and the regressive becomes set in concrete.
Power and money is what gives rise to progressive actions by “the people” and power and money is what destroys the progressive intent and flips it..
A California example – the direct democracy initiative process: A hundred and ten years ago in California:
The entire state government had for decades been under the control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Bribery was the accepted method of doing business in the state capitol.
That was the degree of power that inspires today’s version of oligarchs.
Realizing the hopelessness of dealing with the current officeholders, Haynes and other reformers began a campaign to get rid of them and remake state government from top to bottom. In May of 1907, they founded the Lincoln-Roosevelt League of Republican Clubs, and elected several of their candidates to the state legislature.
That was Step One. Elect a few “better officeholders.” (Generally about the limits of liberal/ progressive thoughts and actions for the past thirty or so years.)
Step Two. Need more “better officeholders.”
Once elected, these legislators worked for a bill to require the nomination of party candidates through primary election rather than the backroom deals of state party conventions.
That was in 1910. When US Senators were still selected in “backroom deals.” More than half a century before Presidential nominees stopped being selected in smoke-filled backrooms.
Step Three: Taking back the legislature
The bill passed, and the League’s 1910 gubernatorial candidate, Hiram Johnson, ran in the state’s first primary election. Johnson won the primary and the general election and swept dozens of other reformers into the legislature on his political coattails.
Step Four: Doing what they were elected to do (Or what’s the point in getting power if not to use it?)
Johnson and the new Progressive majority in the legislature made the most sweeping governmental changes ever seen in the history of California. Among these were the introduction of initiative, referendum, and recall at both the state and local levels. Voters ratified these amendments in a special election on October 10, 1911.
In 1912, there were five titled initiatives and four qualified for the ballot. The one that failed to qualify was to abolish the death penalty.
In 1914, there were 21 titled initiatives and 12 qualified for the ballot. One of the qualifiers was Proposition 44: Minimum wage (page 29) –
Authorizes the legislature to provide for establishment of a minimum wage for woman and minors, and for comfort, health, safety, and general welfare of any and all employees; …
In the argument for passage, it was noted that wages for girls and women at that time were better in California than in older industrial states and that 60% earned $9/week or more. The funding and support for and against would be familiar to us today even if the arguments on both sides were slightly different. For example, the advocates cited an expected wave of new cheap labor to flood the state when the Panama Canal opened and therefore, existing CA workers needed wage protections.
It failed. And the beat goes on.
Forty years on and the forces for ill didn’t quite have their act together:
One of the highest stakes initiative campaigns in terms of campaign spending was in 1956, over a struggle over changes in the state regulation and taxation of oil and gas production. Proposition 4 that year was sponsored by a group of oil companies that sought to make their business more profitable, and opposed by another group of oil firms that preferred the existing system. Campaign funds spent by both sides totaled over $5 million. Proposition 4 lost: California voters, inundated with conflicting claims about a complex measure, took the cautious route and voted “no.”
Two years later:
Almost as expensive was the gargantuan 1958 labor-capital conflict over a “Right to Work” (open shop) initiative sponsored by employers. This battle ended in a double defeat for employers: not only did voters decisively reject the initiative, but the opposition campaign mobilized Democrats and union members to vote in droves, resulting in the election of Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., the first Democrat to occupy that office in 16 years.
Imagine that. California voters way back in 1958 were smarter and savvier than Wisconsin voters in 2014. Maybe folks in Wisconsin are wearing too much cheese on their heads.
Alas, those smarts didn’t last. Along came Proposition 14 (1964):
Neither the State nor any subdivision or agency thereof shall deny, limit or abridge, directly or indirectly, the right of any person, who is willing or desires to sell, lease or rent any part or all of his real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses.
(Sound familiar? Proposition 8 (2010) and IN RFRA (2015)? Fortunately, the CA Supreme Court and SCOTUS ruled Prop 14 (1964) as unconstitutional. But why do we have to spend so much time on this shit again and again?)
Corporations and the big money folks finally got their act together with Proposition 13 (1978. Democrats/liberals/progressives then wandered in the wilderness for the better part of the next thirty years. And so far don’t seem to get that thing about taking full advantage of power when you get it. If nothing else, that’s one lesson that Republicans fully absorbed a hundred years ago.
The CA initiative process, as it currently exists, (authorized killing of gays makes the IN RFRA look like weak tea) and Proposition 13 (1978) must die. Right along with Charlie’s Pierce’s observation that The Iowa Caucus Must Die. (more on that in II)