I am frankly shocked by the underhanded tactics of the Arkansas State Legislators who deceptively imbedded increased term limits in a state amendment entitled “Arkansas Elected Officials Ethics, Transparency, and Financial Reform Amendment of 2014.”

If passed, unbeknownst to most voters, this “ethics reform” amendment will:

  1. Lengthen House term limits from 6 years to 16 years
  2. Lengthen Senate term limits from 8 years to 16 years

According to Philip Blumel (picture on right), President of U.S. Term Limits, in his article, Scandal:  Arkansas Legislators Hide Longer Term Limits in “Ethics” Amendment:

“The amendment summary also claims to be ‘establishing term limits,’ an obvious trick intended to fool voters who don’t know that term limits were established in Arkansas with 60 percent of the vote in 1992, and defended changing them with 70 percent in 2004.”

Thankfully, this is getting some press coverage by some news outlets in Arkansas.  The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette named this amendment the “Outrage of the Year.”

Other coverage includes:

 “This proposition is a prime nominee for the next Shame of Arkansas.”  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Editorial, 10/27/13

“Arkansans are not interested in continuing ‘plantation politics’ or ‘tricks by politicians’ be they republicans or democrats.”  Bill Smith, ARRA News Service

Citizens for Self-Governance has four pillars of self-governance.  Without any one of those four pillars, self-governance in this country will not grow and will, in fact, collapse.  They are all equally important but my personal favorite is Incumbant Accountability.  We define Incumbent Accountability as “Out with top-down government, in with self-governance.”

In order to have Incumbent Accountability, we must:

  • Enable citizens to replace legislators at all levels of government when their actions diverge from the will of the people.
  • Educate citizens on the importance of primary elections.
  • Reduce the influence of big corporations and union bosses.
  • Expose officials who abuse their power for their own political or personal gain.

This move in Arkansas demands we expose their actions. Let’s get this word out about this abuse of power and voter deception in Arkansas to make sure other state legislatures don’t use the same tactics.

 

 

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.