How I plan on voting on California’s 2008 ballot measures
Now that I’m back in California, I once again get to vote on a bazillion ballot initiatives every election cycle. It’s about time for me to look over the list and figure out how I plan on voting.
Prop 1A — $10 billion bond measure for high-speed rail — No
The proposition would authorize $10 billion in bonds to help fund high-speed rail lines from San Francisco and Sacramento to Anaheim (the next city south of Los Angeles). If the project is completed on time and within budget (yeah, right), it will take 22 years and cost a total of $40 billion.
A quick recap of what a bond measure means in California:
- The measure authorizes a certain amount of deficit spending
- When the spending occurs, property taxes are automatically increased to pay the interest on the debt
Since bond measures contain both deficit spending and a tax increase, I tend to vote against them unless there’s an extremely good reason to vote for them. The Prop 1A rail line would be convenient for me personally (assuming nothing changes in the next 22 years), as I live in the Bay Area and have family near Anaheim, and it would reduce gasoline use and reduce the need for highway expansions, but it doesn’t meet my bar for supporting a bond measure. I’d probably support the project if it didn’t have such an absurdly long construction timeline and could be shoehorned into the current transportation budget, but I’ve got to vote on what’s on the ballot.
Prop 2 — Ban tight confinement of farm animals — No
If I care so little about an animal’s wellbeing that I’m happy to eat it, I don’t really care that much about how it’s treated in the meantime. And neither do the overwhelming majority of my fellow Californians, apparently, as most of them also chose to buy meat raised by the conventional high-intensity methods that would be banned by the bill, rather than paying a premium to buy humane meat and cage-free poultry which is currently on the market.
Prop 3 – $980 million bond measure for children’s hospitals — No
See my previous comments about bond measures in the Prop 1A discussion. This also appears to be a giveaway to private hospitals, not funding for the state’s public health care infrastructure.
Prop 4 – Parental notification requirement before a minor receives an abortion — Yes
I don’t see this as a pro-life/pro-choice issue. Even if you believe that a fetus has no more rights than an ingrown toenail, minors cannot get any other form of elective surgery (even something so minor as earpiercing) without parental consent, not just notification. Having an abortion is at least as big a decision as getting your ears pierced.
Prop 5 – Reduces penalties for nonviolent drug offenders — No
I was originally for this, as I think soft drugs (those which can be used responsibly, such as marijuana) should be legal and I question the usefulness of strict laws against harder drugs. Then I read this editorial, which claims that Prop 5 would also soften penalties for property crimes (car theft, burglary, etc) committed by drug addicts to feed their addictions; if true, that’s a dealbreaker for me — responsible drug use is mostly harmless, but stealing to feed an addition is still stealing.
Put a version of this bill that doesn’t soften penalties for robbery on next election’s ballot, and I’ll vote for it in a heartbeat.
Prop 6 — Increase penalties for gang-related crimes and increase funding for crime-prevention programs — Undecided
I don’t know enough about the current penalties or the proposed changes to judge whether this would be an improvement. If any of you have good arguments for or against this, please let me know in the comments.
Prop 7 – Require 50% of California’s power to come from renewable sources by 2025 — No
At some point in the future, it will make sense to transition from fossil fuels to renewables, as we run out of cheap fossil fuels and technological improvements make renewable energy cheaper. I think rushing the transition is wasteful, though. In addition, this bill ignores fission as a viable medium-term alternative to fossil fuels.
Prop 8 — Overturn the California Supreme Court ruling requiring the state to recognize gay marriage — No
I’d prefer to have seen gay marriage come through the democratic process rather than through judicial fiat, but now that it’s here, I’m not going to vote to get rid of it. Especially since I would have voted for an initiative to recognize gay marriage if the California Supreme Court hadn’t ruled as it did.
Prop 9 – Increase victims’ rights provisions and tighten parole standards — Tentative No
I’m leaning against this because I’m worried that increased restrictions on parole would lead to excessive sentences, but I don’t know enough about this to have a firm opinion. As with Prop 6, I’m inviting arguments either way from those of you who know more about this issue than I do.
Prop 10 – Subsidies for alternate fuels — No
While I understand the goals of promoting alternate fuel technology in order to reduce pollution, I strongly prefer taxing pollution so the price of fossil fuels reflects their true costs, over arbitrary subsidies for politically-favored forms of alternate fuel (witness federal subsidies going to hideously inefficient corn-based ethanol to buy the votes of corn farmers).
Also, this is a $5 billion bond measure. As you may have noticed, I’m prejudiced against bond measures.
Prop 11 – Transfer redistricting from the legislature to a specially appointed board — Yes
I don’t know if the redistricting board would do a better job than the legislature, but it could hardly do worse. California has a notoriously brazen bipartisan system of gerrymandering which creates a maximum number of safe seats for both parties, thus minimizing the democratic accountability of our represenatives in congress and in the state legislature.
Prop 12 — $900 million bond measure for subsizided loans to veterans — No
1. This is a bond measure
2. I honor the service of our veterans, and I don’t begrudge them the generous federal benefits we promised them when they signed up, but I don’t think it’s the place of state governments to supplement their benefits after the fact.
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6 comments
Funny enough, I actually agree with most of your assessments here, but I’ll go down them anyway.
Prop 1A- This is where my idealism overrides my wallet. I, too, hate bond measures as I just got a list of how each one affected my most recent property tax bill. I support the idea that only property owners should be able to vote on bonds that affect property taxes. Be that as it may, I’m voting for this as I think that in the long run, it will prove necessary. We should get started.
Prop 2 — Undecided, likely no. While I like the ideas, I agree that people should vote with their pocketbooks if they want ethical treatment of animals.
Prop 3 — No. See my earlier rant on bonds
Prop 4 – No. If a parent isn’t paying enough attention to educate their child about the risks of getting pregnant, then they get no say in what the child does with the results. Ruining a child’s life by having a child too soon is not a choice that parents should be able to make. The pregnant girl denied an abortion by overzealous parents is far too likely to try risky illegal methods than to simply sit back and have the baby. There are all kinds of arguments against this, but most of them have to do with getting the parents to pay more attention and educate their children in the first place. This bill only deals with the aftermath.
The only good that could come of this passing is that an eager couple might put on the condom because they know they’ll have to tell their parents if things go badly.
Prop 5 – No. complete agreement re: theft
Prop 6 — Where does the money come from?
Prop 7 – No. If it doesn’t include nuclear, then it’s just putting it’s head in the sand. If we’re going to go all solar (or something else happily "green"), let science and manufacturing catch up and get the 30-40% efficiency cells out of the lab and to market. Then we can see the energy producing companies fight for the cheapest way to make energy rather than the most tax subsidies they can get.
Prop 8 — No way in hell. Get married if you want to. At least now, if a gay couple is in a committed life-partnership, they can say "husband" or "wife" instead of "partner"
Prop 9 – I’ll have to read up on it.
Prop 10 – No. Re: bonds
Prop 11 – I’ll have to read up on it.
Prop 12 — No. Re: bonds
7/12 (58%) direct agreement with possibly more as research warrants. I usually let the sides make their case in the voter info packet and read more if necessary. I haven’t seen my packet yet.
That’s more than we usually agree on since we come from such different viewpoints.
It’s worse than that — we agree on 7/9 issues (78%) excluding those where at least one of us is undecided pending more information.
My concern on Prop 4 is that minors are all too likely to make knee-jerk decisions that they’ll regret later. That’s why minors don’t have full rights on a wide range of issues. With a parental notification requirement, they’ll need to at least talk it over with their parents. Maybe that’ll result in not getting an abortion (either giving the child up for adoption or raising it with the assistance of its grandparents), or maybe it’ll result in the minor going ahead with the abortion with more confidence in her decision and fewer regrets down the road.
Also, bear in mind that while I’d prefer a parental consent requirement, Prop 4 is merely a notification requirement, so parents cannot legally prevent their daughters from getting abortions even if Prop 4 passes.
My default position on propositions:
1. In general, the bias should be to vote No.
2. Bond measures and other spending items should be done by the Legislature. Of course, that assumes they don’t suck and are actually doing their elected duty, instead of trying to appease the various interest groups so they can move to the next level. So, I rarely approve these.
I’m still undecided on 1A as we’ll probably need something like it and this sort of thing is difficult for private sector entrepreneurs to do (lots of eminent domain issues, etc), but it’s darn expensive and will doubtless enrich the usual suspects.
I’m voting No on all the rest, except 11, which has a chance to address the Legislature’s suckitude.
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Hello, Eric. I often wondered who was the Phantom of the Opera floating around the big music hall in black mask and cape under the tag "Maniakes".
I’ve long supported Republicans the presidency and vice presidency. That’s what I’m doing this years. But recently the politics of it all got murkier as we down the governmental organization charts. Thus, for local land use, transportation, and comprehensive planning efforts, my suppord has focued on Progressive Dane, whose views on these topices coincide with my own. I suppose those of them who know my well have determined they will just not bother me about national politics.
About the various Califirnia bond issues.
The time to make the big investments for rail transit, both intercity and regional, is now, while there still are stocks of fossil fuels, and while there still is a natioanal economy in this contry to sustain the big changeover that is coming.
Most of the remaining portable wealth of the US economy is being poured out, not just on trivial amusements which will disappear in what may be an economic superstorm, but on the fuel we all use to power the vehicles and transportation modes on which life her presently depends.
From my own recent and up-to-date research on peak oil, the real peak will occur some time between 2012 and 2018. That is the time when all the world’s remaining large and exploitable oil fields shall have entered into terminal depletion.
But the annual world demand for petroleum and its myriad of outproducts grows incessantly at a rate that will never again be enough to catch up with the shirinking supply, after some time in 2012-2018.
It is exactly that consideration that has motivated real oilmen such as T Boone Pickens and real petroleum industry financiers such as Matthew Simmons, and a large number of experienced oilfield geologists to offer that same warnings, some of them all at once, and some of them incessantly.
Supply and demand, Eric. It has made or broken every economy in history. And if we cannot remake ours around thsese cataclysmic events, then we are going down for the long count. Because there are other societies organized around the concept of little reliance on personal autos, aircraft or even diesel buses for moving people.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
God bless you for even thinking about this stuff.
I’d wager that puts you in the top 30-40% of voters.
And then you go so far as to make your thoughts public, and even seek input…
We need more people like you!
Please do the world a favor, and reproduce.
Whom are you talking to, JM? Eric? The rest of us as well?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
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