Tag: Missouri

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Just Sue Already

Eric Schmitt, Jeff Landry, Missouri, Louisiana

Two state attorneys general, Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry (of Missouri and Louisiana, respectively), are suing the federal government for colluding with Big Tech to suppress speech in violation of First Amendment rights.

Their recent filing quotes a ruling which argues that it“violates the First Amendment ‘if the government coerces or induces [a private entity] to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.’”

The plaintiffs observe that this has been happening for years, “culminating in . . . open and explicit censorship programs,” and they ask the court to permanently enjoin such unlawful conduct.

Separately, twenty attorneys general (including Schmitt and Landry) have sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the agency’s new board instituted to counter unapproved speech.

The AGs threaten to “consider judicial action” if Mayorkas doesn’t “disband this Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board immediately.”

According to the letter, the board “will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech.”

It is, I suppose, conceivable that if a suit were filed the Biden administration would recognize that it can’t win and would dissolve the board immediately. So far, though, the administration has just been barreling ahead with bad policies unless and until legally thwarted.

So why are the AGs even bothering with a letter that must have even less effect than a filing?

Now the letter has been submitted. Fine. Give Mayorkas ten minutes to shut down the board. Has he shut it down? No.

Sue!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders

Deep Show-​Me State

Ron Calzone, Missouri, free speech, lobbying, 1st Amendment,

Worried about the Deep State undermining democracy in Washington? What about the Deep State in Missouri?

Today, Ron Calzone will sit in a St. Louis courtroom with his wife, Anne, intently listening to arguments in his case, Calzone v. Missouri Ethics Commission, before the entire Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

In what sort of evil corruption has Mr. Calzone been engaged? 

Good citizenship. 

Talk about an open-​and-​shut case! For zero pay, Calzone and others — organized through Missouri First — track legislation and communicate their viewpoints to their state representatives, urging legislators to follow a constitutional, limited government philosophy. The group gives no gifts to legislators, only their opinions, and spends no money. Doesn’t even have a bank account.

This is the sort of wholesome citizen participation envisioned in civics textbooks. But politicians see engaged citizens, like Ron, as pests, infesting their capitols. 

In 2014, angered by the grassroots input Calzone had generated, two state legislators convinced the Missouri Society of Governmental Consultants (the state’s “lobbyist guild”) to file an ethics complaint against Ron, demanding he register as a lobbyist. At the measly cost of $10 a year.

Calzone can afford the Hamilton, but refused, on principle, to pay it or to register as a lobbyist. Thankfully, great lawyers at the Freedom Center of Missouri and the Institute for Free Speech have come to his defense.

Laws regulating lobbyists have been enacted to check the influence of rich, powerful special interests. Or so the powerful interests tell us.

Instead, politicians and bureaucrats are twisting the law, trying to block grassroots citizens.

It is time to deep six Deep States.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ron Calzone, Missouri, free speech, lobbying, 1st Amendment,

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Accountability general freedom incumbents insider corruption local leaders moral hazard political challengers Regulating Protest term limits

Missouri Shows Article V Action

Missouri, show me, Article V, term limits, legislature, congress,

There’s good news and there’s good news from the Show Me State.

First the good news. The Missouri House declined to follow the lead of the Missouri Senate during its recent legislative session in advancing a ballot measure to make a travesty, mockery and sham of state legislative term limits.

The proposed weakening of the limits would have doubled maximum legislative tenure from eight years to 16 years. Further, it would also have excluded terms already served from counting toward the new limit. 

Had the measure ultimately been enacted, some incumbents would have been able to sit in a single seat for up to 24 years. This assault on term limits is dead … at least until next year.

Now the good news. The lawmakers deserve high praise for issuing a formal call for an amendment convention to consider the single subject of congressional term limits, making Missouri the third state to do so (after Florida and Alabama). In mid-​May, the resolution for a Term Limits Convention easily passed in both chambers.

Thanks to a provision in Article V of the Constitution, if two thirds of the states (34 states) submit a similar application to convene a term limits amendment convention, the convention must be convened. The amendment that the convention produces would then be submitted to the states for ratification. Three fourths (38) are required to ratify. 

We’re only in the first-​steps stage here, but first steps are crucial. 

Thanks for showing us how to do it, Missouri.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Missouri, show me, Article V, term limits, legislature, congress,

 

Categories
general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility too much government

Undefeated

Missouri Ethics Commission, lobbyist, lobbying, Ron Calzone, Missouri First

It’s over … but it’s not.

A conscientious Show-​Me state activist has won his case, but …

A year ago, the unethical Missouri Ethics Commission fined Ron Calzone $1,000 for not paying a silly $10 fee. To register as a lobbyist. They also ordered him to stop talking to legislators until he complied.

Citizen Calzone didn’t register.

He didn’t pay.

And he didn’t shut up.

On principle.

Instead, he contacted the Freedom Center of Missouri and the Center for Competitive Politics, a national outfit that defends our rights to participate in our supposedly participatory and representative democratic republic.

On Monday, a judge ruled in Ron’s favor, tossing out the “ethics complaint” against him. On a technicality, actually.

Winning is better than losing. But even if someone bothers to try again against Calzone, filing the suit properly*, Calzone would win.

You see, we have rights … including the freedom to talk to those pretending to represent us. It is not at all certain that government has any constitutional authority to regulate paid lobbyists.

But Ron is not a paid lobbyist. He volunteers for Missouri First, a citizen group.

So why did the speech police’s long arm reach out to grab him?

He’s effective.

More than a forthright advocate for what he believes, he has proven smart enough to find ways to allow fellow freedom-​lovers to weigh in on bills they favor or oppose.

This has endeared him neither to legislators nor the lobbying “community” — professionals paid handsomely to lose to Calzone’s grassroots network. They will strike back. You can count on it.

But as long as there are citizens like him, the people will not be defeated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The charges weren’t filed by a “natural person,” as the law requires, but by the attorney for the Missouri Society of Governmental Consultants, the state lobbyist guild.

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Missouri Ethics Commission, lobbyist, lobbying, Ron Calzone, Missouri First

 

Categories
ideological culture Tenth Amendment federalism too much government U.S. Constitution

Manly Firmness

“Is repealing the Affordable Care Act an issue of manhood?” asks Alan Rappeport in the New York Times. He’s referring to the “macho language” in a resolution introduced recently in Jefferson City, Missouri, by State Rep. Mike Moon.

Moon’s House Resolution 99 decimates the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in a dozen whereas clauses, noting the legislation was

  1. “passed under questionable circumstances”;
  2. found constitutional only on the contradictory determination that it was both a tax and not a tax; and, most notably,
  3. resoundingly opposed by Missouri voters, who have twice trudged to the polls to overwhelming pass measures to block this federal legislation.

HR 99 resolves that, “the members of the Missouri House of Representatives, Ninety-​eighth General Assembly, hereby insist that each member of the Missouri Congressional delegation endeavor with ‘manly firmness’ and resolve to totally and completely repeal the Affordable Care Act, settling for no less than a full repeal.”

Among today’s sophisticates, the phrase “manly firmness” elicits giggles, of course. Seasoned Democrats like U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill play the “war on women” card.  She complained that those words come from “a point in time when women were chattels and didn’t have the right to vote. I think we can update our vocabulary.”

Lost on — or purposely ignored by — the senator? The fact that the phrase “manly firmness” comes from the Declaration of Independence, from the fifth listed grievance against King George III.

And firmness is exactly what’s needed: adult, strong, serious standing up as our representatives — rather than representing themselves — and defending our individual freedom and its corollary, constitutionally-​limited government.

That’s what was needed back in 1776. It is every bit as desperately needed today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture

Against Protester Brutality

Most people agree about the wrongness of police brutality, if not about whether a particular police action is an example of it.

But what about protester brutality? Again, most oppose it. Still, skeptics on this point have been particularly loud and insistent lately. Some even suggest (or scream) that violence against the innocent is fully justified if that’s what it takes to protest injustice.

But the existence of police brutality does not justify protester brutality, protester vandalism, protester indifference-​to-​evidence, or any other violence or irrationality.

The grand jurors in Ferguson were not dealing with injustice in the abstract, but with a particular incident and the relevant evidence. They were not asked to determine whether police ever wrongly shoot or kill, but whether there was evidence that a particular officer had done so, enough to justify a trial. Even assuming legitimate grounds to disagree with their conclusion, too many commenters declaim as if the evidence is irrelevant and the jurors’ motives not possibly honest. The man had to be indicted regardless.

Of course, had Officer Wilson been tried, on this assumed-​guilty approach only one outcome would have then been deemed acceptable, regardless of evidence: conviction. Absent that conviction, violence against the innocent would still have been rationalized.

No injustice is properly fought by either sweeping aside facts or by attacking the innocent in the name of protecting the innocent. If we ignore the requirements of justice in order to advance a Cause, how can that Cause be justice?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment

Let Jeff Mizanskey Go

Commuting unjust sentences is the least that should be done for convicted non-​criminals like Jeff Mizanskey, guilty of peaceful offenses in the War on Drugs. The man’s heinous crime? Abetting a friend’s purchase of marijuana. For this, Mizanskey was sentenced to life without parole — more than 20 years ago.

Because Mizanskey had been caught with pot before, prosecutors designated him a “prior and persistent offender,” and sought the most draconian penalty possible. For not doing anything to anybody.

Repeated appeals of his sentence have availed him naught.

His son Chris and his attorney Tony Nenninger have been asking Missouri Governor Jay Nixon for clemency. In his letter to the governor, Nenninger observes that his client seems to be alone in Missouri in serving a life sentence “for non-​violent cannabis-​only offenses.”

Nenninger’s appeal for donations is accessible via the website of Show-​Me Cannabis, an organization that fights to legalize marijuana in Missouri and elsewhere, and which has been helping to publicize the cause. Show-​Me Cannibis explains on its justice-​for-​Jeff page: “Many prisoners make these applications, and it is rare that a case gets enough of a governor’s attention to be seriously considered. This is why it’s so important you speak out!”

Since I disagree with 1,111 out of every 1,112 Obama policies, perhaps I should note here that one good thing the president has been doing, recently, is using his power more often to commute outrageous sentences. It’s a start.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

The Rest of the Story

One thrill of my lifetime occurred soon after I helped launch U.S. Term Limits in 1992, when radio commentator Paul Harvey phoned me to fact-​check a story he was doing.

Harvey, king of radio back then, was a huge fan of term limits. And I was a big fan of him. I loved his quirky vocal mannerisms and the way he told us “the rest of the story.” Today, three years after his death, I’d like to bring you “the rest” of a few recent Common Sense stories.

I. “There is no Olympic medal for political dishonesty,” I concluded a recent commentary about a Missouri State senate race where the principled Ed Emery was wrongly and ridiculously smeared by State Rep. Scott Largent. “Let’s hope Show-​Me State voters show Largent the agony of defeat.”

Well, voters did just that. In the August 7 primary, Emery narrowly defeated Largent.

II. Recall my rant on the California parks system apparently hiding $54 million from the department of finance?

With an investigation underway, the Sacramento Bee not only reports “a department that wanted to keep secret a reserve of its own special funds” and — surprise, surprise – the unauthorized use of those slush funds, but also “a springtime rush each year to spend money authorized by the Legislature to avoid having the funds return to the general fund.”

Seems the parks department may also have been dummying up million-​dollar contracts to make funding look like it was spent when it wasn’t.

All while asking for donations from the public and closing parks.

III. Objected, I did, to the Obama Administration’s successful push to get a record number of people to sign up for food stamps. Others have objected to David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, who posted on Facebook that we should follow the advice of the National Park Service — “Do not feed the animals” — noting that, “Their stated reason for the policy is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.”

Fowler was denounced for being insensitive, for calling poor people animals.

But aren’t all people animals?

We’re not potted plants.

And now you know the rest of Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

The Solon of Smear

If political dishonesty were an Olympic sport, Missouri State Rep. Scott Largent would qualify for the medal round.

In a campaign mailer sent to voters in Missouri’s 31st state senate district just ahead of the August 7th GOP primary, Largent’s campaign attacks opponent Ed Emery for “Standing With Barack Obama and Missouri Democrats.”

How specifically did constitutional conservative Republican Ed Emery “stand” with the opposition?

Emery voted for a non-​binding resolution condemning Obamacare, sure, but on one amendment to that resolution he sided against fellow Republicans. As an analysis on the Missouri First website puts it: “Emery voted against” that particular amendment because it “urged Congress to replace Obamacare with another federal scheme.”

Apparently no more fond of “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” legislation when proposed by Republicans rather than Democrats, Emery refused to blindly endorse a new, undefined nationalized “solution.”

A badge of honor.

But Scott Largent, the Solon of Smear, sent voters a copy of a letter on White House stationary purportedly from President Barack Obama to Ed Emery:

I wanted to personally thank you for your “no” vote yesterday on the amendment to HCR 18 regarding Obamacare.… The fact that you stood against every one of your Republican colleagues to support Democrats really impressed me. I truly hope you will be as willing to stand against your party in your future elected positions.

Only thing is, the letter is a fake.

There is no Olympic medal for political dishonesty. Let’s hope Show-​Me State voters show Largent the agony of defeat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access national politics & policies political challengers

Seven Million for Show

Complaining about the cost of holding an election is usually done by those who fear the election’s likely outcome, not the price.

I’m not very sympathetic.

Yet, I’m in total agreement with Andrew Wilson, a resident fellow at the Show-​Me Institute, whose article “Money Down a Drain: The Millions Spent on Missouri’s No-​Show Feb. 7 Election,” states flatly that legislators ought to be “embarrassed” for calling “a statewide election” in which “nobody came.”

Missouri taxpayers forked out $7 million to hold the state’s February 7 presidential primary, which produced only a meager eight percent voter turnout, netting a whopping $25 cost for every vote cast.

The legislature had moved the primary date up to gain a greater edge for the state in determining delegates for deciding the presidential nominee. When that timetable didn’t work with the National Republican Party’s nominating rules, legislation was drafted to cancel the primary.

But the legislature and the governor couldn’t bring the bill beyond the draft stage. Instead, they stuck Show-​Me State citizens with spending seven million for, well, show …  the primary having been rendered absolutely meaningless in terms of winning delegates.

Hence the low voter turnout.

There is a very simple solution. Let political parties have the freedom to run their own affairs, their own primaries. And let them do it without taxpayer subsidy.

Governments (taxpayers) pay for the general election; parties pay for their primaries.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.