OneMind

We as a body politic find ourselves held hostage to partisan politics at both the national and state (in California at least) levels. We need to sweep these bums out of office, practically without exception. But I don’t know if this has escaped your attention: there’s no provision for doing that or anything like it. Why? Because it’s the legislators who have to sit in judgment. What do you suppose the odds are of that happening?

My friend and colleague Tony Seton has a clear, incisive piece on this today. In a piece called “Upper Chamberpot”, he calls the United States Senate a joke. There is no leadership coming from either party on the Hill, consumed as they all are by politics and the constant focus on re-election. There isn’t a leader in the bunch. Not one. They’re all followers: of polls, of party policy and of the almighty dollar. His particular gripe today is that they are playing dumb politics with the future of the planet by failing to adopt the massive energy policy shift that is necessary if we are to avoid a global meltdown that could well spell the end of humanity. Tony sees photovolaic cells as the key technology we should be developing, but which isn’t even on the debate horizon in Congress. President Obama, who is starting to make me think he only looks good by comparison with his predecessor, is silent and absent. No leadership there, either.

Meanwhile, in my state, the legislature continues deadlocked over a budget. The impasse has already caused the state treasurer to issue billions of dollars in what are effectively IOUs (which may even prove uncollectible in the future; the biggest banks in the state stopped honoring them late last week). Republicans stonewall because of their view that all taxes are evil and to be resisted even at the expense of a total meltdown of the state. The Democrats, meanwhile, balk at some of the Draconian budget cuts it would take to attempt to overcome a $23 billion budget deficit. Governor Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, struts like a peacock and threatens to veto any legislation he doesn’t personally like. The man can’t even pronounce the name of the state correctly.

They’re all bums, every one. We the people need a mechanism for wholesale replacement of legislatures gone bad. How fast do you suppose we’d get a budget in California — or a sane energy policy for the United States — if the law said that failure to act intelligently and sanely and in the national interest resulted in immediate forfeiture of legislators’ jobs including all pay and benefits and impounding of all their campaign and slush funds?

Yeah, I know. Who’s gonna pass that law?

The California Supreme Court today made one of its most unconscionable rulings ever. It upheld an ill-considered decision by the voters last November to strip a minority of rights previously ruled as granted to it by the state constitution. In doing so, it failed utterly and completely to do its job under the Constitution of protecting minorities from tyranny of the majority. It showed a lack of Constitutional understanding as well as backbone.

Stand by for an impeachment petition against these thoughtless, shallow judges.

As far as I have been able to determine, Prop. 8 was the first time in our nation’s post-Jim Crowe history that a state’s population used a Constitutional amendment to restrict human rights rather than to expand them. The voters were badlly misled by one of the most disgusting and dishonest fear-based campaigns that the Right has ever conjured up. Polls today show the proposition would not pass if it were presented again.

A few decades ago, the bigots of the Right succeeded in impeaching Supreme Court justices who balked at playing a key role in the state’s murder of those who commit violent crimes. It is clearly time for the left and mainstream — you know, the large majority who elected a President recently on a more open and liberal agenda — turned the tables.