Majority vs. supermajority

Re “An all-powerful third,” Opinion, Sept. 18

Peter Schrag is right in identifying the requirement of a two-thirds majority for budgetary and tax matters as the major culprit in the chronic gridlocks that have plagued California politics and legislation.

The great majority of states have functioned quite well without this prohibitive requirement, which allows an obstinate minority to impose its policies on the majority.

What can no longer be delayed is a constitutional amendment that will restore majority rule and enhance democracy for California, and that will hopefully put an end to these disgraceful and harmful budgetary delays.

Roger Carasso

Los Angeles

Schrag provides much high-minded rhetoric about how harmful a supermajority requirement for tax increases is. Balderdash.

What Schrag proposes are the traditional Democratic staples of relaxing term-limit restrictions and abolishing the supermajority for tax increases. While he alleges that the minority holds the majority hostage, that minority represents a huge portion of the voters who pay most of the taxes in the state.

The rest of the population -- the budget hitchhikers -- would gladly vote for all kinds of increases of someone else’s taxes.

Schrag would use the power to tax as a power to destroy in order to ensure that we have a one-party state. In the process, he would also destroy the middle class and small business.

Kip Dellinger

West Los Angeles