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.