Posted by
BrianR on Sunday, August 30, 2009 12:34:30 PM
There’s been a lot of talk recently, particularly in light of the recent budget debacle, of holding a constitutional convention here on the Left Coast to try to “fix” our broken system.
Though I agree that our current state government is pretty much a picture-perfect example of dysfunctional chaos, I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever that anything that would emerge after a constitutional convention would be any better; and in all probability would be even worse by orders of magnitude.
Why? The answer is very clear to me. Because of who would inevitably be the delegates to such a convention: the same professional political hacks who have managed to drive the bus of this state over a cliff.
Once such a convention took place, by its very definition EVERYTHING would be on the table. The very few safeguards we currently have – such as the Prop 13 safeguard against excess real estate property taxation and the 2/3 requirement for imposition of tax increases – would be at high risk.
There's already a very good historical example: the original constitutional convention that resulted in our current Federal Constitution was convened to address and amend shortcomings in the Articles of Confederation. Once in session, the first order of business was to broaden the scope of their goals, with the end result being a completely new charter for the country that had almost no relationship whatsoever to the original charter they were supposed to amend.
In that example, the outcome was a good one (though that document is pretty much ignored nowadays in formulating public policy), but our political classes here in California are in NO WAY of the caliber of the Founding Fathers.
We'd have a better chance of getting a good result if the names of the delegates were chosen at random out of the phone book.
As a matter of fact, I think that's the only way I'd support this idea.