The California Blame Game: California Voters

I first heard the “blaming of California voters” mantra in an light-hearted argument in a social ocassion with a left-wing acquaintenance who is active in the California homosexual/Proposition 8 community a few weeks ago. Assuming this banter was about traditonal marriage and the reluctance of California voters to approve the gay one, I originally disregarded the argument.

But, no it went further.

California voters were to blame for the budget insolvency, the bonded indebtedness, Proposition 13, California school mandated spending – like everything. I argued that California’s initiative, referendum and recall system was the ultimate in democracy and the voters reap what they sow or don’t sow at the ballot box.

Continuing on, the Left One maintained that it is all of the voter’s FAULT and they should NOT be trusted to govern the state.

Whoa, I thought and disengaged to talk with others and Twitter.

Then, comes the May 19, 2009 California Special Election.  All of the budget measures supported by the Democrat dominated California Legislature and RINO GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenenegger failed to pass by huge margins (see graphic above). The ONLY measure that passed was to limit Pols salaries.

The next day and not surprisingly the BLAME CALIFORNIA VOTERS mantra appears in the left-leaning California MSM.

First, there is an op-ed piece by Michael Finnegan of the Los Angeles Times, California Voters Exercise Their Power — And That’s The Problem.

Californians are well known for periodic voter revolts, but on Tuesday they did more than just lash out at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature over the state’s fiscal debacle.

By rejecting five budget measures, Californians also brought into stark relief the fact that they, too, share blame for the political dysfunction that has brought California to the brink of insolvency.

Rightly or wrongly, voters in the special election refused either to extend new tax hikes or to cap state spending. They also declined to unlock funds that they had voted in better financial times to set aside for special purposes.

Nearly a century after the Progressive-era birth of the state’s ballot-measure system, it is clear that voters’ fickle commands, one proposition at a time, are a top contributor to paralysis in Sacramento. And that, in turn, has helped cripple the capacity of the governor and Legislature to provide effective leadership to a state of more than 38 million people.

Huh?

California voters are exerting their check on a rogue California Legislature and Governor beholden to Labor Unions and other special interests who provide them campaign cash. After all, don’t these POLS work for the people of California?

But, it is the California voters’s fault they did not approve the “ELITISTS” view that the disastrously insolvent tax and spend California budget problems should be rectified by MORE tax and spend? Maybe the voters have finally wised up and have had enough as unemployment soars and budget deficits skyrocket?

Just maybe?

Yet, the Los Angeles Times is NOT the only MSM outlet who blames California voters. The Sacramento Bee chimes in, then retracts, well sort of.

Michelle has the summary POOP on the story while this northern California blogger breaks the story.

Case in point: The Sacramento Bee’s sneering editorial flipping the bird to Californians who overwhelmingly rejected the tax-and-spend ballot measures (title: “You did it! Uh, so now what?”). After getting called out not only by hometown readers, but also nationally by Rush Limbaugh, the Bee yanked the editorial and replaced it with a kinder, gentler piece that did a complete 180 — from denigrating voters to counseling politicians that “You can blame the voters for reacting with uninformed and misplaced anger. Or you can look in the mirror and admit you had it coming. And you know you did.”

Blaming the voters? Reacting with misplaced anger? I smell projection. Guess the Sacto Bee editorial board had a look in the mirror.

The newspaper says it neeeever intended to publish the original editorial. Andrea Shea King and Dave Logan have the scoop. An editor told Logan the original rantings were just random notes. Just “thoughts.”

Yes, just “thoughts.” Thanks to copy-and-paste and caching, California voters will always know what the Sacramento Bee really thought of the election results and how they really think of the peons who buy their newspaper. Or used to buy it.

See the unifying theme: Blame the California voters – they either don’t know what they are doing or won’t do what is good for them, blah blah blah.

The self-aggrandizing elitism is so thick I almost want to gag.

But, thanks to the “Progressive Era” in California, the initiative, referendum and recall remains law. And, if the POLS in the Legislature or the Governor’s Office or even the Supreme Court don’t fulfill the PEOPLE”S interests, we voters will either change the laws or throw their ASSES out of office.