One more cup of coffee

Why do we pay for legislators?

In addition to the seven or eight positions in the Executive branch of California's government, state assemblyperson, US Representative, numerous judges, school board, and city council (please choose four this year), California today had seven statewide propositions to vote on. And one county proposition. Eight propositions, in my memory of California elections, is actually fairly low.

Recent years have had an incredible assortment of state initiatives to vote on, my favorite of which was the proposition to ban the human consumption of horsemeat. That was Proposition 6, passed just four years ago. Today, Californians voted on Proposition 52.

So — why is it, again, that we have Legislators? While I'm all in favor of more involvement in the democratic process by the citizenship, I'm not sure that democracy is helped by making individuals vote on a proposition to repeal another proposition on cigarette taxes.

The real problem is that so many ballot initiatives are titled and worded to be deliberately confusing. "English For The Children", which more honestly could have been called "Stick it to the immigrants", is just one example. Today's ballot measures included propositions that would mandate funding for various programs, complete with the assurance that it won't cost anything. Except that, of course, it will cost something. Either California will have to raise taxes to pay for it, or will have to take money away from other programs to pay for it. But somehow, they promise that we'll be able to get something for nothing.

Why are we voting on these? Part of the point of a representative form of government is that we should expect our legislators to research issues like this and understand them so that they can make informed decisions. It is their job. My job is to work on software for Microsoft. My job as a citizen is to vote for representatives in government who I believe will do a good job. Instead my job as citizen seems to be to vote on representatives in government who will do ... something. And decide whether or not human consumption of horse meat is a big problem.