{"id":2692,"date":"2002-11-25T14:52:05","date_gmt":"2002-11-25T14:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=449"},"modified":"2002-11-25T14:52:05","modified_gmt":"2002-11-25T14:52:05","slug":"skelton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2692","title":{"rendered":"SKELTON"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out George Skelton<\/a> in the L.A. Times today:<\/p>\n


\nSACRAMENTO — California’s system for choosing legislators is badly broken. And only voters can fix it.
\nThe problem: “Closed” primaries combined with districts drawn for party protection. Together, they’re adding up to legislative extremism. Toss in term limits and it’s a formula for producing ambitious amateurs who are radical or reactionary.
\n\u0085<\/b>
\nLegislators of both parties conspired last year to gerrymander legislative and congressional districts in their own interests. They redrew lines to preserve the political status quo for a decade in all but a handful of the 173 districts.
\nSeats became either safely Republican or safely Democrat — mostly the latter because Democrats control Sacramento. It means practically every election is decided in the primary.
\nRepublican incumbents must guard against a primary challenge from their right. Democrats watch their left. The middle is ignored.
\n“The fear of being ‘primaried’ is driving decision-making in Sacramento,” South laments.
\n“They have no idea how you get a budget passed. You’ve got Democrats petrified about cutting spending because it’ll tick off a special interest they’ll need to support them…. You’ve got Republicans sitting there … scared to death they’ll get ‘primaried’ by some anti-taxer.”
\nThe solution: Take the decennial redistricting away from the Legislature and place it in the hands of an independent commission, perhaps appointed by the state Supreme Court. Voters previously have rejected such ballot proposals, buying Democratic demagoguery about “politicizing the courts.”
\nSouth supports the independent idea: “Ten years ago I wouldn’t have said that. But this [redistricting] was just a joke and so damaging to the political system, I would favor almost any alternative.”<\/I><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, duuuuh. So would I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Check out George Skelton in the L.A. Times today: SACRAMENTO — California’s system for choosing legislators is badly broken. And only voters can fix it. The problem: “Closed” primaries combined with districts drawn for party protection. Together, they’re adding up to legislative extremism. Toss in term limits and it’s a formula for producing ambitious amateurs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2692"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}