Whatever you call them – initiatives, measures, propositions, referendums – they are almost always a bad idea.
Rooted in special-interest deceit, these posers essentially bypass good democracy.
In other words, they serve as a form of direct democracy, which frankly should be banned. Why? Because people are idiots.
You only have to spend five minutes on Nextdoor to see that people are ruled by entrenched biases and emotions. They rarely pay attention and are easily swayed. All of which can lead to mob rule, which leads to tyranny.
So when in doubt, vote no. Ergo, no on Measures Q, R and S in Laguna Beach.
The fact is we live in a representative democracy, not a tyrannical one. The country’s founders purposely wanted a constitutional republic to avoid what Alexander Hamilton called an “ungovernable mob.”
“The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government,” he said. “Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity.”
Think tyranny when special interests bypass their elected leaders with vague ballot measures that promise mom and apple pie.
Remember that getting dense measures on the ballot isn’t terribly difficult. In the case of Laguna Beach, special interests needed roughly 1,800 signatures.
Officially, a narrow-minded group needs only 10% of the registered voters to sign their name at the local grocery store. In Laguna, there are 18,123 registered voters, according to county records.
And in case you’re wondering, of those Laguna voters, 7,973 are Democrats and 5,194 are Republicans. The rest are divvied up among the idealistic fringe groups.
Perhaps the only legitimate proposition to ever pass in California was Proposition 4 in 1911. It gave women the right to vote in the state. All the rest? Meh.
Even the state’s famous Proposition 13 was fraught with problems and unfairness. It decimated school funding and caused a chain reaction of new taxes. As a result, we remain one of the most taxed people in the country, if you add income, sales and gas taxes.
A better plan would have been to elect officials to fix the specific tax problems of the day.
In the same way, we elect leaders in Laguna to govern for us. Thankfully, we don’t vote on every issue, every new building or perceived problem.
Veteran political journalist and former editorial writer for the San Francisco Chronicle John Diaz wrote a blistering indictment of California’s initiative process in 2008. The trick, he said, is to get billionaire benefactors, “mercenary signature gatherers,” stretch the truth and “hope voters don’t notice the fine print or the independent analyses of good-government groups or newspaper editorial boards.”
“Today, the initiative process is no longer the antidote to special interests and the moneyed class,” he wrote. “It is their vehicle of choice to attempt to get their way without having to endure the scrutiny and compromise of the legislative process.”
Good government requires compromise, but don’t compromise with bogus measures. Vote no on Q, R and S.
