As if there wasn’t enough happening today…
• Jonathan Singer has a good interview with Gavin Newsom. In general, Newsom is a very confident, positive guy, but he lets his slip show here:
But the caveat is that unless we have the structural changes, I don’t care who your personality is, it’s going to be very difficult to navigate out of this. So that’s the big difference between Washington, DC and Sacramento. We’re going to have to, as well, at the same time address the structural questions, not just promote a different personality as Governor.
Not personality but process, as we said here back in February.
• Jerrol LeBaron, a guy from Tujunga, put into circulation The Honor In Politics Act, a ballot initiative requiring lawmakers, under penalty of perjury, to swear in an affadavit that they had read a bill before voting for it. If they want to vote against it, all bets are off, I guess.
This initiative ought to be the ballot statement for the initiative ending all initiatives.
• Good to see that some things never change: Dana Rohrabacher is still as crazy as can be. Ah, the stability of instability.
• We’re up to 53% of Southern California home sales coming from foreclosures. So again, sales are up, but prices are way down. And the foreclosures aren’t stopping, so property values continue to plummet with every sale.
• This is either a symbol of voter anger, or a reminder of the importance of teachers to the community, or a lashing out against school cuts, or just a fake controversy pushed by residents who wanted to get into political office, or something, but voters fired the entire school board in Groveland, a town in Tuolumne County, after the board fired a popular math teacher. Kind of a wild story, give it a read.
• And finally, thanks to John Cole for the shout-out to Calitics, and in particular Dave. Welcome Balloon Juice readers! Send us your pet pictures!
I apologize. I didn’t vote for him, we aren’t all like him. Really!
And how is Mr. LeBaron going to enforce this measure? Pop quiz? How about just electing good legislators that you trust?
Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about the possibility of holding a constitutional convention, but I haven’t heard a lot about just how this would happen, who would attend and make the decisions, etc.
To me, the 2/3 rules are the best target. We now may have majorities that would vote to eliminate these rules if we were able to get them on a ballot. Of course, it looks like it would take until Nov. 2010 which is a long time for the Republicans and the media to spin away our majority. I’m a little worried that the call for a constitutional convention is likely to suck all the air out of the room for any attack on the 2/3 rules.
Just how difficult is a constitutional convention to pull off? Further, how do we know what we would end up with. I have heard Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce calling for a constitutional convention, this does not fill me with confidence that the resultant constitution would be “better” then what we have now. I’m looking for someone who had the knowledge on this, perhaps Robert Cruickshank, to tell me just how this would go down and who would be making the decisions.