Summer of Referendum
There’s an old Swiss saying: every time the referendum bell
rings, an angel gets its wings.
OK, there’s
not really an old Swiss saying like that.
But there
should be.
The
referendum is the low-fat yogurt of direct democracy: pleasurable but
guilt-free. You’re not tearing some guy out of office mid-term, like in a
recall. (You might call that firing squad democracy). You’re not circumventing
budgets and legislative checks and all semblance of accountability, as you are
with a California initiative. (You might call that drunk-in-a-bar democracy)
A
referendum is nothing but direct democracy. Someone objects to something the
legislature does, and so the people step in to pass judgment. It doesn’t get
any more direct than that — the people communicating directly with those they
elect. No intermediaries. (The initiative, which is a way for the people to
circumvent those they elect, is in this way quite indirect).
Term Limits Law Should Be Reformed
In
1990, the proponents of Prop. 140 (Term Limits) viewed
legislators as entrenched officials, serving their own interests and striving
to stay in the legislature for decades. They dreamed of a state capitol filled
with "citizen legislators," who would enter office with fresh ideas, beholden
to no one, and then, after a few years in the legislature, return to the
private sector. That dream has
not been realized.
Our
latest CGS report found that, in 2010, the majority of state legislators remained
in government after being termed out-obtaining new offices at the federal,
statewide or local levels. In fact, about the same percentage of politicians
remain in government today after being termed-out as did their predecessors in
the 1980s, long before the term limit "reforms" went into effect in
the mid-1990s.
Measuring Political Donations
You have to wonder at the attention the American Lung
Association sponsored study
on tobacco company contributions to California politics got in the press. There
was no surprise that tobacco companies donate to protect their interests just
as unions do, just as Indian tribes do and just as other interests do. However,
only in rare cases in the stories was the tobacco spending put in perspective.
Tobacco is not the largest donor to California politics – not
by a long shot.
California should lead in all jobs, not just two percent of them
During a recent California Energy Commission proceeding on our clean energy goals, it was recommended that job creation be included as a metric for measuring the success of clean energy policies. This will only be meaningful if we count all the jobs that will be lost as a result of a policy. Therefore our job creation goal, and the metric to measure it, should only count net new jobs.
This prompted us to look at the Brookings Institution’s recently released report on green jobs — Sizing the Clean Economy. The report stated that California leads the country in the "green" sector, boasting 332,000 jobs. To put things in perspective, that number accounts for only two percent of the state’s entire job base and about one job for every 115 people. Further it doesn’t make up for the state’s overall jobs loss, nor does it make up for the state’s high wage job losses.
Green job definitions vary widely, depending on who you talk to. For instance, the Brookings report maintained that public mass transit operators are in fact "green". Regardless, even with the broadest definitions, the green economy on its own will not catapult California into its next greatest economic boom. The emerging sector is just another important part of the overall economy that will only grow if it — just like our coveted high wage sectors — can compete and invest here in California.
Will unions now thank Wall Street?
Cross-posted at CalWatchdog.
Last week, I was a witness on a mock trial at Freedom Fest, in which public employee unions were in the dock over the detrimental effect of their pensions on the public treasury. It was a fun event, designed to debate and discuss the role of public employee unions in the current fiscal situation, but the union officials who questioned me and made their case kept coming back to the same argument.
Wall Street is evil. That’s what they say, basically. They deny that the routine six-figure pensions have anything to do with any fiscal problems suffered by cities and states. They deny that pensions are too high. They insist that public employees remain underpaid. They deny the obvious numbers about unfunded pension liabilities. The whole problem is in their view due to Wall Street greed, which sunk the economy and reduced the rates of return that kept sustaining the pensions their members receive.
Now, the unions are crowing over new reports that CalPERS and CalSTRS have recorded huge gains in the last fiscal year based on their stock-market investments. They now claim that there is no pension crisis and that we can go back to business as usual. But even the Bee report shows the following: “Yet the two systems, like many public pensions around the country, remain underfunded and are still feeling the effects of the market crash of 2008. Officials said it will be difficult to duplicate the latest investment results in the coming years, and both funds are likely to continue looking to taxpayers for higher contributions.”