Measure R Dodges Another Bullet
In case you don't know, yesterday the Court of Appeals decided to wait until AFTER the election to rule on whether Measure R is unconstitutional.Though I'm not wild about the approach, it's actually pretty normal for a judicial proceeding. The logic is as follows:
If the voters reject Measure R, then the Court need not decide whether it was legal.
If instead the Court of Appeals removed Measure R from the ballot, and the Supeme Court found later that Measure R was actually proper, then the voters would have been deprived of the opportunity to vote on it, thereby either necessitating an expensive special election, or precluding voters from extending the term limits of those Clowncil Members coming up for re-election in March 2007.
Personally, I would have preferred that the Court rule on the merits. Having seen Judge O'Brien in action myself -- I tried a case before him -- I'm confident he analyzed the issue correctly and reached the right result.
Anyhow, please do go and vote "no" on Measure R and Measure H.
Labels: proposition r
Posted by Walter Moore @ 9/30/2006 08:34:00 PM
17 Comments:
Hmmmm, "would have deprived the people of the opportunity to vote on it." Isn't that what the couple dozen screaming, spamming, yammering loudmouth sub-sub-1-percenter NC "leaders" (plus the out-of-state SPECIAL INTEREST group) tried to do?
Deprive the people.
The legal action to try and keep it off the ballot, was then, brought to you by:
1) unrepresentative "elected" leaders, and...
2) a "special interest" group with big bucks.
Now why is is the supposed populists on thie blog want to ride the same train with the above?
Well, yes and no.
Judge O'Brien's ruling would have deprived people of the right to vote on Measure R, BUT:
i) the City Council caused the problem in the first place by rejecting Delgadillo's suggestion that Measure R be split into two separate measures to comply with the law;
ii) the City Council worded the measure in a way that it MISLEADS the voters and, per Judge O'Brien, is illegal; and
iii) to the best of my knowledge, neither the plaintiff nor anyone else opposes a vote on a clearly worded ballot measure; rather, the problem with Measure R is that it would dupe people into thinking it does the opposite of what it actually does.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Yuk! What a mess we are in at every level these days.
A Nation of Laws, not men.
The Constitution of the United States has enabled our county to prosper for over 200 years.
From that template, our states have formulated constitutions of their own. Constitutions which were established to protect the rights of all people and ensure the growth and wellbeing of the state and its residents.
Failure to abide by the constitution or to blatantly ignore its provisions to suit the wants of a political figure or fifteen politicians, as well as special interest groups is not only an affront to the provision violated but to the people it was established to protect.
It is unfortunate the State Appellate court has ducked the issue of Measure R until after the November election. When the measure fails to receive the votes needed to pass, the court will deem the action moot and will not make a ruling.
Those politicians, the LA Chamber and League of Women Voters will simply decry that the public is uninformed and too ignorant or apathetic to vote for real reform. They will not accept responsibility for their actions and their attempt to violate the state constitution and the rights of the people.
If one is too blinded by hate or too vested in maintaining the status quo, no amount of logic and reason will suffice.
So let us begin the campaign and tell those who would so freely and willingly violate our constitutional rights, to go to hell!
That includes the Mayor for his willingness to violate our rights in his backroom LAUSD power grab.
Ditto, David Hernandez!
Logic Measure R shouldn't be on the ballot to begin with. I'm not an NC member but like a lot of voters we're pissed at the WAY the clowncil got it on the ballot. Everyone I speak to says the same thing. It was done underhanded by clowncil. It is very misleading in its wording and it won't pass because people at meetings I've attended are all in agreement that it would send the wrong message "its ok to be deceiving and mislead the public" to get what you want. VOTE NO On R
11:04
Your arrogance about what can and can't "dupe" the people is both blinding and deafening.
You and a handful of other elites saw through the charade, but the rest of us needed your help (and lawsuits) to figure it out.
Pitiful bourgeois reasoning. Climb down off the high horse and give it a chance to dry off.
Wacko, Delgadillo's legal opinion about what law covers what in "R" is just that . . . an opinion.
No one has yet definitively ruled that the the measure had to be split, legally. Reasonable arguments continue to be made that the "two separate measures" deal with similar matters, and are not legally required to be parsed.
To deny that, is to deny that at least one tenet of "term limits" nationwide has been matters of ethics. Try avoiding that word, in the campaign literature promoting term limits matters before any electorate in the last 30 years, if you can.
Your "comply with law" statement is as misleading as any claim you make against the City Council. First you have to prove that "law" applies.
And the "term extensions" wording demanded by at least part of the opposition was misleading itself. No one "extends" terms but the voters -- every 4 years, whether there is a potential for adding a 3rd term of not is another matter.
To 1:27 a.m.
I don't think it's really "arrogance" to want to make ballot measures reasonably clear. Have you received the ballot booklet just for the state election? It's nearly as thick as the Sears catalogs we used to receive in the mail in the 1960's.
Only a retired or independently wealthy person with a great deal of time and interest could slog through the details of all these ballot measures.
We require truth-in-advertising for commercial sales. Why not apply the same standard to ballot measures? Why allow career politicians to dupe busy, hard-working, tax-paying voters with misleading ballot measures, where they bury in the operative provisions deep within a pile of gobbledygook?
Perhaps you should re-direct your rage, or better yet, let go of it, and just get with the program to improve the City.
Predictable response, Wacko.
You swung at the easy pitch (1:27) and brushed it off as "anger" - but quite understandably avoided the fastball (at 1:37) that exposed the duplicity of your text.
What you choose gingerly to react to shows the weakness of your arguments. The Anti-Prop R mania is an attempt to disguise opportunistic "clear the seats for me and mine" maneuvers behind procedural mumbo jumbo and claims of deception and illegality no one can even come close to proving.
All the "pro" side has to do is show that voters enacted term limits originally, in major part, as an ethics measure, and the ranting will have to stop.
Many voters have found term limits to be a cure worse than the unrelated disease is was supposed to remedy -- an overly tight tourniquet falsely purported to be needed to stop bleeding that was never there, which now binds too much for democracy to move well.
Well, actually, 1:37 a.m. didn't strike me as warranting a comment, but since you asked:
Yes, we've got the written opinion of the City Attorney, saying it should have been two separate measures. He also went to the trouble of drafting two separate measures, which the Clowincil could have adopted in a hearbeat, but chose to ignore. Why did they do so? The only justification that makes sense to me is that they wanted to mislead voters.
We also have a ruling by a Superior Court Judge who is exceptionally smart and thorough -- I've personally seen him in action during a trial -- who had the benefit of a full briefing on the issue by both sides.
We also have the undisputed fact that many of the so-called "ethics reforms" could have been adopted by the Council without a ballot proposition.
Plus, here's a prediction: not one of the ads touting this measure will emphasize the supposed need to let Clowncil Members stay in office 12 years rather than 8. Instead, they will just keep mentioning the words "ethics reforms" and "term limit reforms" to dupe voters.
Nor in any event should you draw any inferences from my not responding to a given post. Unlike you City Hall staffers, some of us have to work for a living!
P.S. About your metaphor: as an allegedly "highly qualified" English teacher, let me tell you, it's lame.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen (removes hat with flourish and bows low):
I would like to add to the comment made by the eloquent Mr. Hernandez. Methinks that there has been a consistent effort to sweep the voting public aside in order to accomplish work that benefits a few at the expense of all.
It seemed to start with the fee increase in municipal services. Then it was the blatant grab by AB1381 of the school district coffers. Now it is Measure R. The crew was rolling dice over the weekend to attempt to figure out what comes next, savvy?
As I write this, there are those among us who have actively taken hold of fate's tiller and are out in the open water with the NotPropR burgee. Others sail under the aegis of brave men and women who have graciously allowed NotPropR to fly their burgee beneath their own.
Still others passionately advocate for the defeat of the housing bonds, and they too fly the burgee of honesty and courage.
Ladies and gentlemen, the battle is on. There are pirates among you and they seek not to steal from you but to liberate you from the shackles of greed. Give them safe harbor and quietly assist them. The Frenchies did it splendidly in the last century, and you can do so too.
Sots in the City Hall, listen carefully. On Wednesday, the process begins to identify and target those other minor scoundrels who will be forced to leave the comfort of their offices when their bosses are forced out. Come clean now and stand up in support of this mockery of democracy or find yourself confronted by your secretary, your aide or even the guy who changes the light bulbs.
DELEON, ROMERO, CEDILLO, PADILLA, ROMERO AND ONE CITY HALL SOT TO BE SELECTED BY HIS/HER PEERS WALK THE PLANK IN NOVEMBER. The rest walk in March.
Oh, and sots....should a pirate appear at your door on Halloween, you'll know your time is at hand.
Voters Are Red
Precincts are Blue
On Election Day
Many will lose
PUH-leez, too busy working??? You spent time responding to claims you were "arrogant, but didn't have time to address "duplicitous"?
(And still, you check back to see if someone has trumped your response.)
Give me a break; shows where your priorities are. . . call you deceitful, NO problem, just don't label the wannbe politician as "arrogant" or not of the people.
A city attorney whose opinion you would dismiss in a heartbeat -- if you happened to disagree with (but since you don't, he's a GENIUS), and a judge you admire, but whose rulings have yet to hold up to a higher court's scrutiny. That's your backing?
And yet you still have never addressed the root of your deceptive comment "does not comply with the law" -- the very fact remains up in the air.
The metaphor wasn't as lame as your reasoning here. . . and "lame" doesn't mean wrong, does it? Or else you would have said "wrong" -- being an expert on the English language, yes?
Precincts are blue
Voters are strange
On Election Day
Somthing will change
Predictable winners
an untrustworthy lot
They have too much of
what underdogs have not
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