By contrast, check out what Jeb's facing in FLA:
Education gets a boost: Class caps, pre-K win
...Bush had urged voters to reject the class-size initiative, Amendment 9, warning that its passage would force him to make either one of two unappetizing choices: endorse billions of dollars of higher taxes or support deep budget cuts. Voters also overwhelmingly passed another education measure opposed by the governor -- Amendment 11, which will create a board of governors to oversee Florida's 11 public universities. A third education measure, Amendment 8, which will make prekindergarten available to all 4-year-olds throughout Florida for no cost, easily won passage. Bush supported that initiative, which was championed by Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas.Unlike Slick2 in VA, Bush was upfront and clear about all this in advance, outlining the pros/cons and consequences of each.
Ironically, South FLA voted itself a 1/2-a-penny hike for mass transit. They need it, but they don't need a higher sales tax. Oh well. At least down there the developers have already been smited. The Governor had nothing to do with it. (story here: Voters back tax for transit)
I don't much like referendums. They've done some good things, such as we saw yesterday in CA and AZ rejecting bi-lingal education. On the whole, they are an escape clause for politicians to avoid responsibility, just as Slick2 is doing in VA. Politicians use public referendums to dump bills and moves they don't want to be held responsible for, or that they want to get rid of for political cover.
The idea of the referendum/initiative is a circular argument. The voters must act because their representatives whom they've elected won't... Uh huh. They have weakened representative government, and loosened democracy by making it arbitrary and susceptible to political sway and minority and factional influence.
You will be very upset for a long time, starting next January. You will howl. The sky will fall on you. Your children will starve, and your elderly will be led off the cliff. But the agitation and the contrived pain of next year is nothing, zero, nada, compared to the stunts you will pull in April of 2005.
That Spring, the Supreme Court, newly regenerated under Chief Justice Scalia and three new members, will announce a series of decisions that will reverse fifty years of lies.
My dear leftistas, you shall reap what you have sewn. Instead of amending the Constitution, your Supreme Leader, FDR, made the Court drink his New Deal poison. Instead of amending the Constitution, your JFK/LBJ-packed Court imagined a new addition to the Bill of Rights rights that legalized extermination of small humans. Instead of amending the Constitution, your leftist Courts ignored the Constitution and made up new rules on the fly.
You chose -- deliberately, seductively, and stupidly -- to construct law rather than vote it. You chose autocracy over democracy. You chose populism over constitutionalism. You chose the illusion over the stone. You chose relativism over truth. You are now going to feel, very personally, very, very personally, what it is to know our truth.
The Scalia Court won't have to make up rules; all it has to do is to go back and look at the existing rules, those very rules you leftist morons ignored.
Bleed, darlings, bleed.
Love,
Nicollo