Barack Obama may be the first sort-of black President of the United States, but his political heritage is not much different than the entire line of Presidents starting with real-estate speculator George Washington. Barack will be the only choice on the Democratic Party Presidential ballot line for the June 5 election. The total corruption and march-in-line behind the leader mentality of the party is shown by the lack of even token progressive and anti-war opposition.
Knowing the Democratic Party nomination is locked up, and wanting to appeal to right-wing voters, Barack Obama ordered widespread, unconstitutional raids on our perfectly legal medical marijuana purveyors. It's a funny thing, the way almost all media sources keep the Obama name out of the stories about the raids. It is always the Justice Department. Like Obama is not head of the government. Like he could not order the stormtroopers to go after other crimes. Are there no Islamic teenagers who might be entrapped by agents offering them a chance to play with government-supplied C-4? Are there no criminals violating Disney's copyrights needing to be rounded up and put in concentration camps?
It is not just his Reaganesque marijuana policy that mocks California's enlightened citizenry. There's his anti-gay marriage stand. His ongoing military attacks on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, plus anti-Iranian saber rattling. His promotion of the very men who created the mortgage derivatives and banking meltdown to be his top economic advisors. His failure to vigorously protect women's reproductive rights. His half-ass reformulation of the healthcare for profit system.
But what is a Democrat to do? It is too late to send Him a message by re-registering Green or No Political Preference (the new Decline to State, known everywhere else as independent). You can do that after the primary.
All you can do is vote for your favorite local candidates (up to and including Congress) and then not vote for Barack Obama. Barack does not give a damn how you feel about him, as long as he is the head of the corporate security state. He's going to be the next President. What not voting for Obama will do is show, when the votes are counted, that you care about California and your fellow Californians.
According to my readings of John Steinbeck, pretty many California citizens were smoking marijuana long before the 1960s rolled around. Since the 1960s California citizens have almost all been tolerant of their neighbors who choose to smoke. Sure, there are occasional problems with stoned citizens, but they pale compared to the problems of drunk citizens, and they don't seem to be significantly higher than the problems we encounter with perfectly sober citizens, either.
We Californians are a nation of individuals, but we do mostly share some cultural values, like respecting individual diversity. We have a disproportionate number of agnostics and atheists among us, and even our religious citizens tend more to humanist spirituality and ethical conduct than to memorize-the-text orthodoxy. We believe in evolution, and are evolving, but are ruled by people whose brain capacities froze at Middle Ages levels of memory and compute capabilities.
There are about 38 million of us. There were less than 4 million people living in the original 13 states at the time of the American Revolution, and that included slaves and Native Americans.
We should demand some respect from the rest of the states. If they do not respect our ways and our values, including ending marijuana prohibition, we should began the process of (hopefully without a civil war) leaving other United States and governing ourselves.
Because we can govern ourselves a lot better than the eastern states can govern us.
We don't need the national parties, either. Even if we stay in the Union, California citizens should have their own political parties, subject to our own corrupt bosses and political machines, rather than to the corrupt national bosses and machines.
Let's make that a goal: at least one California-centric party by 2014.
Showing posts with label political parties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political parties. Show all posts
Monday, May 7, 2012
Monday, March 21, 2011
Republican Party Aims to Control Primaries
Traditionally in California (as in most of the rest of the U.S.) most elections are really decided before the primaries take place. Donors and organizations that control volunteers make their choices, if there is any choice other than the incumbent. Primaries just show how well political machines have pushed their candidates. For the most part in California for the past couple of decades this has resulted in very liberal Democrats and very conservative Republicans being elected to the state legislature. None can afford to alienate the machines that elected them. As a result in good times creating California state budgets has been difficult; in recessions, it has been a disaster.
Proposition 14, passed by voters in 2010, is supposed to change that. The two highest vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, will proceed from the primary to the runoff election. This is the same system that has always been used in California for non-partisan offices like school boards and city councils. The framers of Prop 14 hoped that this would allow centrist candidates to emerge and even win. For instance, in a Republican majority districts (most districts are drawn to be heavily biased, a back-scratching agreement between the parties), usually a very conservative Republican candidate backed by the local machine would win the Republican primary under the old system. Even if the Democrats ran a centrist, that Republican would still win the main election. Under Prop 14 a centrist Republican might garner the number 2 spot in the primary, then go on to beat the conservative, machine-supported Republican in the runoff.
All the political parties in California opposed Prop 14, including the Green Party. Now all are working on reasserting their power under the new system. The Republican Party has a pretty good idea for doing that: holding its own internal elections before the primaries. They intend to mail ballots to all Republican voters, and let them decide on who will be the official Republican nominee. That is, who will be backed by party resources. Of course, this will mostly work out to be much like tthe old system because voters choose based on name recognition, and that is based on advertising or outreach by volunteers from the same old sources.
Still, it is better than allowing the party bosses to decide which candidates will be supported by the party.
Whoever the official Republican nominee is for an office, they will still have to run against all the other candidates in the primary, and if they don't place first or second, they will be out of the running.
In my opinion what we really need to give the voters real options is some strengthening of some of the smaller parties, like the Green Party and Libertarians, and a new, centrist party. Call it the California Center Party for now. There are a lot of people in the center, and they want a functioning California government that is not either overly indulgent of the anti-tax crowd or the tax-and-spend crowd.
But no such party has emerged yet.
See also:
The GOP Searches for relevance post Proposition 14
California Republican Party
Addenda: facts not so clear about Republican plans: Sparks Fly at California Republican Party [Sacramento Bee, March 19, 2011]
Proposition 14, passed by voters in 2010, is supposed to change that. The two highest vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, will proceed from the primary to the runoff election. This is the same system that has always been used in California for non-partisan offices like school boards and city councils. The framers of Prop 14 hoped that this would allow centrist candidates to emerge and even win. For instance, in a Republican majority districts (most districts are drawn to be heavily biased, a back-scratching agreement between the parties), usually a very conservative Republican candidate backed by the local machine would win the Republican primary under the old system. Even if the Democrats ran a centrist, that Republican would still win the main election. Under Prop 14 a centrist Republican might garner the number 2 spot in the primary, then go on to beat the conservative, machine-supported Republican in the runoff.
All the political parties in California opposed Prop 14, including the Green Party. Now all are working on reasserting their power under the new system. The Republican Party has a pretty good idea for doing that: holding its own internal elections before the primaries. They intend to mail ballots to all Republican voters, and let them decide on who will be the official Republican nominee. That is, who will be backed by party resources. Of course, this will mostly work out to be much like tthe old system because voters choose based on name recognition, and that is based on advertising or outreach by volunteers from the same old sources.
Still, it is better than allowing the party bosses to decide which candidates will be supported by the party.
Whoever the official Republican nominee is for an office, they will still have to run against all the other candidates in the primary, and if they don't place first or second, they will be out of the running.
In my opinion what we really need to give the voters real options is some strengthening of some of the smaller parties, like the Green Party and Libertarians, and a new, centrist party. Call it the California Center Party for now. There are a lot of people in the center, and they want a functioning California government that is not either overly indulgent of the anti-tax crowd or the tax-and-spend crowd.
But no such party has emerged yet.
See also:
The GOP Searches for relevance post Proposition 14
California Republican Party
Addenda: facts not so clear about Republican plans: Sparks Fly at California Republican Party [Sacramento Bee, March 19, 2011]
Saturday, November 6, 2010
California Voters Extend Citizens Redistricting Commission
California is notorious for non-competitive electoral districts for the State Assembly, State Senate, and U.S. House of Representatives. Each district is designed to maximize the incumbent's chance of re-election. Almost all districts are currently designed to be either heavily loaded with Democratic Party voters, or with Republican Party voters.
In 2008 California voters passed Proposition 11, which established a Citizens Redistricting Commission to redraw the Assembly and Senate district boundaries after the results of the 2010 census come in. Otherwise the state legislature would have redrawn the districts, thus allowing each elected official to have a say in their own district's boundaries. Both the Democratic Party and Republican Party apparatus opposed Proposition 11, making its passage a landmark along the path of California voters to independence from these two ancient, corrupt, federal parties.
In the November 2, 2010 election two related propositions were on the ballot. Proposition 20, in passing, extended the authority of the Citizen's Redistricting Commission. Proposition 27 would overturn Proposition 11, returning redistricting power to the very legislators whose districts are to be redrawn.
With the votes tallied as of today, the results were:
I interpret this as a dramatic victory for democracy. A substantial number of citizens saw the need for a redistricting system that is designed for the good of the citizens, not the good of politicians.
That said, I don't see anything wrong with arguing about some of the particulars of the original Proposition 11. Hopefully, however, the experiment will go well. Then we, those California citizens who can put partisanship aside in favor of the general good, might make some improvements in the system for the round of redisticting that begins in 2020.
In 2008 California voters passed Proposition 11, which established a Citizens Redistricting Commission to redraw the Assembly and Senate district boundaries after the results of the 2010 census come in. Otherwise the state legislature would have redrawn the districts, thus allowing each elected official to have a say in their own district's boundaries. Both the Democratic Party and Republican Party apparatus opposed Proposition 11, making its passage a landmark along the path of California voters to independence from these two ancient, corrupt, federal parties.
In the November 2, 2010 election two related propositions were on the ballot. Proposition 20, in passing, extended the authority of the Citizen's Redistricting Commission. Proposition 27 would overturn Proposition 11, returning redistricting power to the very legislators whose districts are to be redrawn.
With the votes tallied as of today, the results were:
Yes Votes | % | No Votes | % | |
| Proposition 20 | 4,569,276 | 61.4% | 2,881,716 | 38.6% |
| Proposition 27 | 2,963,152 | 40.4% | 4,354,553 | 59.6% |
I interpret this as a dramatic victory for democracy. A substantial number of citizens saw the need for a redistricting system that is designed for the good of the citizens, not the good of politicians.
That said, I don't see anything wrong with arguing about some of the particulars of the original Proposition 11. Hopefully, however, the experiment will go well. Then we, those California citizens who can put partisanship aside in favor of the general good, might make some improvements in the system for the round of redisticting that begins in 2020.
Be sure to visit CaliforniaDemocracy.org for more about issues important to democratic government in California and the United States.
Monday, October 18, 2010
California Government Sells People's Assets
The government of the State of California announced on Monday, October 11, 2010, that it was selling the following state assets to California First LLC, a company that seems to have been created specifically to bid on the buildings. The buildings sold include:
Attorney General Building, Sacramento
California Emergency Management Agency Building, Sacramento
Capitol Area East End Complex, Sacramento
Franchise Tax Board Complex, Sacramento
Department of Justice Building, Sacramento
San Francisco Civic Center, San Francisco
Elihu M. Harris Building, Oakland
Public Utilities Commission Building, San Francisco
Judge Joseph A. Rattigan Building, Santa Rosa
Ronald Reagan State Building, Los Angeles
Junipero Serra State Building, Los Angeles
The state government will lease back the buildings. In the long run this will cost the citizens of the state more money than keeping them would have. The money, $2.3 billion, will be used to cover about 10% of this year's budget "gap," the difference between revenues and tax receipts if the budget contained no new spending cuts or tax increases.
California's government holds a lot of assets in the name of the people. Why not sell most of them? The Chinese would probably be interested in our university system. We could sell our freeways to private investors, who could erect toll booths. Unfortunately some of our most prestigious parks, like Yosemite, are actually in federal hands.
Sell enough and we could lower taxes and raise pay for public employees (both public service union members and administrators). For two or three years. Don't want to sell them? Why not mortgage them?
Would a democracy really sell off the people's assets? The people would have to be really decadent. I do think some people who have made themselves dependent on the state would support any measure taken to keep the slop in their troughs. But most California citizens are not that stupid or lazy. The problem is the state is run by two minorities: public service employees unions, and large corporations. Each enlists allies during the elections. These two poles share only one common goal: getting other people, the ordinary non-corporate tax payers, to pay for their free lunches.
California needs a central political party, free from ties to the national Democratic and national Republican parties, to represent its ordinary citizens. Creating a political party, however, is no easy thing.
Meanwhile at the United States of America federal level, pressures to sell off assets are building. See Save America, Sell Alaska.
Along those same lines, maybe it is time to think of selling San Diego back to Mexico, unless the Chinese are willing to bid higher for it.
Attorney General Building, Sacramento
California Emergency Management Agency Building, Sacramento
Capitol Area East End Complex, Sacramento
Franchise Tax Board Complex, Sacramento
Department of Justice Building, Sacramento
San Francisco Civic Center, San Francisco
Elihu M. Harris Building, Oakland
Public Utilities Commission Building, San Francisco
Judge Joseph A. Rattigan Building, Santa Rosa
Ronald Reagan State Building, Los Angeles
Junipero Serra State Building, Los Angeles
The state government will lease back the buildings. In the long run this will cost the citizens of the state more money than keeping them would have. The money, $2.3 billion, will be used to cover about 10% of this year's budget "gap," the difference between revenues and tax receipts if the budget contained no new spending cuts or tax increases.
California's government holds a lot of assets in the name of the people. Why not sell most of them? The Chinese would probably be interested in our university system. We could sell our freeways to private investors, who could erect toll booths. Unfortunately some of our most prestigious parks, like Yosemite, are actually in federal hands.
Sell enough and we could lower taxes and raise pay for public employees (both public service union members and administrators). For two or three years. Don't want to sell them? Why not mortgage them?
Would a democracy really sell off the people's assets? The people would have to be really decadent. I do think some people who have made themselves dependent on the state would support any measure taken to keep the slop in their troughs. But most California citizens are not that stupid or lazy. The problem is the state is run by two minorities: public service employees unions, and large corporations. Each enlists allies during the elections. These two poles share only one common goal: getting other people, the ordinary non-corporate tax payers, to pay for their free lunches.
California needs a central political party, free from ties to the national Democratic and national Republican parties, to represent its ordinary citizens. Creating a political party, however, is no easy thing.
Meanwhile at the United States of America federal level, pressures to sell off assets are building. See Save America, Sell Alaska.
Along those same lines, maybe it is time to think of selling San Diego back to Mexico, unless the Chinese are willing to bid higher for it.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Democracy Under Pressure
Democracy is one of those words that can have a very broad meaning. To what ever extent you believe the state of California is a democracy, you should be aware that the ongoing economic crisis is putting severe burdens on "rule by the people."
Some would say that California is, in fact, a republic, not a democracy. See my America, Republic or Democracy? for an introduction to this topic for the United States. Most of the arguments apply to the state of California as well.
We certainly have very few elected officials compared to the size of the population (37 million). There are only 80 members of the California State Assembly and 40 members of the California State Senate. In most of the states of the United States there are far fewer voters in a district for a state legislative seat than there are for a member of the United States House of Representatives. But in California the Assembly districts are only lightly smaller than U.S. House seats (California has 53 Representatives in Congress). Each California State Senate seat represents almost 900,000 people and is larger than a congressional district.
That means only tiny percentage of people in the district have any meaningful access to their representatives. Which in turn means that interest-group lobbies rule. The most powerful lobbies in the state represent corporations, often ones that do business in the state but are headquartered in other states. Sometimes they are foreign (non-U.S.) multinational corporations. Other powerful lobbies include state employees unions and professionals like lawyers.
You might think with a small ruling political class, what government lacked in democratic representation would be made up in efficiency and unity of purpose. But the government of California is probably as inefficient as any on earth. It can't make decisions, unless it is making bad ones.
Blessed with natural resources, including a window on the economically important Pacific Ocean rim, and a talented people of diverse backgrounds, California has prospered despite the state government, not because of it.
The only thing our legislators are good at is blaming someone else for their incompetence. Generally speaking, those associated with the Democratic Party and those associated with the Republican Party cast the blame at each other at election time. That way few voters look closely at the legislative record of their own representatives.
If California were split into 2, 3 or 4 states, each state might be small enough to reform and govern itself. If California split from the United States, we might divide it up into 20 or so regions each with a population larger than many of the current united states.
A more likely solution would be up to the people themselves. They could create California-based political parties that made California issues the decisive factors in state elections. Most citizens can only devote so much time to paying attention to politics. Naturally, they pay attention to big-issue national politics: war and peace, and which Congressmen are cheating on their wives. So they vote for members of the California State Assembly and State Senate based on party identifications that have little to do with governing California.
Throw the rascals out should be the rallying cry for Californians in the 2010 elections. But the usual will happen: the power of incumbents is so great that none, or very few, will fail to be re-elected unless they are term-limited out. And when there is a term-limit reached, the party machines will have some hack ready to step in and play at politics the same as the old hack. The donors seldom change, just the political faces that their money buys.
Some would say that California is, in fact, a republic, not a democracy. See my America, Republic or Democracy? for an introduction to this topic for the United States. Most of the arguments apply to the state of California as well.
We certainly have very few elected officials compared to the size of the population (37 million). There are only 80 members of the California State Assembly and 40 members of the California State Senate. In most of the states of the United States there are far fewer voters in a district for a state legislative seat than there are for a member of the United States House of Representatives. But in California the Assembly districts are only lightly smaller than U.S. House seats (California has 53 Representatives in Congress). Each California State Senate seat represents almost 900,000 people and is larger than a congressional district.
That means only tiny percentage of people in the district have any meaningful access to their representatives. Which in turn means that interest-group lobbies rule. The most powerful lobbies in the state represent corporations, often ones that do business in the state but are headquartered in other states. Sometimes they are foreign (non-U.S.) multinational corporations. Other powerful lobbies include state employees unions and professionals like lawyers.
You might think with a small ruling political class, what government lacked in democratic representation would be made up in efficiency and unity of purpose. But the government of California is probably as inefficient as any on earth. It can't make decisions, unless it is making bad ones.
Blessed with natural resources, including a window on the economically important Pacific Ocean rim, and a talented people of diverse backgrounds, California has prospered despite the state government, not because of it.
The only thing our legislators are good at is blaming someone else for their incompetence. Generally speaking, those associated with the Democratic Party and those associated with the Republican Party cast the blame at each other at election time. That way few voters look closely at the legislative record of their own representatives.
If California were split into 2, 3 or 4 states, each state might be small enough to reform and govern itself. If California split from the United States, we might divide it up into 20 or so regions each with a population larger than many of the current united states.
A more likely solution would be up to the people themselves. They could create California-based political parties that made California issues the decisive factors in state elections. Most citizens can only devote so much time to paying attention to politics. Naturally, they pay attention to big-issue national politics: war and peace, and which Congressmen are cheating on their wives. So they vote for members of the California State Assembly and State Senate based on party identifications that have little to do with governing California.
Throw the rascals out should be the rallying cry for Californians in the 2010 elections. But the usual will happen: the power of incumbents is so great that none, or very few, will fail to be re-elected unless they are term-limited out. And when there is a term-limit reached, the party machines will have some hack ready to step in and play at politics the same as the old hack. The donors seldom change, just the political faces that their money buys.
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