This is our task

My sense of outrage is enhanced by my feelings of inadequacy. It seems that no matter my actions, pleas to legislators, or gatherings with others the course of political forces continues to disfavor “We the People.” George Lakoff has presented California with an opportunity to restore some of state power to the people, yet the California Democratic Party leadership is standing in opposition.

What is particularly aggravating is that California has a vast majority of state legislators from the Democratic Party yet we have a regressive budgetary process. Californians suffer under the tyranny of a one-third minority rule. Our Democrats run their campaigns on fixing education, expanding healthcare, improving the state’s infrastructure and yet they cannot be held accountable when progress is never accomplished on any of these fronts. These leaders gave $2.5 billion in tax breaks to large corporations while they cut $9 billion to state education, and many more billions of cuts in healthcare and other social services. I am now in outright revolt against these leaders.

It is all the fault of the Grover Norquist pledge, we are told. Just over one third of the legislatures in each chamber of state government have pledged not to raise taxes. If any Republican should choose to bargain for the benefit of some aspect of the betterment of California they are immediately stripped of party power and often challenged to a recall or a primary battle.

What the Democratic Party has not done and apparently will not do on its own is to go to the well of its support for political pressure. In fact when now presented with an opportunity to do just such a thing the Democratic Party leadership is trying to stop the ground swell. Californian’s for Democracy has begun an initiative process so clear that it cannot be misunderstood to overturn the tyranny of one-third minority rule. “All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.”

To its credit, and the reason I remain in the Democratic Party, the majority of Democratic activists are in favor of this proposal. We are the independent contractors that work without benefits yet provide this, the eighth largest economy in the world, with the freely moving talent necessary for innovation. We are the single parent and two working parent families struggling to obtain a decent education for our children so that their futures and that of the state will be prosperous. We are civil rights activists for ethnic and gender equality. We are environmentalist striving to restore a habitable earth for all species.

There are still large controlling interests in the Democratic Party that we need to bring into the effort to raise the standard of living in a sustainable fashion for all Californians. We progressives need to convince them that their path to improved conditions can only come forward when they work along side of the rest of us. This is our task.