Marching With Germans

I’ve spent the past two days in Northern California playing host to a group of two dozen foreign scholars and practitioners. They are early arrivals to a free, public event that starts Friday night in San Francisco, the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy. (Full disclosure: I’m co-president of the event with a Swiss-Swede journalist named Bruno. Long story).

Listening to the Germans in the group is a trip. Initiative and referendum – previously discredited because of the Nazis’ use of the plebiscite – have made a comeback in Germany since the end of the Cold War. Now, all 16 German states have popular initiative and referendum.

There is even talk of establishing the process on the federal level.

Coming to California, Designing a Brand New Initiative Process

Why would Europeans be coming to California, seeking advice?

Well, a group of European activists and scholars are coming this week to learn as much as they can about our initiative process. Their goal? Learn what to do (and perhaps not to do) as they design a new initiative process of their own.

The process in question is called the European Citizen’s Initiative. It’s an agenda-setting initiative – permitting the people to introduce legislation (though not put a measure on the ballot – at least not yet).

Milk-Giving Bulls and The Governor’s Race

Visiting with my grandmother recently, she handed me an old series of telegrams that her father, my great-grandfather, had sent to other officers when he was in the U.S. Navy. Stuck on some Pacific island, he kept requesting that his superiors send out farm animals. He was especially interested in receiving bulls that gave milk.

It took some of the superiors a little while to get the joke.

The telegrams put me in mind of much of the rhetoric in the governor’s race.

The Other Trickle Down Theory

Has anyone else noticed how progressives, when they’re defending big pensions for public workers, sound almost exactly like conservatives who are defending tax cuts for the rich?

There are two trickle-down theories, and here’s one thing they have in common: the belief that if you simply put money in the hands of the right people, benefits will somehow flow to the rest of us.

Here’s another thing both theories have in common: an absence of evidence that they work.

Do 11 and 14 Add Up to 25?

Prop 25, the November ballot initiative to permit budget bills to pass with a majority vote instead of 2/3, also represents something of a referendum on two recent voter-approved measures, Prop 11 and Prop 14.

Prop 11, the redistricting reform initiative passed in 2008, and Prop 14, the just-approved top-two primary, were pushed through in hopes of creating a legislature that would be more effective, representative, and ultimately trustworthy.

But do voters, having changed how legislative districts are drawn and candidates are elected, feel better enough about the legislature to give them more room to maneuver?

What Happened? Signatures and Unemployment Insurance

While putting together the program for a free, public international conference on initiative and referendum (it’s called the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy and you can register here:), I’ve been hearing dozens of accounts of the strange ballot initiative qualification season that has just been concluded.

The season was puzzling. Why did it seem to cost just as much as always to gather signatures – even in the midst of a crippling recession that should have made it easy to find people to circulate initiative petitions cheaply? And why did the signatures come so slowly-causing delays that saw a half-dozen initiative sponsors turn in signatures far too close to the deadline for comfort?

The answer I’ve received from a half-a-dozen players in the signature game?

Memo to Meg: Your Own Recall

To: Meg Whitman
From: One of those Media Guys You Mostly Ignore
Re: How to Show You’re Serious About What You Say

It must be starting to get to you. The millions and millions spent, and still you trail the Old Guy in the polls. You talk about cutting spending and targeted tax rates and about how determined you are to not let California fail. And the state’s voters yawn as though they’ve heard it all before.

Because they have.

How to show you really mean it when you say you’ll fix the state?

Jerry Brown and the Human Sacrifice Dilemma

Both candidates for governor, and especially Jerry Brown, face what might be called the Human Sacrifice Dilemma.

What’s that?

I first encountered the HSD while researching a book on Gov. Schwarzenegger. In looking through polling conducted by the governor’s political team in early 2004, it was clear that there was strong public support for an increase in the sales tax as part of a plan for getting the state out of its budget crisis. Even when arguments against such a tax increase were read to those surveyed, the sales tax remained popular. The data seemed to argue for Gov. Schwarzenegger to endorse such a tax.

The ‘If Both Parties Agree, It Must Be Bad’ Argument

If you paid any attention to the debate over Prop 14, the top two primary initiative, you probably heard the following argument trotted out: if both political parties agree on something, it must be bad.

Many, many smart people made this argument, even though it’s a demagogic argument that provides a way to avoid examining the substance of the issues. Of course, the determination to avoid examining the substance of the issue is the basic organizing principle of California political debate (and media coverage of same). And who can argue with success? Prop 14 won.

So when it comes to bigger controversies – particularly about our budget system – perhaps it’s time to stop marshaling evidence about the damage done to California by its twin supermajorities, on budgets and tax increases. It’s time to stop showing how two-thirds adds to spending and borrowing.

Dear Meg …

Dear Meg,

Your campaign is so terrific and represents such a public service to California that it’s hard to choose my favorite thing about it.

But I think I’ve finally decided. It’s your commitment to making sure that Californians hear all sides of the story.

It was particularly refreshing to see you defend this principle by asking the California Nurses Assn. for permission to mail information to their lists. I, like you, was surprised and outraged when the nurses’ union didn’t open up its list to you.