11.12.2009 - How to solve California's fiscal crisis? First, don't think of an elephant:
"BERKELEY — If they noticed it at all, readers of the Contra Costa Times must have found the brief announcement utterly commonplace. 'Linguistics expert and UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff will speak at the Nov. 12 meeting of the Lamorinda Democratic Club,' it began, just another routine listing in the paper's 'Political Notes' column. Few would have blinked at its characterization of the evening's topic: Lakoff's ballot proposal to 'eliminate the two-thirds voting requirement for a state budget or new taxes.'
George Lakoff (Peg Skorpinski photo)Yet the item's very innocuousness — with its seemingly neutral reference to taxes — hints at the size of the challenge Lakoff faces in his fledgling quest to end gridlock in Sacramento. For Lakoff, a cognitive scientist best known for his work on 'framing' and for dissecting the political mind in such books as Moral Politics and Don't Think of an Elephant, language is anything but neutral. And for his initiative to have a shot at becoming law, it's crucial that voters don't think of it as a license to boost their taxes."
"This isn't about taxes," he insists, slapping the desk in his small Dwinelle Hall office for emphasis. "It's about democracy."
In that spirit, he's named the initiative, submitted recently to the attorney general's office, "The California Democracy Act." But the newspaper's phrasing underscores a point to which Lakoff returns again and again: The way we think is governed by cognitive frames, largely unconscious metaphors burned into our brains. Thanks to three decades of Republican framing, he explains, "taxes" has come to mean politicians taking citizens' hard-earned money to waste on government. He advises supporters to avoid the term and focus instead on democracy and "revenue."
Change the frames of the budget debate, Lakoff argues, and you can change California history.
To that end, he's crafted a one-sentence, 14-word proposition he aims to get on the November 2010 ballot: "All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote." The measure would roll back the two-thirds votes needed to pass a budget and raise taxes in a state that's inarguably an economic basket case — exceptionally high hurdles Lakoff and many others blame for draconian cuts to state-funded programs and services, including the University of California. The provisions were inserted into the state constitution by the granddaddy of all California ballot initiatives, 1978's property-tax-reform Proposition 13.
"BERKELEY — If they noticed it at all, readers of the Contra Costa Times must have found the brief announcement utterly commonplace. 'Linguistics expert and UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff will speak at the Nov. 12 meeting of the Lamorinda Democratic Club,' it began, just another routine listing in the paper's 'Political Notes' column. Few would have blinked at its characterization of the evening's topic: Lakoff's ballot proposal to 'eliminate the two-thirds voting requirement for a state budget or new taxes.'
George Lakoff (Peg Skorpinski photo)Yet the item's very innocuousness — with its seemingly neutral reference to taxes — hints at the size of the challenge Lakoff faces in his fledgling quest to end gridlock in Sacramento. For Lakoff, a cognitive scientist best known for his work on 'framing' and for dissecting the political mind in such books as Moral Politics and Don't Think of an Elephant, language is anything but neutral. And for his initiative to have a shot at becoming law, it's crucial that voters don't think of it as a license to boost their taxes."
"This isn't about taxes," he insists, slapping the desk in his small Dwinelle Hall office for emphasis. "It's about democracy."
In that spirit, he's named the initiative, submitted recently to the attorney general's office, "The California Democracy Act." But the newspaper's phrasing underscores a point to which Lakoff returns again and again: The way we think is governed by cognitive frames, largely unconscious metaphors burned into our brains. Thanks to three decades of Republican framing, he explains, "taxes" has come to mean politicians taking citizens' hard-earned money to waste on government. He advises supporters to avoid the term and focus instead on democracy and "revenue."
Change the frames of the budget debate, Lakoff argues, and you can change California history.
To that end, he's crafted a one-sentence, 14-word proposition he aims to get on the November 2010 ballot: "All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote." The measure would roll back the two-thirds votes needed to pass a budget and raise taxes in a state that's inarguably an economic basket case — exceptionally high hurdles Lakoff and many others blame for draconian cuts to state-funded programs and services, including the University of California. The provisions were inserted into the state constitution by the granddaddy of all California ballot initiatives, 1978's property-tax-reform Proposition 13.