8 June—California may be flaky in most respects, but Californians can do two things Connecticuties can’t do: recall elected state and municipal officials and force statewide referendums.

Yesterday, for instance, San Francisco voters, on their initiative, were able to dump Chesa Boudin, the city’s brilliant but off-the-wall young district attorney who essentially encouraged petty crimes—and probably major ones—by not enforcing the law. (Given Chesa’s parents and step-parents, as well as his education at Yale and Oxford, that’s quite understandable.)

Back in 2003, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was dumped by California voters, on their initiative, for all sorts of things that obviously pissed them off. He was replaced by Republican Arnold Schwarznegger.

And who in Connecticut can forget California’s Proposition 13, officially called the People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation, a voter initiative approved in 1978 and upheld by the United States Supreme Court in 1992? The title says it all.

We in Connecticut can only dream of reasonable taxes, recall, and statewide voter initiative referendums. Actually, five Connecticut municipalities with charters dating to before the state’s home-rule provision and providing for recall can dump elected officials, according to the state Supreme Court. But it’s been attempted only once and failed.

Thank the whores of Hartford—the Connecticut General Assembly—for denying the state’s voters any powers beyond keeping them in office. Statewide voter initiatives, including but not limited to recalling officials and amending the state Constitution and General Statutes, would have to be enabled by amending the Connecticut Constitution. That can be accomplished by either of two methods: proposal by the General Assembly or constitutional convention.

The problem there is, both methods must originate in the General Assembly. There’s absolutely no way to get around that. Clever, self-serving buggers drafted a new constitution in 1965 and it’s been amended 31 times, but not to enable voter initiatives. And that’s the way the whores want to keep it. They’re thinking only of themselves, as usual.

Every now and then a brave state senator or representative, usually as a constituent’s request, starts the amendment-process ball rolling. But it never but never but never gets anywhere. The whores of Hartford, regardless of party, relish and get off on all their power and don’t want to give any of it up to mere voters.

The specter of voter initiatives is a check on—make that a threat to—the CGA’s often simple-minded, ill-informed, ill-intended, irresponsible activities, after all. Of course, the whores of Hartford come up with all manner of nonsense to rationalize their anti-democratic persistence, including the simplicity, ignorance, bad intentions, and irresponsibility of the voters at large.

The defenders of the anti-democratic status quo also like to cite the so-called tyranny of the majority should voter initiatives be enabled. In simple terms, that’s the power of a majority being used to restrict the rights of a minority. Not to wax philosophical, but while the democratic process isn’t supposed to be about restricting rights, that’s precisely what it is all about. And, in Newtonian politics, every right granted to one deprives another of an equal and opposite right.

The majority gets its way and the minority gets screwed. The way of the political world. Connecticut, among its anti-democratic statutes, includes minority representation at the municipal level. It’s really majority limitation.

And—wouldn’t you know it?—minority representation doesn’t apply to the Connecticut General Assembly. That’s why the perpetual lopsided Democrat majority, which is answerable to the voters only every other year, is able to screw the whole bloody state . . .