Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

The Limits of Corruption

Republican Speaker, Larry Householder, bribery

Another corrupt, term-limits-hating, careerist politician bites the dust.

“Federal prosecutors say Republican Speaker Larry Householder and four others — including a former state GOP chairman — perpetrated a $60 million federal bribery scheme,” reports the Dayton Daily News, “connected to a taxpayer-funded bailout of Ohio’s two nuclear power plants.”

Last year, a citizen-initiated referendum campaign sought to give voters the final say on the legislature’s $1.5 billion baby. “The relentless machinations of HB 6’s backers,” Cleveland Plain-Dealer columnist Thomas Suddes points out, “kept [that] repeal effort launched against the bill off Ohio’s ballot.”

At a news conference to explain the arrest of Householder and his co-conspirators on racketeering charges, federal prosecutors detailed some of the ways the scheme illegally blocked last year’s referendum effort.

Now, the rush is on to repeal House Bill 6.

Mr. Suddes is correct that “[t]he legislature also won’t be OK till voters amend the Ohio Constitution to make it easier to place issues on the statewide ballot for up-or-down votes.”

But when he goes on to argue that term limits are “part of that problem”?

The only thing Ohio’s term limits need is to make the limits lifetime — forbidding legislators from returning after a timeout. Householder had previously been speaker from 2001 to 2004. “While he officially left office due to term limits,” informs the Plain-Dealer, “he departed Columbus amid an FBI investigation that closed without charges.”

Householder also came to our attention back in March, when he called Ohio’s eight-year limits “pretty oppressive.” Before the pandemic, he was pushing a ballot measure designed to weaken the term limits law and serve until 2036 — foreshadowing what Putin* did later in Russia.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I referred to them as “two pols in a pod,” but now, Householder reminds me more of former Arkansas State Sen. Jon Woods, who after sponsoring a deceptive ballot measure to weaken term limits was convicted on multiple felony charges and is serving his current term in prison.

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initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

Greater Idaho Goes Forward?

Post author By Editor
Post date July 17, 2020
2 Comments on Greater Idaho Goes Forward?

An Oregon case, People Not Politicians v. Secretary of State Clarno, was decided last week in favor of People Not Politicians, a group that has struggled obtaining signatures to qualify Initiative Petition 57 (IP 57) for the November 2020 ballot — while observing the governor’s stay-at-home orders.

It is hard to collect petition signatures under social distancing.

So the court is forcing the Secretary of State to give the group some leeway in advancing their redistricting measure.

This is good news for another citizen activist group, Move Oregon’s Border. Chief Petitioner Mike McCarter wants to place initiatives on county ballots in eastern, southern, and southwestern Oregon. His idea is to split off from Willamette Valley politics altogether, leaving wokester Portland — of the comedy Portlandia and antifa riots fame — in the distance.

But he does not want to form a new state. The secession is mere prelude to accession … to Idaho!

It has been a long time since the United States has fissioned a state, West Virginia during the Civil War being the most recent — Maine and Kentucky before that.

Great idea? Well, this goes far beyond these two western states. California is ripe for break-up, for by such a political reformation the ratio of citizens to representatives could be increased in favor of citizens.

The idea of calling the proposed new, larger State of Idaho “Greater Idaho” seems a bit much. Surely “Idaho” would do.

But the idea is politically more possible because it wouldn’t change the partisan complexion of the United States Senate, thus avoiding riling up one of the two major parties.

Other fissions, and fusions, would be much harder. Too bad. People should be able to insist on better representation. Democratically.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs term limits

He Tries Harder

He’s the Avis Rent A Car of authoritarianism.

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin is not the most evil tyrant on the planet. That title clearly belongs to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Instead, Putin is No. 2.

So, of course, he tries harder.

Two years ago, Xi Jinping got the Chinese Communist Party to jettison his term limits without breaking a sweat. Not the slightest pretense of democracy necessary.

Two weeks ago, Putin finally caught up with Xi by winning an unnecessary and highly fraudulent national referendum designed to legitimize the constitutional jiggering that would allow him to stay in office until he would be 83 years old.

Beating Joseph Stalin for post-tsar star tsar.

So, how did Putin rig the referendum?

“Voters are being asked to approve a package of 206 constitutional amendments with a single yes-or-no answer,” explained National Public Radio. Many U.S. states have single-subject requirements for ballot measures to prevent precisely this sort of log-rolling.

Sergey Shpilkin, a well-known Russian physicist, produced statistical evidence that “as many as 22 million votes — roughly 1 in 4 — may have been cast fraudulently,” ABC News reported.

“The European Union regrets that, in the run up to this vote, campaigning both for and against was not allowed,” read a statement from the 27-nation block. With little debate and scant information, the referendum was just pretense.

So, why did Putin go through all the trouble to pretend?

Low approval ratings, a New York Times piece argued, his “lowest level since he first took power 20 years ago.” Putin needed all the help that fake democracy can provide.

Without any of those uncomfortable checks-on-power that real democracy demands.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs

A Deafening Disquiet

Stop Fighting Start Voting, Citizens in Charge Foundation,

“We are living in a world of disquiet,” offers U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at the beginning of a one-minute video now running on social digital platforms in the U.S. and worldwide.

The advertisement shows political strife in Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. It is the opening salvo in a campaign called “Stop Fighting Start Voting,” launched by Citizens in Charge Foundation today with support from direct democracy experts and organizations across the globe — researchers, advocates, NGOs, and academics.

As scenes from the Hong Kong protests unfold, a woman tells a newscaster that China’s new “national security law” will “take away our freedoms … our rule of law.” The spot then pivots to Sri Lanka, lamenting “possible war crimes” and noting that a U.N. panel found “40,000 Tamil civilians were killed” at the end of the country’s civil war a little more than a decade ago.

“We hope to have the right to vote,” a Tamil says as the video ends.

The Stop Fighting Start Voting campaign seeks to increase awareness of unresolved conflicts, such as the struggle for basic democracy in Hong Kong or concerning a referendum for the establishment of a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka. We do not advocate for or against the underlying issues in these often bitter disputes, but advance the use of direct democracy, voters weighing in through ballot referendums conducted under accepted international norms and procedures, to achieve a peaceful resolution.

Self-determination takes a lot of determination. So does the establishment of basic democracy with human rights. That’s why non-governmental organizations and concerned citizens must step up.

Don’t leave the future of freedom and democracy in this world to governments alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

Erecting Democracy

Though I opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, I was not at all offended when an Iraqi mob toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein.

I liked it. That statue was a symbol of oppression.

In my mind, at least.

I guess that’s the rub, eh? A symbol of oppression to one person might be an important piece of history to another.

Here in the good ole USA, we now have our own variant of statue roulette going on, of course. And I wonder: Can we not find a better way to decide public policy regarding statue removal than today’s status quo of leaving it up to roaming, violent mobs? Iconoclastic crowds that, we can see, have some trouble coherently identifying the enemy symbols they seek to vandalize.*

“[T]he choice in 2020 is very simple,” offers President Trump. “Do you want to bow before the left-wing mob or do you want to stand up tall and proud as Americans?”

Actually, cancel those calisthenics.

Let’s vote on the issue.

Either lawmakers or citizens should initiate ballot measures, city by city, state by state, asking voters to choose: keep or remove said statute(s).

The advantages?

A more fair and democratic approach, for starters.
Less public policy decision-making by mobs.
No one else need be critically injured from faulty statue-removal efforts.

Perhaps most important of all, a real discussion and debate can take place.

Where all sides can be heard.

Whatever decisions get made regarding any given monument, we would at least better understand each other.

Let’s stop fighting and start voting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Monuments to famous abolitionists, Matthias Baldwin and John Greenleaf Whittier, as well as a memorial to fallen Union soldiers, who gave their “last full measure of devotion” to end slavery, have been defaced or destroyed. “The irony of vandalizing a monument to those who died to end slavery,” said a Friends of Matthias Baldwin Park member, “is lost on the morons who don’t know their history.”

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initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

Impeachments Are Forever?

Pharaoh Thutmose III, history, myth, memory,

The impeachment of President Donald J. Trump, just concluded in the Senate with an acquittal, was — so far as the Senate trial portion of the exercise is concerned — the least partisan presidential impeachment in U.S. history.

That’s because Senator Mitt Romney (R‑Utah) was the first senator ever to vote against his own party in such a proceeding.

Before we give the notorious flip-flopper a ticker-tape parade, or query too deeply into his personal animus against Trump, let’s acknowledge that the House impeachment, proper, was heavily partisan, and is only going to get more-so.

What? you ask.

How can a past event get more or less of anything?

Well, House Republicans, expecting a big backlash against Democrats next November, are already plotting to “expunge” the impeachment from the record.

As if to stick it to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre point that her House’s action would be “an impeachment that lasts forever.”

Sorta like Pharaoh Thutmose III chiseling his mother’s name — Hatshepsut — off the monuments of Egypt.

The Republicans’ planned “damnatio memoriae” is a good clue to the moral of this story: the impeachment process is … “not good,” to apply a Trumpian mantra.

Now, the process of impeachment has long seemed to me like a great idea — another one from those wise framers of the Constitution.

But with persistent partisanship, this constitutional recourse has not worked out very well.

Overall.

Historically.

Whether in 1868, with Democrat Andrew Johnson, or 1999, with Democrat Bill Clinton, or today, with Trump’s failed ouster, the impeachment process has proved (Romney notwithstanding) maddeningly partisan, and looks like it will only get more partisan — with House Democrats already talking about a second impeachment of Trump.

We need some new form of recall.

Citizen-based, perhaps?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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