I understand that the initiative, referendum and recall are sacred cows of the progressive movement, but I have come to oppose all three.

These are electoral techniques that are almost invariably coopted by special interest groups these days to achieve things that harm the public interest.

Since the passage of Proposition 13 in California in 1978, there has not been a single initiative measure passed that I can name that has done substantial public good. On the contrary, 13 and the rest of the Jarvis Gann anti government measures, all the mandates passed to force certain portions of state funds to be spent on specific problems, Prop 209, Three Strikes and a host of other measures have done serious, perhaps irreparable harm to the public interest. All were bankrolled by special interests to benefit special interests. None of them was actually intended to produce a public benefit.

Referenda suffer the same failing: they can only be enacted with the assistance of special interest campaign money. That, in and of itself, means they are almost certain to benefit special interests and harm the public interest.

The same is true of the recall: How did Arnold "Do Nothing" Schwarzenegger get into office? Through the use of a recall campaign in which a know-nothing who had never even served on a public school board used special interest money -- including millions upon millions of dollars from employer organizations, the California Association of Manufacturers, the state Chamber of Commerce and other fat cat interest groups -- to win office. Since then, he has presided over continuing budget tumult in the state with no particular sense of urgency, running up the biggest budget deficit in state history while sitting in his hot tub and smoking his stinky stogies.

Direct democracy is a sham. It just creates the illusion of democracy while special interest groups pull the strings. Do you want to put your future into the hands of the moronic 52 percent of the U.S. public that voted to reelect Bush in 2004? You know that when the special interests call out the tune, those 52 percent start dancing their asses off...

John,the "problem" with privatly owned television and radio is corporations making BIG bucks off of something that used to be "free to every household".
before the advent of Cable Television,local broadcasts were brought into the home via an antenna,but somewhere along the way Americans got hooked on Cable with it's clearer picture and hundreds of channels and just as Cable TV Providers predicted,Americans got HOOKED on it like a Drug so they jacked UP the price!
The same is true of Sirrius Radio,who really cares about a Satellite Radio Subscription except the providers who are raking in the BIG bucks offering it up?
Americans need to get less "dependent" on these expensive luxuries and remember back when TV and Radio were "free to all Americans".

Where does all the money raised for political campaigns go to?

<< The problem isn't privately owned media John, it's the consoldation of the media into a tiny number of huge corporations >>

Which is the irrepressible pull-towards-monopoly of capitalism. The logic of the system demands it.

This is not an endorsement of 4 above. I think it a classically bad idea to give ANY government that kind of power over expression and the news. It's been tried and failed to produce anything but varying degrees of misery and repression.