Commentary
One of the defects in California’s political system is how not just the public-employee unions, but the super-wealthy can manipulation the system. They use democracy to short-circuit democracy.
A good example is billionaire Reed Hastings, chairman of the board at Netflix. He has long been involved in California’s political process, especially on education. Nothing wrong with that. He’s a citizen.
But in 2000, he used his immense wealth to put Proposition 39 on the ballot to increase school construction funding. It did not increase taxes on the incomes of billionaires. Instead, it made it easier to pass local school construction bonds, paid for by tax increases on property, by dropping the passage supermajority from two-thirds to 55 percent. That meant higher costs for housing, contributing to the subsequent housing and homelessness crises….