This proposition presents itself as another infrastructure bond like 1E.  The reality is that it is nothing of the sort.  It is not a building project.  No dams or levys get built or fixed.  While I’m not sure I’m against the actions that the money would be spend on, they are not capital infrastructure projects and so would be crippling our future without any long term benefit.

Vote for 1E, not 84 if you want to protect California’s water supply and flooding.

Most people who know me know that my default position on propositions is to vote against them.  I really think they should only be used when absolutely necessary.  The Legislature should pass most of our laws, not the general public.

I’m somewhat on the fence about 83.  Obviously nobody likes the idea that known criminals are out there amongst our children waiting for their opportunity to abuse them.  But I think that as a society we treat these criminals like lepers and refuse to address the problem on its own merit.

As an example, this proposition will require all sex criminals to wear GPS devices so we can keep track of them.  This will have an annual cost around $25 million dollars.  To which I respond, it only costs $30K per year to keep these criminals in jail.  If we really don’t trust these people, isn’t the right place for them prison?

This seems like a politically expediant proposition that plays on our fears and disgust at this type of crime without thinking about what we’re really doing, whether it is the right approach and worth the costs.

Much of California’s infrastructure is falling on disrepair because of the underfunding that they have received over the last 20 years.  It’s time that we rebuild.  There are 5 bonds (1A to 1E) aimed at rebuilding.

I am very hesitant about issuing bonds because of how it causes lots of long term debt that can potentially cripple our children and grandchildren’s ability to have a balanced budget for California without taxing them into poverty.  That said, there are a few times when bonds are appropriate.  As the ad for these bonds say “build it now, pay over time”.  That makes a lot of sense when what is built will be used and valuable over time.  So things like freeways and flood protection which will benefit us both now and over time are reasonable things to spend bond money on.  For this reason I endorse 1A, 1B and 1E.

However, 1C and 1D are complete pork projects that do not benefit the state over the long term.  1C is the housing and emergency shelter fund.  I’m sorry, whatever this money is used for will be gone long before the bonds are paid.  In rare cases like New Orleans it make sense to use bonds to rebuild after disasters.  For most it is wiser to build up a savings account for a “rainy day”.  California should not be putting the re-occuring costs of emergencies and disasters on our children.

1D is similarly poorly focused.  The money for schools, while some of it goes to infrastructure projects, has too large a percentage that goes to re-occuring costs like textbooks.  The school system as it stands is mostly broke.  We shouldn’t over-invest in this area until things get straightened out and the reigns are put on the CTA and we definitely shouldn’t do it when we’re doing it with pork bonds.

Proposition 87 is a large tax on oil companies with the intent of that money being spent on alternative energy methods.  The bill is written in such a way that supposedly the oil companies can’t pass “the costs” onto the consumers.  Not only is that probably against federal law it’s also completely impossible to do.

The costs will be passed on in the form of higher gas prices.  I can guarantee it.

When this proposition was originally written, it was written as a way to stick it to the oil companies for their record profits.  Now that time has passed, the focus of the public has shifted so the supporters have shifted their focus to what the money will be spent on.

Well, there enters the problem.  Since it was written to stick it to the oil companies, the payment of the money to a new half-baked alternative energy organization just isn’t compelling.  The money will be wasted.  That too I can guarantee.

Vote against prop. 87.  It means higher prices at the fuel pump without any benefits.

To start off my endorsements I’ll start with the easy ones.  Proposition 85 is the 2nd attempt at requiring parental notification before a minor can receive an abortion in California.  Last years proposition was narrowly defeated.

We live in a society where minors are the responsibility of their parents.  A 17 year old at a public high school has to get their parents on the phone before the school can give them any medication, even a simple painkiller like asprin.  Yet because of “a woman’s right to choose” not only is it legal for a teacher or administrator to allow a student to get an abortion but for them to physically take them to do so.  To make matters worse, not only do they not have to tell their parents, they’re obligated not to.

What’s wrong with this picture?

My biggest complaint about this proposition is how lightly it enforces the law and for those on the fence it should be enough to get them to vote for it.  It has an exception for everyone over-wrought concerns:

• What if the child has abusive parents? The prop. has a legal route to avoid notification if it will result in violence.
• What if the parents don’t approve of the child’s “choice”? It’s just a notification law, it doesn’t require approval.
• What if the abortion is an emergency for the childs health? The notification requirement is lifted.

Vote for this proposition.  Every parent has the right to know if their children are going to be getting an abortion.

I know all of the candidates along with my loyal readers have been waiting patiently for me to hand out my endorsement for the upcoming election.  I wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be making a series of posts over the remaining days leading up to the election on most of the state propositions, a few of the state wide positions and the notable local elections.  Expect to see these over the next few days with the last one coming by Sunday evening.

Also expect to see a post on the Catholic position on two topics that should impact a number of the races I’ll be making endorsments on:

1. Torture
2. Ethics of business.

Of course the Church teaches on a number of issues and I’ve spoken frequently about many but these are two I haven’t commented on much and are new areas of concern this election cycle, at least in my locality.

Expect to see the first couple of posts later this evening.

I have some exposure to all of the stuff that happens behind the scenes in politics and it continues to amaze me to what levels political groups will go to.

And today I saw another example of this.

See the key to politics is peer pressure/influence.  They’ve done study after study that shows people vote not on a politicians record but based on what the voter’s peers say about him/her.  What this means is that they key to winning elections is making it seem like the regular joes out there that we know support the right guy.

And of course they’re using every tool they can to make it seem this way.  The Internet is on the bleeding edge of this.  See, a single person can seem like 200 people online.  So when I read the article about whether my congressman is a fraud my political manipulation censor started going off when I read the reader comments on the article.

In my opinion, this is clearly a case where two or three political operatives for the democratic candidate are purposefully posting tons of comments under multiple names to make it seem like the public is ready to fry the incumbant.  The comments are just WAY too imbalanced to be anything else.  Heck, even the “is this comment helpful” numbers are way out of what with each of the comments slamming the incumbant having near perfect “approval” numbers.

To be clear, I’m undecided whether Doolittle will get my vote.  I’m suspicious that he has indeed been a tool of business interests without any political checking.  However, it’s ridiculous that his opponent will go around acting like the general public is in their corner.  Nice to see that politics has delved to this low level.

Over at my brother’s blog he shares a quote about San Francisco, Oakland and sports:

“Oakland teams will always be second fiddle to the San Francisco teams — regardless of records — because Oakland is a second-class city. When people around the country think of the Bay Area, they think of San Francisco. If there was no San Francisco, nobody would ever even hear of a city called Oakland, except when they break their own record for homicides each year.”

I’m going to ignore the sports angle (mostly because it is ludicrous to state that teams deserve coverage based on the size/prestige of their city (Green Bay Packers anyone?)) and focus on the merits of the two cities.

First of all, there is no denying that SF is an elite city, higher in stature than Oakland.  It’s in that list of cities everyone in the world has heard of: New York, Chicago, Paris, London, etc..  That said, I think it is a stretch to call Oakland 2nd-class unless we’re scoring on an 10 class scale where SF is greater than Oakland is greater than Sacramento is greater than Modesto is greater than Roseville is greater than Rocklin is greater than Newcastle is greater than Gridley is greater than Biggs is greater than nothing kinda way.  The reality is that any city in the US that has 3 pro-sports franchises is in the top tier, at least in the tiers I would have.

But more importantly, since the above argument is just an argument for how to split up the tiers, is that this person seems to think that SF is a better city because of the people and the way the city is run.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  If you look at 9 out of 10 elite cities, they are elite cities because of geography.  They are in genuinely unique places often very a great shipping port, well sheltered from the ocean.  The reality is that SF would be an elite city no matter what they did.  Heck, the current policies of SF pretty much prove the point.

So his statement “If there was no San Francisco, nobody would ever even hear of a city called Oakland” is completely false.  If SF were to fall into the ocean Superman I style, some other city in the Bay Area would be the elite one (and I’m guessing it would be Oakland).  The geography of the area dictates it.

So the next time somebody tries to sell you some crap about how awesome their elite city is, especially if that person is from the pathetically run San Franciso that no longer even has a substantial port despite being in one of the worlds best locations for one (and it should be noted that the reason is because the Port of Oakland put them out of business), know in your heart that their arogance is unfounded.

OK, we all remember Hurricane Katrina last year.  And many of us remember the talk about how global warming was to blame for all of these horrible hurricanes.  So as the anniversary of Katrina comes, one should ask, how many hurricanes have their been this year?

Answer: 4.

That’s as compared to Katrina being #11 of last year.

This is what bugs me about the global warming crowd.  They pick on one item as an indicator of global warming and use it to make their case.  Not only is the one indicator not necessarily fool-proof, there is also no counter articles written when that SAME indicator no longer helps them.  They just move onto something new.

So, this year it’s all about the heat wave that ran across America.  What you don’t hear is that high pressure systems (aka heat waves) actually have the effect of reducing hurricanes.  So, while this year we’ve been boiling (global warming!) the last couple years have been relatively cool which had the affect of allowing more hurricanes in the Atlantic (global warming!).

The reality is that we really don’t know what effect the VERY small changes in temperature we’re experiencing would cause.  We also don’t know with any confidence whether the small up-tick in weather we’re seeing is the beginning of a long trend or just a small up-tick.  The first half of the 20th century saw a small down-tick.  Furthermore, we don’t really know what causes these fluctuations.  People can point all they want to CO2 emissions, but we put out plenty of those in the first half of the 20th century (coal plants anyone?).  Similarly, we haven’t been able to track as accurately as we’d like other factors that could have just as large of an effect.  For example, some believe the sun in burning hotter these days than in the past and the various flare-ups (remember those fears a few years ago about a flare-up that was going to take down the communications industry someday) are a sign of that.

So what do we know?  The answer, despite what Al Gore wants you to believe while you put $10 in his pocket is: Not much.

I always read the online version of the SF Chronicle because frankly it is one of the better Northern California papers particularly their online version which isn’t overly bloated by advertising crud and fancy yet unusable GUIs.

However, there are many times the Chronicle represents the worst of what journalism can be.  First up is the biased reporting:

The Gospel according to the Guv

One doesn’t even have to read the article to get what bugs me.  It’s all in the title.  Although the article is not as bad as the title, the reality is that the title makes a big impact on what the reader is expecting.  And one would never see that title if Jeese Jackson went to speak at a church he wasn’t affiliaited with.

Next up, incomplete reporting:

These Condos’ sizes matters

In this article it’s all about the lack of the data needed for the reader to make a good judgement about the two opposing sides.  We’ve got condo buyers who say their condos are smaller than what they said they would be and builders who say the sizes are approximations.  OK, all I need to know now is how big the approximate size was and how big they actually are.  If they’re supposed to be 550 square feet and they’re really 542, get a grip buyer.  If the number is really 487, then I think the buyer has a pretty good case and should be suing.

But no, we never get that.  We get “units ranging from one bedroom and 550 square feet to three bedrooms and 1,653 square feet for between $500,000 and $1 million.” and “We measured one unit out of each plan, and every unit we measured is undervalued”.

That’s just bad reporting/interviewing.  When the guy makes that assertion the follow up question is: “How much undervalued?”  Either they didn’t ask the question or they didn’t like the answer (see first example of biased reporting).  Either way it is bad reporting.