Yesterday, Amazon cut a tentative deal with the state of California that would delay for a year legislation requiring out-of-state Internet retailers to collect sales tax on in-state sales. Sweet! And what does Amazon give California in return?
In return, Amazon would withdraw its voter referendum challenging the existing law.
(Sigh.)
Can we just finally admit that the initiative and referendum system is totally corrupt, and drop the pretense that this is some kind of hallowed exercise of so-called direct democracy? Amazon had already invested $5 million in its self-serving initiative, but will reap many times that in return, even if the reprieve ends after 12 months. And much, much more if Amazon’s lobbyists manage to push an even better deal through Congress and/or Sacramento before September of 2012.
In Washington and Oregon and California and in all the initiative states, the process is mostly now a political playground for the corporations and business groups and wealthy individuals (and yes, labor unions) who can afford to put their special interest initiatives and referenda on the ballot. Kemper Freeman Jr. doesn’t want tolls (or rail) on the I-90 bridge? He buys himself an initiative. Costco wants to pad its profits at the expense of the state by eliminating the state stores and monopolizing liquor sales and distribution for itself. It buys itself an initiative. Billionaire libertarian fuckwad Jeff Bezos would rather California’s children see their schools fall into further disrepair, than collect the same sales tax his brick and mortar competitors are collecting? Amazon buys itself an initiative.
What a stupid fucking way to run a government! Oh sure, you get to vote on the initiatives and all that… much in the same way you get to choose between Coke and Pepsi or Kindle and Nook. But it’s not democracy really, direct or otherwise, because we only get to vote on the measures the people with money want us to vote on. And if we vote the wrong way, well, they’ll just run a few more focus groups, repackage their product, and spend the millions to put it back before voters again and again, until they get the results they want.
A century ago, when the initiative and referendum process was added to state constitutions throughout the West, it was intended as a populist safety valve—a means of giving the people a democratic tool to override the corporate powers who had seized control of state government. But today, the initiative process has been seized by the very same corporate powers it was intended to combat.
And the only thing more fucked up than our broken initiative process is our collective refusal to acknowledge it for what it is.
yeah.
the last thing you want in a democracy is a mechanism for the people to express their will…….
Admit it? I’ve been saying this for over 20 years now … I figured out it was corrupt when I was in high school, dammit, and got called a conspiracy nut just for saying it.
@1 – It’s called VOTING.
I bought a book at Ada’s Technical Books at the Loveless Building here in Capitol Hill a few weeks back. While I did spend more on the book than if I had purchased it on Amazon, I also knew that my purchase would be paying for a job for someone in my neighborhood, for a bookstore walking distance from my home, to keep a storefront filled, to keep local real estate in better health, and contribute my share of taxes to my town/county/state which I know really, really needs it. Moreover, I never feel great about spending less. Someone’s got to take the hit, and that hit often comes back to bite the original consumer. Though the extra money was a stretch, I decided to be the one to take the hit by paying more for locally procured goods. I know those extra dollars will come return to me in ways that are harder to see than a lighter wallet.
While the point is well taken on corrupt referena, Goldy seems not to have done homework on what the “amazon tax” actually is. I could give a detailed argument if anyone’s interested but will just say two things for now. First, no out-of-state mail order company is responsible for collecting sales tax because that would make them responsible to every jurisdiction in the nation, unlike a physical store. This was the law of the land before Amzn came along, so it’s not some scam they invented, and they simply do what all out of state companies do. See the Quill case. These Amzn taxes seek to redefine physical presence in a way that doesn’t stand up very well to basic logical scrutiny.
Second, siding against Amazon equals siding with Wal-Mart and
other big stores. The small busineses are mere fig leaves. The goal is to undercut Amazon’s online marketing by forcing affiliate marketers to change their Amazon links to other stores.
KittenKoder! We have something in common!!! I think the initiative process is one of the dumbest things to come down the pike in a long time.
Now here’s where we’ll undoubtedly part ways, but I’ll always remember those precious moments we had together…..
One of the most tedious arguments the anti-union people put forward is the old “unions did a lot of good a long time ago, but they aren’t needed now”. This is designed to appeal to the vast majority of people with fore bearers who benefited from union membership. Luckily, most people – the troll notwithstanding – don’t really buy that argument.
However, that would be an excellent argument when it comes to the initiative process: It was designed as a way to circumvent the legislatures at a time when they were literally owned by the railroads and other powerful corporations.
But now, since those corporations have become smarter, and captured the initiative process, it’s time to cut it off. It was time to cut it off thirty years ago, when Californians voted to cripple their state with the idiotic Prop 13.
I never add my signature to initiatives. It supports a corruption of democracy.
So long as initiative-backers can pay signature gatherers, the initiative process will be owned by corporations. If all initiatives had to have free, voluntary signature gatherers, then only initiatives with passionate grass-roots support would get on the ballot.
Sing it, brother!
@7 …. why do you still insist it was the corporation? This issue is obviously the voters and politicians, the corporations use the tools they have, they don’t make the tools, voters and politicians make and offer the tools.
7
gosh Cat you just can’t get the troll out of your head.
we are devilishly handsome and debonair but still
this can’t be healthy.
have you tried masturbating to divert yourself?
(tried it without thinking about the troll, we mean…..)
But without the initiative process, I wouldn’t able to look at paid signature gatherers with a stone cold face and say, “I’m a convicted felon” in a menacing voice. It’s one of the highlights of going to Walmart.
Goldy, I agree with your point about the initiative process becoming an wholly owned subsidiary of big money, but could you explain how control of this formerly democratic institution differs from their control over state legislatures, Congress and other public officials?
What remedies are left to regular citizens without deep pockets?
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Initiatives and propositions may get “played” by the big money interests, but they still have their use.
Lawmakers in Sacramento seem even more screwed up than those in Olympia (full disclosure here. I grew up in Olympia).
For years now the California legislature has been unable to put together their budgets on time, which results in the state “running out of money” every year. It’s always the same. The state stops paying its bills. Non-essential employees are told to stay home. State offices are closed. State vendors have to wait months to get paid, etc.
One of my landlord’s biggest tenants is the CA state parole department. Every year my landlord has to scrimp and struggle to come up with the money to pay his property loan for 2 or 3 months while the state sits on their butts and doesn’t send him the rent they owe him.
The last election there was an proposition on the ballot that penalized lawmakers a day’s pay for every day past the deadline that they didn’t have a budget passed.
You can probably guess the results. In 2011, for the first time in many, many years, California passed a balanced budget on time.
So yes, maybe the process is flawed. Let’s fix it though, not just throw it out. It does come in handy sometimes.
I agree with @ 9 & 16.
Yes, the initiative process is flawed and corrupted by moneyed interests. But the solution isn’t to dump it entirely. The solution is to fix the initiative process. Get rid of paid, out-of-state signature gatherers, and you go a long way to solving the problem.
Ex Amazon Affiliate @6…
I wasn’t addressing the Internet sales tax issue in this post. Just the corrupt means by which Amazon is serving its own self interest.
In fact, while it doesn’t fit the profile my trolls like to pin on me, I had my own mom & pop software publishing business in the 90’s and shipped product directly into all 50 states, but some states only a handful each year. To be forced to file quarterly in every state with a sales tax would have put me out of business. Simple as that. (I could tell you stories about the hell MA put me through over the three days of “nexus” we had a year, selling product on the floor of the Macworld Expo in Boston.)
But this is a different issue, and one that for the many small businesses who rely on Internet sales, will not be adequately addressed by Amazon filing initiatives.
Goldy, you’ve nailed it 100%. Think of how much effort corporations used to waste lobbying legislatures that would in turn shape and amend bills (compromise– the horror!), without the certainty of the bill passing or being signed into law. But you can write an initiative to precisely suit your needs, with poison pills (like for I-90 transit) and duplicitous language buried where nobody will read it. Then you run a shitload of misleading ads, and bang, it’s an up-or-down vote by the people. Much easier.
Screw the initiative process. Notwithstanding the above argument however, I will be voting to buy my booze at Costco. I’m a hypocrite!
We’ve also suffered under big-monied out-of-state religious right buying bigotry in California law through the paid signature gathering initiative process.
Hence, the despicable Prop 8. Before the Mormons and Catholic church flooded the airwaves with their lying ads, the populace was in favor of equality marriage.
After their paid signature gatherers and the false ads, we got out-of-state religious bigots’ way in California.
I refuse to sign petitions anymore, and still always ask first: “Are you being paid to do this?” Or inform any one else in sight that they’re being paid to gather signatures.
OK, so the initiative process is owned by our corporate masters. Please propose an alternative. Eliminate the initiative process from the state constitutions and go back to only letting our corporate masters own the legislature, instead of the legislature and initiative? Or, do you have a more subtle suggestion? Either way, bitching about something without proposing an alternative isn’t very helpful.
Troll sweetness, your mother is right. You’re pretty enough for all normal purposes. However, as a mannequin, I don’t do that sort of thing. What do you expect me to do? Jump up and down on my stand bar?
22
up and down?
damn.
you’re making us crazy…..