One of the great reforms of the Progressive Era was direct election of U.S. senators rather than election by corrupt bargains with state legislators.

But the worst Progressive Era “reform” was the initiative and referendum.

This was a reform that was no reform. It led to the people legislating from emotion rather than reason. It led to bad laws.

As I.F. Stone, the great independent journalist, pointed out: “If you give power to the people we’d all be in jail.”

Examples abound in California, the Land of Initiative and Referendum. Things are so bad there that the California Supreme Court chief justice complained that the government is dysfunctional.

The U.S. Constitution has been amended just 27 times. In sharp contrast, the California Constitution has been amended more than 500 times. The worst of these amendments is Proposition 13 approved by voters in 1978.

Arthur Blaustein, public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley, excoriates Prop. 13 as a fiscal and social folly: “It limits the taxes levied on any piece of real property — houses, apartments, factories and businesses. And, it requires a two-thirds supermajority of both houses of the legislature to approve increases in any other tax.”

This is tyranny of the minority, the stupidity of the masses legislating. It is fool’s gold, causing perpetual catastrophe for the once great state of California.

Among its many problems: K-12 is woefully underfunded, higher ed is foundering and prisons are overflowing. The only solution: a state constitutional convention abolishing the initiative and referendum. 

Lawyer’s lament

An Oakland railroad union lawyer, reading my recent column about Senate filibusters thwarting progress in America, writes, “Thousands of railroad union workers routinely vote against the best interests of their spouses, children, themselves and pocket books.”

They do so, he says, “because Rush Limbaugh, Dick Armey (reactionary ex-lawmaker from Texas and master scaremonger) and the other bastards convince them that the lefties will take away their guns and turn us all into gay abortionists. Discussion is nonexistent. So pathetic!”

The lawyer is dead-on. But there are many nonunion people who also vote against their own economic interests.

So many Americans have no business voting Republican. Yet they do so because of such non-economic issues as abortion and gay marriage.

That too is pathetic. But this is such a conservative country where the conservatives have inordinate power in Congress.      

         

So-called debates

The Left never gets past the Center in so-called media debates.

Take the recent nondebate in the USA Today opinion section about the American role in Afghanistan. Archconservative Cal Thomas was pitted against “Leftist” Bob Beckel.

Thomas: “Nothing would benefit America more than to see Democrats and Republicans unite to defeat the enemy.”

Beckel: “Yes, the more dangerous path would be to retreat.”

That’s a Leftist view?

Gerrymander

Democracy? Not when state legislatures can carve out legislative and congressional districts for partisan advantage after each decennial population count.

Remapping electorial districts is what the New York Times characterizes as “a dark art form designed to make absolutely certain that incumbents in the majority party are safe from electoral competition (aka democracy).”

Lobbyists

In the health care debate “speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities,” the Times reports. No wonder. They are ghost-written by lobbyists for Genentech, a biotechnology firm.        

These bogus speeches are published in the Congressional Record where lawmakers are allowed “to revise and extend” their remarks.

Bad news Souter

Good news: Recently retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter has donated his papers to the New Hampshire Historical Society. Very bad news: The papers are sealed for 50 years.

Souter, a fine justice, is as blind to the public interest in his papers as he is on insisting that cameras should stay out of the Supreme Court.

Victory!

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violated religious and educational freedoms. The ruling is a victory for both religion and education.

Degrading ad

Helen Mirren is one of my favorite actors. But she demeans herself when she appears in a quarter-page ad in the Wall Street Journal for an international hotel chain.

Life is disillusioning

Historians have debunked the wonderful story of Robin Hood robbing from the rich to give to the poor.

The Sherwood Forest Marxist may never have existed, scholars now say. But if he did, they add, he certainly never stole for the poor.

Yet another disillusionment.

Jake Highton teaches journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. You can reach him at jake@unr.edu.