The Death of The Ballot Initiative by The Supreme Court

While most of our state and the entire country paid homage to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision that allowed Proposition 8 to be over-turned, it’s only now that some members of the national media are lamenting the dangerous precedent that has been set.  By refusing to even hear the case sent to them, the Supreme Court’s rationale was that proponents of Prop 8-the very majority of California’s electorate who passed the initiative-lacked the legal right or “standing” to appeal the case!  Why?  Due to the fact that Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris, who were elected to office and are supposed to represent the citizens of California, refused to mount a defense of Prop 8 because they personally were against it.  This decision by the Supreme Court must have sent liberals in Sacramento into a tax-and-spend jitterbug dance!

Set aside your position on Prop 8 for a moment.  What matters most for all of us is the fact that now Sacramento politicians have found and loaded their smoking gun in pursuit of permanently killing the public’s greatest defense weapon against them:  the ballot initiative.  Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris (and previously, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger), by their refusal to defend the majority of citizens they have sworn to represent, have illustrated for themselves and their successors on how to over-turn any ballot initiative that they do not support; the public be damned!  The process, as exemplified with Prop 8, is simple.  Have one or more anti-proposition group appeal the voters’ will in a lower federal court (in this case, as with any in California, the infamous “9th Circus Court of Appeals”), receive a judgment in your favor, and refuse to appeal that decision on behalf of any citizens group seeking to overturn the lower court’s ruling.   Presto!  Proposition is over-turned!  Don’t bother attempting to appeal to the Supreme Court; they’ll refuse to hear the case.

Unless the majority of voters in this state wake up soon and start holding politicians accountable on election day for their on-going fiscal, to not even mention social, incompetence and non-action, we will be taxed to the point where the only citizens left with money will be politicians and state employees.  The ballot initiative was one trump card the public always held up it’s sleeve as a threat to Sacramento’s corrupt machine.  That card has now been folded and eradicated from the deck by the Supreme Court.  Couple this decision with the Democrat’s super-majority in both the Senate and Assembly, and you have a recipe for more tax grabs than any of us can imagine. 

In the name of Howard Jarvis people, get off your I-phone, turn off reality TV, and put down your skinny latte!   Get informed and start informing others!  You’ve helped create this mess; you must get involved to clean it up!