“The U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.”
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On Nov. 29, 1775, in the hope of winning aid for the American war effort, the Second Continental Congress established a Committee of Secret Correspondence to provide European nations with the Patriots’ interpretation of events in the North American colonies.
Councilman Rick Roelle in Apple Valley, California, says that Wal-Mart “blackmailed the town.”
Blackmail is no small matter. So, what did Wal-Mart do, specifically?
Wal-Mart worked with citizens of Apple Valley, including supplying money, to gather enough petition signatures to place a measure on the local ballot for voters to decide whether Wal-Mart could build a store.
“The initiative process was an opportunity that allowed voters to voice their support for the benefits that Wal-Mart would bring their community,” a spokesperson for Wal-Mart argued, “including jobs, affordable groceries, increased tax revenue, and infrastructure improvements.”
Who’s right?
Aside from the fact that there are many issues the majority has no right to decide, including whether a law-abiding business can open its doors, why not let the people decide? At least a vote of the people is a clearer expression of the public will than a city council decision.
Some complain that even when a local petition qualifies the voters often don’t get a vote. Under state law, if 15 percent of the electorate signs a petition, the matter must be placed on a special election ballot . . . unless the city council enacts it, instead.
Special elections cost big money. Cash-strapped city councils have voted to allow Wal-Mart development, simply (they say) to save the expense of holding an election.
But such “caving in” doesn’t seem like blackmail in light of Menifee’s experience. The Wal-Mart measure there won with 76 percent of the vote.
Unless, like some politicians, you think doing the electorate’s will is “blackmail.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Frederic Bastiat
“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
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Czech Communist Party
On Nov. 28, 1989, with communist regimes in neighboring countries collapsing and growing protests at home, Czechoslovakian Communist Party officials announced they would give up their monopoly on political power. Elections were held the following month ushering in the first non-communist government in over 40 years.
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Henry David Thoreau
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. . . . Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”
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Vietnam troop increase
On Nov. 27, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson was informed by the Pentagon that success in Vietnam would require increasing American troop strength there from 120,000 to 400,000. In 1968, the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam reached 543,000 – the highest level of the war.
Nobel Laureate economist explaining why drug prohibition makes no sense:
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Abraham Lincoln
“People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
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T.E. Lawrence reports
On Nov. 26, 1916, T.E. Lawrence, a junior member of the Britain’s Arab Bureau during World War I, published a detailed report praising Arab leader Sherif Hussein, while criticizing the effectiveness of his revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Within weeks, Lawrence joined Arab troops in the field and spent the rest of the war organizing various groups of tribesmen to fight the Turks, earning the name “Lawrence of Arabia.”