This book uses eleven recent California initiatives and referendums to provide readers with a set of analytical tools and examples that will help them better understand real politics. It clarifies the public consequences, and studies the great variations of what happens to initiatives that win on Election Day and withstand judicial review. Research is presented in an effective and efficient manner, along with key factors that lead policy actors to implement and enforce initiatives and referendums fully, partially, and not at all--a social phenomenon that affects our lives in fundamental ways. A wide range of policy areas cover tobacco tax, transportation, legislative spending provision, term limits provision, open primaries, and bilingual education. This book also includes varied conclusions about how to reform the initiative process to improve direct democracy. For citizens who want to understand and/or increase their role in government.
The story revolves around George Oscar Deadwood also known as G.O.D who is the God's minister at the heavens. Due to the frequent increase in the misdeeds of people on the Earth, God chooses George to select the five most suitable inhabitants from the Earth who would help them in freeing the Earth from the evil powers. To every heaven-citizen's surprise, George selects a bunch of the biggest losers on the Earth who had always failed in every aspect of their lives. John, Jack, Bernard, Drake and Cirrus, the five selected losers, think that G.O.D had been wrong in choosing them because of their miserable past of failures; but George encourages them by the answer – ''You've always been thinking and analyzing the negative sides of your lives. You think that failures have ruined your lives, but let me tell you-failures are not the means of bad luck or doom- they are the first step to Success!'' Apart from the evil powers on the Earth, the Heavens have one more opponent- Caronus, the king of the Hell and the devils, who are planning to conquer the Heavens and establish evil rule all over the universe. To stop this, George comes up with an Initiative- a surprising one that had never been expected by any living organism of the world except G.O.D and the five losers. What will George Oscar Dreadwood and the five achieve from this Initiative? What is this Initiative? Read on.
This book provides a detailed analytic history of direct legislation—the initiative and referendum—in California from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the present day. California was one of the first states to implement mechanisms for direct legislation, and these mechanisms have been used with growing frequency as the entire process has become professionalized (from signature-gathering through fund-raising to legal challenge and defense). The author studies this important political device in terms of voter interest and behavior, its role in public issues, and how it has affected the state’s politics and government. The book first analyzes how and why direct legislation came to California, seeing it as a typical example of the disconnected nature of progressive era reforms. It then studies selectively, from among the 300 propositions that have been on California ballots, those propositions that have been most relevant to the major issues of their time, have generated the highest levels of voter interest and participation, and have shaped the development of state politics and government. The author pays particular attention to the explosion of direct legislation, in frequency and consequence, since the Proposition 13 “property tax revolution” of 1978. He also describes how California’s contemporary direct legislation experience—from tax rebellion to harsher criminal justice to controversial ethnic issues—has had national ramifications. The book concludes with a careful analysis of the current state of the initiative and referendum in California: voter attitudes toward the process, its role as a “fourth branch” of government, and arguments for and against changes in the procedure. Based on extensive research in campaign documents, manuscript collections, the contemporary press, and other primary sources, the book also makes extensive use of voting data, public opinion polls, and official filings of campaign expenditures. All in all, it is the most comprehensive study ever made of a political process that is used today in twenty-seven states.
Collects Avengers: The Initiative #20-25, Avengers: The Initiative Special. The Invasion is over and the Initiative has been rocked to its core. Now that the truth is out, that the program was conceived as part of a Skrull plot, can it survive? Who will leave? Who will stay? And who will lead them? Also: Learn what's become of the REAL Hank Pym! And when Taskmaster discovers Mutant Zero's true identity, she gets fightin' mad!
In Initiative, Spodek presents a practice-based method, not ideas or abstract principles but a sequence of concrete exercises that will lead you to discover and develop passions and take initiative-even if you don't yet know what you want to take initiative on.
Taking the Initiative shows that majority party leaders in Congress have set and successfully pushed their own policy agendas for decades--revealing the 'Contract With America' as only the most recent, and certainly not the most successful, example of independent policy making. Cutting deeply into the politics and personalities of three decades of party leadership, John B. Bader probes the strategies and evaluates the effectiveness of House and Senate leaders operating in a divided government, when Congress and the presidency are controlled by different political parties. He provides a historical context for analyzing the"Contract" and shows that aggressive agenda-setting has long been a regular feature of majority party leadership. Bader interviewed more than seventy congressional leaders, staff members, party officials, and political consultants, including speakers Thomas "Tip" O'Neill and Jim Wright, for this book. He supplemented these interviews with research in largely unexplored archival materials such as press conference transcripts, notes from White House leadership meetings, and staff memoranda on strategy.
This book describes the history of the initiative process and the major issues that have arisen during its increasing use in recent years. By elucidating the problems that have arisen and their possible solutions, the authors seek both to inform the debate about the wisdom of the initiative and to offer suggestions for improvement to jurisdictions that choose to use the process. With the aid of more than 40 charts and tables, the authors compare the major features of the initiative in the American jurisdictions that have adopted the procedure-24 states and the District of Columbia. They draw particularly on the experience in California, the most frequent U.S. user of the initiative and a major battleground in the development of ideas about the process. The book also discusses the use of the initiative in other countries, particularly Switzerland, where the process originated and the only other major country in the world that makes extensive use of the initiative today.
