Tag: Oregon

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Eleven Fiftieths

Eleven states have “bottle bills,” legislation requiring vendors to collect a deposit on each container they sell of soda pop, iced tea, energy drinks, etc. It basically mimics the old, voluntary system of recycling, where bottling companies would pay people to return glass bottles, for reuse.

When I was a kid, cheaper materials (aluminum, plastic) made the old system uneconomical. So environmentalists pushed through legislation in Oregon, and then elsewhere, to create government-mandated recycling systems.

Oregon’s legislature just passed a “sweeping revision” of the bill, upping the deposit amount from five cents to ten and expanding the program. John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute testified at a legislative hearing against the revision. According to Charles, bottle deposit recycling conflicts with curbside recycling, which Charles argues is far more efficient — or at least easier to use than lugging containers back to return centers, which are usually sticky, smelly, and. . . .

Well, Charles didn’t talk about the stink. One of my Washington State informers did.

You see, Washington not only lacks a bottle bill, such efforts fail with larger percentages each time one hits the state’s ballot. But the beverage containers sold in Washington have the same deposit/return guarantees as in Oregon. So some Washingtonians transport their in-state purchases — sans five-cent deposit — across the border for unearned returns.

You might think that fighting such cheating would be of more concern to Oregon lawmakers than making it even more lucrative to out-of-state profiteers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Life, the Universe, and Everything

The answer is 42.

The question? Not Douglas Adams’s Ultimate Question concerning “life, the universe, and everything.” Instead, it’s the answer to the question, “How many mandates does the State of Oregon place on the medical insurance packages Oregonians are allowed to buy?”

Forty-two.

The number is far too large — and yet the number will likely increase this year, courtesy of the state legislature, despite the fact that the current mandates raise the cost of medical insurance for Oregonians.

Steve Buckstein, speaking before the state’s House Committee on Health Care, for-instanced Iowa, which sports 16 fewer mandates. The state has lower percentages of uninsured folks and lower premiums than in states with higher numbers of required services.

Buckstein, a policy analyst for Cascade Policy Institute, was arguing for HB 2977, which would allow Oregonians to purchase medical insurance from other states. This would add competition to the current highly over-regulated market.

Buckstein shouldn’t have to do this. The purpose of the federal union was to create a vast free trade zone. Misguided state mandates such as the ones he’s fighting rest upon prohibiting state citizens from buying outside the state, which runs up against the grain of the Constitution. For too long Congress has exempted the medical insurance industry from the correct application of the Commerce Clause, leading to a crippled industry and opening the way for disastrously unworkable ideas like, well, “Obamacare.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Petition Police

It’s a dangerous world. You never know when someone may be out there . . . petitioning their government?

In the past few months, citizens circulating petitions for an anti-tax referendum have hit Oregon streets. And with those citizens trailed a team of investigators. The Secretary of State had hired them, paying with funds provided courtesy of state legislators — the same politicians who passed the tax increases petitioners are seeking to block.

The surveillance proved almost as amusing as it is frightening. For four-fifths of the time investigators put in — at $40 to $70 an hour — they couldn’t even locate petition circulators to commence their stakeouts.

One government agent secretly infiltrated a training seminar held by Americans for Prosperity. The covert op filed this shocking report: “The training was very thorough and was consistent with the training provided by the Elections Division.”

In the end, investigators found no serious wrongdoing — none of the fraudulent activity that might justify secretive investigations of citizens who just happen to oppose the legislators’ policies.

Oregon politicians claim such tactics are necessary to “to protect the integrity of our electoral system.” But they’ve completely lost touch with basic democratic principles. Without any evidence a crime has been committed, citizens petitioning their government or engaging in other political pursuits should not be subjected to secret witch-hunts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

Oregon’s $10,000 Innocent-Bystander Fine

In Oregon, it is now a crime to be both an innocent bystander and a leading participant in democracy.

Or it soon will be, if Oregon’s Governor Kulongoski signs a bill that has just emerged from the state legislature. The bilious bill would fine leaders of a citizen initiative campaign $10,000 if anybody working for the campaign is found to have committed fraud in the process of gathering signatures.

The alleged wrongdoing is not being complicit in fraud but “failing to prevent” it. Do you see the problem? No screening process, no matter how careful, can eliminate the free will of campaign workers. A chief petitioner on a campaign cannot be everywhere watching everyone as more than a hundred thousand people sign the petition. Under this law, an opponent could bankrupt the  leader of a ballot measure by joining the effort and committing fraudulent acts.

This and other less zany — but still burdensome — provisions are designed, presumably, to “cut down on fraud and abuse.” Tough job for a bill that is itself inherently fraudulent and abusive.

It’s real purpose, of course, is to hamper and obstruct the petition process.

The only Senate Democrat to vote no to the bill, state Senator Vicki Walker, notes that some activists will be more reluctant now to be lead a ballot initiative if they can be socked with a huge fine for a violation committed by somebody else.

Well, that’s obvious. It’s also, sadly, the point.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.