Tag: term limits

Terms for Taxes

Years ago, I dubbed Tim Eyman “America’s #1 freedom fighter,” and how does he repay me? Washington State’s anti-tax crusading initiative guru has gone and stolen my bread-and-butter issue, term limits … and married it up with another one of his tax initiatives.

He’s calling Initiative 1648: Term Limits on Taxes.

“This measure would require state tax increases to expire after one year unless approved by a majority vote of the people,” informs the official ballot title, “and immediately terminate any tax increases imposed in 2019 without such approval.”

Did someone say “tax increases”?

“They went absolutely bonkers this legislative session,” Eyman told radio host Lars Larson recently. “There were 11 tax increases; they totaled over $27 billion over the next ten years. And there’s just no checks and balances.”

Speaking with Dori Monson of KIRO Radio, he noted that “all of them were passed without a vote of the people. This initiative says whenever they raise taxes without a vote of the people, we’re going to put it on a strict time limit.”

But with a July 5th deadline, supporters have less than two weeks left to gather the 320,000 voter signatures required on the petition.

It is terrible that Evergreen State voters can’t term-limit their state legislators directly. But in 1998, the state supreme court struck down a term limits initiative passed by voters, ruling that a constitutional amendment was required — something only legislators can propose.

Now, thanks to Mr. Eyman, at least voters can slap term limits on their legislators’ tax increases.

Still, he stole the idea from me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies Popular term limits

Dousing the Dumpster Fire

“Congress is less popular than traffic jams, root canals, and hemorrhoids,” U.S. Term Limits Executive Director Nick Tomboulides explained yesterday at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution hearing.

“You’re beating head lice,” he added, “but the lice have asked for a recount.”

Mr. Tomboulides and U.S. Term Limits support Senate Joint Resolution 1, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Texas), which calls for a three-term, six-year House limit and a two-term, 12-year Senate limit.

“Governing is incredibly hard,” argued R Street Institute Senior Fellow and term limits opponent Casey Burgat earlier on C‑Span’s Washington Journal. “There is no school for this.”

The real world, perchance?

“Right now, we have the most experienced, professionalized, careerist Congress in American history,” Tomboulides countered, “and the results are a dumpster fire.”

“When I came to Congress, I supported term limits in theory,” former U.S. Representative and Senator Jim DeMint (R‑South Carolina) testified. “Now I support it after seeing what really happens here.”

“Over 80 percent of Americans want term limits to happen,” Tomboulides offered. “Donald Trump and Barack Obama want it.”

“The only impediment,” as Sen. Cruz pointed out, “is the United States Congress.”

That’s why U.S. Term Limits is working to convince 34 state legislatures to bypass Congress by passing bills for a convention under Article V of the Constitution, which can consider and propose an amendment for congressional term limits.

It’s the people’s path to putting out the dumpster fire.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political challengers term limits

Beto’s Best Reform

“All too often politicians focus on their own re-election,” says Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, “at the expense of addressing the challenges our country faces.”

A supporter of term limits during his six years in Congress, in 2018 Beto left a safe House seat to challenge U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, also a term limits backer. In a very Republican state, Mr. O’Rourke fell just a smidgeon short of an upset, catching a ton of national attention — leading to his current candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

His “Plan to Realize the Full Potential of Our Democracy” calls for 12-year congressional limits and 18-year limits on U.S. Supreme Court justices. Admittedly, both require amending the Constitution, but a president using his bully pulpit sure can help the effort.*

“The issue of term limits in Congress has some bipartisan support,” notes a BuzzFeed News story, “but … it starkly divides Democrats.”

The reporter is not talking about voters — a poll last year found a whopping 77 percent of Democrats favor “Establishing limits on the number of terms members of the U.S. Congress can serve.”

But as the BuzzFeed article explains, “Former vice president Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and [Sen. Bernie] Sanders all oppose instituting them for members of Congress.”

Not surprising. Both Sanders and Warren are incumbents — with Sanders in Congress for the last 28 years and Warren in her second Senate term, while Biden spent 36 years in the Senate and eight more as Vice President.

“Limit permanent incumbency,” Beto’s website states, “to promote progress, reduce gridlock and inspire more to run for office.”

While Democrat politicians may not be pleased, O’Rourke’s term-limit push will register with voters of all parties.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

* President Donald Trump endorsed term limits in the homestretch of the 2016 campaign. He would be wise to trumpet the issue again and again in order to keep pressure on Congress.

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general freedom term limits

What Tiananmen Inspired

Tiananmen Square, China, Goddess of Democracy, term limits, freedom,

Why did term limits spring up in the 1990s?

Term limitation has a long history in America, of course — and all the way back to Aristotle — but why the resurgence? I remember opponents suggesting that Americans were frustrated with slow economic growth.

Not likely.

In “Restoring Faith in Congress,” a 1993 article in the Yale Law & Policy Review, authors Kimberly Coursen, Thomas Mann, Norman Ornstein and Todd Quinn recognized that “the 1990s are different” because “the climate for far-reaching political reform is ripe.”

But why?

For seven weeks in 1989, Chinese students protested for freedom and greater democracy, joined by others until more than a million people filled Tiananmen Square. Americans were deeply moved by their makeshift Goddess of Democracy, resembling our Statute of Liberty, as well as by the students’ demands, which read much like our Declaration of Independence.

Then, all that hope was doused, courtesy the Butchers of Beijing.

Five months later, the Berlin Wall came down, followed by the overthrow of communism throughout Europe, then the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

No more Cold War.

Americans, lacking an external enemy for the first time in decades, and with Tiananmen’s “tankman” fresh in our minds, could at last safely take a good look at our own government.

We did not like what we saw.

In 1990, Americans in three states — California, Colorado and Oklahoma — used direct democracy by petitioning term-limit initiatives onto the ballot. All three won. In 1992, U.S. Term Limits rallied voters to pass initiatives in a record 14 states.

Sadly, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests did not usher in freedom for China. Yet, they lit fires in hearts across the globe.

Including mine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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incumbents political challengers term limits

Knock Down the Incumbency

Knock Down the House, socialism, term limits,

Over the weekend, I suffered through Knock Down the House … so you don’t have to.

While the documentary heralding four inexperienced Democratic women running for Congress in 2018 cost Netflix $10 million, I did not have to spend a dime — beyond my regular monthly subscription.

The award-winning film, directed by Rachel Lears, who wrote it along with her husband, Robin Blotnick, is expertly crafted. Unfortunately, it is geared to democratic socialists predisposed to adoring the subjects.

The star is now Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.), who defeated then Rep. Joe Crowley, a ten-term, 20-year incumbent … the Number 4 Democrat in the House of Representatives.

In addition to Ocasio-Cortez, the movie follows Amy Vilela, seeking to replace a retiring Nevada Democrat; Cori Bush, challenging the Clay Family’s hereditary congressional dynasty in Missouri’s 1st district*; and Paula Jean Swearengin, battling incumbent Sen. Joe Machin in West Virginia’s Democratic Party Primary. Of the four challengers chronicled, all of whom received extensive support from two progressive groups, Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, AOC was the only winner.

“Let’s assume all the energy in this room can get you on the ballot and into office,” offers a fellow at one of Ocasio-Cortez’s early meetings. “How, then, do we overcome the drop in power?”

“I think we really need to have to look at what that power does now,” AOC responds. “When it matters, [Rep. Crowley] doesn’t stand up for us; when it matters, he doesn’t advocate for our interests.”

Whatever one thinks of AOC’s politics, her point here is not without merit: the idea that we citizens benefit from longtime incumbents who ‘bring home the bacon’ is … baloney.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* At the completion of this term, Rep. Lacy Clay, Ms. Bush’s opponent, will have served 20 years. His father, Bill Clay, held the seat for 32 years before that. Together, over half a century. The film alludes to the fact that Clay Jr. gained the seat in 2000 only after the surprise retirement of Clay Sr. on the very last day to file for the office … with Jr. filing, instead.

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Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

Representative or Reprehensible?

Post author By Redactor
Post date May 16, 2019
3 Comments on Representative or Reprehensible?

Seventy-seven million.

That is the dollar amount of “financial errors” that North Dakota State Auditor Joshua Gallion discovered in the last year, after launching performance audits at twice the rate of his predecessor.*

So, uncork the champagne! Huzzahs all around! Back slaps.

But the back-slappers in the state legislature took a much different tack.

In the waning days of this year’s now-adjourned legislative session, in the opacity of a conference committee, a change somehow slipped into a bill. No future audits without legislative approval.

As news hit of this handcuffing of the elected watchdog, taxpayers turned livid. And legislators started tap-dancing, claiming that “the legislation had nothing to do with the new aggressiveness Gallion brought to the job.”

Finally, Rep. Keith Kempenich, the author of the change, confessed: “A lot of legislators started having some issues with the way things were going and wanted to reel him in.”

Kempenich added that the auditor’s work “isn’t supposed to embarrass people.” At his Minuteman Blog, Arthur Mason countered that such financial mismanagement is “worthy of embarrassment.”

Governor Doug Burgum, who has “felt the sting of a Gallion audit,” signed the bill; calls for the legislature to reverse their gutting of accountability have fallen on deaf ears.

Concerned citizens were already organizing to defeat the legislature’s proposed constitutional amendment giving themselves a veto on voter-initiated amendments, requiring a re-vote if politicians don’t like the people’s first vote. Now an additional effort is forming to petition a referendum or new initiative onto the ballot to stop the power-mad politicians from neutering the state auditor.

Who do these legislators think they are?

Seems North Dakota’s solons are in desperate need of still another reform measure: term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Prior to Gallion’s 2016 election, the state auditor post had for 44 years been a hereditary fiefdom, held by Republican Robert Peterson for 20 years and, before that, for 24 years by Peterson’s father.