Taking aim at those idiot voters (Feb 23)
By Charles Doud
The Madera Tribune
There’s a movement afoot to call a state constitutional convention for California, and apparently quite a few are signing on. Most of those seem to be Democrats unhappy with the fact they couldn’t just raise taxes by a simple majority vote in the Legislature in order to solve the state’s budgetary crisis. Darn it, they had to cut expenses as well, due to those pesky Republicans who hung on to one vote until the last minute in order to accomplish at least a semblance of governing within the state’s means.
People who back rewriting the constitution also remind us that California’s constitution has 519 amendments, compared to just 27 for the United States Constitution. They fail to mention that those to blame for most of those amendments are those annoying citizens, to whom the state constitution gives the right to legislate through popular vote.
Presumably, a new state constitution would put brakes on citizens’ rights to legislate and amend the constitution, leaving the important business of government to the pros instead of the idiot voters, who just get in the way.
However, some Republicans also are looking into changing the constitution, mainly to see if the state’s lopsided tax system can’t be made a bit fairer. In California, fewer than 20 percent of the people pay more than 80 percent of the taxes. That 20 percent tends to be made up of Republicans, by the way. But if you look around at other states, those percentages are about the same.
When times are good, and the state is giving tax refunds to people and raises to its employees, you don’t hear much talk about changing the constitution. But when times get tough, the refrain you hear is, “the system is broken — we gotta change it.”
Mrs. Doud has a saying, which is: “Don’t go to the grocery store when you’re hungry. You’ll spend too much.” The same might be true of constitutional conventions.
