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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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13 September 2006 - 7:24 pm
I don't have a horse in this race, but I became a little angry when I read this article about why an eminent domain issue wasn't going to be on the November ballot. I'm sure there are logical reasons why petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures are required to be turned in in a specific format, but refusing to accept the petition is a victory for legalistic red-tape over citizen initiative. And that's too bad.
The idea behind ballot initiatives is to return control of our government to the people. It's an empowerment initiative born in the 1970s when the people had lost faith in the leaders who were leading their states and their country. In a time when the leaders of our country are trying every trick in the book to errode the rights of the people, it is sad to hear the voices of 220,000 Missourians silenced.
There is nothing new and unique about this particular incident. From the day more than 200 years ago when "We the People" granted powers to our government, our government has struggled to take more. We ask our government to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty." In exchange, we grant away rights that, in the absence of government, would naturally be ours. It is troubling, however, to find my government limiting my right to offer input on how and why it acts when carrying out its obligations.
Posted by on 13 September 2006 at 7:05 PM
Comments
David I could not agree more. I think the use of eminent domain in this area has been terrible: calling decent neighborhoods "blighted" just so a shopping mall can be built. It's a shame that a technicality threw out the petitions. But I'm also disappointed in the group that went to all that trouble, except the trouble to number their pages correctly. I wonder what's really at the bottom of that. Did they not know they needed to do so? Has Secretary Carnihan let other measures on when pages have been numbered incorrectly? Very strange.
Posted by rkc on 16 September 2006 - 7:52 AM