Is This Really What Hiram Johnson Had in Mind?
By Peter Schrag
California Progress Report
Posted on 08 August 2011
“The money changers—the legions of Mammon and of Satan,” wrote C.K. McClatchy, the editor of the Sacramento Bee, in 1911 after Californians voted what’s now called “direct democracy” into the state constitution. “These have been lashed out of the temple of the people.”
Like McClatchy, Gov. Hiram Johnson, who had been elected the prior year, was a Progressive who was convinced that the initiative and referendum, which he championed, would immunize California against the corruption and general misgovernment that had long afflicted his state.
But a quick look at the list of ballot measures that have been cleared for signature collection and are now presumably being circulated suggests that Hiram Johnson’s reforms opened the temple of the people to a lot of elements he never dreamed of, some merely silly, some malevolent and ugly.
As to the legions of Mammon and Satan, they’ve got three or four candidates aiming for next year’s ballot: the referendum financed by Amazon, the internet giant, to spare itself the sales tax that all traditional businesses have to collect, as well as three initiatives attacking collective bargaining and labor unions, among them a version of the “Paycheck Protection Act” that voters have rejected a couple of times before.
There’s a proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by the state’s anti-tax lobby forever choking off real growth in state spending, and locking a rigid re-allocation of revenues into the constitution.
There’s an initiative that would completely shut down the production of nuclear power. There’s another stab at legalizing recreational marijuana and yet another effort at making illegal immigrants and their children as miserable as possible.
Probably the most wonderful offering of all is the proposed Foreclosure Modification Act, a constitutional amendment which declares that “It is a fundamental right for every Californian to purchase and own a home and real property” and therefore “No citizen of the State of California shall lose or have that deemed as their personal home or property taken by foreclosure or any instrument thereof or similar to.”
Home owners who can’t make their mortgage payments would be able to force their lenders to refinance, lower interest rates and reduce the principal owed on the current deflated value of the property involved. In the 1930s, voters got a chance to ballot on the “Ham-and-Eggs” initiative, officially the “California Life Payments Act,” dreamed up (even then) by a radio talker named Roger Noble. It would have required the state to provide a $30 check every Thursday to every Californian fifty years old or older. This is not quite like it, but close enough. It indicates that, all technical definitions aside, we are in a real Depression.
But aside from what one assumes will be the outliers on this list – the proposals too outlandish to pass (one hopes) even in today’s California, or maybe even to qualify -- the central refrain here is yet more constraints on government, more systemic dysfunction, and more severe retrenchment of programs.
The list for next year includes one or two modest reforms -- like the partial easing of the state’s legislative term limits that’s already qualified for the ballot -- that might slightly reduce the dysfunction. But for the most part it’s more of the craziness that’s infected the state for the past thirty-plus years and lately much of the nation as well.
If you look at the ballot measures passed during the last thirty years of California’s century of direct democracy, the predominant thread, notwithstanding some liberal environmental and labor laws, has been tying down government, and with each measure – tax and spending limits, term limits, three-strikes sentencing laws, mandatory school finance formulas – the dysfunction gets more paralytic and the public complaints grow louder.
California had its Tea Party events long before those words were ever used in modern politics. The tax revolt began here; minority rule, through the state’s two thirds legislative vote requirements, became virulent here long before Republicans put it to use through what became nearly daily invocations of the filibuster and other procedural roadblocks in the U.S. Senate.
Our GOP was cultish a decade before the great Washington debt debate of 2011. What Arizona, and more lately Alabama and Georgia, attempted to do with their illegal aliens in the past year or two, we tried to do with Proposition 187 in 1994. With its ever-more mixed population, California has matured on immigration and ethnicity. But judging from what’s proposed for next year’s ballot, in self-government we’ve still got a long way to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peter Schrag, whose exclusive weekly column appears every Monday in the California Progress Report, is the former editorial page editor and columnist of the Sacramento Bee. He is the author of Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future and California: America’s High Stakes Experiment. His new book, Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism, Eugenics, Immigration is now on sale.
California Progress Report
Posted on 08 August 2011
We probably don’t need a lot more evidence that what passes for democracy in America has gone badly awry. But a quick look at the 16 measures that have been proposed so far for next year’s California ballot should strengthen the case just a bit more.
That it’s occurring just as we approach this October’s centennial of California’s adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall, makes the case especially ironic.
“The money changers—the legions of Mammon and of Satan,” wrote C.K. McClatchy, the editor of the Sacramento Bee, in 1911 after Californians voted what’s now called “direct democracy” into the state constitution. “These have been lashed out of the temple of the people.”
Like McClatchy, Gov. Hiram Johnson, who had been elected the prior year, was a Progressive who was convinced that the initiative and referendum, which he championed, would immunize California against the corruption and general misgovernment that had long afflicted his state.
But a quick look at the list of ballot measures that have been cleared for signature collection and are now presumably being circulated suggests that Hiram Johnson’s reforms opened the temple of the people to a lot of elements he never dreamed of, some merely silly, some malevolent and ugly.
As to the legions of Mammon and Satan, they’ve got three or four candidates aiming for next year’s ballot: the referendum financed by Amazon, the internet giant, to spare itself the sales tax that all traditional businesses have to collect, as well as three initiatives attacking collective bargaining and labor unions, among them a version of the “Paycheck Protection Act” that voters have rejected a couple of times before.
There’s a proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by the state’s anti-tax lobby forever choking off real growth in state spending, and locking a rigid re-allocation of revenues into the constitution.
There’s an initiative that would completely shut down the production of nuclear power. There’s another stab at legalizing recreational marijuana and yet another effort at making illegal immigrants and their children as miserable as possible.
Probably the most wonderful offering of all is the proposed Foreclosure Modification Act, a constitutional amendment which declares that “It is a fundamental right for every Californian to purchase and own a home and real property” and therefore “No citizen of the State of California shall lose or have that deemed as their personal home or property taken by foreclosure or any instrument thereof or similar to.”
Home owners who can’t make their mortgage payments would be able to force their lenders to refinance, lower interest rates and reduce the principal owed on the current deflated value of the property involved. In the 1930s, voters got a chance to ballot on the “Ham-and-Eggs” initiative, officially the “California Life Payments Act,” dreamed up (even then) by a radio talker named Roger Noble. It would have required the state to provide a $30 check every Thursday to every Californian fifty years old or older. This is not quite like it, but close enough. It indicates that, all technical definitions aside, we are in a real Depression.
But aside from what one assumes will be the outliers on this list – the proposals too outlandish to pass (one hopes) even in today’s California, or maybe even to qualify -- the central refrain here is yet more constraints on government, more systemic dysfunction, and more severe retrenchment of programs.
The list for next year includes one or two modest reforms -- like the partial easing of the state’s legislative term limits that’s already qualified for the ballot -- that might slightly reduce the dysfunction. But for the most part it’s more of the craziness that’s infected the state for the past thirty-plus years and lately much of the nation as well.
If you look at the ballot measures passed during the last thirty years of California’s century of direct democracy, the predominant thread, notwithstanding some liberal environmental and labor laws, has been tying down government, and with each measure – tax and spending limits, term limits, three-strikes sentencing laws, mandatory school finance formulas – the dysfunction gets more paralytic and the public complaints grow louder.
California had its Tea Party events long before those words were ever used in modern politics. The tax revolt began here; minority rule, through the state’s two thirds legislative vote requirements, became virulent here long before Republicans put it to use through what became nearly daily invocations of the filibuster and other procedural roadblocks in the U.S. Senate.
Our GOP was cultish a decade before the great Washington debt debate of 2011. What Arizona, and more lately Alabama and Georgia, attempted to do with their illegal aliens in the past year or two, we tried to do with Proposition 187 in 1994. With its ever-more mixed population, California has matured on immigration and ethnicity. But judging from what’s proposed for next year’s ballot, in self-government we’ve still got a long way to do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peter Schrag, whose exclusive weekly column appears every Monday in the California Progress Report, is the former editorial page editor and columnist of the Sacramento Bee. He is the author of Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future and California: America’s High Stakes Experiment. His new book, Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism, Eugenics, Immigration is now on sale.
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