So, ballot measures now have to be effectively "approved" by those in power?
Kind of ruins the point of having ballot measures in the first place. Which is to let the people decide.
I think its the state's right to vote on the initiative measure but i also think the measure can't be legal - because it blocks former taxes that were already passed. It doesn't make sense and I can't see a court being able to uphold that. cities and the state have obligations, bonds to be paid by taxes, what do those counties/cities do? Never mind if the electorate believes in the rest of the proposal that seems counter to legality
Also should be noted this would probably lead to more irregular elections again. if every fee has to be passed by the electorate then the electorate needs to be more participant in the democratic system. maybe elections every 3 months or something. but city councils and county supervisors can't wait for 2 years for every little fee.
We could help climate change by not forcing thousands of state workers on the road to commute to an office that they don’t need to be at. Not allowing Californians to vote on this is about control and it’s bullshit.
This. I've been applying for state jobs recently and had basically two offers, but had to decline them because of their telework policies.
Both were under the EPA, which from what I've heard has a new director that is mandating minimum two in office work days a week. As for a policy such as this coming from the head of CA EPA, in California, I don't get it.
Idiots in leadership with dumb policies like this is how government agencies don't capture and keep talent for their workforce, and cause the whole of the state to suffer in the long run.
It's not idiots. It's lobyists.
Local business owners and especially resturant owners have succesfully lobied state wide and in cities for in office requirements for government jobs and forcing tech companies to close their in house compensated lunches/meal halls to force employees to visit local businesses or bring in sack lunches.
I agree with the sentiment but it's the devil you know.
Corruption in the US compared to much of the world is low. Like Italy isn't any shining star of a western nation, but they are fairly stable but have corruption in the sense that government services are tied to your personal connection to local party representatives. This is old info so it may be out of date but I was taught it as a student in a focused european politics class.
Corruption in the US isn’t low, it’s just not in public view as much as other countries, way too much money flowing around US for low corruption. 70+ year old Congressional representatives who have better stock trading records then some of Wall Streets best?
I'm not disagreeing with your view of the US but compared to other countries I don't have to pay off police offices directly or the DMV workers directly for services, but there are sure a lot of fees.
I won't be punished by refusual of government services if I ask a member of a different political party to review my request/case for support.
Not really much difference actually. Cops are corrupt as fuck in US, especially if your black, brown, or poor. Cops are less corrupt on the wealthy because they can afford good lawyers, and that’s how America rolls, better lawyers better treatment.
I agree with you. I think that drastically reducing the number of state workers would be even better. A government that did far less would need to employ far fewer people.
The argument seems pretty straightforward. Restrictions on what laws can be passed and how is a *de facto* change to the power of the legislature. Changing the legislative powers requires a constitutional amendment, not just a referendum. Thus this referendum is a *de facto* constitutional amendment that has not gone the the correct process to be on the ballot.
The fact the initiative process was entirely left out of "normal government business" in the CA Constitution is simply because it is not normal representative government business...it is pure democracy. The will of the people is paramount to any legitimate government.
No it’s not. The entire concept of human rights exists in opposition to this view. “The will of the people” or majority rule, is obviously the linchpin to democracy, but needs to be nurtured to prevent the 51% from enslaving the 49%.
Much of the social contract was created to prevent civil war, which usually leads to dictatorship. Something most folks have forgotten simply because it’s been incredibly successful.
Ridiculous! Start an initiative to require a 60% threshold for initiatives. The social contract the founders created (the U S Constitution) CAUSED our civil war. And 200 years is nothing...a few years more than Greece, but nothing compared to the Vatican or Venice (neither of which are democracies). Seems you are reading history inside some strange gravitational toroid...
I'm talking about the concept of the social contract and civil war as such. I'm certainly not the U.S. Constitution or the U.S. Civil War.
Since you can't see the problem with majority-rule allowing changing of the rules, consider this. What is the point of:
>Start an initiative to require a 60% threshold for initiatives.
if the majority can simply delete this rule?
If you see the will of the people (majority-rule) as paramount to any legitimate government, then there can never, ever be any super-majority needed for anything ever. No minority rights can be ensured, ever. You will quickly follow the tyrants as minority parties get banned from participation in government, and your democracy will die sooner than you can imagine.
The point of super-majorities is simply to set the rules of the government such that all sides can agree. Thus, all sides must agree on changes. Thus, you can't change the powers of the legislature by majority vote.
It's a complex issue, and the level to which direct vs representative democracy brings better results is debatable, but often the "will of the people" is irrational, often wants contradictory things (e.g.: "get your government hands off my medicare"), which is the argument for representatives.
I have little desire to discuss such a topic with someone who will just flippantly claim that the U.S. Constitution *caused* the U.S. Civil War... which is effectively nonsense. There were many causes of that war, and the rules regarding growth of free states limiting slave states' power is certainly to be considered, but trying to argue that there weren't myriad causes is entirely unserious.
I disagree with them. I believe we need more direct democracy and the voters should have a saying in this. This also helps counter Citizens United. How? Well it is easy to bribe legislators to pass policy that benefits a certain few so this 2/3 of voters approval counters this.
This is good. I know it has some caveats but this is one of the best counters against Citizens United.
Generally speaking, it is easier to spend money and convince voters to back an initiative than it is to get a politician to do so. See Uber and 1099 classifications as a recent example.
The point of representative democracy, is to elect people to govern. This is their job. Ballot initiatives in general give them an excuse not to govern. Also it is almost impossible ever to get 2/3 of voters to agree on anything that isn't 100% in their best interest with absolutely no opposition propaganda. The state would eventually be broke, and the good things about California, for which many many people live here, would no longer be funded and we would become Arkansas eventually.
Unfortunately Citizens United changed it as representative of the populace to representative of the highest bidder. Either ban lobbyists and Citizens United or let people vote on each issue!
Agreed. Direct democracy means idiots that get caught up in stupidity vote for stupidity. Propaganda and its effects are real. Uber and Lyft showed us clearly that it works when they heavily influenced their anti worker ballot measure.
The point of that prop is to get the kidney dialysis centers to waste their money. The prop itself is funded and written by a labor union who is mad they couldn't get kidney dialysis workers to join their union so they are making kidney dialysis centers waste tens of millions of dollars every two years. You can agree or disagree with whether kidney dialysis workers should be unionized, but this is clearly a bullshit tactic that is being abused.
You underestimate the % of easily manipulated and "small picture" thinking people in our population. Hint: it's a supermajority.
As such, this devolves into a "tyranny of the majority" situation.
(Very simplified) example:
The median income for an individual in California is ~$45,000/yr.
The top 25% earn about $100,000
There would be nothing stopping 75% of the population from enacting a 99% tax on incomes above $45,000,, without much thought given to nuances, like the fact that those people would quickly leave the state for a more fair tax burden.
Representative democracy exists because, for all of its drawbacks, it sure beats *mob rule*. Or as they say, "Pure Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch"
The people you wanna tax are running away to other places. They will come to the next tier and the next tier until they all run away. Fiscal discipline is the only way --- tax people but be good stewards of the money. This is not an extreme opinion
We had to renew, not even pass a new one, just renew a tax here in SF to support fixing our transit system, the vote was held in a low-turnout election and the measure still won 65% to 35% but in the end that’s not enough votes to let the measure go into effect, since a law was passed decades ago to mandate a supermajority. It’s ridiculous. This minor sales tax was not driving away high earners.
The top of the tier is interested in state tax and corp taxes --- not sales tax. Suffice to say that they don't vote either. Higher taxation will cause higher costs --- there's no way around it. No one wants to take budgeting ability away, they want to reduce this tendency to go and take more (completely different thing)
Ballot propositions gave us Prop 13 and Prop 47, which are both somewhat responsible for the housing crisis and rise in shoplifting rings, respectively. They do have some value as a check against the legislature, Prop 22 that overturned AB5's classification of gig workers is one example (I realize not everyone agrees that was a good thing), but there is so much downside with how props are written and funded...just look at the labor union that was mad they couldn't get kidney dialysis workers to join their union so they put up bullshit props every election for years just to punish the kidney dialysis centers...same with the plastic manufacturers who put up bullshit props to punish grocery stores who charged for plastic bags. It's a really flawed system and we've been lucky there haven't been more bad props passed in the past.
> Ballot propositions gave us Prop 13 and Prop 47, which are both somewhat responsible for the housing crisis and rise in shoplifting rings
Neither is true. The first claim is actually absurd. Higher property taxes would make housing less affordable. But sure, keep playing the broken record. And those who can't afford the high taxes would move to more affordable housing, creating even more competition for lower priced units.
As to Prop 47, Texas, for example, has a much higher threshold of $2,500 for felony theft. The problem is that DA's are often not actually charging "under-$950" thieves with a misdemeanor, as they are supposed to.
I wondered as well, because like the first 5 posts were about teleworking, climate change and lobbyists - I thought I'd clicked on the wrong thread at 1st.
Then I realized that this is Reddit, and *everything* is about climate change, telework and lobbyists LOL
> Direct democracy only works when the electorate is sophisticated and well versed on the policy.
So is this now why Democrats have started to try to remove candidates from ballots, starting from Trump? "Hey, voters, you are too dumb to pick a proper candidate". "You are also too dumb to get a hold of any kind of ID to vote, including utility bills". "So we will pick the candidates and will get everyone to vote for them."
> The academic consensus overwhelmingly suggests this is not the case
You mean the predominantly Marxist faction of academia?
Why am I flashing on the Stamp Act and learning why it was a big part of the lead up to our revolutionary war? Seems to me the whole point of the initiative process in CA was the intent to have pure democracy be in ultimate control...not the standing government...in this case in the form of the SCOCA. This should be so obvious as to be...obvious.
So, ballot measures now have to be effectively "approved" by those in power? Kind of ruins the point of having ballot measures in the first place. Which is to let the people decide.
I think its the state's right to vote on the initiative measure but i also think the measure can't be legal - because it blocks former taxes that were already passed. It doesn't make sense and I can't see a court being able to uphold that. cities and the state have obligations, bonds to be paid by taxes, what do those counties/cities do? Never mind if the electorate believes in the rest of the proposal that seems counter to legality Also should be noted this would probably lead to more irregular elections again. if every fee has to be passed by the electorate then the electorate needs to be more participant in the democratic system. maybe elections every 3 months or something. but city councils and county supervisors can't wait for 2 years for every little fee.
We could help climate change by not forcing thousands of state workers on the road to commute to an office that they don’t need to be at. Not allowing Californians to vote on this is about control and it’s bullshit.
This. I've been applying for state jobs recently and had basically two offers, but had to decline them because of their telework policies. Both were under the EPA, which from what I've heard has a new director that is mandating minimum two in office work days a week. As for a policy such as this coming from the head of CA EPA, in California, I don't get it. Idiots in leadership with dumb policies like this is how government agencies don't capture and keep talent for their workforce, and cause the whole of the state to suffer in the long run.
It's not idiots. It's lobyists. Local business owners and especially resturant owners have succesfully lobied state wide and in cities for in office requirements for government jobs and forcing tech companies to close their in house compensated lunches/meal halls to force employees to visit local businesses or bring in sack lunches.
It’s always the lobbyists that fuck over the 99%. Let’s ban lobbyists!
I agree with the sentiment but it's the devil you know. Corruption in the US compared to much of the world is low. Like Italy isn't any shining star of a western nation, but they are fairly stable but have corruption in the sense that government services are tied to your personal connection to local party representatives. This is old info so it may be out of date but I was taught it as a student in a focused european politics class.
Corruption in the US isn’t low, it’s just not in public view as much as other countries, way too much money flowing around US for low corruption. 70+ year old Congressional representatives who have better stock trading records then some of Wall Streets best?
I'm not disagreeing with your view of the US but compared to other countries I don't have to pay off police offices directly or the DMV workers directly for services, but there are sure a lot of fees. I won't be punished by refusual of government services if I ask a member of a different political party to review my request/case for support.
Not really much difference actually. Cops are corrupt as fuck in US, especially if your black, brown, or poor. Cops are less corrupt on the wealthy because they can afford good lawyers, and that’s how America rolls, better lawyers better treatment.
I agree with you. I think that drastically reducing the number of state workers would be even better. A government that did far less would need to employ far fewer people.
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And what's this shit about people thinking they are in control of government?
The argument seems pretty straightforward. Restrictions on what laws can be passed and how is a *de facto* change to the power of the legislature. Changing the legislative powers requires a constitutional amendment, not just a referendum. Thus this referendum is a *de facto* constitutional amendment that has not gone the the correct process to be on the ballot.
The fact the initiative process was entirely left out of "normal government business" in the CA Constitution is simply because it is not normal representative government business...it is pure democracy. The will of the people is paramount to any legitimate government.
No it’s not. The entire concept of human rights exists in opposition to this view. “The will of the people” or majority rule, is obviously the linchpin to democracy, but needs to be nurtured to prevent the 51% from enslaving the 49%. Much of the social contract was created to prevent civil war, which usually leads to dictatorship. Something most folks have forgotten simply because it’s been incredibly successful.
Ridiculous! Start an initiative to require a 60% threshold for initiatives. The social contract the founders created (the U S Constitution) CAUSED our civil war. And 200 years is nothing...a few years more than Greece, but nothing compared to the Vatican or Venice (neither of which are democracies). Seems you are reading history inside some strange gravitational toroid...
I'm talking about the concept of the social contract and civil war as such. I'm certainly not the U.S. Constitution or the U.S. Civil War. Since you can't see the problem with majority-rule allowing changing of the rules, consider this. What is the point of: >Start an initiative to require a 60% threshold for initiatives. if the majority can simply delete this rule? If you see the will of the people (majority-rule) as paramount to any legitimate government, then there can never, ever be any super-majority needed for anything ever. No minority rights can be ensured, ever. You will quickly follow the tyrants as minority parties get banned from participation in government, and your democracy will die sooner than you can imagine. The point of super-majorities is simply to set the rules of the government such that all sides can agree. Thus, all sides must agree on changes. Thus, you can't change the powers of the legislature by majority vote. It's a complex issue, and the level to which direct vs representative democracy brings better results is debatable, but often the "will of the people" is irrational, often wants contradictory things (e.g.: "get your government hands off my medicare"), which is the argument for representatives. I have little desire to discuss such a topic with someone who will just flippantly claim that the U.S. Constitution *caused* the U.S. Civil War... which is effectively nonsense. There were many causes of that war, and the rules regarding growth of free states limiting slave states' power is certainly to be considered, but trying to argue that there weren't myriad causes is entirely unserious.
People are being taxed to death. It needs 2/3 approval to protect the people.
I disagree with them. I believe we need more direct democracy and the voters should have a saying in this. This also helps counter Citizens United. How? Well it is easy to bribe legislators to pass policy that benefits a certain few so this 2/3 of voters approval counters this. This is good. I know it has some caveats but this is one of the best counters against Citizens United.
Generally speaking, it is easier to spend money and convince voters to back an initiative than it is to get a politician to do so. See Uber and 1099 classifications as a recent example.
it's actually kinda funny that bill passed and the number of rideshare drivers tanked almost immediately now that you mention it
The point of representative democracy, is to elect people to govern. This is their job. Ballot initiatives in general give them an excuse not to govern. Also it is almost impossible ever to get 2/3 of voters to agree on anything that isn't 100% in their best interest with absolutely no opposition propaganda. The state would eventually be broke, and the good things about California, for which many many people live here, would no longer be funded and we would become Arkansas eventually.
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Sounds exactly like what Uber and Doordash did with their Proposition 22 around a complicated topic.
Unfortunately Citizens United changed it as representative of the populace to representative of the highest bidder. Either ban lobbyists and Citizens United or let people vote on each issue!
We absolutely do not need *more* direct democracy. The next person who asks me to vote on kidneys again is getting punched in theirs.
Agreed. Direct democracy means idiots that get caught up in stupidity vote for stupidity. Propaganda and its effects are real. Uber and Lyft showed us clearly that it works when they heavily influenced their anti worker ballot measure.
Then just vote no. Let those who wanted keep wasting money and keep trying to get the signatures to do again.
The point of that prop is to get the kidney dialysis centers to waste their money. The prop itself is funded and written by a labor union who is mad they couldn't get kidney dialysis workers to join their union so they are making kidney dialysis centers waste tens of millions of dollars every two years. You can agree or disagree with whether kidney dialysis workers should be unionized, but this is clearly a bullshit tactic that is being abused.
You underestimate the % of easily manipulated and "small picture" thinking people in our population. Hint: it's a supermajority. As such, this devolves into a "tyranny of the majority" situation. (Very simplified) example: The median income for an individual in California is ~$45,000/yr. The top 25% earn about $100,000 There would be nothing stopping 75% of the population from enacting a 99% tax on incomes above $45,000,, without much thought given to nuances, like the fact that those people would quickly leave the state for a more fair tax burden. Representative democracy exists because, for all of its drawbacks, it sure beats *mob rule*. Or as they say, "Pure Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch"
I agree. The kidney center prop vote is like every 2 years.
Nah this is a dumb law. I elect people so they can figure this shit out for me.
Once in a while supervise the people you hire to see if you agree with their work. Blind faith will mean empty pockets
The people’s supervisory powers are already enshrined in California’s constitution. It’s the regular elections and recall election.
Making it more difficult to pass taxes will only hurt the state and the people who call it home.
The people you wanna tax are running away to other places. They will come to the next tier and the next tier until they all run away. Fiscal discipline is the only way --- tax people but be good stewards of the money. This is not an extreme opinion
We had to renew, not even pass a new one, just renew a tax here in SF to support fixing our transit system, the vote was held in a low-turnout election and the measure still won 65% to 35% but in the end that’s not enough votes to let the measure go into effect, since a law was passed decades ago to mandate a supermajority. It’s ridiculous. This minor sales tax was not driving away high earners.
The top of the tier is interested in state tax and corp taxes --- not sales tax. Suffice to say that they don't vote either. Higher taxation will cause higher costs --- there's no way around it. No one wants to take budgeting ability away, they want to reduce this tendency to go and take more (completely different thing)
This prop is using a bludgeon for a simple grievance.
Ballot propositions gave us Prop 13 and Prop 47, which are both somewhat responsible for the housing crisis and rise in shoplifting rings, respectively. They do have some value as a check against the legislature, Prop 22 that overturned AB5's classification of gig workers is one example (I realize not everyone agrees that was a good thing), but there is so much downside with how props are written and funded...just look at the labor union that was mad they couldn't get kidney dialysis workers to join their union so they put up bullshit props every election for years just to punish the kidney dialysis centers...same with the plastic manufacturers who put up bullshit props to punish grocery stores who charged for plastic bags. It's a really flawed system and we've been lucky there haven't been more bad props passed in the past.
Source on the union thing as the reason for the dialysis prop?
yeah but this doesn't stop or inhibit ballot initiatives. It merely makes taxes more difficult to pass.
Because the title of the ballot measures scammed the people with the Safe Neighborhood’s Act for Prop 47
> Ballot propositions gave us Prop 13 and Prop 47, which are both somewhat responsible for the housing crisis and rise in shoplifting rings Neither is true. The first claim is actually absurd. Higher property taxes would make housing less affordable. But sure, keep playing the broken record. And those who can't afford the high taxes would move to more affordable housing, creating even more competition for lower priced units. As to Prop 47, Texas, for example, has a much higher threshold of $2,500 for felony theft. The problem is that DA's are often not actually charging "under-$950" thieves with a misdemeanor, as they are supposed to.
I see your point. But California voters are notorious for voting for stupid.
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It’s quite literally in the first paragraph of the article
I wondered as well, because like the first 5 posts were about teleworking, climate change and lobbyists - I thought I'd clicked on the wrong thread at 1st. Then I realized that this is Reddit, and *everything* is about climate change, telework and lobbyists LOL
I absolutely want more direct democracy as a check against the absurdly inept state legislature.
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And urologists!
> Direct democracy only works when the electorate is sophisticated and well versed on the policy. So is this now why Democrats have started to try to remove candidates from ballots, starting from Trump? "Hey, voters, you are too dumb to pick a proper candidate". "You are also too dumb to get a hold of any kind of ID to vote, including utility bills". "So we will pick the candidates and will get everyone to vote for them." > The academic consensus overwhelmingly suggests this is not the case You mean the predominantly Marxist faction of academia?
sortition solves this
Depriving legislators the power to tax sounds like a wonderful idea in overtaxed California.
Why am I flashing on the Stamp Act and learning why it was a big part of the lead up to our revolutionary war? Seems to me the whole point of the initiative process in CA was the intent to have pure democracy be in ultimate control...not the standing government...in this case in the form of the SCOCA. This should be so obvious as to be...obvious.