Repair California...

The folks at Repair California issued a press release yesterday.  It starts:

Today, Repair California, a group of everyday Californians, reformers and advocacy groups turned in ballot language to call the first Constitutional Convention in California in more than 130 years.  Citing a broken system of governance, the measures would call a limited Constitutional Convention to reform four areas of the constitution: the budget process; the election and initiative process; restoring the balance of power between the state and local governments; and, creating new systems to improve government effectiveness.  The Convention is specifically prohibited from proposing tax increases or from considering changes to social issues such as marriage, abortion, gambling, affirmative action, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, immigration, or the death penalty.  Voters will decide on calling the Convention on the November 2010 ballot, the Convention would be held in 2011 and its proposed reforms would require voter approval in one of the three scheduled statewide elections in 2012.

I'm intrigued by this.  I've no idea what the probabilities are that a Constitutional Convention could actually be pulled off, and that it could make substantive and useful changes – but it's the only idea I've heard that could even plausibly fix the things that are so badly broken in California.  Most especially, it's the only idea I've heard that could break the iron grip of incumbency in Sacremento.

Besides, it sounds like a huge amount of fun – with one action, we can irk and irritate every parasitical special interest, every public sector union, and (best of all!) every insincere, posturing politician in Sacremento.

Woo hoo!

A Beautiful Idea...

Would eliminating the current state government completely and starting over with a clean slate appeal to you? Until I read this web site, I didn't know such a thing was even possible (at least, not without an actual revolution). The general idea is to call a “Constitutional Convention”, and rewrite the state's constitution from scratch.

Currently California's Constitution requires two thirds of the legistature to vote in favor of placing the question of a Constitutional Convention on the ballot, where it must win a majority of the voters to gain approval. The first part of this is unlikely in the extreme – it's hard to imagine two of the current legislators voting for this, much less two thirds.

However, the voters in California have the power to place propositions on the ballot that would amend the State's Constitution (as we did recently with Proposition 8, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman). So the folks at RepairCalifornia.org propose exactly such an amendment proposition, to amend the State's Constitution to allow the voters to directly call a Constitutional Convention.

This would be like a revolution without the guns and tanks. I want to think about this some more, but on a first pass I'm inclined to agree with Peter Robinson:

Will California default, forcing states and municipalities throughout the nation to pay higher interest rates to bondholders? Will it persuade Washington to bail it out, rewarding the Golden State's political class while punishing the citizens of prudent, solvent states such as Indiana or Texas? Or will California cut its budget so sharply that basic state agencies--the California Highway Patrol, for instance, or the Department of Corrections--will be impaired?

None of the answers are pretty.

Yet this financial crisis has produced one beautiful idea.

Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, a business group, has begun calling for a constitutional convention. The current constitution, Wunderman argues, is so long, convoluted and encrusted with amendments that Californians ought to toss it out and start again from scratch.

To keep the political class from taking over the convention, Wunderman wants to choose delegates from the state jury pool. Does that sound like placing trust in chance? If so, you've got the idea. Ordinary Californians, redesigning the entire state government.

William F. Buckley Jr. once said, "I would rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard University." Me? I'd rather be governed by a few hundred jurors from Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Irvine, San Diego, Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto and Stockton than by all the lobbyists and union officials in Sacramento.

It is, as I said, a beautiful idea.

A clean slate. A system of government designed by ordinary citizens, not the political in-crowd. A beautiful idea, indeed...