Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
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The war on democracy is ongoing. One of the ironies some folks note is that the biggest opponents of citizens’ direct say in government tend to be sitting Democratic politicians. But Democrats who earnestly support democracy can take heart, for not only can they remind Republicans of recent GOP-led jihads against initiative rights, but Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, just vetoed an initiative-silencing bill in California.
Of course, it was concocted by labor unions for their benefit, and was supported by Democrats in the Assembly, but still: Huzzahs for Jerry Brown!
Assembly Bill 857, advanced by Cupertino’s Paul Fong, would have placed hurdles on the petitioning process by limiting the paying of petitioners to qualify initiatives for the ballot. The vetoed law, if enacted, would have required 10 percent of valid signatures to be volunteers. But “volunteer” included union workers who were, in fact, being paid to circulate petitions.
And that was one of the governor’s complaints about the weaselly legislation.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association had gone on record opposing the measure, charging that it would have made the process more difficult for most groups with its cumbersome record-keeping requirements. And another part of the bill, as Neal Hobson summarized at Citizens in Charge,
would have established a right for any California citizen to sue the sponsors of initiative petitions by claiming they had turned in any fraudulent signatures. Whether such charges could be substantiated or not, the resultant litigation could bankrupt initiative campaigns with legal fees.
Devious political minds obviously cooked up this bill. Exclude Gov. Brown from that designation.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Eugene O’Neill
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
Former FEC commissar Trevor Potter says the Supreme Court “should get more politically savvy.”
Potter really means the High Court should agree with him, and allow incumbents in Congress to write the campaign finance rules under which they — and their opponents — operate, undisturbed by constitutional review.
Last week, the Court heard McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case concerning Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman, who wants to give $1,776 dollars to more candidates. He’s limited, because by law he cannot give over $48,600 to all federal candidates combined.
Why? Apparently those who contribute $48,600 or less to candidates they believe in are pure of heart, but that once that forty-eighth-thousandth-six-hundredth-and-first dollar is donated it can only be devoid of any decent intention, an unquestionable attempt to corrupt our government.
Most observers recognize that such an arbitrary limit is constitutionally suspect and likely to be voided. Including Potter, who is already furious that the Roberts Court has restricted congressional legislation dealing with campaign regulation in all five cases it has thus far considered. Potter accuses it of “judicial hubris” and “contempt for legislative authority” and “a surprising lack of respect for Congress’s expertise on political matters.”
How could “a lack of respect” for Congress be “surprising”?
Speaking of “political savvy,” where’s Potter’s?
Potter concludes that the Supremes “should leave politics to the politicians, who have a better sense of when the intersection of fundraising and lawmaking leads to corruption.”
Sure, politicians have a better sense of that corrupt intersection . . . they’re always there.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Albert Jay Nock
One can hardly say that republicanism has failed, or say a priori that it is bound to fail, so long as it has not been tried under conditions essential to its success.
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Townhall: Earmarks and Ezra to the Rescue
This weekend’s Townhall excursion takes us back to the utopia of just a few years ago, when politics was stable. Yes, that’s an argument. It was made by Ezra Klein. Click on over, then come back here for a few choice bits of further reading.
- Washington Post: Ezra Klein, “The 13 reasons Washington is failing“
- Wall Street Journal: “Use of Food Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves”
- CBS: “House Probe Cries Foul on Social Security Disability Claims”
- “Selected Data from Social Security’s Disability Program”
- USA Today: “Wall Street cowers as Fed hints at stimulus pull-back”
- Common Sense: “Big Government Blows It”
- Common Sense: “The Apple of Their Own Eyes”
- Common Sense: “Resistance is Not Futile”
- Wikipedia: “Klein bottle”
- The Objective Standard: Ari Armstrong, “Get Government Out of Beer“
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Albert Jay Nock
As long as our people are incapable of the simplest possible process of putting two and two together, I can not get much warmed up over their political misfortunes.
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Ludwig von Mises
It is a widespread fallacy that skillful advertising can talk the consumers into buying everything that the advertiser wants them to buy. The consumer is, according to this legend, simply defenseless against high-pressure advertising. If this were true, success or failure in business would depend on the mode of advertising only.
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Video: The Second Amendment Is Outdated?
The First Amendment isn’t, and neither is the Second:
Who says signing up for Obamacare is all snarls and snafus?
Thirty-year-old law student Brian Mahoney already had a high-deductible, low-premium insurance plan. But the day the Obamacare exchanges went online, he decided to check it out. For him, unlike thousands of others, signing up was easy.
Great. Except that . . . Mahoney had been paying for medical insurance, and now he’s on Medicaid. The website told him he was eligible. Thus, the “success” here is the triumph of making a capable adult less self-responsible and more dependent on government handouts.
And that’s bad. If we care about our freedom, what we must do is resist appeals, or demands, that we forfeit control over our lives — even if offered a mess of pottage in return. Refuse to cooperate with the bureaucrats and politicians. Not become martyrs, but resist to the extent that we can resist. Even if it’s, well, more than a tad inconvenient. Certainly we should not submit to new chains and crutches eagerly.
A reader at the Hot Air blog reports that when he asked his doctor about “about how our electronic records would be used and protected” under the Obamacare regime, the doctor replied: “We’re not keeping electronic records. We refuse to comply with Obamacare. We’re not switching over.”
Good for you, Doc. We need more like you.
I certainly don’t want my medical records in the hands of government . . . to name just one of the things having to do with me, my rights and my life that I don’t want government anywhere near.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.