Category: initiative, referendum, and recall

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary term limits

The Fix Wasn’t In

Al Jaeger has been the Secretary of State in North Dakota

Something totally unexpected — by me, at least — happened earlier this month in North Dakota. It concerned a citizen initiative to term-limit the Peace Garden State’s governor and state legislators.

Not unexpected, however, how often term limits measures meet resistance from long-serving politicians, judges, and officials.

Al Jaeger has been the Secretary of State in North Dakota for the last 30 years. This is Mr. Jaeger’s final term; at age 79, he’s not seeking re-election.

Back in February, Jared Hendrix and the North Dakota Term Limits committee submitted over 46,000 voter signatures on petitions to Jaeger’s office, enough to far surpass the 31,164 requirement to earn a spot on this November’s ballot.  

Yet, in March, Secretary Jaeger ruled that the petition fell far short of the requirement, throwing out over 15,000 otherwise valid signatures because the petitions were notarized by someone he “suspected” of fraud. Before making this public announcement, however, Jaeger had brought proponent Hendrix into his office and, along with the state’s attorney general, threatened criminal prosecutions unless he withdrew the petition.

Hendrix refused to cave. And with help from U.S. Term Limits, the North Dakota group challenged the secretary’s denial. Still, when a lower court judge agreed that Jaeger, with all his experience, could make such sweeping judgments to disqualify petitions, I feared the fix was in. 

But earlier this month, the surprise: the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled, unanimously, that Jaeger had misapplied the law and ordered the amendment placed on the ballot as Measure 1.

Yes. Misapplied. Deliberately?

Thankfully, the term limits amendment includes a provision to prevent itself, if passed, from being overturned except by another citizen initiative. 

We know how eager establishment politicians are to kill term limits by hook or by crook, mostly crook.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

SF Scheme Scuttled

San Francisco, taxes, income, GBI

The proposed tax was very popular. In San Francisco. It polled at nearly 75 percent in favor. 

But it possessed a fatal flaw. 

And worse.

The fatal flaw? The numbers didn’t add up.

Organizers spent nearly half a million bucks developing and promoting and getting the petition signatures to place Proposition K on this November’s ballot.

The notion? Tax Amazon sales within city limits to fund a guaranteed income scheme in the Golden City.

But then they learned — after it qualified for the ballot — that it was an incoherent tax-and-spend mess. Its chief pusher, John Elberling, admitted, reports The San Francisco Standard, that “he made mistakes in calculating how Amazon earns its revenue in the city.” And, The Standard continues, “the City Controller’s office found that the tax measure would actually harm hundreds of small businesses in San Francisco and cut revenue to the city’s general fund by about $10 million a year.”

So Elberling ate crow, admitting to error (and also, apparently, to misleading petition signers), and a judge removed Prop K from the ballot.

Whew. Disaster averted.

Alas, Elberling promises to “perfect” his scheme, and advance it again.

Which is ominous, for the core idea itself — adding on more taxes to fund a trendy-but-disastrous “guaranteed income” — is not the way out of California’s progressive-induced nightmare. It’s just a vastly bigger version of what’s gone on before.

If Californians don’t develop more common sense about the limitations of salvation-by-government, they are doomed to repeat such folly.

That goes double for San Franciscans.

Who this time have a reprieve, thankfully.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability education and schooling initiative, referendum, and recall

After Recall, Revival

San Francisco, dumpster fire

Is San Francisco waking up from its dystopian nightmare?

The egalitarians who have pushed the great city into absurdity have suffered another setback.

The earlier victory for sanity was won in a landslide election this February when parents recalled three members of the local school board for doing things like renaming 44 schools to conform to a left-wing agenda, keeping San Francisco schools closed because of outsized fears of the pandemic, and using a lottery system to undermine the magnet school Lowell High.

The lottery ended Lowell’s merit-based admissions, preventing the most qualified students from getting in unless they happened to get a lucky number. A step was thus taken toward reducing all students in the district to the same low academic level. Obviously, kids too behind or lazy to be even good students let alone top students would not suddenly become stellar academicians merely by winning a lottery.

The three board members ousted in February were the only ones then eligible to be recalled. Now the reconstituted board has voted 4-3 against extending the lottery system. The vote restores merit-based admissions.

A victory, but way too narrow. One flipped vote and the district would be back to hobbling the best and brightest.

The three anti-education board members who voted against the best possible future for the best students are Kevine Boggess, Mark Sanchez, and Matt Alexander.

They should be recalled or at least defeated in their next election. Since district parents are on the alert and active, there’s a good chance that this will happen.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Good News . . . For Now

Florida, legislature, citizens initiative

For now.

One must always add that proviso — at least with respect to constitutional provisions like term limits and citizen initiative rights, which limit the power of lawmakers and expand that of citizens. For these, incumbents’ hostility never ends.

But for now? The news is good. 

The Florida House of Representatives website reports that HJR 1127 “Died on Second Reading Calendar” in mid-March. The same fate is reported for the companion senate bill.

The measure would have amended the constitution to limit citizen-initiated amendments “to matters relating to procedural subjects or to structure of government or of State Constitution.”

Citizen initiatives would have been prohibited from dealing with policy matters, including legislatively enacted (or citizen-enacted) policy that voters seek to reverse.*

During the battle over the measure, Kara Gross of the ACLU observed that some lawmakers “continue to find new ways to make the already-stringent citizen initiative process even more challenging.”

One legislator who challenged the Republican-sponsored measure was Democratic Representative Andrew Learned.

“Is it really best that the legislature make decisions and not the citizens of Florida on the ballot?” he asked. “If the people of Florida at the ballot aren’t a check on the legislature, I don’t know what is.”

No matter how unpopular such a bill might be with mere constituents, many lawmakers would have had no problem imposing it. As a constitutional amendment, though, such a change must be approved by voters. 

And that proved a bridge too far.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Florida politicians cry crocodile tears over citizen initiatives amending the constitution instead of merely changing a statute. Those same legislators refuse to establish a path for citizens to petition statutory changes onto the ballot.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Pucker Up

term limits, lipstick, pig, Michigan

“Never have so few applied so much lipstick to such a pig.”

That’s what term limits activist Kurt O’Keefe told the Michigan Board of Canvassers last week, as it considered the official title for a citizen initiative that he argues is anything but.

The Detroit attorney points out that the proposed ballot measure — sponsored by a group named Voters for Transparency and Term Limits — actually comes from “current and future politicians” and “current and future lobbyists.”

These insiders, who’ve “never been in favor” of term limits, seek to replace the 6- and 8-year cap now in place in the House and Senate, respectively, with a 12-year overall limit in both houses. At the hearing, proponents argued that the ballot title should declare simply that their measure reduces the current term limits — even though it would double terms in the House and up the Senate cap by 50 percent.

The initiative would also allow former Speakers and previously termed-out legislators to return like the undead to their former capitol haunts. 

“This is a trick,” warned U.S. Term Limits National Field Director Scott Tillman. “We know it is a trick. They know it is a trick. They had to sweeten it up with transparency.”

That’s the lipstick.

Yet, the transparency fix, instead of simply enacting a financial disclosure system, orders the legislature to do so. Of course, the legislature cannot be forced to legislate, so the measure encourages endless lawsuits against the legislature. 

As if to further show just how sincere these politicians are, their “voters” front-group has raked in $5 million from “unknown sources,” according to the Michigan Information & Research Service. 

They are transparent only in their self-serving insincerity.

Oink oink.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Michigan Voters: Alert!

Michigan, elections, term limits, democracy

Michigan voters: Beware of a petition by the group Voters for Transparency and Term Limits, a nontransparent group working deceitfully against term limits.

Currently, Michigan state senators are limited to two four-year terms; state representatives to three two-year terms. The VTTL people want to bloat maximum tenure in a legislative seat to twelve years, which they call a “reduction” because the twelve years would nominally cap total service in both chambers.

A now-familiar gambit. The old, stock propaganda against term limits just doesn’t cut it anymore: arguments about how “term limits give lobbyist ginormous power, and, uh, we already have term limits and they’re called elections” are a nonstarter these days. Term limits are too popular and have been too effective.

So enemies of term limits now pretend that they’re the best friends term limits ever had. Indeed, they wish to strengthen term limits . . . we’re just not supposed to notice that by “reducing” the two-chamber overall limit by two years generally politicians will stay longer in office.

With 110 House seats and only 38 Senators, it is merely mathematics that few politicians successfully switch chambers to serve the current 14 year maximum. But, rest assured, this amendment means virtually every politician will stay in the same legislative seat for 12 years. 

Greg Schmid, author of the definitive commentary on this hoax, predicts that VTTL will pretend to conduct a petition drive for a while, then invite incumbent politicians in the Michigan legislature to refer the measure to the ballot, skipping the initiative’s expense and hard work.

If you see the petition, don’t sign. If the amendment gets to ballot, vote No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts