Thursday, July 16, 2009

What if it really is broken?


The saying that, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" can not be used in California, except it might be revived by Jay Leno when his new show comes on. I would hope that he takes his shots at the sorry mess we are in.

To begin with, the budgeting system is broken, a pawn to special interests and partisan wrangling from both sides of the imaginary divide in Sacramento. Add to that the fact that the system by which California allocates and manages it's water resources is also broken and you have the outlines of a dysfunctional government heading into a drought that it did not ask for but for which it has not answers.

In the meantime the Green Party bemoans the fact that the electoral process is stacked against it (as well as Libertarians, etc.) We need to find a way to get at all of these problems before time runs out. Mike Feinstein has written a piece now online in the Santa Monica Mirror in which he describes how the public might participate in a Constitutional Convention for California. I would hope that all the readers of California Greening figure out how to do the same.

I can not think of any better way to address the failure of governance of this large state than to start with the basic structure of government itself. My one requirement is that anything stipulated in the new constitution would bear consequences if it were not adhered to... for example the fact that the Constitutional requirement for having a budget by a fixed time is routinely ignored without consequence.

The longer I consider this subject, the better it looks. I will start a series on the Constitutional Convention and hope to make it clear to all.



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