Tag: Kansas

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

Bailing Out Topeka

Back in August, the city council in Topeka, Kansas, voted to expand a redevelopment district and purchase Heartland Park Topeka, a “multi-​purpose motorsports facility” featuring drag racing, dirt racing and more.

Chris Imming wasn’t keen on the notion. He put together an initiative petition calling for a public vote. Topeka townspeople eagerly signed it.

Taking this as a cue, did the city officialdom welcome this vibrant exercise of basic American democracy? Did they ready themselves for that election?

Afraid not.

Instead, the city sued to block a vote on the issue.

A local judge sided with the insiders, ruling in the city’s favor. The development decision was administrative in nature, the Robed One determined, not legislative. That made it beyond reach of the citizen initiative process.

Both the judge’s designation of “administrative”  and his rationale for exemption from a citizens’ veto seem more than dubious. Clearly, “the people” should be able to overrule any decision made by the city council, which is established for the express purpose of representing the views of “the people.”

Kudos to Mr. Imming for appealing that lower court decision. Thank goodness for folks like him, folks who stand up against the powerful public and private forces always looking for a bailout or a subsidy.

“We’re bailing out the city,” argues Doug Gerber, Topeka’s administrative and financial director. He cites the city’s previous redevelopment district, which annually costs a cool million dollars in bond service, while bringing in only a fifth of that in sales tax revenue.

So politicians want to double down, to cover their past rotten wheeling and dealing by … expanding it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies Second Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism

Nullification Today

As the federal government lurches further out of control, wildly grasping to increase control over our lives, an old and controversial method of reining in our central government gains popularity: State nullification of federal law.

A recent Rasmussen survey asked whether “states have the right to block any federal laws they disagree with on legal grounds,” and 38 percent of likely voters surveyed said “Yes.”

Cutting to the quick of the Commerce Clause, a new Kansas law — Senate Bill 102, the Second Amendment Protection Act, signed by Governor Sam Brownback last month — states that firearms manufactured and owned in Kansas that do not cross state lines are not subject to federal law.

Of course, the Supreme Court thinks otherwise. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Court allowed the federal government to regulate darn near anything on the grounds that any conceivable act of consumption affects demand, and thus “commerce.” Goofy ruling? Yes. But by tradition it’s the Supreme Court justices who get the final word.

Yet even that has been denied by many constitutional theorists, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — “Mr. Constitution” himself — both of whom supported nullification, as recently explained by historian Tom Woods. No compact joined into by multiple parties may only be interpreted by one of the parties alone, unless specified to that effect. The Constitution doesn’t even mention judicial review, so the tradition of the Supreme Court’s final word is itself a matter of dispute.

Standing up for the status quo, Attorney General Eric Holder has written to Brownback against the new Kansas law, citing the Supremacy Clause. Problematic? Yes. But not easily dismissed.

Brownback has volleyed back.

At least we can expect the old issues of constitutional law to gain a new and lively hearing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Stopping Crony Capitalism

Voters in Wichita, Kansas, went to the polls, Tuesday, to smash a measure that would have forked over $2.25 million in tax rebates to a downtown hotel project. Those supporting the giveaway spent $300,000 to promote the deal, while opponents ponied up a scant $30,000 against it. The vote nevertheless strongly weighed against the big money, 62 to 38 percent.

The Wichita City Council had enacted this “economic development” deal with the hotel developers, and that would have been the end of it … but for some pesky Wichita taxpayers.

Kansans may lack a statewide initiative and referendum, but there is a local process, so citizens possessed a tool for effective resistance. They formed Tax Fairness for All Wichitans and, working with the Kansas chapter of Americans for Prosperity, they hit the streets to gather over 2,700 signatures to require Tuesday’s vote.Bob Weeks interviewed, YouTube

After the victory, Bob Weeks, the group’s chair, reminded fellow activists that the battle is far from over:

The Ambassador Hotel is receiving assistance from eight taxpayer-​funded government programs with costs of $15.4 million up-​front and several hundred thousand annually. None of these were affected by the election. Wichita city hall and its allies are ready, willing, and able to use these incentive programs in the future for other hotels and businesses.

Weeks summed up the election results this way: “The best way to create jobs is to get government out of the way.… That is what the voters said tonight.”

On behalf of the new Liberty Initiative Fund, I’m honored to have given two cents worth of advice to their effort. They changed public policy, saved tax dollars and threw a big monkey wrench into the machinery of crony capitalism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability First Amendment rights

What a Pile

Jarrod West has seen the other side of government. Instead of service with a smile, it’s no service, no smile and a slap at fundamental freedoms. He bought a house in Valley Center, Kansas, only to discover that his new neighborhood floods, regularly. It flooded again this June, long after having been promised help (he said) from the city administrator. So he put up a sign on his lawn, addressing the city:

Fix this problem
That’s what I pay taxes for.
PS. Joel This Means You!

City administrator Joel Pile was not amused. He convinced the city attorney to file defamation charges against West. Pile explained that “individuals have an absolute right to free speech. But however, when they do it and continue to do it within the realms of what we believe is actual malice for the purpose of holding me accountable to the public we believe that crosses a line.…”

You gotta love that “but however” segue, wherein “absolute rights” vanish after “a line” has been crossed. Plus, Pile objects to being held “accountable to the public.”

More pertinently, Pile claims that he’s not responsible, claiming that only the city council can rectify West’s flooding. That’s under dispute, and worth debating.

But if any line has been crossed, it’s been crossed by Pile and the city attorney. West ought to be free to speak, and criticize — even unjustly — his local government.

Why? That’s the foundation of a republican form of government, where citizens are in charge, and the employees are “public servants.”

Not rulers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.