You have to love the ingenuity of San Diegans, who are attempting to roll back the tide of liberalism that has has swept over the entire state of California. First, we organized one of the biggest and most effective tea party groups in the state. Now, a local businessman has organized one of the most creative protests I’ve ever seen, right on the steps of our capitol.
San Diego entrepreneur John Cox went to the California State Capitol in Sacramento on Wednesday, August 26th, along with 121 life-size cutouts representing California’s elected legislators – 40 State Senators and 80 Assembly members, along with the Governor. The cutouts showed the 120 legislators and the Governor covered in the logos of the special interests and businesses who have funded their political campaigns.Mr. Cox is launching a campaign to restructure California’s legislature and the process for electing it. The logo-covered cutouts were designed to illustrate how much money is funneled into political campaigns. Each politician needs the money to buy the TV, radio, mail, and internet ads that are critical to modern election campaigning.They need enormous campaigns – and the sponsor dollars that pay for them – because they represent large districts. A California State Senator represents almost 1 million people, and an Assembly member almost half a million. That is much larger by far than the electoral districts in any other state.Mr. Cox’s new initiative is proposing a new governing structure. In the newly designed legislature, State Senators would represent only 10,000 people and Assembly members just 5,000. That is only a couple of thousand households – a neighborhood. They would do their jobs utilizing modern technology that gives voters direct access to their representatives through social media and digital communications, and enables the representatives themselves to caucus and collaborate over the Internet.
Hands-down, my personal favorite cut-out is one of Governor Jerry Brown:
For those of you who aren’t versed in the insanity that passes for politics in the Golden State, Cox was one of those leading the charge to oust “Filthy” Bob Filner from San Diego’s mayoral office, after numerous credible allegations of sexual harassment surfaced. He was also the first Republican to toss his hat into the 2008 GOP Presidential ring.
Given the popularity of outsider campaigns in 2016, Cox may wish to consider another run.
Many conservative activists have observed that the number of Congressional representatives in the nation’s capital should actually be over 1000, based on population growth and the type of representation that the Founding Fathers were attempting to establish. However, the official number was set at 435 after Congress itself shut down reapportionment entirely in 1920. The result: fewer politicians hold more power, making it easier for corporate and union “sponsorships” to take hold.
Cox and his Neighborhood Legislature are taking on this disparity at the state level. Under the proposed measure, each of California’s 120 current legislative districts would be broken into 100 smaller districts, which would give California 12,000 legislative districts.
In each of the small districts, Cox said the neighborhood legislator would know most of his or her constituents. “Campaigns in the Neighborhood Districts would be door to door, face to face, voter by voter,” he said. “Social media, email and Internet campaigns will be key, and fundraising will be almost non-existent and of little effect.”This could be the reason so many of California’s political elites aren’t crazy about the idea. Political consultants would be virtually unnecessary for legislative seats, and the current crop of political elites would have their power and influence greatly diminished. While this is appealing to liberty-loving Californians, those now controlling the state would lose out.Changing the system would mean that each Neighborhood Legislator would be elected by only a few thousand voters — his neighbors — instead of 500,000 to 900,000 voters for the current districts.
Ultimately, 7,760 Assembly members and 3,880 Senate members would select a 40-member Senate Working Committee an 80-member Assembly Working Committee, the same number of members each body now has. The initiative sets the salaries of the Working Committee members at $50,000 per year and the other legislators at $1,000 per year.
There is a distinct possibility the people of California will have a chance to vote on the measure, too. Backers have received permission to gather signatures for the initiative proposed by Neighborhood Legislature, and have until November 30th to collect nearly 600,000 signatures to qualify the measure for the November 2016 ballot.
In the meantime, I anticipate even more entertaining videos from Neighborhood Legislature. Given the history of state representatives, including the former gun-runner Leland Yee, there is a lot of material to work with.
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