> Watching this fight I wonder "Who is in charge of governing California?" is it the Legislature/Governor or is it special interests who can spend enough to put bespoke laws into effect and make bespoke changes to the state constitution?
Neither.
It's the people, who, after all the spending choose both the legislature and the governor, and choose the results ofinitiatives and referenda, and who have, on making all those choices, time and again defied the balance of spending.
> California didn't help itself when it implemented term limits which had the unpleasant side effect of never having any legislators with enough experience in the job to know how to really get things done, and so the "work" of writing laws has also fallen to special interests.
Special interests have proposed and drafted laws and offered them up to the legislature since long before term limits, legislators (both before and after term limits) do draft their own a decide which, wherever they originate, to support, either as written or with amendments. And while term limits as implemented in CA do overall moderately weaken the elected legislators compared to unelected interests (professional staff as well as lobbying groups), it's a fairly modest effect; the median legislator is probably about as strong as before, but no one builds up the kind of institutional power that someone like Willie Brown had.
> This has never been more clear than the last 4 years where California has had a single party in both houses, and a Governor and still cannot legislate anything that special interests oppose.
This is obviously untrue in the literal sense, as most legislation has special interests both supporting and opposing and plenty has passed in the last four years.
If you mean it in some non-literal sense, then I can't fathom exactly what that might be.
There is an old sailor's joke about who do you believe when the sailor on the deck says, "there is no land in sight" and the one in the crow's nest says "land off the starboard bow."
The wisdom in the joke is that both are correct from their own point of view but as a matter of trust, you want to go with the point of view with the person who has a better view of the bigger picture.
Representative forms of government have always relied on the chosen representative spending their time and energy to understand an issue and its relative merits and, with the understanding of what the people who elected them value, choosing the right path. They are "in the crow's nest" in this scenario.
Imagine a hospital scenario where the doctor announces your symptoms over the public address system and then all of the other patients in the hospital vote on your course of treatment. And the patients are voting while treatment company representatives walk around and tell misleading stories about how effective their particular drug or therapy is in treating what ever ailment has just been announced over the PA.
Of course in theory you choose your doctor based on the fact that they spent 12 years studying for their certification in medicine and perhaps their experience in treating cases like yours. You don't go to the hospital to hear what the other patients think you should do.
But even in this ridiculous scenario, the other patients can be sincere in their desire that you get better, and so will passionately advocate for vendor X's treatment if they believe that vendor X has the best treatment.
And as a result, your care stops being about finding the right treatment to a disease or condition, and becomes convincing the largest number of patients that an answer could be the right answer.
From my perspective, living as I do in California for many years, my perspective is that I don't think the people of California are well served by this state of affairs.
I think state wide referendums are bad because (and only because) people won't educate themselves and vote the way they "believe" as determined by their "gut feeling" as opposed to real research. I actually trust politicians more to make laws like these.
There are different representative forms of government, and their priorities are correspondingly different. What you describe is more or less the basis on which US was organized back in the day. However, by the time the West Coast states were being settled and granted statehood, there was a pushback against elitism in government, and more interest in direct democracy. Which is why those states ended up with extensive provisions for referendums written into their constitutions. If the citizens of California decide that it's not in their interest to govern themselves directly, they can always amend the constitution to remove those provisions.
> And it's a bit insulting to say California voters don't have the wherewithal to digest political advertisements and make their own decisions.
On top of this, voters don’t even need to digest political advertisements. The state sends a booklet that describes all the proposition, the pro position, rebuttals to the pro position, the con position and rebuttals to the con position, plus how much money was spent from each side, plus who made those contributions. All there, in black and white, in your mailbox.
Unpopular opinion, but I think we're giving a little too much credit to the average voter. There are a lot of low-information voters out there who don't pour through the booklets and published rebuttals and rebuttals to the rebuttals. Media saturation works. It doesn't always work, and you can always go back and find exceptions, even some very high profile ones, but if it didn't work in general, we wouldn't see so much money pouring into political advertisements. There's a reason we track and measure campaigns by counting dollars spent.
> but if it didn't work in general, we wouldn't see so much money pouring into political advertisements.
We might, because professional political strategists (who advise campaigns on what works) tend also to be involved in the firms that do this work, and direct their clients to spend money with entities in which they have a financial interest. It is an industry which is absolutely rife with the kinds of conflicts of interest that wouldn't be tolerated for long elsewhere.
And its also an industry where people very often fail upward due to connections rather than succeeding on their track record.
I’m one of those schmucks who thinks the solution to ignorance and misinformation is education, and that there should always be more options for voters, not fewer. It’s not about credit to the voters, it’s about making sure the avenues for change are always open. That’s one thing I love about California — it’s a fucking mess, we have no one to blame but ourselves, and there’s always someone trying to do something about it. Compare this to the Texas style of democracy — legislature meets only ever other year and if you don’t like something you can get out - I’ll take the California way.
You don't solve this problem by ditching direct democracy in favor of representative one, though. The end result is that people still vote for populists, who are either clueless and quickly run things into the ground, or are pandering sociopaths. The "philosopher representatives" has been shown to be as much of a sham as philosopher kings.
Just because "the majority" want it doesn't make it a good thing. That's why there is a Constitution (in the USA) and courts to protect various minority from the over-reaching majority. If I make a few bucks on the side working for uber in the evenings does that mean they should give me an insurance policy and retirement plan?
Neither.
It's the people, who, after all the spending choose both the legislature and the governor, and choose the results ofinitiatives and referenda, and who have, on making all those choices, time and again defied the balance of spending.
> California didn't help itself when it implemented term limits which had the unpleasant side effect of never having any legislators with enough experience in the job to know how to really get things done, and so the "work" of writing laws has also fallen to special interests.
Special interests have proposed and drafted laws and offered them up to the legislature since long before term limits, legislators (both before and after term limits) do draft their own a decide which, wherever they originate, to support, either as written or with amendments. And while term limits as implemented in CA do overall moderately weaken the elected legislators compared to unelected interests (professional staff as well as lobbying groups), it's a fairly modest effect; the median legislator is probably about as strong as before, but no one builds up the kind of institutional power that someone like Willie Brown had.
> This has never been more clear than the last 4 years where California has had a single party in both houses, and a Governor and still cannot legislate anything that special interests oppose.
This is obviously untrue in the literal sense, as most legislation has special interests both supporting and opposing and plenty has passed in the last four years.
If you mean it in some non-literal sense, then I can't fathom exactly what that might be.