A Yes Vote for a National Ballot Initiative

While the long-predicted tsunami of voter anger is about to break across the national political landscape, oddly enough this may just be one cataclysmic event that California won’t experience. Yesterday the New York Times has pronounced the House of Representatives all but lost to the Democrats, but today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Jerry Brown’s lead over Meg Whitman doubled over the last month.

That might have something to do with Whitman’s obscene spending for the post – Californians have a tradition of rejecting the candidacies of people who treat high office as a new found hobby – and it couldn’t have helped that Whitman hired (and then cruelly fired) an undocumented housekeeper.

But wait. The Times’ polling also showed that in California, “Democrats have gained strength and GOP motivation has ebbed slightly in the last month.”

So what’s up with California voters? People elsewhere might attribute it to the weather, or our mythical blessed out state. But that’s not it: 81% of Californians told the pollsters that the state is “seriously off on the wrong track.”

I have a theory to explain why California voters aren’t reflecting the national trend, and it’s based on a political safety-valve unique to California: our often-maligned ballot initiative process.

This year, as in most elections, California voters will not only fill over a dozen federal, state and local elective offices. They will get to decide some major public policy issues, including legalization of marijuana, reapportionment, climate change, and majority rule in the state Legislature – a total of nine ballot propositions.

Californians rightly complain about the initiative process – that it’s increasingly invoked by the powerful special interests, that we shouldn’t have to do the politicians’ jobs for them – but the fact is, we love initiatives. Ballot measures empower Californians, giving us the opportunity – for better or worse – to shape our own destiny.

For many Californians, politicians are already a lost cause. What excites and inspires people to pay attention to politics here is the dynamic, creative and often chaotic opportunity to sidestep the political establishment and take matters into their own hands.

“For all the problems ballot initiative politics present today, the ballot measure offers the best part of modern politics,” says California citizen leader Jamie Court in his new book, “Raising Hell.” That’s “the ability to directly change injustice, without the main problem with politics today, politicians who are too corrupt or inept to make changes.”

In most states, angry voters can only vent their frustration by choosing from an often deeply unsatisfying list of candidates, a  desperate exercise in the “lesser of two evils.” When politicians are the only available target, the electorate’s outrage is by necessity narrowly focused. And it also gets amplified, like when you pump water through a fire hose. So it’s “throw the bums out” – as is likely to happen next week throughout the nation, whether or not they deserve it. Then the voters get to welcome a whole new bunch of bums.

Ballot initiatives offer a much more precise weapon: for example, an initiative to roll back auto insurance premiums, like I wrote in 1988, in the middle of public indignation over skyrocketing insurance premiums, when California lawmakers were too afraid of their industry patrons to do anything about it.

I’m as angry as everyone else these days about how Washington and Wall Street got together and betrayed us. If we had a national initiative process, I’d propose a cap on the interest rates banks and credit card companies can charge us for borrowing our own money from them.

Around the Web: Typos and Tired Arguments

Did a typo or a technical glitch cause “a moment of uncontrolled selling” aggravating an already skittish stock market into a full-blown plunge? The old gray lady diplomatically labels it “an errant trade.”  But CNBC calls it a typo.

Meanwhile the fight over financial reform goes on. If some of it sounds hauntingly familiar, that’s because…it is.

Unearthing old arguments against corporate reforms of the past, columnist Michael Hiltzik finds opponents trotted out the same lame doomsday scenarios 75 years ago they’re offering today.

In 1933, writes Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times, the American Bankers Association urged members to “fight…to the last ditch” an “unsound, unscientific, unjust and dangerous” proposal Congress was considering.

What kind of dangerous radical thing could those congressional crazies have been up to?

Federal deposit insurance.

Just like financial reforms of the 1930s, most corporate reforms, Hiltzik reminds us, almost always turn out to be positive for their industries.

At Baseline Scenario, James Kwak does a good job dismantling the arguments against auditing the Fed, the proposal which appears to have been the subject of a Senate compromise Thursday that would allow a substantial audit to go forward.

The Obama administration has been fighting the proposed audit arguing that it will “politicize” the Fed and that the ordinary flawed mortals who inhabit Congress don’t have the intellectual chops to oversee the Fed’s monetary titans. “The idea that monetary policy is too technical for Congress to understand, and therefore should be done in secret, I don’t buy,” Kwak writes. “So is, say, climate policy. That’s a complex scientific topic, of crucial importance to the future of our nation (and the human race), that is clearly beyond the ability of Congress to understand and discuss responsibly. But we don’t exempt the EPA from Congressional oversight.”

Back to the Future of Reform with Sen. Chris Dodd

Dodd moves to scale back Consumer Financial Protection Agency plan

In an attempt to lure the Republican votes needed to get a sweeping overhaul through the Senate, the Banking Committee chief is circulating a plan for a less powerful Bureau of Financial Protection.

-- Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2010

Dodd Proposes Financial Protection Committee Housed in Treasury Department

In new attempt to lure the Republican and Democrat votes needed to get semi-sweeping overhaul through Senate, the Banking Committee chief is circulating a plan to create a Financial Protection Committee inside the U.S. Treasury.

-- Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2010

Dodd Proposes Professor of Financial Protection at University of Connecticut

In renewed attempt to lure the Republican and Democrat votes needed to get modest financial fixes through Senate, the Banking Committee chief is circulating a plan to give the University of Connecticut $150,000 to hire a professor to teach the public about financial protection.

-- Los Angeles Times, April 15, 2010

Dodd Proposes Dial 1-900-4Protection Line

In a leisurely attempt to lure the Republican and Democrat votes needed to get itsy-bitsy, not too scary reform bill through Senate, the Banking Committee chief is circulating a plan to set up a 900 number to be answered on weekends by volunteers from credit card customer service departments. Costs of the program will be defrayed by charge of 99 cents per call.

-- Los Angeles Times, May 20, 2010

Dodd Proposes Facebook Financial Protection Page

In further attempt to lure the Republican and Democrat votes needed to get any kind of friggin’ bill through Senate, the soon to retire to the financial industry Banking Committee chief is circulating a plan to create a Facebook page where consumers can share financial protection ideas with each other.

-- Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2010

Dodd Proposes Wall Street Protect Consumers

Fuhghettaboutit.

-- Los Angeles Times, July 4, 2010