Tag: democracy

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people Popular term limits

Let There Be Light

Washington Post, Democracy, term limits,

The Washington Post sports a new masthead slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness,.”

A story in last Sunday’s Metro section suggests that the editors are yet to fully implement the slogan’s implicit mission — providing impartial, unbiased illumination. “Term limits for Maryland legislators?” reads the headline. “Here’s why that’s unlikely,” it immediately answers.

“Term limits seem highly popular in Maryland,” begin the article.

Seem?

What produces that elusive sensory perception? I mean, other than every poll ever taken and, as the Post elaborates, “Voters in the state’s two largest jurisdictions, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, strongly endorsed them at the polls in recent years.”

Add to that three other counties, which had previously enacted term limits, the paper informs.

Still, the idea is “widely considered dead on arrival.”

Why? you ask.

“It’s very difficult,” explains Gov. Larry Hogan, “to convince people to willingly give up their power.”

“People” not as in “the People” but, instead, such as Senate President Mike Miller, a 46-year incumbent and the Senate boss for three decades running, and Speaker Mike Busch, a 31-year incumbent and the longest serving speaker in state history.

But wait . . . why didn’t politicians in those five Maryland counties block term limits like state legislators “likely” will? Did their lack of experience cause them to forget to be self-serving jerks?

No. Counties in Maryland have a ballot initiative process whereby citizens can petition term limits directly to a democratic vote. Their elected servants simply cannot ignore them.

The Post piece could have pointed out that very difference — between the democratic outcomes in those counties and an unrepresentative one at the state capitol.

It did not.

Democracy dies in darkness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders national politics & policies political challengers responsibility tax policy term limits too much government

What Unlimited Government Costs Us

Tim Eyman, doll, petition, taxes, Washington, initiative, democracy, voters

“Olympia can’t restrain itself,” Tim Eyman wrote the other day, a judgment on legislative irresponsibility hardly unique to the Evergreen State. Citizens around the country have cause to lament the difficulty of obtaining anything close to a good legislature.

Too often the merely “bad” would constitute a significant improvement.

Which is why legislators need to be put on a short leash. Limits on government must be written into law, where possible into either the U.S. Constitution or state constitutions, so the limits cannot be tampered with by legislators, good or bad.

Washington State initiative guru Tim Eyman, cited above, has made a career of working for just those kinds of limits. In 2007, Eyman and the citizen group Voters Want More Choices petitioned onto the statewide ballot a requirement that any tax increase must receive a two-thirds vote from both legislative chambers.

Voters passed the measure* in 2007, 2011 and 2012.

In an email to supporters this month, Eyman presents data — an “amazing real-world comparison” — to help us understand how effective the limits were . . . while they lasted.

He notes that “with the 2/3 rule in effect from 2008-2012, those 5 legislative sessions cost the taxpayers $6.894 billion” in increased taxes.

And he compares that to the five years (2013-2017) since the state’s highest court struck down the voters’ two-thirds mandate: “WITHOUT the 2/3 rule, those 5 legislative sessions cost the taxpayers $23.679 billion.”

“Without the fiscal discipline imposed by citizen initiatives,” Eyman concludes, “politicians cannot hold back.”

Now we have hard evidence for what unlimited government costs us: more than three times more!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Washington State’s ballot initiative process allows voters to pass simple statutes but not constitutional amendments. For two years after passage, legislators must garner a two-thirds vote to override a ballot initiative. After those two years, only a simple majority is required.

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Accountability general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

The Online Manipulation of Democracy

Google, search results, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, bias, influence, tampering, election, democracy

There exist many sneaky ways to get other people to do what you want, voluntarily — effectively blurring the line between legitimate persuasion and fraud.

When large, almost unavoidable private companies apply those techniques to targeted groups of voters, that blur might look something very much like election fraud.

Harvard psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein has been studying hidden online persuasion techniques. Interviewed by Tom Woods last Friday, the doctor explained several sub rosa persuasion techniques, especially the fascinating Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME), which he says has been replicated in studies by other researchers. 

SEME, he argues, is a “genuinely new” way to manipulate masses of people — without them realizing it.

And it sports “one of the largest effects ever to be discovered in the behavioral sciences.” Google, it turns out, can influence voter and consumer behavior merely by ordering search results in specific ways. Going into his first study, he suspected he might discover a 2 percent influence on voter behavior. He got 48 percent, instead.

There is more: not only can Google do this, the behemoth does do this — Epstein has documented that Google did it in the last election. 

Supporting, or to the benefit of, Hillary Clinton.

Understandably, Epstein scoffs at the “fake news” panic as something insubstantial in comparison. The potential impact of this online manipulation dwarfs the allegations of Russian influence.

I wonder: Did Mrs. Clinton know that her very special high-tech friends were pressing their very big thumbs onto the scale of democracy?

It seems a very old tech — the Electoral College — effectively counteracted the manipulation.

This time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom local leaders media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Another Election “Against”

Doug Jones, Alabama, Roy Moore, election

As I write, Democratic candidate Doug Jones has just taken the stage to declare himself the winner of the Alabama Senate race, the one in which Roy Moore became more infamous than famous, and better known for the worst kind of reasons.

The final counts are not in, and I suppose there could be a turnaround at the last moment, but it doesn’t look like it. It looks like Republicans lost the seat. Hillary Clinton is already crowing that this is a sign of more Democratic victories to come.

Maybe.

Too soon to tell.

Meanwhile, what to make of it all? Jones has declared that “This entire race has been about dignity and respect. This campaign has been about the rule of law.” And I am not certain that is a good description. It seemed to me what the campaign turned into was a referendum on whether voting for a man accused of sexual assault and statutory rape was a good idea.

There were also Republicans thankful that Moore lost. “Decency wins” is what Senator Jeff Flake tweeted; “Suck it, Bannon,” is Meghan McCain’s eloquent taunt. (Steve Bannon had backed Moore.) Reason’s Scott Shackford probably put it best, writing that “Polls have closed in Alabama as voters there decide between controversial former judge Roy Moore and … um … not Roy Moore.”

The modern American political process is now firmly a matter of reiterating this pattern: voting against more than for.

A horrible development? Well, there sure is a lot more to be against in American politics, than for.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom incumbents local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Democracy — or Too Much Government?

Democrats, Republicans, reform, democracy, primary, primaries, presidential

The Democratic Party’s Unity Reform Commission met last week to concoct measures to pull the party from the brink of madness and oblivion.

The commission’s main recommendation? Limit the role of “superdelegates” in the nomination process.

Great — a first step I’ve long advocated. But the whole system needs more serious reform.

Jay Cost covered some of the problems associated with the parties’ candidate selection processes, yesterday, in the online pages of the National Review. Unfortunately, he went off the rails about an alleged “trend toward an unadulterated democratic nomination process,” which he regarded as a “major mistake.”

He misdiagnosed both the problem and the Democrats’ proposed cure. Neither is “too much democracy.”

America’s partisan voters keep selecting bad candidates because the major party duopoly is a rigged game — designed and regulated by incumbents for incumbents to solidify a protected class of insiders.

Which voters understandably seek to overthrow on a regular basis.

The problem is the whole primary process, which is faux-democratic, a clever ruse to prevent real challengers from emerging, forcing effective politicians through the two-party mill.

To make things more democratic — to add effective citizen checks on power and privilege — the parties need to be completely divorced from official elections. That is, junk the whole primary system, making the parties bear fully the costs of their own selection processes. Further, the general elections should be thrown open to a wider variety of parties and candidates, with the voting system itself reformed to avoid the sub-optimal results of our first-past-the-post system.

The problem with our politics isn’t “too much democracy” so much as “too much partisan government.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

Illinois’s Chicken-and-Fish Supreme Court

Illinois, Supreme Court, term limits, initiative, democracy, gerrymandering

A constitution is the law of the land only to the extent that it’s enforced. And in Illinois, the right of citizen initiative — provided for in the state constitution — is not enforced.

The constitution’s wording is explicit: “Amendments . . . may be proposed by a petition signed by a [specified number of electors]. . . . Amendments shall be limited to structural and procedural subjects contained in Article IV.”

Does that Article IV discuss the subject of election procedures, including eligibility requirements, thereby opening the door to a citizen-initiated term limits amendment? Yes, it does. Section 2, subsection (c), for example, specifies citizenship, age, and residency requirements.

Yet the Illinois Supreme Court has repeatedly chucked the results of effective petition drives to get a state legislative term limits question on the ballot.

The justices rely on the venerable Fallacy of Tortured Misreading.

Former Illinois legislator Jim Nowlin recently pointed out that in 1976, the court concluded that the wording about how initiative proposals “‘shall be limited to structural and procedural subjects’. . . meant a proposal must make both kinds of changes.” The lone dissenter on the court “opined to the effect: When I see a restaurant sign that says, ‘We have chicken and fish,’ that doesn’t mean you have to order both chicken and fish!”

The right of citizen initiative is a crucial means of reforming government when those in government won’t reform themselves. The citizens of Illinois have that right. But, for now, they also don’t.

That ain’t Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom government transparency incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders political challengers

Initiative Surplus?

Truth in Accounting, TIA, Financial State of the States, Sheila Weinberg, initiative, democracy

Only nine out of 50 states can pay their bills and meet their obligations; 41 cannot, barring major tax increases or spending cuts.

That’s what we learn in last month’s “Financial State of the States” report from Truth in Accounting (TIA).

Alaska is in the best shape, “with $11 billion in assets to pay future bills”; New Jersey’s in the worst, needing “to come up with $208 billion in order to meet its promised obligations.”

Sheila Weinberg, TIA’s founder, works hard to counter governments’ creative accounting. It’s trickery, really, which “would be considered criminal for private sector corporations.” One gimmick is “promising to pay employee benefits in the future, but not fully funding the benefits programs as they rack up obligations.”*

Thankfully, TIA’s financial analysis includes items such as already-made pension and healthcare commitments.

Now, let’s expand the analysis, collating these findings to separate between initiative and non-initiative states**:

  • Seven of the nine states with a “taxpayer surplus” — where government can pay its bills and meet its obligations — have the ballot initiative process.
  • The 23 initiative states comprise 46 percent of the states. Yet, initiative states comprise a whopping 78 percent of financially healthy states.
  • Of the 20 states carrying a larger-than-average taxpayer burden, 15 states (75 percent) lack the initiative process.

Granted, this represents a correlation between states with citizen-initiated ballot measures and healthier fiscal policy, not necessarily causation. Still, I’m not surprised states where citizens have more say so are better governed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “This short term fix allows governments to artificially ‘balance their budgets’ by not counting certain obligations as official debt.”

** There are 23 initiative states and 27 non-initiative states. Two referendum-only states— Maryland and New Mexico — are considered non-initiative states, and so is Illinois. Illinois is considered a non-initiative state, because its ballot initiative process is so severely restricted as to be non-existent. Only one measure has ever appeared on the ballot.

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folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

A Special Place in Heck?

Hillary Clinton, Trump voters, Trump, women, woman, vote, election, democracy,

Former First Lady scolds women for not voting . . . for a former First Lady.

Yes, “Michelle Obama,” the BBC headlined last week, “scolds female Trump voters.”

Need you ask why? You probably have already guessed.

“Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice,” Mrs. Obama remarked at a Boston conference.

Though a majority of women who voted cast their ballots for Mrs. Clinton, a slightly smaller majority of white women voted for Donald Trump.

And to those women who did not vote for Hillary? “Well, to me that just says, you don’t like your voice.”

The idea that one woman candidate can serve as “the voice” for all women is not merely absurd. It is sexist. But it is something that this most recent First Lady shares with the former First Lady who just lost a major election. Yes, Hillary Clinton has said much the same kind of thing. And Madeline Albright, Secretary of State under Clinton’s husband’s command, famously argued “there is a special place in hell” for women who refuse to toe the line and vote Clinton II.

Heck, there is a special place for women who think, appraise and choose against social pressure: America. Here people matter as individuals, as persons, not as members of their race, religion, sex, or . . . political party.

But the arrogance of these women leaders shows no understanding of effrontery. “You like the thing you’re told to like,” Mrs. Obama belittled female Trump voters.

Truth is: women were repeatedly told to like Hillary for president. But they refused to do as they were told, which is why Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Obama are attacking them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders national politics & policies political challengers U.S. Constitution

Free to Choose

Milton Friedman, democracy, initiative, referendum, Free to Choose, public interest,

“I think that the most effective way one could possibly move toward greater freedom in the United States, toward a smaller role of government, would be if we could only have a more democratic society.”

Who said that? A Democrat?

No.

The speaker quickly added, “I don’t mean a capital-D, I mean a small-d.”

“That is, I mean if we could have referenda,” the late Milton Friedman explained back in 1987.

The Nobel Prize winning economist — and co-author with wife Rose of the bestselling Free to Choose* — was referring to the initiative and referendum process, whereby citizens vote on laws, and in the case of initiatives directly place measures onto the ballot.

Citizens enjoy initiative and referendum rights in twenty-four states and roughly 60 percent of cities throughout the country.

“The public at large has always shown itself,” Dr. Friedman observed, correcting himself, “has almost always shown itself to be more libertarian in its views than have their elected representatives.”**

Friedman was not suggesting that a bad law becomes good because it was passed at the ballot box. He simply weighed the odds between two distinct sets of voters. Legislators are a small group, the personal power of each one so closely tied to government that politicians’ personal interests often compete against the public’s. Conversely, the much larger group of voting citizens almost defines the public interest.

Perhaps I was channeling the great doctor of economics when I was once asked, “Do you trust the people?”

My reply?

“No. But I trust the people a whole lot more than I trust the politicians.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul of Jacob.

 

* The book was first published in January 1980, in tandem with PBS’s airing of the popular “Free to Choose” series.

** He spoke this at a California Libertarian Party conference. Tough crowd.

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Accountability general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders national politics & policies responsibility term limits

Today’s Leaders

democracy, the people, politicians, cowardice, marijuana, asset forfeiture, initiative, term limits, police brutality

We have a new president. Many people put a lot of trust in him — and many more hate him and seek to bring him down. In both cases, presidential politics takes up an inordinate portion of our brain space.

Over the weekend I twice wrote about four heroic senators, standing up to the insiders in their own party. Getting a lot of deserved attention.

But remember: the real leaders are not in Washington, D.C.

Right now, a half dozen issues are undergoing revolution. Legalized gay marriage swept through state after state; meanwhile, Democratic leaders (Clinton, Obama) lent none of their prestige to the cause.*

It was local and state activists who led. And even wide swaths of “the people” were out in front.

Not politicians.

Marijuana legalization has occurred in state after state, mostly by initiative petitioning. It wasn’t the politicians who pushed this through. It was activists.

And, again, the people.

The politicians — including, now, the new Attorney General — largely obstructed the advance of freedom on this issue.

Much the same can be said for improving police-citizen relations with mandatory cop cams and transparency protocols. In the past, much the same pattern could be seen regarding term limits and tax limitation measures. In most cases of progress, politicians have actually represented the rear guard.

Which should give us something to think about. We face a looming sovereign debt crisis, the pension system bubble, and ongoing culture wars regarding campus (and general) free speech.

If you think something should be done, minds should be changed, don’t look for a national figure. Look locally. Look to yourself. Go online.

Master the mechanisms of social change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*That is, these politicians “became leaders” on the issue at the point the issue needed no leadership. They remained opposed to change until the last moment, when the direction was firmly set and most of the watershed marks had been made.

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