With a media assist from the Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt, Tim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, came to Ventura County August 2 to promote Repair California’s   plan for calling a state constitutional convention.  It  seeks to sidestep the legislature’s sole power to convene a constitutional convention by using  two constitutional initiatives on the November 2010 ballot.  The first would allow a convention to be called by initiative.  The second would call a convention, but limit its mandate to four specific topics so as to exclude controversial human rights subjects such as discrimination and abortion.

Wunderman assured the audience that experience in other states proves that a convention
can be trusted to stay within its mandated limits despite some disturbing historical precedents to the contrary. By a selection process still undetermined, he would exclude politicians and experts  as delegates.  “Plain citizens,” he claims, could avoid the partisan acrimony and career conflicts that produce deadlock. After sufficient education by experts, they could, in a climate of personal respect, resolve problems whose solutions have eluded partisan legislators. But can “plain citizens”  wrest  power and resources away from dominant vested interests without heated conflict.?  Would lobbyists provide the delegates’ education?  If not, then who?

A “pro-business” agenda accompanied Wunderman’s  call for nonpartisan politics.  He would amend but not repeal Proposition 13. Using data that contradicted figures supplied by Timm Herdt and the Legislative Analysts Office, he  ranted about “excessive” corporate and personal taxes.  While he supports extending term limits and overturning the 2/3 rule for budgets and revenue raising, his own  movement would drain resources from concurrent campaigns to make these changes by initiative. Without public campaign financing, what “plain citizen” could be elected as a delegate?   Reforms they adopt could not take effect before 2012, too late to help alleviate the current  economic crisis. Moreover a conservative judge on the panel warned that “judicial activists” would delay or rule unconstitutional  his whole procedure.

Given the magnitude of California’s current crisis, Repair California’s radical alienation from “politics as usual” is understandable. But opting out of partisan politics does not promise to break  the deadlock.  Wunderman attributes deadlock to partisanship, not to the concentration of the power of money in politics. He overlooks the vehemence that would be released by vested interests under attack.  He scapegoats legislators, a majority of whom have voted for “clean money” in a effort to escape dependence on  big money.   Repair California aims to recruit independents and voters disillusioned with party politics who, by registering “No Party,” forfeit participation in the only effective organizations possible in our winner-take-all-election system.   Repair California promises to replace partisan politics, but it expects the same voters who have repeatedly been stampeded by big money media campaigns in the past, using the same old rules, to vote  differently this time.   This is ultimate California dreaming.  Let’s get on with abolishing the 2/3 rule, imposing limits on lobbyists rather than legislators, freeing legislators from the tyranny of constant money raising with clean public money– reforms that are concrete and necessary now.  Meanwhile we can study proposals for instant runoff voting and abolition of the state senate as projects for a real convention in the future.
Al Dirrim

With a media assist from the Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt, Tim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, came to Ventura County August 2 to promote Repair California’s   plan for calling a state constitutional convention.  It  seeks to sidestep the legislature’s sole power to convene a constitutional convention by using  two constitutional initiatives on the November 2010 ballot.  The first would allow a convention to be called by initiative.  The second would call a convention, but limit its mandate to four specific topics so as to exclude controversial human rights subjects such as discrimination and abortion.

Wunderman assured the audience that experience in other states proves that a convention
can be trusted to stay within its mandated limits despite some disturbing historical precedents to the contrary. By a selection process still undetermined, he would exclude politicians and experts  as delegates.  “Plain citizens,” he claims, could avoid the partisan acrimony and career conflicts that produce deadlock. After sufficient education by experts, they could, in a climate of personal respect, resolve problems whose solutions have eluded partisan legislators. But can “plain citizens”  wrest  power and resources away from dominant vested interests without heated conflict.?  Would lobbyists provide the delegates’ education?  If not, then who?

A “pro-business” agenda accompanied Wunderman’s  call for nonpartisan politics.  He would amend but not repeal Proposition 13. Using data that contradicted figures supplied by Timm Herdt and the Legislative Analysts Office, he  ranted about “excessive” corporate and personal taxes.  While he supports extending term limits and overturning the 2/3 rule for budgets and revenue raising, his own  movement would drain resources from concurrent campaigns to make these changes by initiative. Without public campaign financing, what “plain citizen” could be elected as a delegate?   Reforms they adopt could not take effect before 2012, too late to help alleviate the current  economic crisis. Moreover a conservative judge on the panel warned that “judicial activists” would delay or rule unconstitutional  his whole procedure.

Given the magnitude of California’s current crisis, Repair California’s radical alienation from “politics as usual” is understandable. But opting out of partisan politics does not promise to break  the deadlock.  Wunderman attributes deadlock to partisanship, not to the concentration of the power of money in politics. He overlooks the vehemence that would be released by vested interests under attack.  He scapegoats legislators, a majority of whom have voted for “clean money” in a effort to escape dependence on  big money.   Repair California aims to recruit independents and voters disillusioned with party politics who, by registering “No Party,” forfeit participation in the only effective organizations possible in our winner-take-all-election system.   Repair California promises to replace partisan politics, but it expects the same voters who have repeatedly been stampeded by big money media campaigns in the past, using the same old rules, to vote  differently this time.   This is ultimate California dreaming.  Let’s get on with abolishing the 2/3 rule, imposing limits on lobbyists rather than legislators, freeing legislators from the tyranny of constant money raising with clean public money– reforms that are concrete and necessary now.  Meanwhile we can study proposals for instant runoff voting and abolition of the state senate as projects for a real convention in the future.
Al Dirrim

Governor Schwarzenegger is casting his lot with the Republican minority in the legislature which is primarily responsible for the failure of the legislature to produce a viable budget. True, our staggering deficit does represent an accumulation of spending greater than revenue collection, and some of that spending, the burgeoning prison bill, for example, is certainly misdirected, but most of the deficit now undermining our credit and credibility comes from the success of the minority party repressing equitable revenue collection for several decades. The governor got his office by promising to hold the vehicle license fee at recession levels, thereby creating much of the current shortfall. The Republican minority in the legislature has wielded the veto given by the two thirds rule to keep taxes on the most lucrative sectors of the economy—real estate, financial services, and corporations, especially oil companies, low, shifting the burden onto individual personal income taxpayers and sales taxes. Their low taxes contributed to the housing bubble and subsidized an infrastructure increasingly dependent on shrinking supplies of oil and stubbornly resistant to adapting to menacing climate change. Extraction of rainy day funds from sunshine sectors was denied.
Both the governor and Republican legislators claim a mandate against any increase in taxes from the May 19 election, but neither election analysis nor public opinion assessments substantiates their claims. Long-term remedy lay not exclusively in spending cuts but in overcoming application of the two thirds rule. Continued tyranny by this highly disciplined minority will continue to consolidate economic and political power in the hands of winners taking all, depriving the rest of the broad incentives needed by the capitalist system it claims to represent. Instead, its “gusher up” policies disguised as “trickle down” have led to systemic breakdown, in which most who expect to win lose, and to destruction, not the “creative destruction” touted by its ideologists. Regenerative creativity has to come from policies based on experience, not ideological fantasy. Crisis may bring opportunity but institutionalized stalemate does not. Heaping blame on the boxed-in majority in the legislature produces more stalemate, not creative change. It merely serves to perpetuate the tyranny of the minority, results of whose ascendancy have now come home to roost.

By Allen Dirrim, GOOD Club President

Governor Schwarzenegger is casting his lot with the Republican minority in the legislature which is primarily responsible for the failure of the legislature to produce a viable budget. True, our staggering deficit does represent an accumulation of spending greater than revenue collection, and some of that spending, the burgeoning prison bill, for example, is certainly misdirected, but most of the deficit now undermining our credit and credibility comes from the success of the minority party repressing equitable revenue collection for several decades. The governor got his office by promising to hold the vehicle license fee at recession levels, thereby creating much of the current shortfall. The Republican minority in the legislature has wielded the veto given by the two thirds rule to keep taxes on the most lucrative sectors of the economy—real estate, financial services, and corporations, especially oil companies, low, shifting the burden onto individual personal income taxpayers and sales taxes. Their low taxes contributed to the housing bubble and subsidized an infrastructure increasingly dependent on shrinking supplies of oil and stubbornly resistant to adapting to menacing climate change. Extraction of rainy day funds from sunshine sectors was denied.
Both the governor and Republican legislators claim a mandate against any increase in taxes from the May 19 election, but neither election analysis nor public opinion assessments substantiates their claims. Long-term remedy lay not exclusively in spending cuts but in overcoming application of the two thirds rule. Continued tyranny by this highly disciplined minority will continue to consolidate economic and political power in the hands of winners taking all, depriving the rest of the broad incentives needed by the capitalist system it claims to represent. Instead, its “gusher up” policies disguised as “trickle down” have led to systemic breakdown, in which most who expect to win lose, and to destruction, not the “creative destruction” touted by its ideologists. Regenerative creativity has to come from policies based on experience, not ideological fantasy. Crisis may bring opportunity but institutionalized stalemate does not. Heaping blame on the boxed-in majority in the legislature produces more stalemate, not creative change. It merely serves to perpetuate the tyranny of the minority, results of whose ascendancy have now come home to roost.

By Allen Dirrim, GOOD Club President