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Republicans have brainwashed us to dislike taxes, says UC Berkeley cognitive scientist/linguistics professor George Lakoff, and it’s time Democrats fought back with some brainwashing of their own (George Lakoff is on Bill O’Reilly’s “enemies list,” right between Anthony Romero, the executive director of the ACLU and Howard Dean.) Lakoff intends to get a proposition on the November 2010 ballot that would restore democracy in California. It employs hardcore brainwashing a subtle cognitive phenomenon that made him famous, called “reframing.”
His proposition is called “The California Democracy Act.” Clever. It is 14 words long. They are “All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.”
In 1978, Prop 13 sneaked a clause in there and made it so: you need a 2/3 vote to raise taxes or change the budget. According to Lakoff, people swallowed this with the Republican anti-tax mentality, which had been prominently framed up in their brains. Now we’re paying for it in the form of … well, we’re sure you know.
Lakoff expects the wording of his new proposition to evade the “taxes = government taking your money” frame and call to the “democracy = simple majority rule, come on, like we learned in elementary school” frame, or something like that.
Slight refund adjustment anyone?
Image Source: Pop!Tech under Creative Commons.
How to solve California’s fiscal crisis? First, don’t think of an elephant [News Center]
Tags:don't think of an elephant, framing, George Lakoff, Proposition 13, this isn't about taxes
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Nov 15, 2009 at 10:49 am
Visit http://www.trivalleydems.com/DemocracyInCalifornia.htm to sign up to HELP pass Dr. Lakoff’s ballot measure and the latest info on the campaign.