initiative, referendum, and recall

Yesterday, I explained how the official title for California’s Proposition 28 tricks voters who favor tougher term limits into supporting a measure that will dramatically weaken those limits.

The title’s slipperiness is anything but accidental. It was designed to fool, hiding the fact that the measure doubles the time legislators can park themselves in the state assembly and ups senate tenure by 50 percent. Instead, voters read that Prop 28 “reduces” (ever so slightly) the time a politician can serve in both chambers, from 14 years to 12 years – something affecting less than one in ten office-holders.

“The proponents of the measure are longtime opponents of term limits who have long wanted to roll back California’s voter-approved legislative term limits,” says Jon Fleishman of the Flash Report, who serves as volunteer co-chairman of “No on 28.”

Still, the sham ballot title is only one part of the Prop 28 scam.

The biggest financial backer behind Prop 28 has been billionaire developer Edward Roski. While at the very same time legislators were awarding Roski’s company the special environmental exemptions he needed to build a sports stadium, Roski just happened to plunk down over a million bucks to the politician-prized petition drive, helping the measure get on the June 5th ballot.

“That’s crony capitalism and that stinks,” argues Fleishman.

“In a state with a 12-percent-plus unemployment rate,” Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, points out about legislators, “the jobs they’re fighting the hardest to keep are their own.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

It’s heart-breaking to read the daily accounts of the Syrian government shelling neighborhoods and snipers gunning down protesting citizens in the streets. Syria, sadly, is hardly the only place where speaking one’s mind or seeking political change can be met with threats and violence.

Sometimes the brutality comes from the government itself. Sometimes the acts of intimidation and bloodshed come from extra-legal gangs acting in concert with those in power.

Thank goodness we live in a country where one doesn’t have to fear violence for one’s political beliefs and activities.

Or do we?

Like many cities and states in our land, Colorado’s public employee pension system is woefully underfunded, $21 billion behind, putting taxpayers and/or retirees in grave jeopardy. In addition to the financial problem is a serious lack of accountability.

State Treasurer Walker Stapleton sits on the board of the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA). But when he asked for some basic information about benefits, the board refused. Stapleton complains that “it seems their objective is for all board members to operate in the dark and act as a rubberstamp for their executives.” He’s filed a lawsuit seeking the information.

Luckily, Colorado citizens have access to the initiative petition process. Recently, Carol Baum and Karen Stauffer filed initiatives to reform PERA, including requiring greater transparency. Last Friday, they attended the first hearings to finalize their measures.

That’s when the threatening phone calls began. And then on Sunday, Karen Stauffer’s car window was smashed out by a large rock.

Something is rotten in Denver. Tyranny is wielding its most powerful weapons: fear and intimidation. The only antidote is courage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

In the traffic snarl of political ideas, the liberating concept behind America seems as straightforward as the freeway: The people are the boss, with rights above government, and “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The people have a green light to pursue happiness, provided that in their liberty they don’t diminish someone else’s equal right. Conversely, government is limited, facing red lights, and flashing yellows, from the people.

In theory.

Too often our judges and our “elected” representatives don’t get it. They shine red lights at the people. Just happened in Washington State on the issue of . . . well . . . red light cameras.

In dozens and dozens of public votes held across the country on the issue of red-light cameras, voters have a 100 percent track record of saying “No,” to those Orwellian contraptions. That’s what happened in Mukilteo, Washington, thanks to a referendum pushed by Tim Eyman. It’s happened in numerous other Washington cities and localities.

So American Traffic Solutions, the company providing this cash-creating “service,” formed a front group and sued to block local citizens from petitioning the issue to the ballot box.

In a narrow 5-4 decision, Justice Barbara Madsen wrote for the majority: “The legislature granted to local legislative bodies the exclusive power to legislate on the subject of the use and operation of automated traffic safety cameras. The legislature’s grant of authority does not extend to the electorate.”

Say, what? The very power granted by the legislature, and now denied the people in court, came from the people. The voters are the ultimate “legislative authority.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

One of the things I do is promote the initiative and referendum process. Have you noticed? Well, that means traveling around the country and speaking before groups of people interested in making the world a freer, better place. Recently I spoke at “Liberty On the Rocks” in Denver:

Ari Armstrong asked some great questions — questions I think that would come to most thoughtful people’s minds, when contemplating direct action via the ballot.

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.

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.