About this Blog
Direct democracy -- the Switzerland-inspired system of initiatives, referenda and recalls that allows voters to make and repeal laws in 24 states -- is poorly understood. It isn’t even very direct. Direct democracy has become blockbuster democracy: a half-billion-dollar international industry of signature gatherers, consultants, and election lawyers who use ballot measures less as a method of making law and more as a tool of mega-communications to boost some politicians, hurt others, and supplement lobbying campaigns.
Blockbuster democracy is a decentralized business that practices wide-open politics. This blog aims to provide a center of news, analysis and conversation for and about the industry. We will report from blockbuster democracy’s capital -- California -- but we’ll monitor ballot measures from across the country and around the globe.
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A Drive By Shot at Prop 13
Your blogger is all for overturning Prop 13, particularly the piece that required a two-thirds vote of the legislature to raise taxes. But Prop 13 is sturdy, both legally and politically. Overturning it will require sustained public education and organizing. It's a waste of time to try out discredited legal theories to defeat it. But that's what former UCLA Chancellor Charles Young did last week by suing under the theory that, 31 years after it passed, Prop 13 was an unconstitutional revision to the constitution, rather than amendment. Call it a drive-by shot. That's now how you kill the king.
Young's argument is the same theory that didn't work when it was used to challenge Prop 8, the ban on same-sex marriage. In fact, it's a theory that hasn't worked because the California constitution and the judiciary have always been reluctant to overrule a vote of the people. If you read the state constitution -- particularly the second article -- you'll see why. The people really are sovereign in California.
What's more, as former Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn president Joel Fox points out correctly in this post, Prop 13 already survived a challenge under this same legal theory.
prior case doesn't guarantee outcome
The fact that the theory did not work in the earlier challenge to Prop 13 is interesting but not dispositive, because courts can and do change their minds. What appears to be fair at one time may not seem fair at another -- which is why the constitution refers to abstract concepts like "due" process. Whether the court has a different view now, regarding the difference between a "revision" and an "amendment" remains to be seen. I think the strongest challenge to Prop 13 is that it violates the U.S. constitution for a simple majority of voters to take away the rights of future majorities by instituting a 2/3 requirement.
Political Earthquake
I agree that Prop 13 was a political earthquake whose jolt was felt not just in Sacramento but all across the nation, including Washington, D.C., Why was Prop 13 so overwhelmingly approved ? Few expected it to win. In fact, on two separate occasions, less draconian versions of Proposition 13 had failed. But by 1978 raging inflation had sent property tax bills in the Golden State soaring so high that many families had to sell their homes because they couldn't afford to pay their taxes. Despite a torrent of horror stories from teachers' unions, politicians, newspapers and corporate lobbyists in Sacramento about the potentially devastating effects of Proposition 13, more than 60 percent of the voters took a gamble and approved the ballot measure.
Yes its a question of great
Yes its a question of great relevance to the country.But now same sex mairrages are becoming legal in the conservative and developing countries like India, moreover we are living in the 21st century does it really matters to us as to what other person's sex prefrence is? Dont you think we live them alone and live and let live...it hardly matters...
The Prop 13 revision was
The Prop 13 revision was certainly a democratic suicide, i understand the concern of courts over such a sensitive issue where not always all people agree but most of them agree. It cant be ambiguous, it has to take a stand.Well this is a matter of great national concern and lets see what happens....
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