~ Media, Educators, Legislators Ridicule California Voters For Getting in the Way of the ‘Master Vision’

Voters in California rejected several ballot initiatives designed to stop the fiscal bleeding and out-of-control state budget deficit. 

Their thanks for speaking decisively on the matter?  Ridicule and contempt.

Basically, the voters in California are getting in the way of the master plan, the LA Times openly implies, and are responsible for causing the economic problems themselves by enabling the Legislature and past several Governors to put the State in the state it now finds itself.  The Times, using quotes from lawmakers, university professors, public service officials, and of course, its own journalists, openly expressed utter disdain for the people of California. 

From the Los Angeles Times, California voters exercise their power — and that’s the problem, a few quotes, with commentary [emphasis added]:

“No one’s really stepping back and confronting the harsh realities that face our state in a critical sense, because of constraints put on our elected leaders,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California.

So those troublesome, pesky voters are putting “constraints” on elected officials.  How inconvenient.  That wouldn’t happen to be because it’s the right thing to do when the attitude of said elected leaders is that they should be able to do whatever they want to do with impunity, and need to be constrained, would it?

Clogged freeways, the decline of public schools, an outdated water system and a battered economy are just a few of the challenges demanding action by state leaders. Instead, they are consumed by yet another budget crisis, one that voters worsened Tuesday.

Translation:  Why are you making things worse, you stupid voters?  You were supposed to vote yes!  We’ve got projects to do and we need your money to do it.

It is clear that voters’ fickle commands… [have] helped cripple the capacity of the governor and Legislature to provide effective leadership to a state of more than 38 million people.

Translation:  Get out of the way, you cripplers.  We have governors and legislators and people a lot smarter than you to make decisions and you are so in the way.

Don’t believe that’s what’s being said?  Try this one.

“We pay the legislators to go to Sacramento and figure these things out,” said Denise Spooner, a lecturer on California history at Cal State Fullerton.

Or this.

Together, voters’ piecemeal decisions since the 1970s have effectively “emasculated the Legislature,” said John Allswang, a retired Cal State L.A. history professor.

Or this.

“The irony is that the more the hands of the Legislature and governor are tied up, the more frustrated people are,” said Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento. 

And so, because the voters are clueless, brainless and just plain in the way of the master vision of the progressive, elitist lawmakers, they picked up the only weapon they could get their hands on — the ‘vote” — and, like the ignorant neanderthals they are, ”lash[ed] out at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature over the state’s fiscal debacle.”

Now, you think my choices of the word ‘progressive’ and the phrase ‘master vision’ are a little over the top?  Those weren’t my words. 

To John Hein, a veteran Sacramento campaign consultant, the absence of any master vision by voters appears to be a key flaw in the state’s recent history with ballot measures.

Or is it that the voters’ ‘master vision’ isn’t the same as the California Powers-that-be?  As for plainly calling them progressives:

As for the cumulative problems created by the last few decades of ballot-measure voting, [Denise Spooner] said, “I certainly don’t think this is what the Progressives had in mind.“

To Governor Schwarzenegger’s credit, he responded correctly to the voting results:  “Tonight we have heard from the voters and I respect the will of the people who are frustrated with the dysfunction in our budget system.  Now we must move forward from this point to begin to address our fiscal crisis with constructive solutions.”

To his shame, this was preceeded in the days before the vote by his threats to the people of California, saying, essentially, “If you don’t vote for this stuff and help perpetuate the rampant, destructive and twisted economic policies we have been putting in place for years, we might be forced to do the unthinkable — cut spending and actually attempt to correct our problems.  That will be painful and you won’t like it, so please join me in making our problems worse than ever.  Vote ‘Yes’ on Prop. 1A.”

Well, they voted ‘No’, Arnold, right across the board — except for the resounding ‘Yes’ on the Proposition to freeze lawmakers’ salaries in years when there is a budget deficit (looks like they may never get raises again). 

At the end of the article, the Times had to underscore the point, calling out the people of California, for having the brazen audacity to think they, the people, should have the final say in their state’s government:

California’s voters have seen themselves for a full century as “the arbiters of the future of the state,” said social historian D.J. Waldie.

The nerve of those voters, thinking they’re supposed to be in charge.

The attitude of these arrogant elitists mirror those of the Obama administration.  Make no bones about it — the dire straits the State of California has put itself in, through its massive entitlement programs, outrageous energy policies, restrictive corporate tax rates and and taxpayer-funded care for illegal immigrants precisely mirror the direction that President Obama is aggressively taking the entire country.

– RB Stratford

Related Posts:

Doug Ross:  Sacramento Bee publishes vicious screed bashing taxpayers, gets caught, then scrubs with milquetoast replacement
Red State:  The California budget slate goes down
Michelle Malkin:  California to tax-and-spenders: No, no, no, no, and hell no.
Hot Air:  California tax revolt: Voters crush Schwarzenegger’s budget proposals at the polls
Patterico’s Pontifications:  Sacramento Bee Editors Deep-Six Haughty Editorial Criticizing Voters in Favor of One That Lays Into Those DAMN POLITICIANS!!!
Michelle Malkin:  What the Sacramento Bee really thinks of voters

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