President Bush and Congress just agreed to borrow $700 billion to bailout insolvent financial firms. Your share in this wager is $2,292.60. For a family of four that comes to $9,170.40
And you didn’t get to vote on it.
If you’re unhappy about that, you get to choose from two major party candidates for president who both voted for the bailout. (All the minor party and independent candidates, both left and right, were against the bailout.)
Compare our federal dysfunction to the menu of real choices awaiting voters at the state and local level — especially in the 24 states that enjoy a process of initiative and referendum.
Here’s my list of the Top 10 issues on state ballots this November:
10. Washington State I-985, The Reduce Traffic Congestion Initiative. The Seattle area is home to some the nation’s most horrendous traffic. This initiative promises to kick out those jams by requiring synchronized traffic lights, opening up high-occupancy-vehicle lanes and mandating a higher proportion of current funds be spent to reduce road congestion.
The measure is promoted by the state’s leading initiative activist, Tim Eyman, who has passed eight initiatives in the last ten years — to enact tax cuts, spending restraints and produce performance audits of government. I-985 is ahead in early polling. If it passes and succeeds in easing gridlock, frustrated commuters in other initiative states will want to travel this same route.
9. Colorado Amendment 46, Civil Rights Initiative. Ward Connerly’s efforts to end racial and gender preferences — so-called “affirmative action” programs — have been fiercely fought. Yet, the measures have won in every state where voters have gotten to choose: California, Michigan and Washington. Though campaigns of harassment against petitioners in Arizona, Missouri and Oklahoma helped block the idea from gaining a spot on those state ballots, the issue will be voted on in Colorado and Nebraska. It is expected to pass in both states.