would not have been possible without Dunmire, who was happy to help: “I honestly think he is the only one who gets anything done, and the money could not be better spent.”

Dunmire loved the initiative process. When legislators considered adding a $100 fee for citizens to file a ballot measure, Dunmire eloquently objected:

This hundred dollars may not seem like very much. It will eliminate some people who have fringe ideas. But let me tell you once it was a fringe idea that the world was round. I don’t think we want to suppress these ideas, and I think that all this bill does is buy a tremendous amount of ill will.… You maybe will make $10,000 off of this, but you stick a finger in every citizen’s eye.…

A native of Woodinville, Washington, he balanced humility with wit, hard work with compassion. He once jokingly introduced himself as “the Woodinville Think Tank President” at a legislative hearing.

“Although starting out with very little, I’ve been fortunate,” Mike once wrote. “I live in the most beautiful state in the union, I have my health, a wife I love, and had a career that brought me financial success. I’ve supported many philanthropic efforts during my life. In recent years, I’ve supplemented my ‘normal’ charitable giving by supporting political efforts to hold government more accountable.”

Mike Dunmire remains alive in the hearts of all those he helped.

This is Common Sense. I’m glad I knew you, Mike.