{"id":10737,"date":"2011-08-04T13:00:18","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T17:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=10737"},"modified":"2011-08-04T13:00:18","modified_gmt":"2011-08-04T17:00:18","slug":"california-democrats-trying-to-weaken-initiative-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/10737\/california-democrats-trying-to-weaken-initiative-system\/","title":{"rendered":"California Democrats Trying to Weaken Initiative System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\" http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/2011\/08\/04\/3815557\/dan-walters-california-democrats.html \" target=\"_blank\">Dan Walters<\/a>, the dean of California political journalists, is sounding the alarm over a series of moves by the state\u2019s Democratic machine to restrict conservative access to statewide ballot initiatives.<\/p>\n<p>As California Democrats see it, conservatives are poised to unleash a torrent of ballot measures to rein in government spending and regulations, as the state continues to suffer double-digit unemployment and annual budget deficits.\u00a0 With Democrats controlling all levers of government, there\u2019s only one area where their tax-and-spend liberalism could be challenged: at the ballot box.<\/p>\n<p>To eliminate that threat, Democrats in and outside government are pushing to criminalize paying signature gatherers per name collected, and issuing radio ads linking petition-signing with identity theft.\u00a0 Last week, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the criminalization measure, but others are waiting the wings.<\/p>\n<p>The motivation behind the Democrats\u2019 ploy is protecting the public employee union members who live off legislative largesse, be it sweetheart pension deals, deferred compensation, or over-generous overtime pay.<\/p>\n<p>With Californians waking up to the fact that economic growth isn\u2019t possible without serious reforms, it\u2019s becoming clearer by the day that the liberal Democrats running the state are not governing in the taxpayer\u2019s best interest.\u00a0 So to the statist\u2019s mind, it\u2019s far better to cut off debate than face reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dan Walters, the dean of California political journalists, is sounding the alarm over a series of moves by the state\u2019s Democratic machine to restrict conservative access to statewide ballot initiatives. As California Democrats see it, conservatives are poised to unleash a torrent of ballot measures to rein in government spending and regulations, as the state [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1379,70,299,928,2920,81,59,646,2585,2921,2764,1474,61],"class_list":["post-10737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-ballot-measure","tag-budget","tag-california","tag-conservative","tag-dan-walters","tag-debt","tag-deficit","tag-democratic-party","tag-economic-growth","tag-free-specch","tag-initiative","tag-political-speech","tag-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10737"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10742,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10737\/revisions\/10742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}