Tag: Virginia

Categories
ballot access

Easy to Be Hard

Politicians often try to pass laws making it more difficult for citizens to petition issues onto the ballot, claiming that it’s too easy to gather all those signatures.

Speaking of easy, that’s awfully easy for politicians to say.

If they’re major party candidates, Democrats or Republicans, they usually don’t have to come up with any voter signatures at all to place themselves on the ballot. Even in the few states that require major party candidates to gather signatures, the numbers are nominal, a few hundred at most.

Funny, we certainly don’t hear former House Speaker Newt Gingrich or Texas Governor Rick Perry prattling on about how simple and carefree it is to gather thousands of signatures. That’s because presidential ballot access is sometimes much more difficult and both candidates just failed to collect the required 10,000 valid signatures to gain a spot on the Virginia ballot as Republican presidential candidates.

To place a statutory issue on the 2010 ballot in Nevada, a state sporting about a quarter of Virginia’s population, required 97,000 signatures. That’s ten times more than demanded of Gingrich and Perry. To place a statutory measure on the Arizona ballot requires 172,809 signatures; a constitutional amendment needs 259,213.

Governor Perry is challenging Virginia’s unconstitutional law banning non-residents from helping collect signatures. I hope he wins. But maybe the best way to prevent legislators from passing laws that make petitioning too difficult is to make those laws apply to them and how they get on the ballot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly

The Candy-Cane Killers

Tragic holiday horror! Diabolical kids with bad sweaters, scheming with Grinch-like dastardliness to stab at the heart of the season! Openly distributing thinly disguised blades . . .

Openly! Well, the school administrators were on the case in a jiffy.

The ten culpable kids at the Haymarket, Virginia, high school — called, by a cruel joke of destiny, Battlefield High — belonged to the secret commando unit “Christmas Sweater Club,” so-called because they wear “the craziest sweaters they can find.”

Just the kind of loosely-knit cover story you’d expect from such warped-and-woofed yarn spinners.

On the fateful morning, before classes began, club members ruthlessly tossed two-inch candy canes to arriving schoolmates. These student instigators told Channel 9 that school officials charged them with trying to “maliciously maim” their fellow students. “They said the candy canes are weapons because you can sharpen them with your mouth and stab people with them.”

By the time disciplinary notices were issued, however, the complaint had lapsed into something about “creating a disturbance.” Mom Kathleen Flannery related an administrator’s earnest appraisal: “Not everyone wants Christmas cheer.”

Lesson? Obviously, tiny candy canes in the wrong hands are dangerous, especially if converted by frenetic licking into ferocious little shivs that could turn a playground into a killing field!

Also, tiny brains in the wrong school officials’ heads can be dangerous, too . . . especially when they can’t be sharpened at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

It’s the Spending

When running for governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell said, “The worst thing you can do during a recession is try to tax yourself to prosperity,” and that Virginia has “a spending problem more than we have a taxation problem.” To this I would add only that it would be best if government were fiscally disciplined in both good times and bad.

Virginia’s state government is facing a shortfall of $4 billion over the next two years. A few weeks after reaching the governor’s mansion, McDonnell submitted a list of budget proposals to the legislature. These include mandatory furloughs, staff reductions, financial aid cuts, park closings, and hundreds of millions in cuts to spending on health and human services and K-12 education.

Like Chris Christie in New Jersey, Virginia’s new governor is facing fervent opposition to any spending cuts. Unlike Christie, Governor McDonnell is less able or perhaps just less willing to act on his own to make any spending cuts, saying he is eager to collaborate with lawmakers.

Virginians must express their support for fiscal common sense and hope for the best. They could do a lot more if the state had a statewide initiative and referendum process; then they themselves could pass restraints on taxes and spending, at the ballot box. Unfortunately, when it comes to citizen initiative rights, Virginia gets an F.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

Wake Me When It’s Over

There are gubernatorial elections, today, in Virginia and New Jersey. My Republican buddies in Virginia are excited. After losing to the Democrats in the last two elections for governor — and for president, and the last two U.S. Senate contests — Republicans are now poised to win back the governor’s mansion.

Me? I’m not as excited.

Oh, Bob McDonnell, a former legislator and then attorney general, doesn’t seem any worse, and may be better than your average politician. But his campaign has the usual messaging: more jobs, better education, more and better transportation. All new and improved. For less.

Strikingly similar to the Democrats, I dare say.

Except that McDonnell hasn’t flat-out said he’d raise anybody’s taxes. His opponent, Democrat Creigh Deeds, admits he would — only after a gallant attempt to dodge all those pesky questions and tip-toe around taxes.

No independent or third party candidate is on the ballot.

In New Jersey, the sitting governor, Democrat Jon Corzine, may win with less than 50 percent of the vote. What a shame that’d be — the majority votes against a guy and yet they’re still stuck with him.

The polls show it very close, with independent candidate Chris Daggett getting 7 to 13 percent.

I prefer Republican Chris Christie. He promotes voter initiative and referendum. He promises he’ll actively push to establish a statewide initiative process.

That would give people a real vote for change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets individual achievement too much government

I’ll Clink to That

Awards, known as the Sammies, are given annually by the Sam Adams Alliance to recognize the efforts of citizen activists fighting governmental lunacies.

This year’s winners for best video, Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg, produced a film on the anti-competitive liquor laws of Virginia.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should report that I received a Sammy this year too — partly for fighting the Oklahoma Attorney General’s attempt to jail me for supporting Oklahoma democracy. Long story made short, we won that battle.

The award also recognized my decades-long work for term limits and citizen initiative rights.

Caleb and Austin’s video is entitled “The ABCs of Virginia Alcohol Law.” “ABC” is a pun on the name of the agency spewing the nonsensical edicts, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The brief video gives you a good glimpse of the silliness, which includes violation of free speech rights.

Did you know that it is legal for a Virginia bar to sell you a beer, or a shot of liquor, or a beer and a shot of liquor, but not a shot of liquor in a glass of beer?

Or that America’s Founding Fathers would be thrown in jail under the liquor laws of today’s Virginia?

Watch the video. It’s slick, it’s funny. And it should make you mad.

For more on all of this year’s Sammy winners, visit samadamsalliance.org.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Nebraska

Government transparency is understandably popular. Voters want to know what their governments are doing.

So smart politicians promise us more transparency, more sunshine, more info. But, being politicians, sometimes they don’t deliver. And, when they do, they often spend a whole lot more than necessary.

That’s what is happening in Virginia. Bills to put the state budget online have passed both chambers of the legislature — unanimously.

But politicians estimate that the cost to get the job done will run over $3 million. Wow. That’s a lot. How does that compare with other states?

At the Tertium Quids blog, there’s a letter posted from Ed Martin, chief of staff to former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. Martin points out that two years ago Blunt created the Missouri Accountability Portal by executive order.

The website is a national model with a searchable database of state expenditures. It’s garnered over 17 million hits from interested citizens. And it cost less than $200,000.

Then there’s Nebraska State Treasurer Shane Osborn. As the Washington Examiner recently reported, he put Nebraska spending online without the legislature passing a law. He just did it.

“I used my staff to compile the data,” Osborn said. “I just viewed it as my job.”

The grand cost of Osborn’s excellent transparency website? Only $38,000.

Sounds like there are millions of reasons for Virginia to learn from others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Citizen Government in Gloucester

What does Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, have in common with Gloucester County, Virginia?

Politicians and judges who try their mightiest to keep citizens from influencing government.

In Wilkes-Barre, a judge ruled that Denise Carey would have to pay the court costs for the money spent by the city to trounce her attempt to put a local issue to a vote.

In Gloucester, a group of citizens got angry at four newly elected members of the county’s Board of Supervisors. The four had participated in a closed meeting. So some folks worked to get a Grand Jury, which indicted the supervisors, and then they petitioned to recall them.

The judge who got the case was neither respectful nor amused. He threw out the indictments — and, citing a minor technicality, the petitions too.

He then ruled that the citizen activist group owed $80,000, to cover a majority of the supervisors’ legal bills.

As I told you a few weeks ago, the Wilkes-Barre case had a good ending, with higher courts reversing the judge’s decision.

In Gloucester County, the ACLU is coming to the aid of the group, and the state legislature is considering a law preventing judges in future cases from punishing citizens exercising their rights.

Great — but wouldn’t it be better if politicians and judges respected citizen rights in the first place?

That would be Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.