Category: local leaders

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local leaders

Farewell, Freedom’s Champions

As we enter a new year, I’d like to remember all the wonderful souls who have passed from this world in 2008.

In politics, it’s easy to look on the bleak side. Yet, I’m hopeful for our republic, believing that “yes, we can” protect freedom.

One reason? The example set by several men who died this year, men who believed in doing what they thought was right, who stood up for justice and truth. Men I respect.

Marshall Fritz, who founded Advocates for Self-Government, was a man of boundless energy and good cheer.

William F. Buckley, who I had the privilege of meeting in 1988 when Ron Paul ran for President on the Libertarian Party ticket and I got to accompany him to tape Buckley’s Firing Line program.

Allan Schmid passed away just weeks ago. Folks outside of Michigan may not know the name, but Al was one of the first proponents of term limits. He also pushed for tax limitation. He was a good and great man. Al’s son, Greg Schmid, continues his legacy of actively defending liberty.

Paul Weyrich, a conservative exemplar, died just before Christmas. Paul was very kind to me when I came to Washington in 1991. He provided sage advice to the term limits movement, and was one of the first conservatives to realize the importance of the voter initiative process. Paul never traded principle for political expedience.

Thank you, kind gentlemen, for the examples you set.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

The John Lilburne Award

John Lilburne and Eric Ehst could never meet: They belong to different eras. But they have something in common.

Back in the 1600s, John Lilburne worked as a pamphleteer and champion of individual or “freeborn” rights. He pioneered the use of petitioning for redress against government power and abuse.

Lilburne was a term limits guy, too, arguing that members of parliament should not be able to serve for longer than a year at a time. Unfortunately, he spent far too much time in jail; his support for individual rights bugged both the Crown and then Cromwell. Lilburne’s trials sparked the fire that led to our own Fifth Amendment.

The Citizens in Charge Foundation, a group I work with, has just launched The John Lilburne Award. This monthly honor will go to a citizen working to protect and expand our petition rights.

Eric Ehst is the award’s first winner, for November 2008.

Ehst, executive director of the Clean Elections Institute, formed a coalition that helped defeat Arizona’s Proposition 105. This measure would have severely hampered Arizona’s initiative process by requiring a virtually impossible majority of all registered voters — not just those voting — to pass any initiative that would raise a tax or fee or that mandated any spending at all, even a postage stamp.

Long ago, John Lilburne struggled to establish the peoples’ right to petition their government. This year in Arizona, Eric Ehst defended that same right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders

Capitalism vs. Caste

An “Untouchable” in India’s caste system has changed his mind.

Chandra Bhan Prasad, an Indian writer and activist, was once the worst kind of socialist. According to a profile in the New York Times, he had been the kind of Maoist revolutionary who “carried a pistol and recruited his people to kill their upper-caste landlords.”

Now Prasad says the best way to lift low-caste members of society out of poverty is to increase economic freedom, let capitalism flourish. He accuses hardcore leftists of “hatred for those who are happy.”

Prasad is conducting a survey of India’s untouchables to learn about the impact of the economic liberalization that has been underway in India since the early ’90s. His survey finds that they are less likely to be confined to the traditional jobs of their caste, like skinning animals. And that they enjoy more social privileges than they once did.

The Times reporter advises that the results of greater economic freedom are uneven, that many untouchables are still mired in poverty while members of the upper caste still possess great advantage. Not very surprising, eh? You can’t expunge decades and centuries of bad policy and entrenched prejudice with a snap of the fingers.

On the other hand, if you want to bring millions out of grinding poverty, the abundant wealth created by capitalism sure comes in handy. Socialism will keep them poor just fine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders term limits

New Yorkers Won’t Take It Any More

Mayor Michael Bloomberg thought it would be easy to unravel citizen initiative rights in New York City.

He wants to stand for a third term, when New Yorkers have twice voted in support of a referendum limiting the mayor and city council members to two terms. Bloomberg’s second term ends November 2009.

Solution? Exploit a loophole that lets the city council revise the term limits law unilaterally. Council members had mumbled about doing this before, but Bloomberg always said he would veto any such attempt. We must, he said, respect the decision of the voters.

Once the mayor changed his mind, his task was simple. Just persuade a willing council to lengthen terms from two to three. Which they did. Problem solved.

Except . . . the uproar greeting Bloomberg’s betrayal of the voters has become enormous. And continues. Many voters showed up at the signing ceremony to berate him in person. So he had to squirm for a couple hours before scribbling his soiled John Hancock. There’s also a lawsuit under way to try to undo this undoing of lawful democracy.

And now a Brooklyn resident, Andre Calvert, has set up a Facebook page dedicated to the goal of defeating Bloomberg and the 29 city council members who voted to undermine the voters. Live in New York? Check it out. Maybe even if you don’t. The name of the profile is King Bloomberg III.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders term limits

Putting Principles First

Some people have this idea that if the end is good then whatever means they choose must be good, too. But no. Principles matter — they exist to help us choose the right means and oppose the wrong ones.

Politicians tend to think unlimited terms in office is a good thing. I disagree, but forget that for a moment. What is the best way to settle the disagreement? Who should decide how long politicians serve?

The people, that’s who.

New York City’s mayor and City Council have opposed the term limits they live under, term limits voted into law by citizens.

So they got together and legislatively overturned the people’s decision, extending their own terms in office.

But not every politician who may like extended terms thinks that this was the way to obtain them. Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum went on record before the council vote that, if the council overturned the term limits rather than sending it back to the voters again, she would not seek re-election.

“I think it’s wrong,” she said. “It would be wrong for me, feeling as strongly as I do, to run for a third term if [term limits are] overturned in a way that I don’t think is right.”

Immediately her political competitors breathed a sigh of relief. But citizens should sigh in appreciation. It is mighty good to see personal principles trump re-election frenzy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency local leaders

Transparency versus Stupidity

The Sunshine Review newsletter from the Sam Adams Alliance reports an amazing instance of bureaucratic dimwittery.

It seems that the county clerk in the county I grew up in — Pulaski County, Arkansas — also likes the idea of sunshine or “transparency,” or some distorted notion of it. Apparently, he is the kind of person who thinks that if people have “nothing to hide,” it’s okay to go traipsing door to door ripping curtains off living-room windows.

According to the Sunshine Review, this troublemaker “posted [to the Web] tens of thousands of circuit court records containing Social Security numbers and other personal data including bank account numbers, birth dates and check images.”

An outraged resident of the county, Bill Phillips, used the Freedom of Information act to obtain email records from the county clerk’s office. Bill has posted them at his own website, PulaskiWatch.com. In one of the posted emails, county clerk employees are advised to make sure to synchronize their “docuclocks.” Okay. In another email, we learn that someone named Ben is late because of a doctor’s appointment.

PulaskiWatch.com announces that it will remove these silly emails from public view just as soon as the county clerk’s office removes all the personal information from the Internet that is placing so many persons at risk of identity theft.

Good luck, people of Pulaski County. When your public servants don’t see why the personal should be kept private and the public realm open, you’ve got an uphill battle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.