Halloween Edition: Reflections on the other Referendum Votes
The importance of language in the law seems underrated these days,
The internet is changing in big ways these days.
Financialization, where fees are charged every which way, particularly by banks, for every sort of transaction, extracts wealth from the general populous without providing a viable service or product. In this day of instant transactions, on the rise is the three-day wait to transfer your own funds from one bank to another, often demarcated by the amount of funds one has in one’s account, and penalizing the lower sector of the economy. Begging the question, what happens to your funds while they are in limbo?
Access to information and interaction is increasingly blocked. A revealing example of this is that there is an app on Paypal that says “Tell Us How We Are Doing?” but it is blocked! Looks like Paypal doesn’t want to hear about it!
That is why the rise of the private newsletter matters more than ever and who knows what techniques are implemented against independent voices even in this industry?
Credit goes to an article by Bill Pearson in the Boothbay Register titled Referendum questions dominate November ballot.
Sharing comments to the article is blocked.
So, once again I am sharing my comments in my newsletter:
Comment to Referendum questions dominate November ballot.
This is a good article, very informative.
Question 1, barring "some quasi-governmental entities and all consumer-owned electric utilities from taking on over $1 billion in debt unless they get statewide voter approval?", sounds like a good idea barring the word "some" which isn't even defined. If there are exceptions, those exceptions should be clearly defined, otherwise, the government is carving itself and its private partners out of the requirement- which in this case, by qualifying a "consumer-owned public utility" as a "quasi-governmental entity" classified under "some", the law does not necessarily apply to the consumer-owned entity- so what is the point?
It makes sense to require state-wide approval over a resource that affects so many, but I am not buying the implied dichotomy between "for-profit" and "consumer-owned". It should say "privately owned and "state-owned". If it were truly consumer-owned, with no state government, that would still be privately owned. A corporation chartered by a Special Act of Legislation, as opposed to general law, clearly involves the state.
The Maine Constitution, Article IV Part Third states:
Section 13. Special legislation. The Legislature shall, from time to time, provide, as far as practicable, by general laws, for all matters usually appertaining to special or private legislation.
Section 14. Corporations, formed under general laws. Corporations shall be formed under general laws, and shall not be created by special Acts of the Legislature, except for municipal purposes, and in cases where the objects of the corporation cannot otherwise be attained; and, however formed, they shall forever be subject to the general laws of the State.
What about "consumer-owned" equates with either for-profit or non-profit? A privately owned corporation can be either. Since it is not state business to run utility companies, I expect the state will contract operations out to private management and add on its ownership fee. Or will it really be a private company, consumer-owned, run as a non-profit organization, perhaps with a for-profit subsidiary, which is so common today, with the for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit organization in charge of actually running the company?
I would support Question 2, if not for its ill-fated timing with the attempt to take over private companies, drawing attention to the fact that If the state is going to try to take over private companies, then the private company should have the right to advertise against an act that attempts to take their property. It makes no difference whether the company is foreign or domestic. If the state attempts to take over a company that has a lot of money to advertise, expect it also to have a lot of money to challenge the constitutionality of the state's action in court, or is the state going to ban that as well? This law is a Banana Republic law.
All in on Question 4 and Question 5.
Question 6 is presented in a very confusing way. The ballot question is "“Do you favor amending the Maine Constitution to remove a provision requiring that all of the provisions of the Constitution be included in the official printed copies prepared by the Secretary of State" My answer to that is NO! That falls under the category of revised history and we should never approve such a revision when it comes to a Constitution. I do not understand why "A “yes” vote on Question 6 would cancel the 1876 amendment, and restore the language of original Sections 1, 2, and 5 of Article X to printed Constitution copies. The first description makes no mention of the sections highlighted in the second question. Doesn't "all" mean "all"? Also, there have been many amendments, merely recording the history of amendments should not mean canceling an amendment without going through a constitutional process, though I can understand why some might fear that in this day and age.
Question 7 is very dangerous and gives control over our state to owners of short-term rentals, distant equity investors, and foreign entities. The article says it would align “the Maine Constitution with a decision by the First Court of Appeals :
NOTE added later: I saw the question on the Secretary of State website, that said this”
QUESTION 7: Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to remove a provision requiring a circulator of a citizen's initiative or people's veto petition to be a resident of Maine and a registered voter in Maine, requirements that have been ruled unconstitutional in federal court?
The most important word I missed in misinterpreting what is said in both representations of the question is “circulator”, which means it applies to the people seeking the signatures, and not those signing the petition.
The second point I missed is that there is mention of the federal court ruling in the article. This is because the article provides a link to a general description of the Federal Court rather than a link to the court ruling, which is mentioned by name but without linking to it.
Question 7 would remove a residency and registered voter requirement in circulating a citizen’s initiative or people’s veto. This amendment would align the Maine Constitution with a decision by the First Court of Appeals in the We the People PAC, et al. versus Bellows which affirmed a decision by a U.S. District Court requiring a circulator for written petition in Maine to be a resident violates the First Amendment. article in Boothbay Register.
The question is asking should we change the definition of "circulator" in the Maine Constitution to comply with the ruling of the federal court. It is only a first circuit court ruling but Maine is being asked to change its Constitution because of it. If the people of Maine reject this, it will likely be appealed in higher courts. I think our Constitution deserves more and will be voting NO. I will discuss this further in my next post. Meanwhile, The remainder of this post was written before I realized my mistake, but I think it applies as well to allowing circulators of petitions that either initate or veto our state laws being that I see no where in the Constitution where the authorship of the petitions is discussed and so the definition of “circulator” is all we have to protect us from national and foreign interference in our state laws.
End of Note.
The First Court of Appeals is a Federal Court. There is nothing leadership likes more these days than aligning our laws with higher levels of central management as in the boards that repealed and replaced our school charter and “aligned it with state law” removing local governance of our schools. Now could they please explain to us how Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor votes on the school will be tallied by citing state law, which now governs our local school system? Why is no one doing this?
The Maine Constitution is based on the US Constitution and if there is anything out of alignment with the Maine Constitution and the US Constitution I think we would have heard about it by now, but this law appears to be placing the Maine Constitution under the jurisdiction of the Federal Court:
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is a federal appellate court with appellate jurisdiction. It hears appeals from all of the circuit courts within its jurisdiction and its rulings may be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Ballotopedia
I do not understand why this is needed. When state law and federal law conflict, federal law displaces or preempts, state law, due to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. U.S. Const. art. VI., § 2. (legal Information Institute) So what is the purpose of this question? To disempower state (local) governance? That seems to be trending these days.
The term ”align with (state or federal law)” is a new ready-to-use phase that is gaining in legislative popularity these days, threatening to compete with “is an essential government function” used to package all sorts of unconstitutional acts, particularly the chartering of corporations by special acts of legislation.
I'd say yes on Question 8, as in a dystopian world defining someone as mentally ill can be used against anyone for any reason. I can think of a few prominent people to whom I would apply this label.