I think your analysis of the budget situation in California is way off base. The core problem is that something upwards of 80% of the California state budget is already comitted by law -- debt payments and the cumulative results of citizeninitiatives -- before the legislature even gets it. That makes it an ungovernable process because no one can do what they were elected to do within those constraints.
> Now, if *I* were in charge, I'd fire every
> single state senator and forbid them to run
> for office in California ever again if
> they pulled that shit.
Leninist.
> Florida. Texas. California. The Reps have shown
> that they have less interest in the Democratic
> process than in winning.
Hold up there, buddy. The Democrats were the ones being anti-democracy in Texas. The Republicans hold nearly a 60% majority in the Texas Senate. The problem is that, by Senate rule, you must have a 3/5 vote to bring a matter to the floor. So, a minority was holding up the democratic process by relying on technical rules to do things not intended by those who wrote them -- just like the Democrats did with Bork, and the Republicans did with Davis. Ultimately, in Texas, one Democrat recognized this and went back to make the vote.
Florida is a toss-up. Most of the newspaper-funded forensic studies after the fact concluded that Bush in fact won Florida under any of the more reasonable standards proposed by Democracts, despite Democratic propoganda to the contrary. I note, however, that I recall seeing one that concluded that Bush would have lost under one of the positions he had proposed!
The big loss from Florida is that, to call a halt to it, the Supreme Court had to invoke a doctrine of equal protection that had never before been applied to election results. This means more litigation in the future. I wish they had chosen a different rationale.
> I'm not happy that the recall happened because
> it was petty politicking. If Davis had been
> caught in a Watergate, then I would have been
> all for it. But this was Republicans dissatisfied
> with the legal results of a legal election.
Weeeel, you stretch a point, but basically I agree. The politicking is pretty important and it was obviously not just Republicans who were dissatisfied. But the point remains that recalls whould be an extraordinary remedy and were applied to a pretty ordinary problem.
> I say call in the UN to oversee any and all
> elections in America until we
> have a legally elected government.
Perhaps after the UN is composed of folks with better democratic credentials. Would you really want election observers from, say, Angola, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Cuba? The UN is a democratic body majority-composed of representatives of profoundly anti-democratic regimes. My seven year old would be a better election monitor.
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