Like Don Quixote, the Tracy Democratic Club refutes the numbers game for the six state propositions to balance the California budget. And like Don Quixote, we reject the power elite’s fiscal analysis and narrow view of political reality.

Elitist proponents use “facts” that are the enemy of truth. The local Democratic Club unyieldingly refuses to accept their politics of deceit and deception. We will fight the unbeatable foe and their bullying tactics and their divide-and-conquer fear-based agenda.

This week at the Tracy Dem Club, we unanimously voted no on Propositions 1A through 1F and urge others to do the same.

As a local grassroots organization, we see the February 2009 budget agreement from the bottom up, not the top down — or if you prefer, the view from Main Street and not from the perch of Capitol Hill.

As Tracyites, we see these six propositions requiring voter approval as “sink or swim” proposals. The governor and legislators have agreed to close a $41.7 billion gap in the state budget through June 30, 2010. To close the budget gap, proponents favor 35 percent spending cuts, 31 percent tax increases, 20 percent federal funding, 12 percent lottery bond borrowing and 2 percent elimination of special funds.

This appears balanced and fair, but it is not. Unconventional verbiage creates loopholes and misdirects reason and common sense.

Beginning with Proposition 1A, which changes the budget process, we are being asked to trust politicians again.

Repeatedly, whether Democrat or Republican, governor or Legislature, we are annually talked down to like children and told to behave and be silent. For example, on Proposition 1A, the gap and rainy-day fund mechanism overestimates state revenues with phrases like “smoothing out state spending over time” and underestimates “temporary tax increases.”

Proposition 1A deceives us with unrealistic optimism of revenues and forces us, the public, to do the jobs of our cowardly elected officials through passing narrow constitutional propositions. Based on a false premise, we the people are marginalized by the tyranny of the minority Republican Party, herded like sheep and left to hold the bag of perpetual indebtedness.

Proposition 1B, the public education funding proposition that uses children as shields, depends on passage of Proposition 1A. Like political hostages, the state politicians hold their elitist interest of authority over the common man. Without a doubt, education is our future, and these propositions portend a bleak and hopeless outcome.

To illustrate, Proposition 1C, the state lottery measure, supplants, not supplements, profits from going to education, ignoring the original initiative.

Furthermore, Proposition 1D, the transfer of dedicated funds for child development, and Proposition 1E, the transfer of dedicated mental health funds, will displace successful public programs with non-specific general funds — never to be seen again.

Finally, 1F, the pay raise proposal for state officials, quietly and disproportionately punishes non-exempt state workers and not the state’s elected politicians.

In total, the catastrophic impacts of Propositions 1A through 1F, if passed, unfairly target the common sense of governance by constitutional propositions. These six propositions that are authored by powerful elites at the expense and interest of the common man deny us our birthright of a duly represented state Legislature. By unifying against this slate of deceptive propositions, we avoid continuing this charade of short-term reforms.

Instead, we need to face the crux of our budget problem — the antiquated two-thirds majority rule. We demand the overhaul of it with a simple majority vote. This long-term solution will come from the lower and middle classes when common sense pursues a fundamental change through a California Constitutional Convention in 2010.

A convention will establish oversight of special-interest groups and irresponsible expenditures.

Real change will come when the populace demands local representation to lead California when the economy declines. Any other way is unrealistic and misleading. Thus, the local Democratic Club of Tracy unanimously rebels — just as Don Quixote did — against these windmills of misguided solutions, to right the unrightable wrong of tyranny rule to reach the impossible California dream.