Category: local leaders

local leaders national politics & policies

Darkest Day Survived

Howard Lutnick, World Trade Center, Twin Towers

On September 11, 2001, the nominee for secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick, took his son Kyle to his first day of kindergarten; which, he told the Senate, “is why I am with you today.”

The detour made him late for work at the company of which he is CEO, Cantor Fitzgerald, a leading financial service firm then located on top floors of the World Trade Center.

His brother Gary “and 657 of my other friends and colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald” lost their lives that day.

Lutnick asked the surviving employees, about a thousand people, to help him rebuild the company and help the 658 families who had lost a loved one. Over the next five years, they all donated 25 percent of their salaries to those families, about $180 million. These acts of generosity “stitched my soul back together,” he said.

“My employees never expected to get paid back, but I had other ideas. In 2008, we took a division of our company public and each employee received double what they had given.”

Lutnick does seem like “just a good dude,” as J.D. Vance describes him.

I don’t know whether he will do a good job as Secretary of Commerce. Leading a major government agency isn’t the same as leading a major business. I guess part of the answer depends on whether we, like Lutnick, support President Trump’s trade policies.

I do suspect he’ll be a better head of that department than the last one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment local leaders

Okay, Not Okay

Melisa Robinson won her case.

After years in lower courts, she prevailed definitively in the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The court ruled that the town of Okay, Oklahoma, must compensate her for their taking of her property.

But the town balked — the judgment has not been obeyed. The town says that the department that dug the sewer line, the Okay Public Works Authority, has no money. And that the city is not responsible for the bill even though the Authority is run by the city.

More litigation, this time federal litigation — which Robinson is undertaking with the help of Institute for Justice — is required to force the town to comply with the result of the previous litigation.

Robinson’s problems began in 2009, when city workers dug a sewer line through her family’s mobile home community without any legal right to do so and without even notifying the property owners in advance, causing much damage in the process.

A jury award for the damage was overturned on appeal. But in 2022, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the city owed an amount that with attorney’s fees and other costs totals more than $200,000 today.

“Okay needs to pay what the Oklahoma Supreme Court says it owes me,” says Melisa Robinson. “If the city can do this to me, there’s nothing stopping any government from doing the same thing to others. I want to be paid and I want to put a stop to this before it catches on.”

It would certainly be the opposite of Okay to see this practice “catching on” beyond Okay.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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judiciary local leaders

Arresting Speech Victory

I am happy that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the way it did, letting Sylvia Gonzalez proceed with her litigation.

But why was there even a question?

The case is Gonzalez v. Trevino. It started in 2019 when Gonzalez was elected to the council of Castle Hills, Texas. After winning, she led a petition drive to remove the city manager from office for abusing employees and neglecting his duties.

Soon the mayor and the police chief were falsely accusing her of tampering with a government record. She was arrested and jailed. But the district attorney dropped the charges after a day.

After Gonzalez resigned from the council because of “ongoing intimidation,” the Institute for Justice helped her file a federal lawsuit against the town for selective prosecution.

A lower court had gone along with the city’s request to dismiss the case. The rationale was that Gonzalez had not shown that others who trivially “mishandled a government petition” in exactly the same way Gonzalez did were not then arrested.

In reversing this decision, the Supreme Court said that “the demand for virtually identical … comparators goes too far.” Plausible evidence that Gonzalez had been singled out for retaliation, thus violating her First Amendment rights, was enough to let the case proceed.

It’s an important issue for all of us, not only for Sylvia Gonzalez. As IJ stresses, this kind of retaliation “against citizens engaging in protected speech or activity” is more common than we may suspect.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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local leaders too much government

Brave New Budgets

“Stay here and you will suffer.”

That’s the message Denver’s Newcomer Communications Liaison Andres Carrera delivered to migrants last month, according to the city’s NBC 9 News.

“You don’t have to walk anywhere, we can buy you a free ticket,” Carrera offered. “You can go to any city,” he said, mentioning New York and Chicago, specifically.

“We can take you up to the Canadian border, wherever!”

Denver is now preparing to spend $90 million on migrant programs this year.

In the last fiscal year, New York City spent $1.5 billion “for asylum seeker shelter and services,” and those expenses are going up. Chicago’s “City Council is set to vote on spending another $70 million in city funds for migrant services,” Block Club Chicago reported last week, “just five months after Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 2024 budget allocated $150 million for new arrivals this year.”

We hear about the costs of the border crisis; these whopping numbers certainly clarify that matter.

Still, something else caught my attention.

Denver is making a 2.5 percent cut to most city agencies, while reducing the police department budget 1.9 percent, an $8.4 million dollar decrease for cops. Some charge that’s de-funding the police.

“The City of Denver’s adjustment to the Denver Police Department’s budget was carefully crafted with safety leaders and Mayor [Mike] Johnston,” a spokesperson explained, “to ensure there would be no impact to the department’s public services,”

Crafted with care. And having precisely zero impact.

Imagine had you or I suggested to politicians and government officials that we slice millions of dollars from their budgets. We’d be accused of gutting education and undermining public safety … if not starving the children.

Who knew it could be so easy and painless for them?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Denver, immigration, migrants, police

general freedom local leaders Tenth Amendment federalism

Utah and the Tenth

The trouble with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution — the last two items in the Bill of Rights — has not been lack of clarity. The Tenth, at least, is extremely clear: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The problem has been one of enforcement. How do the States prevent the federal government from overreach? Especially when the federal government acts as if no objection to a federal law could be brooked? Especially when the Supreme Court is, ahem, wrong, or hasn’t yet been approached with a challenge.

Utah has rediscovered an old technique. And revived it. Governor Spencer Cox signed into law the “Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act”: “The Legislature may, by concurrent resolution, prohibit a government officer from enforcing or assisting in the enforcement of a federal directive within the state if the Legislature determines the federal directive violates the principles of state sovereignty.”

Ultra clear. And by old precedent — the non-enforcement of The Fugitive Slave Act by some northern states — it provides teeth to the Tenth. If the federal government were to enact (just stretch your mind a bit!) something obviously unconstitutional, like, say, a gun confiscation, the state legislature would simply vote to prohibit any state employee, or subsidiary of the state (county, municipality) from working with federal agents. Federal government agencies don’t have enough manpower to enforce all the rules. The feds rely on the states.

CNN quotes a Democrat representative running against Governor Cox suggesting that the use of this technique would be overruled by the Supreme Court using “the Supremacy Clause.”

No. The Supremacy Clause only applies to the federal government regarding specified (“enumerated”) powers.

Regarding matters not explicitly stated in the Constitution, it is the States that are supreme.

Or the People.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags federalism, states rights, Utah

initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism regulation

Discrimination, California-Style

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 16, 2024
3 Comments on Discrimination, California-Style

California, racism, discrimination, government, corruption

How far will a California lawmaker go to try reverse a validly enacted and also very good citizen initiative?

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibits the state government from imposing race-based, ethnicity-based, or sex-based preferences.

Prop 209 added a section to the California Constitution stating that the government “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

In 2020, friends of racial discrimination tried to revive racial preferences through a referendum. But voters shot it down, even though proponents outspent opponents 14 to one.

Now California Assemblyman Corey Jackson wants to revive racial preferences another way. His bill, ACA7, would not touch the language of Proposition 209. But it would empower the governor to make exceptions. What exceptions? Any he wishes, as long as he spews the right rationalizations when he does so.

Law professor Gail Heriot, who has launched a change.org petition to oppose the measure, says that “ACA7’s proponents are hoping that voters will be fooled into thinking that it is just a small exception. In fact, it gives the governor enormous power to nullify Proposition 209.”

ACA7 has passed the House and now goes to the state senate, awaiting the magic of legislative action. Heriot says Californians should let their senators know where they stand on the bill. I don’t disagree.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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