Thursday, February 10, 2011

"Save Yourselves"

"There were also two less obvious, though no less momentous, consequences of Prop 13. One was the rapid increase in direct democracy initiatives, many of them conservative, backed by those wealthy enough to field large groups of signature-gatherers, and posing, like Prop 13, as 'populist' circumventions of the supposedly out-of-touch legislature. Since 1978, voters have passed laws restricting legislative term limits, forbidding undocumented residents access to social services, instituting stricter sentencing laws for repeat offenders (the 'three strikes' law), curbing bilingual education, and stripping same-sex couples of the right to marry. Twenty-two initiatives appeared in the 1970s; there were forty-five in the 1980s, sixty-two in the 1990s, and ninety-four in the last decade. Such a 'plebiscitary' democracy not only tends to favor super-rich interest groups (to cite one journalist’s list: 'insurance companies, railroads, banks, auto manufacturers, car dealers, oil refiners, utilities, drug companies, Silicon Valley millionaires, realtors’ associations, and trial lawyers'), who can afford the kind of numb and manipulative TV ads that helped pass Proposition 8 (against gay marriage) and others like it; it also makes private the act of voting on legislation. Since no one knows which item you cross in the polling booth, no one can hold you — unlike an elected representative — accountable for your vote. Making savage cuts in public services that meant your own son or daughter couldn’t afford college, denying emergency care to immigrants, and so on: Californians by the millions walk around with these votes — acts of violence, really — secreted in their hearts."

In n+1, Nikil Saval offers a meandering discussion of post-1960s San Francisco and California politics.

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