Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

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initiative, referendum, and recall

Not-​So-​Total Recall

Michigan has a recall law. Citizens can toss out an unrepresentative representative before you can say Ypsilanti — even if that politician hasn’t committed a crime or tweeted lewd photos of himself.

Well, maybe not Ypsilanti-​simple: one must gather enough signatures to reach 25 percent of the contested office’s vote in the previous election.

Since 1954, when the recall provision was added to the Michigan Constitution, only three legislators have been successfully recalled. The first two were Democrats, back in 1983. The third happened just last month. Republican State Senator Paul Scott’s recall was placed on the ballot, largely through the efforts of the state teachers union, and he was voted out.

I wouldn’t have supported Scott’s ouster, but I support the right of citizens everywhere to oust away.

Michigan State Senator John J. Gleason disagrees. To Gleason, three recalls in 57 years are three too many. The Democrat introduced Senate Bill 629, which would gut the right to recall by disallowing it unless the legislator has gone on a crime spree or piled up serious ethical violations.

Just voting our liberties away wouldn’t qualify any longer.

“Nothing unites lawmakers more than making it easier to stay in office,” wrote Mackinac Center for Public Policy President Joe Lehman in the Detroit Free Press. “The voters’ right to recall lawmakers, for expressly political reasons, is a potent check against government overreach that the people should jealously guard irrespective of party.”

Joe’s talking Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall

Blackmail and Ballots

Councilman Rick Roelle in Apple Valley, California, says that Wal-​Mart “blackmailed the town.”

Blackmail is no small matter. So, what did Wal-​Mart do, specifically?

Wal-​Mart worked with citizens of Apple Valley, including supplying money, to gather enough petition signatures to place a measure on the local ballot for voters to decide whether Wal-​Mart could build a store.

“The initiative process was an opportunity that allowed voters to voice their support for the benefits that Wal-​Mart would bring their community,” a spokesperson for Wal-​Mart argued, “including jobs, affordable groceries, increased tax revenue, and infrastructure improvements.”

Who’s right?

Aside from the fact that there are many issues the majority has no right to decide, including whether a law-​abiding business can open its doors, why not let the people decide? At least a vote of the people is a clearer expression of the public will than a city council decision.

Some complain that even when a local petition qualifies the voters often don’t get a vote. Under state law, if 15 percent of the electorate signs a petition, the matter must be placed on a special election ballot … unless the city council enacts it, instead.

Special elections cost big money. Cash-​strapped city councils have voted to allow Wal-​Mart development, simply (they say) to save the expense of holding an election.

But such “caving in” doesn’t seem like blackmail in light of Menifee’s experience. The Wal-​Mart measure there won with 76 percent of the vote.

Unless, like some politicians, you think doing the electorate’s will is “blackmail.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Red Lights, Green Roads

Washington State activist Tim Eyman could celebrate election night. Several of his sponsored anti-​red-​light-​camera initiatives won — in Bellingham and Longview and Monroe.

But his statewide initiative seems to be going down.

Eyman has become obsessed with transportation issues, and he’s receiving the usual push-​back from insiders and editorialists. The Seattle Times proclaimed his I‑1125 “anachronistic,” saying that Eyman

may have something to say about the scope of government. His anti-​tax proposals fare well. But voters do not think much of his ideas for moving — or, more precisely, not moving — people around a busy metropolitan region.

A tad disingenuous. Washington’s voters received a barrage of advertising against the measure, but the campaign tended to ignore the measure’s main point, its attempt to strengthen the feedback systems of paying for (and developing) road projects. I‑1125 would have kept politicians’ hands out of the road till, forcing them to leave money in road funds put there by fuel taxes and tolls and such.

Despite the negative campaign, on election night the measure was losing so narrowly that many deemed it “too close to call.”

Contrast this with the common anti-​initiative complaint, that voting for them is driven by well-​funded campaigns that overpower citizens’ reason. Well, Eyman’s initiative campaigns carry mainly on the written measures themselves: His group spends nothing on paid advertising, while his opponents splurge millions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Time Waits for the Tax-Fighter

More than two decades ago, I got involved in my very first initiative campaign.

In 1990, tax-​fighter Jim Tobin, then the head of Taxpayers United of Illinois, filed the Tax Accountability Amendment. I organized the petition drive, which gathered more than half-​a-​million voter signatures to earn a place on the ballot. Polling showed more than 70 percent support for the issue, but a lawsuit by the Chicago Bar Association struck our initiative from the ballot.

The amendment would have mandated a three-​fifths vote of both legislative chambers to increase taxes. By requiring public notice and hearings before a tax hike could be enacted, the amendment also promoted transparency in the legislative process — long before the “transparency” buzzword became cool.

Illinois’s very limited initiative process has allowed for only one issue to appear on the state ballot — a successful 1980 measure, cutting back the number of state legislators and electing them in single member districts.

But even without a vote, Tobin wrested a pledge from both candidates for governor to abide by the provisions of the amendment, which the victorious governor stuck to for several years.

Tobin’s group has grown, finding considerable success battling big taxing politicians. It hasn’t forgotten about transparency, either. The group has launched a national campaign to provide the public with information on lavish and unsustainable pensions being collected by public employees.

Tonight, I’ll be with Jim Tobin at a big event in Chicago celebrating the 35th anniversary of his now national anti-​tax organization, Taxpayers United of America.

Congratulations, Jim! Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people term limits

Corporate Domination?

While Californians celebrated the centennial of their initiative and referendum, the Associated Press pushed a story headlined, “Corporations, wealthy dominate initiative process.”

Reporter Judy Lin gave examples:

  • In 2010, Pacific Gas & Electric spent $46 million on a measure to make it more difficult for localities to go into the utility business — outspending the opposition by 161 to 1.
  • Another measure last year, to allow auto insurance discounts for continuous customers, was funded almost entirely by $14.6 million from Mercury Insurance.
  • In 2008, T. Boone Pickens’ company contributed over $22 million — outspending opponents 100-​to‑1 — on a measure to encourage use of natural gas … which would have benefited the billionaire’s business interests.
  • A 2006 ballot measure charging a severance tax on oil production to fund alternative energy programs was bankrolled with nearly $50 million dollars from real estate heir and Hollywood producer Steven Bing.

What Ms. Lin did not emphasize was that each of these big-​spending corporate/​rich-​dude campaigns had the same result: The voters defeated their ballot measure.

The millions spent didn’t sway the people.

If special interests “dominated” the state legislature (or Congress) in this same way, we’d be dancing in the streets.

I spent the 1990s organizing petition drives to put term limits measures before voters — over 100 state and local initiatives — and virtually every single one passed, usually by large margins. No one ever charged that the term limits movement was “dominating” the initiative process.

Nice to know that I’m not plausibly demonizable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies too much government

The Obama Betrayals

In one way, President Obama has had it hard: He inherited a mess.

In another, he has had it easy: His predecessor blew it big time.

As James Bovard put it in his 2004 book, The Bush Betrayal, “George W. Bush came to the presidency promising prosperity, peace, and humility. Instead, Bush … spawned record federal budget deficits, launched an unnecessary war, and made America the most hated nation in the world.”

The election of Obama turned foreign opinion around, but his actual policies have proved no advance over his predecessor’s.

Bush started the bailouts; Obama bailed out more.

Bush pushed through an under-​funded entitlement, Medicare Part D. Obama leveraged his political capital to take an even bigger step towards socialized medicine.

Bush understandably undertook the Afghanistan venture — but the Iraq conquest and reconstruction betrayed his promise to forswear “nation-​building.” Then Obama lingered in Iraq, upped the forces in Afghanistan — long after the rationale became murky — and also attacked a number of other countries, including Libya. So much for the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

But when it comes to America’s misguided War on Drugs, Obama has been especially disappointing. No-​one really expected much of Bush. But Obama? He said he’d reverse policy at least vis-​à-​vis the states that voted in medical marijuana. Yet federal agents continue targeting medical marijuana growers.

We aren’t being served well by the presidents we spend so much time thinking about.

Could it be because they don’t really think much about us?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.