dagblog - Comments for "Jerry Brown Facing Off With Ken Starr Over Prop. 8"

Yeah, he's been around. He's

DF — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:35:01 +0000

In reply to Jerry Brown is the state's

Yeah, he's been around. He's been Governor, Sec. of State, State Chair of the Dems and the Mayor of Oakland.

I definitely understand your point of view on the initiative process. While I think that direct democratic action sounds good in theory, in practice it's seemed to have some flaws that aren't necessarily apparent beforehand. The 2003 recall election had some similarly baffling trappings.

As far as representation goes, Californians are represented roughly as well in their state government as they are in their federal government. It's 1 assemblyperson to about 400k citizens and 1 senator to about 800k citizens. If you average this out, it comes out to about 1 rep per 600k citizens, which is comparable to to our total of 55 reps at the federal level. Whether this is adequate for the average citizen to have enough access to influence their representation is another issue.

Jerry Brown is the state's

Orlando — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:54:15 +0000

In reply to Jerry Brown Facing Off With Ken Starr Over Prop. 8

Jerry Brown is the state's Attorney General? He's pretty old, isn't he?

The whole initiative process has always confused me a bit. When I lived in California, I found it impossible to keep them all straight. That was back in the early 90s, when state term limits was the biggest issue. It seems to me that it's too easy to boil the propositions down to sound bites when the actual implications of voting one way or the other are much more nuanced. I remember feeling back then that it was sort of silly to elect public officials to set policy and then have people voting on individual policies as well. I understand the point of view that it's democracy in action, really giving people a say in their government, but a mechanism already exists for that in lobbying elected officials at the state level. Seems to me that individuals talking to their officials are able to make more of an impact at the state level than at the federal level. But then, California is a different animal than most states, I guess.

While you’re at it, Ken, why not introduce Proposition 9?

Prop 9 could roll back the Emancipation Proclamation.

Only one as morally void as Ken Starr would even think of aiding the over turn of Prop 8.