Politics working against the people
Tonight I’m going to talk about a website that I found through a Facebook (www.facebook.com) group that I belong to. The focus of tonight’s posting is www.freepauljacob.com.
FreePaulJacob.com is a political website which is fitting considering Paul Jacob’s history. Quite frankly, Paul Jacob is an activist. I don’t agree with all of his views but I do believe he has a right to free speech that is often, as an activist, hard to express without fear of retribution. In the 1980’s he resisted draft registration and was put in jail for violation of the Selective Service Act. He served five and a half months. In recent years, Jacob has been active in the Libertarian Party and has been a vocal advocate for legislative term limits. Jacob also founded Citizens in Charge, in 2001. Citizens in Charge is a group focused on the voter initiative process (see Wikipedia: Initiative and referendum). In 2007, Jacob, with two others, was indicted and sent to prison in Oklahoma on charges of conspiracy to intentionally defraud the state of Oklahoma with regard to the use of out-of-state petitioners. (info source: Wikipedia: Paul Jacob)
So this brings us to the website. www.freepauljacob.com is a website set up by a group of Paul’s supporters in order to raise awareness of his situation and foster citizen activism in response to what they believe is an unjust and politically motivated imprisonment. I’ll state my bias now: I agree that Paul Jacob and the other two members of the “Oklahoma 3″ do not deserve to be in prison or face charges of any kind in this matter. The main story here is that Paul and his associates were working in Oklahoma to gather petition signatures in favor of Oklahoma’s version of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TaBOR). Basically, if passed, the initiative would cap state government spending and require a popular vote to allow spending beyond the cap. In response to the petition effort, the state government, big business, and other opponents to the TaBOR initiative used heavy-handed tactics to scare petition gatherers away and prevent citizens from signing petitions. In response to these anti-petition efforts, the Oklahoma 3 examined Oklahoma’s law requiring petition gatherers to be Oklahoma residents. They sought legal precedent in the matter and found that the resident requirement only required that someone have the intention to be a resident of Oklahoma. They hired and moved people to Oklahoma, had them declare residency (which one can do immediately in Oklahoma) and begin their new job of collecting signatures.
I have a unique perspective on this because of my job in the Relocation department of a large company. Looking at their actions form a purely business perspective (without any politics), the petition gathering company hired people to gather signatures with the employment offer contingent upon the new employee’s becoming a resident of the State of Oklahoma. This is what the new employees did and, in doing so, they satisfied Oklahoma’s requirement that the people gathering signatures be residents of Oklahoma. Thus, rather than conspiring to defraud the State of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma 3 were actually conspiring to operate within state law.
The information on the website is distributed mostly as text and uses a format similar to that used by news organizations. There are offshoot groups like the one on Facebook that keep supporters of the Oklahoma 3 updated on new developments. The website is mainly targeted toward people who are interested in politics and government corruption. The site is of interest to Libertarians and people who wish to limit government spending. Most of the visitors to the site are supporters of the cause and visit to learn more about what is happening and how they can help. Other site visitors would be people opposed to the cause who wish to keep abreast of what the supporters are doing and who are looking for quotes to use on their attacks against the Oklahoma 3.
FreePaulJacob.com contains links to many other sites of interest to the supporters of Paul, the other Oklahoma 3, and the political causes Paul was supporting that ultimately led to his imprisonment. I’ll list some of the links below.
Sam Adams Alliance: Common Sense
Forbes Editorial: Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?
