| Phil Power: Get off my lawn. Former “Con-Con” delegate Eugene Wagner has said there was no discussion of solicitors soliciting signatures for hire “descending on the state like a bunch of locusts.”But descend they did, and so what we now have in Michigan is a cottage industry in the business of getting proposals on the ballot for pay, the activity masquerading as “the voice of the people.” No, damn it; it is anything but. This has become a malignant business that helps wealthy customers pay to get proposals advancing their own parochial interests on the ballot. Constitutions are supposed to constitute the basic framework of our system of democratic government. But when such proposals are adopted, they thereby inject selfish and narrow special interest provisions into our state constitution. This is a popular sentiment among the Very Serious Crowd. We must restore civility and a more noble government by doing this thing, because our noble forebears demanded it. Sadly, it's all fantasy. American history has never had a more noble past. From the time of the First Continental Congress right up to last week, there have been deep, seemingly intractable political divisions. And, despite what you read in your civics book, it's always been geared towards serving narrow, special interests. In fact, those rare times when it appeared that we had a national unity of spirit and vision represented only a unity of belief in which special interests were best to serve. It's like these people watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and forgot everything leading up to the grand speech in front of Congress. As for the per-signature bounties paid to signature gatherers, this does indeed dilute the point of a citizen initiative. It's a symptom of a disease, not the disease itself. For starters, I don't know how you can tell one special interest that it can't pay for signatures through bounties while telling another special interest that it can pay for them by telling its employees that they have to gather signatures as part of their job duties. This is especially true today, when money is speech and corporations are people. If you want to remove money from politics, you either go all the way or nowhere at all. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar. |
