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mithriltabbyMeasures submitted to the voters
- Proposition 1A. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. The California League of Women Voters are neutral and provide this analysis. This is too crude an instrument for dealing with the state’s budget. No.
- Proposition 1B. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. LWV analysis. Sierra Club California are neutral. If we don’t keep our roads open for the flow of workers and goods, we’ll be hurting a lot more than the debt from these bonds. Yes.
- Proposition 1C. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. LWV analysis. Housing prices are insane here; we need to make sure that there’s opportunity for people who are working their way up the ladder. Yes.
- Proposition 1D. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. LWV analysis. Education is one of the best investments we can make in our future economy; this will pay for itself in the very long term. Yes.
- Proposition 1E. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profile. California Online Voter Guide. LWV analysis. Sierra Club California are neutral. We can pay to renovate levees now or pay a lot more to fix up flood damage later. This is a sensible investment. Yes.
- Proposition 83. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle. California Online Voter Guide. The California League of Women Voters are neutral. If someone is a danger to society, why are they allowed access to society? This isn’t the right fix to the problem of sex offenders who are likely to re-offend (and is unjust for people who have been rehabilitated), and we have better ways to spend hundreds of millions of dollars. This kind of law didn’t work in Iowa and it won’t work here. No.
- Proposition 84. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. Weather is going to be increasingly uncertain in the future; we need to invest in our water supply now. Yes.
- Proposition 85. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. This is Proposition 73, from Arnie’s special election, is back, virtually unchanged. Parents, if you want your kids not to get abortions, you need to raise them to trust you to help them make that kind of decision; if government needs to intervene in bad parenting, this is not the place to start. I voted against it then and I’m voting against it now. No.
- Proposition 86. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. I’m always cautious of “sin taxes”, since I have my own vices and would prefer not to see a cascade effect that impinges on my own deviant lifestyle. The thing that makes tobacco stand out to me is that the tobacco industry have been working on increasing the nicotine delivery of their product to make it more addictive, which would be difficult to do with most currently-legal vices. Yes.
- Proposition 87. SmartVoter profile, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. A perspective in the Palo Alto Daily News. The California League of Women Voters are neutral. This taxes the extraction of fossil fuels in California (just as they already do in Louisiana, Texas, and Alaska) to pay for renewable energy and energy efficiency. I have concerns about the lack of accountability, but we need to move away from fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Yes.
- Proposition 88. SmartVoter, EasyVoter Guide, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. A perspective in the Palo Alto Daily News. Yes, our schools need help. This proposition is not an effective way of providing it. No.
- Proposition 89. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. Perspective from Truthout. We need to reduce the influence of money on politics, and this kind of legislation has worked well in Arizona and Maine. The proposition contains some First Amendment problems (which is why the ACLU of Northern California is neutral on it); I expect they will be struck down in court challenges, and we’ll have to vote on something that muzzles unions as well as corporations in a later election. It’s a better start than waiting for the legislature to come up with something effective and try to get it past a gubernatorial veto (which is likely if Schwarzenegger gets a second term). I’m voting a tentative Yes, but there’s more work to be done in the area of electoral reform.
- Proposition 90. SmartVoter, EasyVoter, and VoteCircle profiles. California Online Voter Guide. A perspective in the Palo Alto Daily News. This is not an effective fix for Kelo vs. New London. It’s the brainchild of Howard Rich, a real estate magnate from New York; he’s sufficiently unpopular to rate a web site determined to expose his activity and see investigation on PBS’ Now. It sounds fair on the surface— who wouldn’t want compensation for losing a previously legal use of your property?— but it would put an immense price tag on efforts to protect the environment. If we already had fair rules in place, this would be fine, but right now there aren’t sufficient protections, and this would be a very, very bad idea. NO.
- Santa Clara County Measure A. SmartVoter profile. Coverage in the Almaden Resident, Cupertino Courier. I think it’s worthwhile to restrain suburban sprawl, and we’ll be glad of local agriculture if fuel prices go up steeply. Yes.
If you’re disgusted by the results of our two-party system, you may wish to join Californians for Electoral Reform, the California IRV Coalition, and/or the Center for Voting and Democracy. (For voting-technology geeks, yes, Condorcet is a more robust preferential voting method than IRV, and I suspect will be much easier to sell once people are used to IRV.)
