Plutocrats against plutocracy

摘要

Ron Unz, a Silicon Valley millionaire and Republican enthusiast, is at it again. Last November he masterminded a ballot proposition that killed bilingual education in California—and killed it, moreover, without unduly inflaming the state's combustible ethnic politics. Now he is trying to use the ballot process to cure the state's campaign-finance system. The California Voters' Bill of Rights is a complicated initiative that includes measures to limit legislators' pay rises and to take the redrawing of political districts out of politicians' hands. But the heart of the initiative is an attack on the influence of big money on politics in a state where, last year, the two leading candidates for governor together spent more than $60m.