One of the things I do is promote the initiative and referendum process. Have you noticed? Well, that means traveling around the country and speaking before groups of people interested in making the world a freer, better place. Recently I spoke at “Liberty On the Rocks” in Denver:
Ari Armstrong asked some great questions — questions I think that would come to most thoughtful people’s minds, when contemplating direct action via the ballot.
Voters in Wichita, Kansas, went to the polls, Tuesday, to smash a measure that would have forked over $2.25 million in tax rebates to a downtown hotel project. Those supporting the giveaway spent $300,000 to promote the deal, while opponents ponied up a scant $30,000 against it. The vote nevertheless strongly weighed against the big money, 62 to 38 percent.
The Wichita City Council had enacted this “economic development” deal with the hotel developers, and that would have been the end of it … but for some pesky Wichita taxpayers.
Kansans may lack a statewide initiative and referendum, but there is a local process, so citizens possessed a tool for effective resistance. They formed Tax Fairness for All Wichitans and, working with the Kansas chapter of Americans for Prosperity, they hit the streets to gather over 2,700 signatures to require Tuesday’s vote.
After the victory, Bob Weeks, the group’s chair, reminded fellow activists that the battle is far from over:
The Ambassador Hotel is receiving assistance from eight taxpayer-funded government programs with costs of $15.4 million up-front and several hundred thousand annually. None of these were affected by the election. Wichita city hall and its allies are ready, willing, and able to use these incentive programs in the future for other hotels and businesses.
Weeks summed up the election results this way: “The best way to create jobs is to get government out of the way.… That is what the voters said tonight.”
On behalf of the new Liberty Initiative Fund, I’m honored to have given two cents worth of advice to their effort. They changed public policy, saved tax dollars and threw a big monkey wrench into the machinery of crony capitalism.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
It’s getting to become more and more popular to bash initiative rights — even when those rights are not very relevant. I hear rumblings in California that the hopeless Republicans, there, are gearing up for more of such nonsense. But beware, folks: This puts you in very dangerous company, amongst defenders of outright tyranny. See my column at Townhall.com this weekend.
For references associated with that column, click the links below:
For last week’s column, view it on This Is Common Sense.
Last November, Marylanders went to the polls. In addition to choosing candidates to administer their government as well as delegates to legislate for them, there was a ballot question on whether to call a constitutional convention, which, if voters so chose, would provide an opportunity to propose fundamental reforms.
Well, voters so chose. A solid majority — 54.4 percent — voted Yea.
But the Maryland Legislature isn’t setting up the convention.
In a Baltimore Sun op-ed, J.H. Snider, president of iSolon.org, tells the history of the constitutional convention provision in Maryland’s 1851 Constitution: “From 1851 until 1930, the majority required to convene a con-con was interpreted and implemented to mean an ordinary majority.”
But in 1930, when a majority said yes to a convention, the legislature balked, claiming that a convention required a supermajority of all citizens voting in the election. In other words, those not voting on the convention issue were counted as Nay votes.
A legal challenge was brought, but failed, because the counsel to the General Assembly provided, according to Snider, “a remarkably selective and biased interpretation of the con-con debates” for the court. In 1950, again a simple majority called a convention, again legislators shut their ears and, this time, a federal court case failed to decide the matter.
Snider supports a convention as the “best hope for fixing Maryland’s democratic deficits, including its inherently corrupt redistricting system and its legislators’ defiance of popular sentiment on legislative term limits.”
So, he’s suing the Old Line State government “to force it to convene the con-con a majority of Marylanders voted for on Nov. 2, 2010.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Wisconsin Democrats turned in more than a million signatures yesterday to force a recall election for Republican Gov. Scott Walker. That’s far more than the 540,000 signatures required by law.
State officials will now check the signatures and, barring tremendous irregularities, will set an election six to ten weeks after that, depending on whether a primary is needed to determine the Democrats’ candidate. Some recall processes require an up-or-down vote on the official being recalled, but Wisconsin simply holds a new election.
Only two state governors have been successfully recalled in the nation’s entire history: California’s Gray Davis (2003) and North Dakota’s Lynn Frazier (1921). Both deserved it.
Yet, while I applaud the recall as a good process and a fundamental right of citizens — not only did I personally work on the recall of the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, in 2010, I wholeheartedly cheered the recall of Davis — I hope the people of Badger Nation will vote to keep their gutsy governor.
Walker’s reform, making public employees pay more toward their hefty healthcare and pension benefits and restricting collective bargaining by public employee unions, understandably angered the state’s labor unions. But the reform has already saved overburdened taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, a report released by the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators shows that districts across the state are financially more secure and have been able to hire more teachers.
The right to recall is essential, but replacing Gov. Walker would punish him for doing what’s right.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Last year at this time, I was in Omaha, Nebraska, testifying at a court challenge to the petition drive I had run to put a recall of Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle on the ballot. Recall opponents had hurled baseless charges of “fraud” throughout our signature drive, an increasingly common smear used by the professional left. In the court case, their attorney also tried the old racist tactic of demonizing me as an evil outside agitator. The judge found their charges meritless, writing in his opinion, “Plaintiff introduced evidence to attack the credibility of certain circulators and a Paul Jacob, the coordinator for the paid circulators.… This Court found Paul Jacob credible and accepted his testimony as truthful.”
Those powerful political forces opposed to citizens having a say on the ballot, whether through recalls or initiatives or referendums, have made a habit of using nasty, scorched-earth, character-assassinating tactics. They think they can keep good, decent people away from any effort to hold government accountable by being especially dishonest and despicable. We have to prove them wrong at every turn – as we did in Omaha last year.