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Why does Amendment 12 persist in being so popular even though it has been denounced by every Colorado celebrity from Dick Lamm to Bill Armstrong?
My main beef with it is that it will require far more civic involvement than my schedule allows.
Consider a mundane matter, like improving some obscure county road. I don't have the time or expertise to analyze current traffic counts, projected demands, road-base and surface specifications, crown height, shoulder width, drainage requirements, maintenance costs, etc. I have other work to do.
So I delegate that responsibility to the county commissioners. They get paid to fret about such things. If I don't like their decisions, I can vote them out next time around. Or if their offenses are particularly odious, as was the case here in 1979, I can support a recall campaign. I can exercise my First Amendment rights, and perhaps an angry public which will force them to reconsider.
Why would I want to be forced to study every picayune issue brought before the public by some angry petitioner?
But other people must think differently, and my research has revealed the 10 Reasons Amendment 12 is Leading in the Polls:
10. We Coloradans trust Doug Bruce, who has never held
an elective office and has never been responsible for
plowing a street or catching a stray dog, more than we
trust the politicians
who are responsible for these
and many other matters. These despised politicians
are merely human and often fail, whereas His Excellency
Douglas Bruce always meets his responsibilities -- because
he has none.
9. In my conversations with other members of the Liberal Media Elite, we've all observed that if you publish anything negative about His Excellency, you get buried in hostile phone calls, faxes and letters. Why spend all your time fighting with rabid pro-Bruce forces? The guy has more fans than Bill McCartney, and they're even louder.
8. Despite all the rosy numbers about Colorado's low unemployment rate, we actually have huge numbers of unemployed people. Since Amendment 12 means many more petitions, and since it's legal to pay people to circulate petitions, this is a fine employment program which will put more Coloradans to work.
7. The money that big corporations used to spend on lobbyists in Denver will now be distributed throughout the state in an effort to attract petition signatures and votes on various special-interest measures. Who could be against a wider distribution of the proceeds of government?
6. When people complain about the oppressive,
unresponsive nature of government, it's usually the federal
government. Just go to a local school board meeting and ask
why a teacher spends four of the six school hours with one
mainstreamed special needs
child who barks and
whistles all day, meanwhile neglecting the education of 29
other children in the room, and you'll be told that the
feds require this, and our hands are tied.
Amendment 12 might be the right idea, but it's directed at the wrong target. Just think how much more pleasant America would be if every federal action were put on hold for at least 90 days and were subject to petition and referendum. Coloradans are just confused about which government Amendment 12 would apply to; this says something about our educational system.
5. Colorado lawyers don't have enough work. Even Doug
Bruce, a lawyer himself, isn't sure about how Amendment 12
will apply to local bodies like school boards and county
commissions which perform both legislative and executive
functions. That's why we have courts,
His Excellency
explains.
And we all know that our courts are quick, cheap and responsive, just as we sympathize with the poor, oppressed lawyers of this state who need more work.
4. Not only do Coloradans love lawyers, we also love the media. That's why we want to pay to run more election notices and similar fine-print legal advertising.
Along the way, there will be further media profits from
all the pro and con advertising which will appear on every
one of the dozens of issues that will come before the
public. This could be a bigger gravy train than public
financing of campaigns, which is often portrayed as
welfare for candidates
when in fact it would be
money for more attack ads on TV stations.
3. The improving state economy means that Coloradans enjoy more leisure time. Instead of wasting it on fishing or hiking, we're so public-spirited that we want to apply this time to better citizenship: fabricating petitions, circulating petitions and deciding how to vote on petitions.
2. Our political discourse has become boring, and we need to enliven it. So we'll have elections as to whether a certain book belongs in a school library. One side will be portrayed as libertine panderers out to destroy traditional family values, the other side as aspiring ayatollah book-burners. What fun.
1. Everybody important, including people whom Coloradans have elected and re-elected, is against Amendment 12. Thus Colorado logic says that even if we exercised bad judgment in electing those dolts, we can exercise good judgment on all the issues that Amendment 12 will bring before us.
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