term limits

Republicans took over both chambers of the Arkansas Legislature, last November, and now have control for the first time since Reconstruction — that’s the century before the century before this century.

Not long after their installation ceremony, the Republican majority — apparently eager to make new reforms — introduced Senate Bill 821, creating a new state program to regulate people circulating initiative petitions. Arkansas activists, the Advance Arkansas Institute and Citizens in Charge were effective in getting legislators to dramatically pare back and remove several harmful and unconstitutional provisions of SB 821, but the legislation designed “to make the referendum process prohibitively difficult in Arkansas,” still passed.

Even more underhanded was passage of House Joint Resolution 1009, “The Arkansas Elected Officials Ethics, Transparency and Financial Reform Act of 2014.” It’s a doozy:

• With claims of preventing legislators from giving themselves a pay raise, the measure actually removes the current constitutional requirement that voters approve any pay increase and creates a commission of citizens (appointed by legislators and other politicians) to give those same politicians a pay raise.
• While claiming to enact a gift ban and other ethics reforms, the measure actually provides, Arkansas Times’ Max Brantley wrote, “constitutional protection extended to special interest banquets and travel junkets for legislators.”
• Completely unannounced by the title, the measure also changes the state’s term limits by allowing legislators to hang around for 16 years in the House or the Senate.

Still, I look on the bright side. The people of Arkansas, having meet their new boss, will petition and vote and sue to protect their rights.

Plus, yesterday, the legislature adjourned. It’s safe again in Arkansas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Americans eager to weaken various limits on political power here at home should pay closer attention to news from abroad.

Around the globe, killing presidential term limits is high on the to-do list of aspiring presidents-for-life.

Autocrats also dislike the right of citizen initiative. Even when they abstain from trying to kill initiative rights altogether, they often seek outrageous restrictions on them, or even stoop to harassing petitioners and voters.

One such enemy of the people was Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, now dead. Chávez was an equal-opportunity attacker of citizen rights. He expropriated businesses, bullied media, once even ordered soldiers to fire on anti-Chávez protesters (they refused). He also succeeded in eliminating presidential term limits.

In 2003, his government arranged for the public release of the names of Venezuelans who had signed a petition to recall Chávez. The names were stolen from the office charged with overseeing the petition drive and leaked to a pro-Chávez legislator, who then published them on his website. Many signers lost jobs, loans, and other opportunities controlled by the state.

American foes of term limits, initiative rights, and other constraints on concentrated power may think there’s no comparison. But every chipping away at protections against tyranny is dangerous.

While it is true that no single limit on power can substitute for all the cultural values and ideas that underlie our rights as free citizens, it is also the case that institutions and culture reinforce each other. The foundation of a building has more than one cornerstone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Critics of term limits on elected officials sometimes say: “You wouldn’t term-limit a neurosurgeon/fireman/[other indispensable professional] just because he’s experienced, wouldja?”

No. But I am capable of distinguishing between economic power and political power — between voluntary trade and policies imposed by force. It’s all about “opting out”: we are free to decline the iPad, but not Obamacare.

A study reported in Harvard Business Review suggests that CEOs who start out as dynamic entrepreneurs, responsive to market conditions, often grow more conservative over time. Commentators debate whether such waning of entrepreneurial vitality is inevitable. Sure, the Steve-Jobs-like exceptions loom large. Nevertheless, we can readily imagine a CEO stuck in the strategies of yesteryear.

My point, though, is that customers, shareholders and/or other company officers working within a market context can fix the situation when evidence piles up that the formerly right guy for the job is now the wrong one. Every day we hear of failed CEOs being ousted, failed companies closing their doors.

Au contraire when it comes to political incumbents. They often snag re-election despite widespread and intense discontent with their performance. (See the 2012 presidential and congressional election.)

I don’t worry when good persons must leave an elective office before doing all the good they can there. They can do good elsewhere too. I worry when politicians become entrenched in a seat of power for decades, becoming more and more inured to the consequences of their actions — and more and more brazen about assailing our wallets and freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Her name is Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and she’s Argentina’s president. She is apparently chafing under the country’s presidential term limits.

The last time I wrote about Mrs. Kirchner, five years ago, I had some advice: “Don’t cheer for Cristina, Argentina.” Thankfully, the Argentines aren’t cheering. In Beunos Aires, “Throngs of people banged pots and pans Thursday, as they protested government policies in Argentina,” relates a CNN report:

The massive march was the latest in a series of “cacerolazos,” protests named for the cooking pots participants hit to draw attention to problems they say are growing in the South American nation, including crime rates, inflation and political corruption.

Many demonstrators said a key issue drove them to the streets: the possibility that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner could push through changes to the country’s constitution and run for re-election.

Term limits. The people want them, and if the signs at the protest rallies are any indication, Argentines are against “Corrupcion,” oppose Kirchner’s “Reelección,” and are for “Libertad.”

And here in the putative Land of Liberty, a Miami, Florida, neighborhood known as Little Buenos Aires heard pots and pans clanging, too, as marchers expressed sympathy with friends and relatives in the Southern Hemisphere: “We are not afraid” and “We don’t want a communist Argentina.”

The full story of the protests, which have been going on since June, echo some of the issues and criticisms that were pushed for and charged against both Tea Party and Occupier protests in past years here in America. There’s talk of secret partisanship, even “astro-turf.”

But fear of dynastic rule isn’t confined to any party, or require any special organization.

For Argentines, I wish only the best: “Libertad.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

P.S. I will be in Buenos Aires later today — this evening, actually — and if I find anything to modify or amplify this story, you can be sure I’ll do so at thisiscommonsense.com.

There they go again!

You’d think after Nebraskans voted three separate times for eight-year legislative term limits that the state’s legislators would finally accept the vote of the people they claim to serve.

But you’d be wrong.

The limits passed in ’92 and ’94 were struck down in court rulings that re-wrote the state’s initiative petition requirements. Voters responded to that judicial tyranny by booting out a supreme court justice in a retention election for the very first time in state history. A second justice resigned the day after that 1996 spanking by voters.

In 2000, citizens gathered enough signatures to put the limits back on the ballot and again they passed.

But that hasn’t stopped State Sen. Tom Carlson and his fellow legislators from placing Amendment 3 on tomorrow’s ballot. If passed, Amendment 3 would allow Carlson & Co. to stay in office 50 percent longer.

Strange, we limit the president to eight years; George Washington stepped down after two four-year terms to set that example. But somehow eight years isn’t enough time for a state senator.

In a last minute radio ad campaign by a purposely mis-named Nebraskans to Preserve Term Limits, Sen. Carlson says that he and his gang “believe in term limits.” But seconds later Carlson mentions “coaches, teachers, doctors” and suggests, “It is unlikely we would consider limiting their service to eight years.”

Well, he’s right that we don’t limit brain surgeons to eight years. But then again, being a legislator isn’t brain surgery.

As Nebraska voters will remind members of the state’s Unicameral Legislature tomorrow — for a fourth time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.