Starrfall on 31/10/2008 at 16:49

---

So while picking a new president is all very exciting, state and local ballot measures are probably every bit as important. California adores ballot measures (often to our detriment) and so we usually have a few interesting ones. This year isn't any different. What IS different is that the economy sucks, the state is having budget problems, and if all of the statewide propositions are approved it'll mean something like a 4 billion dollar outlay (some of which would eventually be recouped.) So I'm going to end up voting "no" on some things I otherwise would vote yes for, because we just can't afford it.

Here are California's, feel free to jump in with yours:

1 - High Speed Rail: I want this train. I just want it when we're not calling special legislative sessions to deal with our budget. Voting no, hoping it'll be back in a couple of years.

2 - Standards for Confining Farm Animals: I'm waffling on this one. This one is mostly about giving chickens more space (veal calves and pregnant pigs are in there too, but chickens vastly outnumber them). My farmer friends and my vet friends tell me this is bad for farmers and bad for chickens. Other vets seem to think it'd be fine (the two sides actually have competing vets from UC Davis arguing about it). It'll be six years before anyone has to comply, but I'm not sure I like the idea of forcing a major business change at a time when business loans are hard to come by.

3 - Children's Hospital Bonds Voting no, will feel like a bad person for ten seconds when I do. It's expensive, and we passed pretty much this exact same bill four years ago. 350 million of THAT money still hasn't been distributed and so I'm not at all convinced that this is at all necessary at this time.

4 - Parental Notification of a Minor's Abortion No. When I first heard about this one I thought it might actually be different (ie: better) than the last few but no, they keep giving us the same shit, just in a different bucket.

5 - Parole/Rehab for Nonviolent Drug Offenders: Yes. This one costs money, but is also expected to save about 1 billion annually in costs over time. And for indirect fiscal effects, consider this: California's prisons have been found to be unconstitutional and are currently sitting in receivership. This has the potential to cost us 8 billion dollars and we're already spending buckets of money on legal battles. The longer this goes on, the more it will cost. This proposition is one way to help get some of the pressure off of our prison system, which will save us money in the long-term.

6 - Law Enforcement Funding/Criminal Penalties and Laws: No. Costs a minimum of a billion dollars per year. Costs are expected to increase by tens of millions of dollars annually. This funding is not discretionary, it will be mandatory. This is a stupid idea. If local law enforcement wants more money to fight local problems, they should raise the money locally. It also looks like this provides money to DAs, sherrifs, and police without providing any money to public defenders, which is inexcusable.

7 - Renewable Energy Generation: No. Ok I'm all about renewable energy, but California has a ton of projects already going. How about we see how those play out first before we go spending another bunch of money on something that probably is duplicative and probably not necessary? Also this one is opposed by basically everyone who's spent the last few years fighting global warming, including the Environmental Defense Fund, the CRDC, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Sierra Club, all of which think this measure is severely flawed.

8 - Eliminates the Right of Same Sex Couples to Marry: Fuck off, no. Listen up fundies. You used your religion to justify the subjugation of women in the marital relationship. You used your religion to justify laws that prevented whites from marrying members of any other race.* Your religion treats human beings like shit and as such it has no place in making laws that govern how human beings interact. And if you try to tell me that marriage is a religious institution, I will laugh in your face and show you copies of my completely god-free marriage license, and my completely god-free marriage vows. You have utterly failed to demonstrate how gay marriage hurts you. You rely on lies to make your case. You are despicable and regardless of what happens with prop 8 it won't be long before the majority of the country looks back at what you have done and wonders how anyone could have fought so hard to prevent equal treatment of american citizens.

*Here's a choice quote: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix."

9 - Victim's Rights and Parole: No. Horseshit wrapped up in victim's rights. California already has very strong victim protection laws. And remember what I was saying about how Prop 5 is good because it means we'll incarcerate fewer people? This will do pretty much the opposite, by increasing the minimum wait between parole hearings from 1 year to 5 years. This will keep more people in jail for longer, increase the overcrowding problem, make it harder to fix the current problems, and is a GIANT fuck you to people who honestly try to rehabilitate themselves in prison. The prison guards union supports this one (as well as 6) and they are one of the biggest cancers on the state today, so you should probably vote the opposite of what they recommend.

10 - Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy: No. Again, California already has a ton of projects along these lines going. This is expensive. This isn't really a good time to force taxpayers to subsidize 10 million dollars worth of someone else's vehicle purchases or leases.

11 - Redistricting: Yes. Remember what I said about the prison guard's union? They oppose this one. That's your first hint that it's probably really good for Californians. Politicians also hate it, which should be your second clue. Is it perfect? No. But "it's not perfect" isn't really a very strong argument when what we have now is pretty much "the worst possible," and this one is much better than the last one we had. Gerrymandering and partisanship is a big problem in California (and the former fuels the latter) and I have little sympathy for politicians who will have to win by actually being good candidates, instead of just having to be the right party.

12 - Veterans Bonds: Waffling, leaning yes. This one re-ups an existing veteran loan program. It'll cost about a billion, but since we're talking loans, in theory we'll get it back with some interest. The loans go to buy houses and farms, and given the currently reduced availability of credit, this might actually be pretty beneficial because it will help inject money into the housing market.

edit for Matthew: Here are my very unscientific guesses for how these will go down: 1 - won't pass; 2 - will pass; 3 - will pass; 4 - will be close, but history says it won't pass (it didn't pass the last two times, but this time a lot of the people who fight that sort of thing are really busy fighting prop 8); 5 - will pass; 6 - I honestly can't guess and I can't find any readily available polling; 7 - will pass, 8 - won't pass, by a potentially very small margin; 9 - I think 6 and 9 will stand or fall together; 10 - won't pass (I don't think 7 and 10 will stand or fall together because 10 is a lot more expensive and 7 "looks" better); 11 - will pass; 12 - will pass.

I think we tend to pass more of these things than is good for us. This is one of the complaints about California's system: it was designed to make it easy for citizens to have control in order to counter the heavy influence of railroads in the state's early years, but today it results in a lot of bloat that gets passed because it sounds good to the millions of voters who go by the title of the initiatives and not what they actually contain. If nothing else it definitely doesn't help our budget problems to keep passing measures that demand billions of spending that can't be reduced but instead have to be worked around.

SD on 31/10/2008 at 17:52

---

One wonders why America bothers electing politicians at all when measures of such import are delegated down to the masses. I bet the average voter gives more considered thought to whether they should have KFC or Wendy's for dinner than they do to shit like this. De Tocqueville will be turning in his grave.

Starrfall on 31/10/2008 at 18:20

---

See the thing is that those voters don't even know who De Tocqueville is, so they're not worried about it.

demagogue on 31/10/2008 at 19:04

---

In Texas (or maybe just my home city) I recall one option being whether a liquor license to sell alcohol can only go to restaurants (to be consumed on premises), or whether other groups could also sell it; presumably supported by shopping marts wanting to sell booze.

I voted in favor of letting marts have licenses; I thought it was a convenient way to let my libertarian streak out, and at the same time not be so tied to (hypocritical) moralism that I think gov't should interfere. Sort of a backhanded way to send a message that I want the old Republican party back ... that and voting for Obama, haha.


BTW, De Tocqueville is one reason I became a lawyer.
He thought there should still be some outlet for informed, civic-minded people (what used to be the old aristocracy) to make important decisions in the public interest, the buffer between the gov't and common people, and was happy to find in the US that role was filled by lawyers.
Makes it seem almost a little romantic.

Aerothorn on 31/10/2008 at 19:51

---

Here in Massachusetts, we have an intiative on the ballot to completely repeal the income tax - which would, at least for the short term, basically destroy educational funding, among other things. But I can't vote her, so I'll give you Washington's initiatives.

We have Initiative 985, which is another Tim Eyman ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Eyman)) initiative, which to many people makes it bad by default. It concerns traffic congestion regulations, and is one of those things that simply should not be on the ballot because normal folks (including myself) are not informed enough on these issues to make a vote on it: this is stuff for the legislature to deal with. Among other things, it opens HOV lanes to general traffic, and it sounds like most people knowledgable on the subject think that this is a horrible idea.

Initiative 1000 extends Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law to Washington (legalizing assisted suicide in very narrow circumstances. "This measure would permit terminally ill, competent, adult Washington residents, who are medically predicted to have six months or less to live, to request and self-administer lethal medication prescribed by a physician." There's a lot of loops you have to leap through to do it, but I support it.

Initiative measure 1029 concerns requiring people to receive additional training if they are caring for the elderly - which sounds nice, but the details are complex enough that I'm not voting on it, given my lack of education on the subject.