LGBT News NOM Loses (Yet Again) In California

I won't breathe easy until their appeal fails.

 

This is very, very good news considering the problem with direct democracy in California is for some reason, California elects the most liberal politicians in the country, and yet votes extremely conservative on ballot measures. Prop 8 wasn't the first bitterly divisive ballot measure that a few petition signatures got on the statewide ballot, another was Prop 187 which denied illegal aliens any services at all-including health care. If you're dying of a gunshot wound and here illegally, you're SOL. This was what got Pete Wilson re-elected in 1994, even though his support of Prop 187 handed the State of California's Latino and minority voters to the Democratic Party for decades to come, when his approval ratings were in the toilet before a Republican wave year and it looked like he was a goner.

In 2012, every single statewide ballot measure in California, everything from raising taxes on the rich, to repealing the death penalty, to banning unions and corporations from making political contributions, genetically engineered foods, to harsher penalties for human trafficking, were placed on the ballot through the citizen initiative process, where you have to get the number of signatures equal to I think 8% of the ballots cast in the previous gubernatorial election, to be placed on the ballot.

This is why California is so broke, is because the voters placed on the ballot many expansions to state services and spending projects, and then tied the state's hands behind its back in terms of paying for it through tax-revolt measures such as Prop 13 from 1978 which required a 2/3 vote for a tax increase, a 2/3 vote to pass a budget, and limited property taxes to 1% of the property's assessed value, which, by the way, can't go up more than 2% per year. This resulted in California's revenue and, really the entire economy, being based on capital gains taxes and the stock market, causing a huge economic roller coaster, meaning when the nation is in a recession, California takes it the worst, and when the economy is at its peak, California is at the top.

Then there was Prop 26 in 2010 that required a 2/3 vote to raise state and local fees, and voters repeatedly rejected tax hikes to help pay for essential services, even in the middle of a budget crisis, that would have stopped the fiscal bleeding.

The voters have used direct democracy to circumvent the Legislature on almost every major issue, and the money is the biggest factor. In 78% of the ballot measures California has voted on since the 1960's, the side with the most money won. In 2012, Prop 37, which required that genetically altered food be clearly labeled, failed. The side supporting Prop 37 raised $8.7 million, while Monsanto and other big food companies poured $45.6 million into the No campaign. The No campaign won.