The Left Angeles Times Prefers A Corrupt Political Process

OK, I want to be fair about the headline. It is not the Left Angeles Times but one their stealar columnists, George Red Skelton.
In today's piece, Red Skelton yearns for a return of the days of the politicians drawing their own legislative districts. Red Skelton does not like the fact that the people of California, through the initiative process, took that away from the legislature. Well, actually, Red Skelton does not really like the initiative process at all.
Lets deal with Red Skelton's claim that if the Democrat-dominated legislature was able to redraw the districts for congress and the state legislature, things would be better for the tax scheme of Gov. Jerry Brown. And Red Skelton gives us how this would have played out in the old days:

This is the way it might have worked if voters had not stripped legislators of their traditional power to draw legislative and congressional districts:

A backbench Republican is summoned to an isolated, windowless room in the Capitol. There are two large maps on a table. "Here are two districts," he's told by a Democrat Tom Hagen type. "Which one do you want?

"Run in one and you survive. Run in the other, you sleep with the fishes."

"I'll take the first," the GOP lawmaker replies. "And, of course, I strongly support the governor's tax plan."

That's fiction based on historic fact. Many favors have been granted and much family business settled during redistricting. Allies gets comfy districts; adversaries get to retire.

WOW!
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. And themsome.
This is the kind of government that Red Skelton would like?
But if you read on, of course it is our own damn fault. We, the California voters that have voted on initiative in the past that have not helped the state budget process.
Here is the problem according to Red Skelton:

Reform isn't all good. The century-old citizens' initiative has led to ballot-box budgeting, a major contributor to deficit spending. Term limits weakened the Legislature's ability to respond to California's needs. And — although on a lesser scale — independent redistricting is undermining legislative leadership.

Well, Red, the real problem is that the vaunted legislators of both parties have screwed things up. They have chosen over the years to pay off their allies. When the Dems are in, it is their allies in the government labor unions and their contributors. For the Republicans, a lesser extent very few government employee unions and their contributors. When a problem comes up, they punt. Let some group write an initiative and it either is voted in or not. Term limits have not been part of the problem. A so-called full-time "professional" legislature has been a huge part of the problem. And really, you can not think the way the legislative lines were drawn in 2000 were good for democracy. Can you Red? If so, you should be orgasmic about a state like Massachusetts, a virtual one-party dictatorship.
Letting the very people that have created this mess draw their own lines is wrong. It totally corrupts the process. It makes general elections virtually meaningless. And that is not good for the process.
By letting the politicians draw the lines California has become a near one-party state.
But, an independent commission that may be imperfect will be better than what we had.
I would like to let the commission do their work and let us see the finished product before we yearn for the corrupt old days.
If George Red Skelton thinks that political blackmail is a way to run things, the Left Angeles Times needs to explain that to its dwindiling readership.