You’ve got to admire the persistence of the Left. When they’ve got a goal in mind, they never give up and they never play by the rules. If only — pardon me, but I’m trotting out an ancient Maxwell Smart line (he’s the guy with the original shoe phone, the one that Shifra now uses to talk to Tammy) — “If only they’d use their tactics for niceness instead of evil.”
But I digress. I haven’t even started, and I digress. It’s a problem.
Okay, some history. Here in California, in 1994 we voted on Proposition 187, also known as the Save Our State (SOS) initiative. The essence of Prop. 187 was that state money should be spent on state citizens.
Prop. 187 passed with 59% of the vote, which is pretty much of a mandate. So of course the losers went to court to overturn the election because the people had voted wrong. It took a few years of maneuvering and backroom dealing, but Prop. 187 quietly disappeared in a puff of judicial smoke.
By the way, when political bosses of the third world annul the “wrong” election results, we tut disapprovingly at those bosses and smirk in our snide superiority. But when we annul elections in the United States, we tut disapprovingly at the people and smirk in snide our superiority. Go figure.
Then Gray Davis, a subsequent California governor signed a law granting drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens. This was in the run-up to the Davis recall of 2003, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger become our new governor. Schwarzenegger pledged to rescind the licenses for illegals, and made good on that promise.
If there’s one issue that plainly illustrates the utter disconnect between government and the people, the problem of illegal immigration is it. The people, pretty much across the board, want the border to be controlled. The special interests and pressure groups want the border to be uncontrolled. The people have the law on their side, as well as general understanding that a nation without borders is not a nation, and controlling the borders is about as fundamental as a governmental duty can get. The special interests and pressure groups have…well, whatever magic power it is that makes them come out on top. So the people fight in the daylight and win all the battles, and the night comes and we find we’ve somehow lost the war, and so we come to regard our democratic processes as a joke. Which is an unfortunate but realistic attitude to have developed in a nation born with the words, “We the People”.
The political leaders, sensing discontent and understanding the indefensibility of their position, take the offensive. They justify their defiance of the people by cursing the people as unworthy. This is evidenced by the fact that the people voted the wrong way. If only we had voted the right way, then it would not be necessary to subvert the democratic process. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
We the people are subjected to a litany of invectives that lose their meaning through endless mind-numbing repetition…racist, selfish, mean, greedy, unchristian (this from the crowd that is otherwise hostile to actual Christianity and Judaism), etc.
Last year our Gov. Brown triumphantly signed legislation granting drivers’ licenses to illegals. As wiser men would say, there you go again. So the illegals line up at the DMV as our representatives work to serve foreigners and disenfranchise their own people.
That’s where we are now. I recount it because, last November, there was an interesting event in our likewise-kooky neighbor to the north, the People’s Republic of Oregon. Please pay attention, because what follows may be important. The story was this:
Oregon immigration vote is a warning for Obama The fate of a little-noticed ballot measure in strongly Democratic Oregon serves as a warning to President Barack Obama and his party about the political perils of immigration policy.Even as Oregon voters were legalizing recreational marijuana and expanding Democratic majorities in state government, they decided by a margin of 66-34 to cancel a new state law that would have provided driver’s licenses to people who are in the United States illegally.
Did I mention that the people want the borders to be controlled? Even the people who live in kook states and elect kook lawmakers? Did I mention that government is out of touch with the people?
The state law had seemed to be popular. It easily passed last year with bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled Legislature and was signed Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, who was re-elected Nov. 4.
Yes, it seemed popular. Why does this kook stuff always seem popular? It seemed popular, but it failed in the election by a 2-1 margin in one of the bigger kook states. Could it be that we’re being lied to a lot?
Opponents barely gathered enough signatures to put the repeal question on the ballot. Immigrant rights groups outspent their opponents 10-1.
Still, the measure failed in every county but the state’s most liberal one, Multnomah, home to Portland. Even there it trailed significantly behind other Democratic candidates and causes.
Did I mention the special interests and money are against the people? A kook state, outspent by 10 to 1, and still the people prevail.
“It was really the epitome of a grassroots effort,” said Cynthia Kendoll, one of the activists who led the campaign against licenses. “There’s such a disconnect between what people really want and what’s happening.”
Ummm, yeah, what she said.
I mention these things because here in California we’re 2 for 2 at the ballot box, and we’ve still lost. But if we could manage to petition a similar measure onto an upcoming California ballot…Well, I’m sure the Left would try to kick it off the ballot, and if they failed I’m sure they’d outspend the proponents by 10-1 or maybe 100-1, and when it passed anyway, they’d go back to court and…well, did I mention the Left is persistent, and they also cheat? It’s very annoying to play a game where the other guy just cheats and lies and cheats and lies, and you don’t want to become like him, but you also don’t want to lose unfairly. Did I mention that it’s unhealthy for the democratic process that our elections keep getting overturned, and the government is disconnected from the people?
Well, if anybody feels like pushing this thing onto the California ballot, we’ll have yet another chance to highlight what a bunch of lousy cheating totalitarian bastards we have running the show. And maybe that makes it worth doing. We can’t match the Left for unscrupulousness and deceit, and we operate in the light and not the dark. But maybe we, too, can be persistent.
Ummm, yeah, what Maynard said. When the tyrants in the Black Robes know better than the peasants they lord over and continually overturn elections and laws that the people have worked hard to obtain, then said people become discouraged and stop voting. They don’t stop caring, they just stop voting – to quote our next anointed in line – “What difference does it make”.
I, myself, believe that we need to add term limits to congress and to Supreme Court Justices. What is this that nine, unelected, “men in black robes” should be able to wreak such havoc on our Constitution and our Constitutional rights.
We, in Arizona, continue to vote for Election ID laws and for laws prohibiting the right of illegal aliens to obtain drivers licenses but the courts continue to overturn “the will of the people”.
And while I’m on a rant…”We can’t match the Left for unscrupulousness and deceit, and we operate in the light and not the dark. But maybe we, too, can be persistent.”…That bastard, Mitch McConnell, better have the balls that the bastard Harry Reid has and use that “reconciliation vote” (51 majority vote that the dems pushed through to pass Obamacare)to pass this latest vote to repeal Obamacare! We know it would be vetoed, but get. it. on. the. record. (great post Maynard)
BTW, great post Maynard
Don’t forget the Lefts lecturing of, Don’t refight_ old battles, after they get what they want.
As the old saying goes,”$hiet rolls down hill”, and we’re constantly at the bottom of said hill playing catch.
Liberals don’t say, Missed it by that much…
They say, Bring a gun to a knife fight.