Our meaner nannies

The Legislature may be in the process of referring to you at the general election ballot of 2018 a proposed constitutional amendment to make it harder thereafter to amend the state Constitution.

By this proposal, the Legislature could subsequently refer an amendment for consideration only by a two-thirds vote of each chamber, rather than a simple majority. Then that amendment—as well as citizen-initiated proposals—could be passed only by 60 percent of the popular vote, rather than a simple majority, at the ensuing general election.

Petition initiatives for proposed amendments would be required to gather more signatures and concentrate their solicitations in 25 counties instead of 15.

It would be a glorious advancement, at least in the minds of true conservatives, of which there are few, who believe we are laden with plenty of laws already and don’t need half the lawmaking we’re bombarded with.

Now if only our legislators would impose rules on themselves by which all these bills they file in these biennial orgies of banality would be subjected first to debate about the necessity of them—about the supposedly pressing problem they supposedly would address—and then to three-fifths or two-thirds votes of relevant committees even to qualify for formal introduction and active consideration for passage.

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Did Jason Rapert’s silly, spiteful bill to take the Clinton name off Little Rock’s airport confront a pressing need with a viable solution, or did it never warrant taking up our time further with actual introduction? Does Charlie Collins’ bill to declare that colleges and universities may not decide for themselves whether to permit guns on campus meet a pressing need with a viable solution, or should a minority have been able to keep Charlie from delivering the state wholesale to the National Rifle Association?

These legislators say they want anti-government conservatism. But they haven’t been acting like it.

They have their own nanny states. Their nannies are simply meaner.

Our state Constitution, meantime, is a jumbled mess of minutiae and self-service, made that way by 98 popularly voted amendments— ninetyeight— either referred by lobbyist-run legislators or initiated all too easily by people with petitions.

Then these matters of self-professed constitutional law get voted on by people confronting their legalese for the first time in the voting booth, and saying, “Sounds good to me. I’d like me a lottery.” Or, “Sweet. I’d like me some marijuana.”

It would be even worse in Arkansas if, over the years, the state Supreme Court hadn’t contrived reasons to throw amendments off the ballot. Such was the case last year with a proposal from a couple of big-spending old boys in Missouri to write their LLCs into our state Constitution guaranteeing them and their successors casino-gambling monopolies in Arkansas.

Anybody with enough money can buy enough signatures through canvasser remuneration to get just about anything on the ballot.

Some say it’s a plain matter of virtuous democracy that the people by a simple majority ought to be able to make laws. Really? We don’t let the people pick the president, for heaven’s sake.

The founding fathers whom we all profess by mindless cliché to adore … they didn’t want the people making laws. They made amending the U.S. Constitution so arduous that it gets done almost never, thank goodness.

There are but 27 amendments in nearly 250 years to the U.S. Constitution. We haven’t had an amendment since 1992. The state Constitution has 98 besmirchments over not quite 150 years, since its ratification in 1874.

The hard-to-amend U.S. Constitution—requiring a two-thirds vote of Congress for a referral and 38 state legislature ratifications for enactment—guarantees equal protection for everyone under the law. The easy-to-amend state Constitution embeds lower tax rates for owners of farm, timber and utility property.

Let me run that by you again: The hard-to-amend U.S. Constitution grants equity. The easy-to-amend state Constitution grants inequity. See the difference?

Constitutional law shouldn’t be made perfunctorily three or four or five times every two years just for the heck of it, or on whims, or to relieve a special interest of its latest inconvenience.

Speaking of that, my pals on the left say I’ve been had on this issue by big business, which, they say, intends to pass its tort-reform amendment in November 2018 by a simple majority while it also passes this proposal to make it harder to get that amendment undone.

But I am concerned more about the general principle than a specific complication.

The way to beat tort reform is to stand up for valuing the lives of grandmas in nursing homes, children and stay-at-home parents—people who don’t have salaries qualifying them for economic damages.

Anyway, it works both ways. The medical-marijuana amendment would become harder to repeal as well.