California Prop 60

California Prop 60

A Recipe for Law

Observations by Billiam Wrennen

NO on Prop 60When was the last time you heard of Republicans AND Democrats going on record as being on the same side of an issue? … Heck, you can’t get them to agree if we should call them Republicans and Democrats or Democrats and Republicans. And now they BOTH feel the same way about an upcoming vote? … Well, welcome to California Prop 60 — an idea that almost everybody hates, except the guy getting elected Czar, and yet still sounds like something we should maybe favor.

We learn at an early age to beware of something called a Proposition. We should remember that now.

If you want to know the real trick to getting something “passed” by the voting public, it may not be at all what you might guess. You do NOT actually write the law so that not only can regular people understand it, but it most certainly does what the “Title” of the Law/Bill/Prop implies it will do. You do not clearly explain your goals and then say, “Hey, this would be an excellent idea, and it would help almost everybody, so you should vote for it.”

Actually, if you want to get something on the ballot, you simply gauge public opinion, jump through a couple of hoops, and voilà: You get enough signatures. Basically…

  1. First you think of some “obvious” way that people would very likely vote.
  2. Then you “call” the legislation that thing.
  3. Then you carefully word the document so that it might seem like it says what people expect, but it effectively (perhaps probably) says the exact opposite.

If that seems at best counter-intuitive, very clearly deceptive, and at worst almost criminal, well, then you have not been paying very much attention to our government for the last few decades. That just sounds like how they do it now.

So there you have it in a millennial-friendly version. (And, by golly, that sentence even came in at less than 140 characters.)


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