In a state ruled by direct democracy in many ways, George Skelton’s column might be something close to seditious speech:
All that said, “check-ins” with the voters are what regular elections are about. The way our republican system of democracy was set up by the framers of both the U.S. and California constitutions, the people elect representatives to make decisions about spending and taxes.
You didn’t see either the Clinton tax increases or the Bush tax cuts being put to votes of the American people. That occurred at the next elections, when the people voted whether to rehire their representatives.
Only in screwy California, where we have an out-of-control initiative system and a bloated Constitution that Sacramento often stumbles over when it does try to make decisions, do voters perpetually get handed such policy-making power. (LA Times)
Here’s the situation we face. We have a state of 37 million voters. At most 10 million of them turn out to vote on any regular basis, or less than a third. Now care to guess how many of these people spent more than 5 minutes researching the issues they are going to vote on?
This is why we moved away from an Athenian-style direct democracy to a representative democracy. Our American founding fathers understood that not every voter had the capacity to take everything into context to make the decisions we expect of our legislators. You could argue that the information age has brought the knowledge necessary closer to the people, but in the end, uninformed voters are making decisions without all of the facts.
Even in a state of 1 million people the system would be impractical, here it’s downright unworkable. Skelton takes Brown to task for boxing himself into the corner, but really, it was something of an electoral practicality. He may have won without it, but it sure made it a lot easier. But, here we are, in a position where Brown is now forced to bring this to the voters instead of just doing his job and making the decisions for the state with the Legislature.
Of course, Skelton goes on to throughly lambaste the Republican caucus for being pretty much worthless and waste of taxpayer money. (It’s true!) But the real point here, is that while this is where we are headed in the short term, it is ultimately unsustainable to continue to run of the world’s largest economies by plebiscite.
…is that what people want is higher takes on the wealthiest & corporations. of course that isnt on the ballot this time-unlike in June, 2004 (mental health svcs tax) on millionaires. of course thats very simple-george skelton is a rie, republican in exile. if the gop wasnt loaded with christianists, neocons/warmongers & corporatists or shall is say so-called “moderates” think arnold, the 2 maine senators etc.
have a tax on higher corporate profits taxes, higher income taxes (reagan & wilson did thix), estate taxes, severance taxes (oil) & capital stock taxes (net worth of corporations incorporates in CA). REAL progressives would propose this. Jerry Brown & alot of these so-called “progressives” wonts. but then again these progressive are just the “RIEs” i spoke of earlier & others who r socially tolerant but dont & r not liberals and dont wish to be called such.
btw i bet someone will say u cant do the estate tax thing bc the fed govt. VT & MN both decoupled their Estate Tax from the federal one. btw MN has more millionaires per capita than any other state. i guess they live there for the other low tax (say income, vehicle, corp & sales taxes and the nice weather ; ) lol.
As a medical cannabis patient I am glad every day for California’s initiative process. Warts and all it is by far better to have messy democracy in the long run than efficient but corrupt representation. We will have to fix some of the problems we’ve created, of course, but it is the people’s sovereign right to do so. Our representatives do not always represent us, unless we are wealthy or well connected.
…i grew up in PA where we only have a referendum given to us by our legislature-much more corrupt than this one btw. this blog is a form of a “Check-in, ” after all do u think george skelton gives a Goddamn about what i think.
and btw i forgot to mention this before but CA has ~ 37 million RESIDENTS not voters. i personally think election day should be a holiday, lets call it Democracy Day. the one day a yr the people can directly hold their representatives accountable or decide who their reps r. make voting/registration compulsory, give people the ability to vote “no” like Nevada, proportional voting, public financing of elections ,etc.
Jerry Brown might not be governor in the first place if he hadn’t repeated on television 5 million times “No new taxes without voter approval,” which let him kayak the political rapids without hitting any of the usual boulders.
…was majority vote in the legislature. If Skelton wants to go back to that, I’m good with it. But the all-tax-cuts-all-the-time crowd slipped that 2/3 provision into prop. 13. So now we don’t even have a representative democracy, but minority rule by extortion. Can’t have it both ways George. Either we have a representative system with majority rule, or we go back to Athens and let the people decide.
I’m coming to think that on fiscal issues Skelton is right. Moral issues, like Prop 8 or abortion, the people are perfectly qualified to decide, perhaps more than legislators because elites are biased. But fiscal issues are another matter.
Here is a question. In this post you say that we have a state of 37 million voters.
But, California only has 37 million residents.
So, a large portion (1/4) are under 18.
A portion are not citizens.
So, we can’t have 37 million voters.
You need to recalculate.