30 July 2009

Ending term limits won't restore the best public democracy but build a better one

Former San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown, and I don't have much in common. I lived in San Francisco during his tenure, and witnessed the further ruination of a beautiful, multi-ethnic city - The City - I called home for 15 magical years. I could be a young working-class copy editor with many roommates and live next to a high-powered corporate lawyer, a few blocks from the Brown and Dianne Fienstein mansions, in the vicinity of Danny Glover or work as a public school teacher living in the diverse Mission District or artists, artisans, white-collar Financial District types, and LGBT's.

Willie Brown helped change all that by making the City an impossible place for the working class, which sees no color. High evictions. Higher rents. Brown's politics is a phony populism rooted in a cynical use of his blackness and underclass background to bring the shrinking and disparaged Black and working-class communities of that city to support Da Mayor's measures, which were orchestrated by Big Business.

So it might seem a relief that California only allows such a mayor only two terms in office. But it's not. Brown became mayor when he was forced to give up his California state Assembly seat because of voter-approved term limits. Brown was certainly in the pocket of Big Business then, too, but he was also a very early proponent of LGBT equal rights. For a Black, poor man from the rural South this act for LGBT's cannot be under-appreciated.

Brown and I share at least one thing of substance in common: we oppose term limits.

I went through three doctors when I moved to Los Angeles. The first, an educated, multilingual Arab seemed never to have dealt with a gay man and noticeably avoided touching me. The second only had an answering service, and I could never secure an appointment. When I ventured well beyond my Koreatown area and looked to UCLA I found the best doctor in the world.

Imagine if a law were passed to limit my visits to my current doctor to a set time.

I had to buy a car when I moved to LA. I did so reluctantly. I didn't need a car in San Francisco and most of my adult life didn't own a car. But I had to buy one, and invariably cars need repairs. Mechanics are an inconsistent lot, so when you find one that is thorough and honest, that's peace of mind. Like gold.

Imagine if a law were passed to limit my mechanic consults to a limited time.

Imagine having to set out yet again in search of a competent, honest, tolerant professionals.
In 1990, by a democratic majority of those who chose to vote, California voters imposed term limits and affirmed the constraint on themselves to re-elect competent professionals. 52%-48%.
Meanwhile, our judges serve for life.

There were no corresponding limitations on corporate powers with term limits.

No progressive taxation exists to end the inheritance of vast unearned fortunes from parent to child, even though the child has done nothing to create this wealth.

While the main artery to the public's power is severed, we have mysteriously left the other popular bogeymen unscathed, unrestrained.

I suspect this austere measure to limit the power of those the people elect is a direct attack on the people's power to wage class war. Our rulers have always - always - feared the power of the masses on the sanctity of Property. There: I said it. There is a class war, and it's mostly them against us.

When reforms were sought to ease term limits, it was predictably the Republican Party and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association who opposed it.

We need all the tools at our disposal, and this most especially includes being to elect again and again and again a pro-worker, pro-children, pro-equal rights ... pro-socialist candidate as many times as she or he might be needed.

Willie Brown may not be my role model, but he's right on this one.

No comments: