Paul Jacob
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My car died this week. It needs a new motor. Unfortunately, that costs more than the car is worth. But I don't really even care.

You see, as this week's bad news goes, that's nothing. I'm much more focused on my felony indictment in Oklahoma.

On the one hand, my car misses pretty badly and could cook an omelette on the hood.



Susan is a mother and grandmother who lives in Michigan. She's also the president of a petition management firm called National Voter Outreach. She started on the streets as a petitioner many years ago, learned the business and is now at the top.

Seeing this sweet lady (and I mean "lady") in leg-irons as we were being processed is something I'll long remember — whenever I think I've had enough, whenever I doubt that my extra effort is needed or wonder if freedom can be guarded without personal sacrifice.




Soon the petition drive's prospects looked bleak. The harassment made it very difficult to retain petition circulators. The only avenue to complete the drive successfully would be to find additional manpower, especially experienced petitioners.



A number of petitioners moved to Oklahoma, declared residency, and proceeded to gather signatures on the various petitions. Ultimately, both the spending cap and the property rights measure garnered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Then, the various forces of big government that had worked so hard to block the vote, joined by a who's who of corporate CEOs and the heads of energy companies and banks (can you say "daddy welfare"?), challenged the petition. And the Oklahoma Supreme Court came to their aid, providing a much different standard for residency than in the past. The judges now equated residency with a "permanent home."

How permanent was "permanent"? One petition circulator, who moved to Oklahoma in September of 2005 and was still living there in July of the following year, was ruled not to be a resident.




While I keep pinching myself to wake up from this nightmare, you might be wondering what on earth is going on?

You see, stopping the people from voting to cap spending wasn't enough. The people who run the state of Oklahoma want to make certain that upstart reformers like Rick Carpenter don't dare attempt any future initiatives, and that professional petition managers like Susan Johnson or "outside agitators" like me quickly think better of providing any assistance to such citizen-initiated efforts.


Once upon a time you could participate in politics without a battery of attorneys. Once upon a time you could lose an election without fear that one's opponents would use the power of their office to imprison you. No more.

Well, it is definitely scary. Personally, it's not fun to think of what impact this legal truncheon to the head could have on my wife, kids, grandchild. But we'll not allow our rights to be bullied away. Nor will we stand idly by while the one process capable of reining in corrupt politics — citizen initiative and referendum — is threatened into non-existence.


Maybe it's time for all Americans — conservative, liberal, populist, libertarian — to "conspire" together to take back our political system from the gutter.

Before it's too late.

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Paul Jacob
