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initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy too much government

The New Property-Tax Revolts

property taxes, protest, revolt, taxes

Decades after a famous revolt by California homeowners led to the relief provided by Proposition 13, taxpayers acting to resist sky-high property taxes are making waves throughout the country.

Just a few of the many examples reported by The Epoch Times:

Ohio. The elderly couple who paid off the mortgage on their home long ago but cannot now afford the property taxes is one reason that people are signing a statewide petition to eliminate local property taxes. It will take about 413,000 signatures, collected by a July 1, 2026 deadline, for the measure to reach the November ballot.

Florida and Texas. Legislators in Florida and Texas hope to limit the “flexibility” that local governments enjoy in how they raise revenue.

Minnesota and North Dakota. Lawmakers are pushing a cap on property tax increases tied to inflation and population growth. Voters would have to agree to any change in the cap. Recent school-board driven increases of 8 or 9 percent would be limited to 3 or 4 percent in typical scenarios.

Montana. Lawmakers want a two-percent limit on tax hikes for “local government spending but not for schools, which consume about 55 percent of property tax revenues.” A fatal flaw? Public schools are better at bloating costs than improving education.

The author observes that 46 states and D.C. already impose some sort oflimits on local property tax increases — though “their designs and restrictiveness differ widely,” adds the Tax Foundation.

Let’s improve those designs and increase the restrictiveness ASAP.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Polybius

There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.

Polybius, The Histories, Book XVIII, Chapter 43.

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Today

The 27th on the Seventh

On May 7, 1992, the State of Michigan ratified a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution, thereby fulfilling the terms of amending the document, adding it as the 27th Amendment.

The amendment had been written by James Madison. He had presented it as part of the original twelve amendments that became the ten making up the Bill of Rights.

It bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a pay raise until after the next election, so that voters have a chance to decide whether those voting for the raise would remain in Congress to receive it.

Categories
election law U.S. Constitution Voting

Expanding the Electorate

citizen voting, democracy, voting, elections, Washington DC

Who should vote? Ought we expand the electorate? 

To everyone . . . on the planet?

Do folks from other countries, who have come to America, legally or not, and reside in a community for 30 days, have a right to vote?

Well, they do under a crazy law in our nation’s capital. Even the ambassadors and embassy workers (and spies) that China and Russia send to represent their regimes, could, if they so desired, register and vote for the next mayor, city council-member and ballot measure in the federal capital . . . if those foreign nationals have been here (working for another country) for 30 days. 

The far-left-of-sanity Democrats on the D.C. City Council passed it — without a popular vote. 

At least in Los Angeles there will be a public vote — should the push by Democratic Socialists of America-backed Democrats on that City Council advance a measure to allow noncitizens in L.A., legally or not, to vote in local elections. 

Citizenship seems a wiser qualifier at all levels of government.*

“Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections,” The Los Angeles Times reports. “However, states are allowed to set their own local and statewide election rules.”

Note that The Times does not inform readers that states, such as California, determine who is qualified to vote in federal elections in those states. Were California to allow noncitizens to vote in its state legislative elections — not too giant a leap from noncitizen voting in L.A. and San Francisco — those noncitizens would be legally qualified to vote for California’s representatives in Congress and the U.S. Senate. 

The U.S. Constitution’s “Qualifications Clause” is clear.

This state “loophole” is something worth closing through Florida Rep. Laurel Lee’s constitutional amendment. 

Locally, statewide, nationally: let the people decide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* I serve as chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting. We have worked to pass Citizen Only Voting constitutional amendments in 15 states and to place these measures on six more state ballots this November. We now ask Congress to consider and propose a federal constitutional amendment, HJR 152, the U.S. Citizens Vote Amendment.

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Tacitus

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium,
atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

Publius Tacitus, De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae (A.D. 98), Chapter 30, conclusion.

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Today

Now Comes Good Sailing

On May 6, 1862, American author, philosopher and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau died, after many years of tuberculosis. 

Aware he was dying, Thoreau spoke his last words: “Now comes good sailing,” followed by two lone words, “moose” and “Indian.” Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau’s works, and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at his funeral. 

His remains, as well as those of members of his immediate family, were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

His most famous works are An Essay on Civil Disobedience (1849) and Walden (1854).

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Today

Now Comes Good Sailing

On May 6, 1862, American author, philosopher and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau died, after many years of tuberculosis. 

Aware he was dying, Thoreau spoke his last words: “Now comes good sailing,” followed by two lone words, “moose” and “Indian.” Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau’s works, and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at his funeral. 

His remains, as well as those of members of his immediate family, were eventually moved to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

His most famous works are An Essay on Civil Disobedience (1849) and Walden (1854).

Categories
general freedom nannyism regulation

Killer Cars for Your Safety

“It is in my memory banks,” Eric Peters wrote last month, referencing an android on an old Star Trek episode, “the long-ago time when GM was a car company.”

Yes, in the “long-ago” they “made an almost infinite variety of vehicles to suit almost any need and budget, all of them designed and engineered to free their owners. Some were utilitarian. Others were beautiful. Some were arrogant. None were parenting. They were made by adults who respected other adults. What became of that GM?”

The answer? Government.

Specifically, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, as directed by Section 24220 of 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

“By 2027, every new car sold in the United States could be required to actively monitor the person behind the wheel,” explained Shawn Henry, the Chief Security Officer at CrowdStrike until last year. “That means watching your eyes, tracking your behavior, and constantly evaluating whether you’re alert enough to drive. For a lot of drivers, that starts to feel less like safety and more like surveillance.”

The idea is for your car to remove you from control.

The excuse for this nanny-state totalitarianism — a human-made robot take-over! — is that it will save lives. If you are too tired, too excited, too sleepy, or just walking erratically, the idea is for your smart car to prevent you from taking the wheel. 

But it would only save lives under normal conditions. In an emergency, your actions — watched over with loving grace by your ultra-smart car — could look like you’re on drugs or worse, and the car, not understanding the emergency, blocks your escape.

That is, if the NHTSA ever finalizes the regulation.

In a world where the CIA can execute you by making your car drive off the road (yes, it’s a thing), adding more overriding tech?

The wrong direction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Machiavelli

Comincionsi le guerre quando altri vuole,
ma non quando altri vuole si finiscono

Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.

Niccolò Machiavelli, from the Florentine Histories — Istorie fiorentine (A.D. 1526).

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Today

Endings

    On May 5, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte, former emperor of France, died in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
    On the Fifth of May, 1945, a Fu-Go balloon bomb launched by the Japanese Army killed six people near Bly, Oregon.
   On May 5, 2023, the World Health Organization declared the end of the global health emergency that was the COVID-19 pandemic.