I live in Washington state, a great blue state, filled with trees, water, mountains, smart beautiful people, and good coffee.
Generally I'm a big proponent of power to the people - if you need a label, what might be called a progressive or a populist.
In the case of ballot initiatives though, I've had enough, I can't take any more.
I would like to petition the petitioners to stop the petitions.
I don't think the general public has the time, knowledge or resources to cast an intelligent vote on many of the complex issues that are put on the ballot as initiatives.
The initiative process sounds like a wonderful exercise in participative democracy, but many hinge on the flawed concept that we can get something for nothing, or less obvious but still part of the theory, that we can change something "over here" and not inadvertantly effect something "over there".
As systems thinkers like to say there is no "over there".
Everything is connected.
Cut taxes - close schools - increase unemployment - increase crime - increase prison populations - then raise taxes to pay for building more prisons.
The other side of that story is that by cutting taxes we encourage economic growth which may be true but it's not the whole story...any more than my simple example above.
Some of the latest initiatives are a way for a special interest group to bypass careful consideration by informed people (our elected officials and their staff) and instead get a law passed via the "popular" mostly uninformed or under-informed vote.
Washington state isn't the only place suffering from initiative fever -
Why the California Initiative System is Undermining Democracy written by Jules Tygiel, professor of history at San Francisco State University.
California Initiatives: No Longer of the People an NPR interview with political commentator/activist Peter Asmus
Our next initiative should be to eliminate the initiative process.
