John A. Fleming: Because that’s the objective encoded in the redistricting initiative.

I have a better idea.

Use parallels of latitude to divide the state into five parts. Each “strip” will have eight million people.

Divide each “strip” into eight Assembly and four Senate districts using meridians of longitude; the Assembly districts shall each have one million people.

The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy-Services Paradigm
California taxpayers don’t get much bang for their bucks.

David Welker: The reason we have elections is so that people can make change.

I see you’re still on the Hope and Change ™ bandwagon.

No, you are mistaken about the reason why we have elections. It is not so that activists can thrust change upon the public. It is so that the government is accountable to the people. That is the whole reason to have elections.

Because that’s the objective encoded in the redistricting initiative.

Second, it makes the Legislators responsive to polities, and not carefully selected pockets of like-minded people, on the theory that if you are representing a diverse collection of people, your decisions are likely to place more emphasis on and actually be what is best for the vast majority of people, rather than your friends.

Here’s an example I’m familiar with. Jane Harman (D) represents the Los Angeles South Bay. Since she’s a Demo, and a rich lady who lives in Palos Verdes, a relatively conservative area, they have carefully drawn a convoluted district that extends from Santa Monica to Palos Verdes, snatching in enough Demos from the overwhelming Demo neighborhoods of Santa Monica, Westchester, and the poorer areas east of the beach cities, to overwhelm the conservatism of the Beach Cities and Palos Verdes. So the interests of Santa Monica, Lawndale, Westchester, Gardena, Hawthorne have been diluted to negate the interests of the upper-middle class Beach cities and PV Peninsula.

A more natural redistricting would be take all the cities south of the 105 and the PV peninsula (“the South Bay”), upper and lower middle class, as one district, and all LA districts to the North as another. But then poor Jane Harman would actually have to compete every two years. Oh no, can’t have that!

John A. Fleming: Even the new redistricting won’t help much, because by keeping cities whole, we will still have legislative districts with clustered illegals, and hence safe Demo seats. The teat’s gotta dry up before people will vote for fiscal sanity.

Why would cities be kept whole?

Just use meridians and parallels to draw the boundaries.

California is a majority rule state. It is also a one-party ruled state. The only consequential supermajority is for to raise new taxes. The Governor is often a weak reed, not able to stand up against the special interests that dominate the Legislature.

The Demos pass all the policy changes they want. Our laws are ever expanding. The essence of governing is not being able to pass new taxes. The proper essence of governing is making hard choices about how to spend a limited amount of the people’s wealth for the welfare of all. Hard choices with limited funds. The Demos in CA think governing is doing all things we already do, and getting more money from the people to do new stuff. They are incapable of making hard choices.

The problem is the gerrymander. No matter how bad the policies (and on this there can’t be credible disagreement, the State government has run us into a ditch), the people cannot break the gerrymander.

Here’s why. A safe Republican seat in Orange County has 180,000 votes cast, and the Repo wins with 100,000. A typical safe Democrat seat has 80,000 votes cast, and the Demo wins with 70,000 (absolute values vary depending on Congressional,
State Senate, or State Assembly, but the proportion is what’s constant). This disparity is caused by illegal immigrant clustering. Illegal immigrants count for redistricting, but don’t and can’t vote. The gerrymander is strengthened by the 6 mlllion illegals in California. Now you know why the Demos and Repos professional politicans want amnesty.

Californians aren’t stupid, but it will take a total economic collapse to break the gerrymander. No matter how mad we get, no matter how determined we are for change, we’re spread too thin. We’re overwhelmed by too many people who want to keep sucking hind teat on Uncle Sugar. It used to be a tradition in California, that the Demos would rule for a while, and screw things up. The people would then vote in the Republicans to clean up the mess and put our fiscal house in order, where we then vote back in the Demos. Those days are gone, finito, over. It’s Demo majorities forever. Even the new redistricting won’t help much, because by keeping cities whole, we will still have legislative districts with clustered illegals, and hence safe Demo seats. The teat’s gotta dry up before people will vote for fiscal sanity.

David Welker: I am not surprised by your position. I do not expect the typical conservative to show even an ounce of principle.

This is stupid and insulting. You’re not doing your argument a service with this kind of “argument.”

You also seem to forget that the entire purpose of the U.S. Senate was to give THE MINORITY (that is, the smallest 25 states) the power to block what the MAJORITY (the biggest 25 states) want to do. The amendment process was also specifically designed to allow the MINORITY to stop basic changes that the MAJORITY wanted.

You can make all sorts of arguments about whether supermajorities are bad ideas — though the idea that California would be in great shape if only the Republicans had agreed to massive tax increases strikes me as peculiar — but please don’t suggest that the one-person-one-vote-majority-rule thing was shared by the founding fathers.

David Welker: Your thesis is that California will tax businesses leading them to flee the state.

The experiment has already been done–businesses are leaving the state. The situation is so bad here that Nevada and Oregon run ads on California TV inviting people and businesses to move. Your thesis that voters will punish the legislature for its hostile attitude towards business has not happened. The legislature remains unpunished and all too willing to continue its profligate ways. For example last Friday Jan. 29, the California Senate passed a measure to create a California single-payer health care system that will cost $200 billion. See here. Right in the middle of a fiscal crisis, the legislature wants to embark on a new gigantic program. Do you really think California Senator Mark Leno, who introduced the bill, is going to get voted out for doing this? Not a chance. His constituents will love it because they think it will either not cost anything, or somehow the “rich” will pay for it. Leno says they will figure out how to fund it later– a mere detail.

Due diligence does not seem to be an attribute of the people running the California government. For example CalPers has just lost $500 million, on the Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town real estate deal they went into. See here. The investors paid $5.4 billion. With a little arithmetic you will see that they paid 22 times the yearly rent from the tenants. In general one does not pay more than 8 to 12 times yearly rent depending on the time horizon. Even if they could convert all the apartments to rent at market value they would have paid 14 times yearly rent. Not surprisingly this whole project has blown up and the creditors now own the housing complex whose real market value is something like $2.1 billion. See the problem? The California government is not too good at finance.

David Welker: You can try to justify your infantalizing the voter all you want or making derogatory statements about their IQ. But to be honest, YOU don’t impress me.

California does have a low average IQ, and only New Mexico, Alabama, Hawaii, and Mississippi are lower among the 50 states. You are not going to change reality by flinging out insults.

A. Zarkov: They really think we need to raise taxes to whatever is necessary to “protect the most vulnerable among us.”

By the most vulnerable among us, they mean people like Charlie Samuel , not Lily Burk.

David Welker: Yet, voters would not pay any cost for this?

They will, and many of them would blame the “rich”.

David Welker: Where are the principled conservatives?

Principled conservatives want to protect people like Lily Burk, not people like Charlie Samuel.

I am not surprised by your position. I do not expect the typical conservative to show even an ounce of principle. No perceived political advantage is worth giving up for mere principle. It is all all empty rhetoric.

Your thesis is that California will tax businesses leading them to flee the state. Yet, voters would not pay any cost for this? That is ridiculous. I guess if you don’t view unemployment as a cost, that makes perfect sense. I think your policy predictions are wrong, but I think the idea that voters would not feel it if they were right is basically a delusion. You can try to justify your infantalizing the voter all you want or making derogatory statements about their IQ. But to be honest, YOU don’t impress me. And if you decided to leave the state, I for one would not miss you.

Where are the principled conservatives?

David Welker: Giving the minority a perpetual ability to block the majority might seem like a good way to protect our voters from themselves.

The minority should be able to block the majority in California because the majority does not have to pay for what they vote for. We have a lot of safeguards in the US to protect minorities. The Senate, the Supreme Court and super majorities for important decisions like treaties. However this is all becoming moot because the state will go bankrupt anyway. Then we shall see if the voters replace the legislature. I bet they won’t. California is now a low IQ state. The voters don’t understand very much any more.

If Republicans won a majority in both houses of California legislature and the governors office, I would WANT them to be able to govern even if I completely disagree with their agenda. Even if I thought they might do permanent damage. In a sense all bad public policy decisions, even decisions to do nothing, have permanent consequences. Today’s opportunities are everywhere and always a function of yesterday’s prudent or imprudent decisions.

Let us not forget that it is not merely ACTION, but also inaction that can do permanent damage. Imagine the scenario of the state going bankrupt which you envision. That is a problem of inaction that could be avoided by action (raising taxes, cutting spending, or both). It would also have permanent negative consequences for the state.

Quit infantalizing voters. Elections SHOULD have consequences. Giving the minority a perpetual ability to block the majority might seem like a good way to protect our voters from themselves. But it isn’t. Not really. Voters should be treated like adults. Part of democracy is accepting that mistakes will be made along the way. Further, not all mistakes originate in action, but also in inaction. The budget crisis you envision in California is an example of that.

David Welker: Zarkov asks if we move to majority rule, then Democratic majorities will enact policies that he disagrees with and this will have a negative affect on ths state. But, THAT is why we have elections. I don’t believe Zarkov is right in his dire predictions concerning the possibility of tax increases in California, but if he is the remedy lies within the next election.

You assume that damage done to the California economy is necessarily reversible, and that California would even be willing to elect a new legislature to correct the damage. Since most of the California income tax is paid by a small minority, I doubt they would ever vote to eliminate benefits they don’t have to pay for.

I don’t understand why you think tax increases would not damage the California economy. In 2009 the legislature did raise taxes (some Republicans relented). Then a few months later a new revenue hole opened up. This time the hole got filled with gimmicks and the use of IOUs issued by the state in lieu of cash payments. Now we have yet another hole with no way to fill it except to cut expenditures or raise taxes yet again. I see no solution. The Democrats won’t give in on spending and the Republicans won’t give on taxes. I think the state will go bankrupt. Other than a massive transfusion of cash from the federal government, how can California possibly climb out? I can easily move out, and I’m giving that serious consideration. Of course the feds are broke too, so I don’t see how they can bail out the states either. The Treasury owes almost $2 trillion just to China and Japan. The total of private public debt in the US is about 4 x GDP or about $60 trillion. And this does not include unfunded liabilities which is more than $60 trillion. The US is insolvent.

What you guys don’t get about majority rule is this. If Democrats (or Republicans) pass bad policies, then WIN the next election and repeal them. You both think it is so smart to entrench your own preferences against majority rule because you know everything. But you aren’t as smart as you think you are.

The reason we have elections is so that people can make change. So, if people don’t like Democratic policies, they can vote Republican. (And vice-versa after the Republicans take over.)

Finally, Mr. Nieporent, my problem really is with lack of majority rule, despite your cynical suggestion to the contrary. We have seen what a failure it is, just as Alexander Hamilton predicted.

Zarkov asks if we move to majority rule, then Democratic majorities will enact policies that he disagrees with and this will have a negative affect on ths state. But, THAT is why we have elections. I don’t believe Zarkov is right in his dire predictions concerning the possibility of tax increases in California, but if he is the remedy lies within the next election.

Those who are against majority rule are the problem.

markm: Not any more. And it won’t save them if the no-more-taxes crowd folds, either; they’re already clearly on the wrong side of the Laffer curve, and higher tax rates will just mean more high-earners leaving or quitting work and less tax collected.

I don’t think that the Democrats in California legislature really believe that a significant number of people and businesses would move if they increased taxes. They really think we need to raise taxes to whatever is necessary to “protect the most vulnerable among us.” Including illegal aliens. They won’t believe it until the state goes bankrupt, and then they will go to Washington and ask for a bailout. They might even get it. The feds will then borrow or print money and give it to California. Then what will happen?

David Welker says:

The reason that California government is so dysfunctional is the exact same reason that the United States Senate is so dysfunctional. Lack of majority rule.

No, the problem is there are two majorities, with some overlap in their membership, and both of them have too often been getting what they want. One wants no tax increases. The other wants more and more spending. Put both of those on the ballot at the same time, and I expect there will be enough complete idiots who vote for both to pass both of them.

Other states have gone through this. For instance, Michigan went bankrupt in the early 1960′s, and so our constitution now includes a balanced budget requirement with real teeth. Many other states also have a balanced budget clause in their constitutions; I don’t know how many learned from seeing other states go bankrupt vs. how many had to learn for themselves.

For a long time, a continual influx of talented or rich people that just wanted to enjoy CA’s climate and culture kept the economy growing so they could avoid facing reality. Not any more. And it won’t save them if the no-more-taxes crowd folds, either; they’re already clearly on the wrong side of the Laffer curve, and higher tax rates will just mean more high-earners leaving or quitting work and less tax collected.

So what CA is missing isn’t majority rule, but the right kind of restriction on majority rule. Because the function of a proper constitution in a republic is to restrain majority rule. A constitution says that a majority of the voters can’t declare Socrates too annoying to live. It says that, no matter how popular Schwarzenegger is at the moment, a temporary majority cannot make him gubernator for life. And in Michigan and many other states, it says that the budget has to balance, even if the majority can’t do simple arithmetic.

Bohemond: I think you are trying to define “republic” as simply meaning “any state without a monarch”, whereas I define a republic as government by elected representatives and magistrates.

I use dictionary definition of a republic. From Webster:

1 a (1) : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president.

There are secondary definitions, again from Webster,

b (1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law …

There are good reasons for not using b(1) because then then what do we call China? It’s not a monarchy, but then under 1(b) it’s not a republic either. It’s just a matter of terminology, and I go for the simpler meaning which is clear and easy to apply.

David Welker:
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

David Welker v2.0 doesn’t seem much different from v1.0.

Mark Field: There’s no honest way to claim that CA has a republican form of government.

Only by your own idiosyncratic standards of what constitutes a republican form of government.

For all of those complaining about the 2/3rds budget requirement, given the fact that Republicans (Deukmejian, Wilson, Schwarzenegger) have managed to hold the governor’s office for about 22 of the past 27 years and there has been no Democratic majority exceeding 2/3rds that could override a veto, i.e. divided government, it’s not obvious to me that eliminating that requirement would have made any significant difference.

I think you must have overlooked my last line. I don’t believe there is a democracy at the national level anywhere in the world. Basically all the free nations of the world are one or another form of republic even though some pretend to be monarchies, and the unfree nations pretend to be but aren’t.

I think you are trying to define “republic” as simply meaning “any state without a monarch”, whereas I define a republic as government by elected representatives and magistrates. There hasn’t been an actual constitutional monarchy in Europe (as opposed to today’s pretend-monarchies) since 1919 and the collapse of the German Empire and the kingdoms of Saxony and Bavaria: monarchies where the Sovereign was Chief Executive within a constitutional structure.* Arguably the earlier Hanoverian kings of Britain filled this role, but the last vestige of genuine executive power disappeared with George III’s incapacity.

*The Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires paid lip-service to such a system towards the end, but in reality the power of the Throne remained absolute and unfettered by any real constraints.

Bohemond: This thread is revolving about the difference between form and substance. As you know, a lot of dictatorships have the form of republics (pretty much anyplace calling itself a “people’s republic”).

You seem to be conflating democracy with republic. The two are separate concepts, and there’s no need to talk about form and substance. With the traditional definition of a republic, we can classify every country in the world with the possible exception of North Korea. Now with respect to being democratic, I agree. A country could be just a formal democracy.

The 2/3 supermajority for tax increases was an initiative band-aid to slow down the growth of government, to substitute a structural impediment instead of hard choices, so that neither the Legislature nor the people would have to make the hard choices of how best to spend a limited amount of public revenue.

All the Demos do is peel off a few Rinos who want some chump-change free money to blow on their pet feel-good projects (we have local versions of the Cornhusker Compromise and Louisiana Purchase every single year), and tax increases are passed every single year in the budget. And every election, the Demos and Rinos send up feel-good and oh-so socially worthy initiatives to tax and spend even more money (The Stem Cell Institute, the After-School Child Care program). Even with the 2/3 supermajority impediment, the California State budget has doubled in ten years, and we have nothing, nothing to show for it.

The California electorate is profligate, and without fiscal discipline, and so likewise is the Legislature.

But because of gerrymandering, the politicians are far more partisan than the electorate. They can do anything short of dead girls or live boys, and are guaranteed re-election. Being highly partisan true believer airheads, and so disconnected from rational thought, they believe that if only they can spend the people’s money on their favorite projects and commissions and regulations, California will be a golden paradise. And there is no penalty for failure or lack of performance.

Gerrymandering came first. The Prop 13 and 2/3 tax increase supermajority were attempts by the electorate to discipline the Legislature, because we couldn’t break the strangling gerrymander. All these initiatives have done is forestall our doom.

In short, the people have lost control of the Legislature, and the Legislature has broken free from the discipline of elections, and everybody thinks the party of free money will never end. The only way the people can now discipline the Legislature is through statewide initiatives where the gerrymander doesn’t apply.

We have a representative republic, but it’s completely dysfunctional. Each legislator represents special interests, their own or their leash-holders. If they break this redistricting reform, it will take nothing less than an economic collapse and a revolution to pry those airheads out of Sacraspendo, and for the electorate to get a clue about why elections have consequences, and why you can’t vote yourselves free money.

This thread is revolving about the difference between form and substance. As you know, a lot of dictatorships have the form of republics (pretty much anyplace calling itself a “people’s republic”). If you’re talking about substance, then the question is where the actual power lies, which is almost always with the head of government, not the head of state (a purely formal and powerless role): Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel, not HM The Queen or Bundesprasident Kohler. In Italy up until 1943 there was a dictatorship posing as a monarchy- it was most certainly ruled by Mussolini, not Vittorio Emanuel.

(In fact, England/Great Britain has been a quasi-republic ever since 1689, when it was determined that the sovereignty of the realm lies with the King-in-Parliament and not with the person of the Monarch.)

In the world as a matter of substantive reality, not idle formalism, there are monarchies (Saudi Arabia), genuine constitutional monarchies (Thailand), pseudo-monarchical republics (Britain), parliamentary republics (Germany), magisterial republics (USA), at least one hybrid parliamentary/magisterial republic (France)– and lots and lots of dictatorships most of which pretend lamely to be republics (Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba). There aren’t any real democracies, although the Swiss cantons come close.

A. Zarkov: Suppose California had what you call “majority rule.” What would happen? We would have higher taxes and more government spending in California.

Exactly. For liberals, it always comes down to bigger government. They’re not upset that California has supermajority rules; they’re upset that these rules prevent them from raising taxes.

Bohemond: No, it’s the form. The British Commonwealth and Scandinavia and the Netherlands etc. have the form of monarchies, but in substance they’re republics, as the crowned heads are powerless windowdressing.

There are republics where the head of state is essentially powerless window dressing such as Israel. Israel is a republic because the president (head of state) is not a hereditary position. One might argue that North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is actually a monarchy because power has passed from father to son.

The UK, Scandinavia, Netherlands, and Belgium are officially monarchies. I don’t see why you want to blur the very clear distinction between republics and monarchies. Both forms of government can be either democratic or dictatorial. The concepts are orthogonal.

Pat Brown has much more in common, in terms of policy preferences, with Ronald Reagan than with the current leadership of the California Democratic Party, including his son Jerry.

David Welker: “[A]ll provisions which require more than the majority of any body to its resolutions, have a direct tendency to embarrass the operations of the government, and an indirect one to subject the sense of the majority to that of the minority.”

That is not always a bad thing.

We enable the minority to block removal of an impeached official or a veto override.

No, it’s the form. The British Commonwealth and Scandinavia and the Netherlands etc. have the form of monarchies, but in substance they’re republics, as the crowned heads are powerless windowdressing.

Nor does the absence of a sceptred toff on a fancy chair define either the form or substance of a republic, as dictatorship (the most prevalent form of government in the world) has no monarch either- but certainly isn’t republican. Dictatorships may have the illusory form of republicanism, but certainly not the substance- like the old USSR, or Chicago.

The real measure of a republic is not whether the head of government is voted in, but whether he can be voted back out. Augustus Caesar never assumed the title Rex, but the Roman Republic was most assuredly dead.

Mark Field: Oh, it has the forms of republicanism, just not the substance.

A republic does not have to be a democracy, let alone a perfectly proportional democracy. As long as the head of state is not a monarch the government is a republic. That’s the substance.

Oh, it has the forms of republicanism, just not the substance.

Also true.

Bohemond: the unhinged lunatics running the Assembly asylum have passed a $200 billion single-payer healthcare scheme with no funding mechanism.

Has the California Assembly actually passed the bill or has it just been introduced?

Never mind that the state budget has doubled in ten years. Never mind that had the Assembly been content to restrain spending at inflation-adjusted percapita 2005 levels, the budget would be in surplus. Never mind the obscenely bloated and overpaid unionized state and local bureaucracies. Never mind that California, through its ner-nonexistent eligibility rules, accounts for 1/3 of the nation’s welfare caseload. Never mind that California has encouraged and protected illegal immigrants, of whom it possesses roughly half. And above all, never mind that Californiia’s sky-high taxes, insane regulation and the nation’s #1 hostile business climate has employers and high-skill (i.e. taxpaying) workers running for their lives to other states> To blame the recession for California’s collapsing tax base is, simply put, a lie of the first magnitude. State revenues have contracted at triple the Federal rate.

And now with the state beyond bankrupt, its budget “balanced” on accounting tricks and Obama’s stimulus largesse, the unhinged lunatics running the Assembly asylum have passed a $200 billion single-payer healthcare scheme with no funding mechanism.

If the several states constitute 50 laboratories of governance, then the results of California’s experiment are blindingly obvious: liberalism leads to catastrophe.

David Welker: The reason that California government is so dysfunctional is the exact same reason that the United States Senate is so dysfunctional. Lack of majority rule.

Suppose California had what you call “majority rule.” What would happen? We would have higher taxes and more government spending in California. That would cause even more out migration of the middle class and business, which would cause even higher taxes to make up for the revenue loss. The problem here is majority rule. The people who benefit from the spending in the main don’t have to pay for it. When you have a state full of chronic and incurable mendicants, what else is going to happen?

Mark Field: I agree with David Welker. There’s no honest way to claim that CA has a republican form of government.

Oh, it has the forms of republicanism, just not the substance.