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TO A FRIEND
The People vs.
Their Elected Officials
Thursday, November 14, 2002
By Gordon Bishop
When a middle-aged professional wrestler is elected the Governor of Wisconsin, you know America's traditional two-party system is in trouble. Instead of Democrats and Republicans, the United States of America now has what many voters believe to be is a one-party system — the Republicrats. A Republicrat is neither a Republican nor a Democrat but a blurry blend of both.
What is a "liberal" Republican?
What is a "conservative" Democrat?
Can a politician be both?
If so, then you don’t have a twoparty system with an identifiable ideology. What you have is one vague gray area with lots of words, mostly rhetoric, that have no meaning (much like the former leader of the Democrat Party who defines words differently from their real definitions in Webster or Oxford dictionaries).
Here in Monmouth County and New Jersey, our elected state officials may soon be getting a generous pay-raise, compliments of you and me, the working taxpayer.
Before that happens, we can demand that our elected state officials give us, their employers, something in return for a salary hike — with platinum benefits!
And what can that "something" be? Something we’ve been asking for since 1972, but without any success. The state legislators keep stalling and stalling and ignoring the wishes of those who elect them to office.
What the voters want is what this once great Republic is all about: Initiative and Referendum.
That is, the opportunity to put the voters’ issues on a public referendum or ballot, and ask voters to vote on a particular issue, be it education, the economy or the environment.
We’re still waiting for that after more than 25 years.
The New Jersey State Legislature does not want working taxpayers to tell them what they think is important. Hey, that’s why we elected them, right? To serve us, right?
Wrong.
To tell us what they think we need, we are constantly reminded.
So here we are into the new Millennium and New Jersey voters still don’t have Initiative and Referendum, If we lived in 28 states that have I&R, we’d have a collective voice in our government. Our voice has been our elected officials. Are you satisfied with their political track record in New Jersey?
Afterall, we only have the nation’s highest properly taxes, highest auto insurance, one of the highest education costs, the second highest cost of doing business, and the second worst return on taxes we pay the federal government.
But we can do something about all of the above. We can sign referendum petitions and put the people's priorities on the next election ballot. Politicians promise, and few, very few, deliver.
Now it's time for the politicians to deliver. If they want a raise for their "part-time" job, make them give us Initiative & Referendum. No I&R, no raise.
In the infamous words of billionaire Ross Perot, "We are the owners of the America. The politicians and bureaucrats are our employees. They work for us, not the other way around."
My old ally in the political reform movement, former Congressman and State Legislator Dick Zimmer of North Jersey launched the I&R campaign in the early 1970s. Zimmer a solid Republican, couldn't convince his legislative colleagues to let the people speak for themselves, rather than the politicians exclusively.
It’s time the people be heard. We are the employers. We elect our officials as our "public servants. Now, dear employees, go and work for us on this on simple matter. Just say Yes!” (And you'll get your raise, we promise you.)
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