Category: term limits

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ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall term limits too much government

Don’t Copy Chávez

Americans eager to weaken various limits on political power here at home should pay closer attention to news from abroad.

Around the globe, killing presidential term limits is high on the to-​do list of aspiring presidents-for-life.

Autocrats also dislike the right of citizen initiative. Even when they abstain from trying to kill initiative rights altogether, they often seek outrageous restrictions on them, or even stoop to harassing petitioners and voters.Hugo Cloned

One such enemy of the people was Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, now dead. Chávez was an equal-​opportunity attacker of citizen rights. He expropriated businesses, bullied media, once even ordered soldiers to fire on anti-​Chávez protesters (they refused). He also succeeded in eliminating presidential term limits.

In 2003, his government arranged for the public release of the names of Venezuelans who had signed a petition to recall Chávez. The names were stolen from the office charged with overseeing the petition drive and leaked to a pro-​Chávez legislator, who then published them on his website. Many signers lost jobs, loans, and other opportunities controlled by the state.

American foes of term limits, initiative rights, and other constraints on concentrated power may think there’s no comparison. But every chipping away at protections against tyranny is dangerous.

While it is true that no single limit on power can substitute for all the cultural values and ideas that underlie our rights as free citizens, it is also the case that institutions and culture reinforce each other. The foundation of a building has more than one cornerstone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits

Market Power vs. Political Power

Critics of term limits on elected officials sometimes say: “You wouldn’t term-​limit a neurosurgeon/fireman/[other indispensable professional] just because he’s experienced, wouldja?”

No. But I am capable of distinguishing between economic power and political power — between voluntary trade and policies imposed by force. It’s all about “opting out”: we are free to decline the iPad, but not Obamacare.

A study reported in Harvard Business Review suggests that CEOs who start out as dynamic entrepreneurs, responsive to market conditions, often grow more conservative over time. Commentators debate whether such waning of entrepreneurial vitality is inevitable. Sure, the Steve-​Jobs-​like exceptions loom large. Nevertheless, we can readily imagine a CEO stuck in the strategies of yesteryear.

My point, though, is that customers, shareholders and/​or other company officers working within a market context can fix the situation when evidence piles up that the formerly right guy for the job is now the wrong one. Every day we hear of failed CEOs being ousted, failed companies closing their doors.

Au contraire when it comes to political incumbents. They often snag re-​election despite widespread and intense discontent with their performance. (See the 2012 presidential and congressional election.)

I don’t worry when good persons must leave an elective office before doing all the good they can there. They can do good elsewhere too. I worry when politicians become entrenched in a seat of power for decades, becoming more and more inured to the consequences of their actions — and more and more brazen about assailing our wallets and freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits

No a la Reelección

Her name is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and she’s Argentina’s president. She is apparently chafing under the country’s presidential term limits.

The last time I wrote about Mrs. Kirchner, five years ago, I had some advice: “Don’t cheer for Cristina, Argentina.” Thankfully, the Argentines aren’t cheering. In Beunos Aires, “Throngs of people banged pots and pans Thursday, as they protested government policies in Argentina,” relates a CNN report:

The massive march was the latest in a series of “cacerolazos,” protests named for the cooking pots participants hit to draw attention to problems they say are growing in the South American nation, including crime rates, inflation and political corruption.

Many demonstrators said a key issue drove them to the streets: the possibility that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner could push through changes to the country’s constitution and run for re-election.

Term limits. The people want them, and if the signs at the protest rallies are any indication, Argentines are against “Corrupcion,” oppose Kirchner’s “Reelección,” and are for “Libertad.”

And here in the putative Land of Liberty, a Miami, Florida, neighborhood known as Little Buenos Aires heard pots and pans clanging, too, as marchers expressed sympathy with friends and relatives in the Southern Hemisphere: “We are not afraid” and “We don’t want a communist Argentina.”

The full story of the protests, which have been going on since June, echo some of the issues and criticisms that were pushed for and charged against both Tea Party and Occupier protests in past years here in America. There’s talk of secret partisanship, even “astro-​turf.”

But fear of dynastic rule isn’t confined to any party, or require any special organization.

For Argentines, I wish only the best: “Libertad.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

P.S. I will be in Buenos Aires later today — this evening, actually — and if I find anything to modify or amplify this story, you can be sure I’ll do so at thisiscommonsense​.com.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Unbelievable

There they go again!

You’d think after Nebraskans voted three separate times for eight-​year legislative term limits that the state’s legislators would finally accept the vote of the people they claim to serve.

But you’d be wrong.

The limits passed in ’92 and ’94 were struck down in court rulings that re-​wrote the state’s initiative petition requirements. Voters responded to that judicial tyranny by booting out a supreme court justice in a retention election for the very first time in state history. A second justice resigned the day after that 1996 spanking by voters.

In 2000, citizens gathered enough signatures to put the limits back on the ballot and again they passed.

But that hasn’t stopped State Sen. Tom Carlson and his fellow legislators from placing Amendment 3 on tomorrow’s ballot. If passed, Amendment 3 would allow Carlson & Co. to stay in office 50 percent longer.

Strange, we limit the president to eight years; George Washington stepped down after two four-​year terms to set that example. But somehow eight years isn’t enough time for a state senator.

In a last minute radio ad campaign by a purposely mis-​named Nebraskans to Preserve Term Limits, Sen. Carlson says that he and his gang “believe in term limits.” But seconds later Carlson mentions “coaches, teachers, doctors” and suggests, “It is unlikely we would consider limiting their service to eight years.”

Well, he’s right that we don’t limit brain surgeons to eight years. But then again, being a legislator isn’t brain surgery.

As Nebraska voters will remind members of the state’s Unicameral Legislature tomorrow — for a fourth time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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incumbents term limits

Chavez Shocker

Having chucked presidential term limits, Venezuela dictator Hugo Chavez recently won re-​election to a third six-​year term in office. Not surprising.

What is surprising, according to Francisco Toro writing in the New Republic, is that the election was so close.

Toro, writing before election day, wasn’t surprised that the failings of Chavez’s socialistic and repressive policies have been getting harder for the public to evade. But in an “increasingly autocratic petrostate, the advantages of incumbency are so deep, [re-​election] really ought to be a walk.”

Toro saw Chavez’s own campaign as awkward and unpersuasive, the challenger’s as smart and effective. Come October 7, though, the former tramped across the finish line with 54 percent, a comfortable if smaller margin than he had enjoyed in previous elections.

Chavez’s advantages included rules for political ads permitting each candidate to advertise only three minutes a day on each broadcast outlet — even as the incumbent ran frequent “institutional” ads promoting the government’s doings that looked an awful lot like campaign ads. During the campaign, his government often claimed emergency to take over the air waves to spout campaign pitches. All this is in the context of years of efforts to increase the number of state-​owned media and browbeat private media into uncritical silence.

The more tyrannical a government becomes, the more urgently a citizenry needs term limits in self-​protection. Yet the more tyrannical a government becomes, the more easily it can get rid of such safeguards.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits

Putin, Unlimited

There once seemed to be no hope for Russia, formerly the core of a group of oppressed countries called the Soviet Union.

In the post-​Stalin decades, opposing the totalitarian regime often meant a one-​way ticket to Siberia. Dissidents weren’t cut down en masse the way they were in the early years of the Soviet Union. But protesting the government was a very lonely and costly enterprise.

These days, it’s less lonely. In recent months, tens of thousands of Russians have filled the streets of Moscow to protest the electorally suspect return to power of Vladimir Putin, constitutionally debarred from the presidency after two terms in office. But Russians knew that Putin’s successor, Dmitry Medvedev, was just a placeholder until Putin could regain the presidency in name as well as fact. Russia’s presidential term limits are thus more sham than surety of rotation in office.

Opposing the regime can still be costly. Fees for attending an illegal anti-​Putin demonstration (they’re all illegal) have been jacked up by a docile parliament. Stand out from the crowd in your political resistance and you may end up incarcerated.

Three members of the radical Russian punk group/​political performance artists Pussy Riot have been sentenced to two years in prison for what is being called “hooliganism.” That’s the crime of making a music video entitled “Holy Mother, Chase Putin Away!” It seemed worth a try. Fake term limits hadn’t done the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.