Posted on 05/18/2009 9:12:47 AM PDT by Lorianne
In less than 24 hours, you're going to be hearing the righteous indignation of all sorts of California pundits and policy types. They'll no doubt be shouting about an embarrassingly low turnout in Tuesday's statewide special election and the astounding ignorance on the part of those who did vote. Though not completely without merit, their rantings also will be part and parcel of the problem they're condemning: Our political elites are burdening the public with too much democracy.
Yes, I said too much. The state is on the verge of financial Armageddon -- in the governor's words -- and I think that placing too many decisions in the hands of voters is adding to the ruin of the Golden State.
Think of it this way: Much of the life of an average citizen is lived in the spirit of indifference, if not outright defiance, toward the political system. From time to time, we're all expected to cast a ballot, tune in to what's going on at city hall, the statehouse, Capitol Hill, and either express our grievances or throw our support to one cause or candidate or another. Our general indifference is interrupted by intense moments of engagement. But to ask voters to make too many decisions too much of the time tips the delicate balance between indifference and engagement, and that can lead to civic contempt.
In 1863, American psychiatrist Isaac Ray went so far as to suggest that participatory democracy was endangering our mental health.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
California needs to contact CSpan and have another channel that shows the State Legislature in action every time they are in session. At least a few more people will see what they are doing. Each State should do this.
Woh. This is frightening... And his sentiments are a prelude to...
This guy has it exactly backwards. Get rid of the full-time legislature, replace it with a two-months’ a year legislature, and let the people decide everything and the part-time legislature implement those decisions. And recognize that the unions are strangling California and the voters will be a lot less tolerant of them than their buddies in the legislature are.
California's system of "democracy" is highly dysfunctional. I don't remember exactly what the issue was, but one perfect case in point surfaced a few years ago when two different ballot initiatives were approved by a majority of the voters even though they directly contradicted each other. Basically, one of them said "the sky is blue," and the other said "the sky is not blue."
This kind of process is a recipe for bedlam and anarchy.
This is correct. California ballot propositions typically mandate that the state issue bonds, designate a certain percentage of the state budget for particular causes, etc. You could pass ten propositions that each mandate that the state spends 10% on the proposition’s target, and then do it again in the next election. In fact, we are well down that path.
Ballot initiatives are a backup system to representative democracy. Of course it isn’t going to be as efficient as the main system, otherwise it would BE the main system.
The question no one wants to explore is WHY California has to keep switching to backup.
Summing up the article: a Shrink in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, declares that democracy doesn’t work. Later (146 years later) a writer for a dying newspaper gets worried.
Most of those in state government (like their federal counterparts) have spent their years in power constructing enormous behind-the-scenes programs to sate the demands for patronage and nepotism, prime the pumps for graft, surreptitiously repay special interests, and provide the illusions of (1) “doing something”; (2) competence; (3) responsibility - the latter in the hopes of using political office as to better leverage the former with the aim of advancing their own personal agenda (social life, finances, ego-stroking).
None of that machinery is EVER cut. Cut such waste and the greatest perks of office (quid pro quo/pay-to-play, cronyism, nepotism, and other forms of sleaze) are also cut. The state government will only (threaten to) cut the visible elements of the state apparatus - never the back-office make-work scams, or the functions funded via highly-obfuscated general funds programs. They would rather raise taxes and face a potential voter backlash than cut the waste and face a definite reduction in their ability to leverage political power.
To some of those who have seen how political sausages are made, this is forgiven as the price for doing business. Someone puts a fundraiser together for you and thusly bankrolls 20% of your campaign, you repay them by making their son or daughter a six-figure Executive Directory of some new trumped up bureaucratic boondoggle with a grandiose-sounding mandate and exactly zero practical responsibilities. Similar deal for your campaign staffers - find them all make-work positions ($60k-$70k to shuffle papers) somewhere in the byzantine expanse of government where nobody will notice - in return for “volunteering” to help get you elected. None of it goes away - more and more is added every year, and, like the power of compounded interest, after decades of individually-minuscule contributions, the cumulative weight of those one-part-per-hundred-million parasites really adds up. And it is so diffuse that waste-reduction efforts will miss it all, because the trigger for a red flag is an enormous block of expenses under one bureaucratic heading with nothing to show for its operation. If one unit or department is functioning, the 30-70% waste is overlooked.
I want you all to think of this every time the state governments cut police, fire, roads, etc. Their friends always stay on the dole.
Very good question. I think there are a number of answers to it, but a big part of it is that special interest groups see the initiative process as a way to circumvent the legislature and get things passed through massive ballot campaigns.
This shows how extreme the liberal elites are in our state. The vast majority of the time, the masses vote to enact liberalism in California. On the rare occasion the masses don’t support rabid liberalism, the liberal elites are ready to take the vote away from the people. Disturbing.
Been around for awhile, it's called "Cal Channel"...channel 14 on my Comcast cable. Very depressing to watch though...they pass dozens of laws per day most with negative fiscal or social consequences.
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