Category: insider corruption

initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

The Man Who Had No Idea

“I have no idea.”

So responded Florida Rep. Jamie Grant (R-Tampa Bay) to a question about how petition circulators on 2018 ballot initiative campaigns were paid.

“Is there evidence that signatures collected by a person . . . paid per hour or paid per signature are more fraudulent?” asked Rep. Tina Scott Polsky (D-Boca Raton), following up.

“If you’re asking specifically on the petition process,” Grant admitted, “I don’t know the answer to that.”

Rep. Grant should know. His 18-page amendment — slapped onto completely unrelated legislation, House Bill 5, in the waning hours of the last day of the legislative session — criminalizes paying petition circulators based on the number of signatures they gather.

Which is precisely what you pay circulators for: gathering as many voter signatures as possible. Grant claims his ban will prevent fraud — without evidence there has been any fraud.

Instead, a tap-dancing Grant blurted out that Wells Fargo, the bank, is “a fantastic example” that “broken commission structures will lead to bad actions.” But his bill doesn’t address banking fraud.

Not ridiculous enough? He went further, comparing Floridians enacting a constitutional amendment to the Russian government meddling in our elections.

What does a foreign government’s black-ops scheme have in common with the constitutional ballot initiative process whereby millions of Florida voters sign petitions and then must approve amendments by a supermajority vote of at least 60 percent?

Nothing.

Which is the sum of Grant’s knowledge.

Well, there is one thing Rep. Grant testified to with certainty: His legislation will hike the cost of initiative campaigns, making it even more difficult for citizens to check politicians . . . like Grant.

Don’t sign it, Gov. DeSantis, veto.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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.

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Tags Joshua Gallion, North Dakota, State Auditor, term limits

ballot access insider corruption local leaders

Clown Car of Felonies

Michael Madigan, Speaker, House, Illinois, corruption, machine

“It’s overkill of epic proportions,” John Kass writes in the Chicago Tribune, “like using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat, or firing off a nuclear weapon to kill a sparrow.”

In three columns, Kass tells the story of David Krupa, a 19-year-old DePaul University student, who gathered over 1,700 voter signatures on petitions to gain a spot on the ballot for alderman of Chicago’s notorious 13th Ward.

Why notorious? It’s Boss Madigan’s home.

Yes, the “Land of Lincoln,” home to nearly 13 million people, is ruled by one man, Michael J. Madigan, Speaker of the Illinois House, “the longest-serving leader of any state or federal legislative body in the history of the United States.”

And 13th Ward Alderman Marty Quinn, the incumbent, is Madigan’s guy.

Quickly, a lawsuit was filed challenging Krupa’s petitions and, as Kass explains, “A crew of mysterious political workers — perhaps they were Buddhist monks, or the gentle sun people known as the Eloi, or maybe Madigan precinct captains — filed 2,796 petitions of revocation of signature.”

While almost three thousand people executed affidavits stating that they wanted their signatures removed from Krupa’s petition, only 187 actually signed his petition.

Since the revocations require swearing to a legal document, under penalty of perjury, and perjury is a felony, more than 2,500 people — and their knowing helpers — appear to have committed what Krupa’s attorney calls a “clown car of felonies.”

Then — voilà! — the legal challenge evaporated. Young Krupa won’t be squashed; there will be a challenger on the 13th Ward ballot for the first time in decades.

Is that enough? No.

Election process corruption and the possible suborning of thousands of felonies must be investigated.

No quarter for boss rule.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags corruption, House, Illinois, Michael Madigan, speaker

insider corruption tax policy

There You Go Again, IRS

IRS, free speech, taxes, censorship, corruption, surveillance

The old keywords were “Constitution,” “Patriot” and “Tea Party.”

The new ones? “Marijuana,” “oxycodone,” and “legalization.”

Paul Caron, the TaxProf blogger, calls attention to another IRS scandal — again about denying tax-exempt status to organizations because of their political views. He had barely finished blogging about the scandal that came to light in 2013 when a new one burst into view.

You almost certainly remember the older scandal, in which the Internal Revenue Service had been caught intrusively scrutinizing and delaying the applications of conservative non-profits picked on because of their conservatism.

To cover that mess, Professor Caron published a blog series called “The IRS Scandal, Day __.” He added a post daily.

Every day.

For years.

The last installment, Day 1921, published on August 14, 2018, reported a settlement: meager taxpayer-funded payouts to over a hundred victimized organizations. The IRS never admitted wrongdoing. No one was ever punished. According to the Washington Times, the agency said that it had “made changes so that political targeting can’t occur in the future.”

These changes don’t seem to include prohibiting political targeting by the IRS, however.

Now we have another case.

Caron points us to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by David Rivkin and Randal Meyer, lawyers, who have discovered a dirty little secret in Revenue Procedure 2018-5. One provision authorizes IRS to withhold tax-exempt status from applicants seeking to improve “business conditions . . . relating to an activity involving controlled substances,” including marijuana and oxycodone. Advocating legalization of marijuana would count as trying to improve such conditions.

Apparently, the IRS thinks its mandate entails enforcing the status quo by stifling dissent — instead of just doing its congressionally mandated (if all-in-all irksome) job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags censorship, corruption, free speech, IRS, surveillance, tax policy

initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Lie, Cheat AND Steal

Memphis, City Council, term limits, lie, cheat, steal

Sometimes lying just isn’t enough. But dishonest politicians have additional weapons at their disposal. There’s cheating. And stealing, too.

Meet the Memphis City Council.

Apparently fearful that their official fibbery through deceptive ballot wording on three council-referred measures won’t be enough to successfully hoodwink a majority of voters, the council has decided to ramp the chicanery up a notch.

“I think it’s pretty clear that the ordinances were intentionally written by the city council and its attorney to confuse voters,” writes Bruce VanWyngarden, editor of The Memphis Flyer. “They are attempting to extend term limits from two terms to three terms, but they don’t have the courage to ask for it honestly.”

That’s the lying. And here’s where stealing jumps ahead of cheating.

Last week, the city council voted 5-3 to snatch upwards of $40,000 in city money and spend it, as the Memphis NBC affiliate reports, “in support of extending term limits, suspending instant runoff voting, and repealing instant runoff voting.”

Council Chairman Berlin Boyd says the goal “is merely educating the constituents and letting them know our position on these referendum items.” But it is the constituents’ money, city tax dollars, not a political slush fund for the Council.

Furthermore, the people’s money should never be spent for or against a question on the ballot. That’s . . . cheating.

“They are trying to undo the will of the voters,” argues Steve Mulroy, a law professor and instant runoff activist, by “misappropriating public funds” for “a propaganda campaign.”

Precisely.

To keep things in perspective, however, let’s acknowledge that the Memphis City Council has not dismembered anyone with a bonesaw.

Yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags cheat, City Council, lie, Memphis, steal, term limits

crime and punishment general freedom insider corruption

The Ayatollah for Governor?

Post author By Redactor
Post date October 29, 2018
1 Comment on The Ayatollah for Governor?

Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is running for governor.

Again.

You may recall, as I certainly do, that Mr. Edmondson prosecuted — more like persecuted — me and two others involved in a 2005 petition drive. He charged us with “conspiracy to defraud the state,” a felony carrying a 10-year prison term.

At our arraignment and processing, the three of us were shackled together with handcuffs and leg-irons and paraded before TV cameras.

“Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?” was how a Forbes magazine editorial greeted the spectacle. The conservative Wall Street Journal connected the Sooner State to the kind of repression practiced in Pakistan, while liberal consumer advocate Ralph Nader also condemned the prosecution. New Jersey Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine noted that Russia’s Vladimir Putin “could learn a thing or two from the Oklahoma boys.”

We became the Oklahoma 3. The AG earned the label “Ayatollah Edmondson.”

Loudly expressing our innocence, we waited for our day in court.

It was a long wait.

Edmondson held the indictment over our heads for a year and a half, publicly attacking us and calling us criminals. But he never permitted us our day in court. He went to great lengths to avoid completing a preliminary hearing, which would have allowed a judge to determine if enough evidence existed to hold a trial.

Finally, in 2009, as he prepared to launch his previous unsuccessful run for governor, he dropped all the charges.

When someone abuses power so recklessly, that someone shouldn’t be given more power.

Today, career politician Drew Edmondson tells voters he will “Put Oklahomans First.” He can’t even come up with his own slogan.

Ayatollah Edmondson: Dangerous. And unoriginal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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