Anyone who knows me knows that I am an opponent of abortion “rights”. This measure is being attacked along those lines: you’re either for abortion “rights” or your not, pick a side and vote on this issue. But abortion is not completely a black and white issue. I’m fully willing to allow abortions for life-threatening reasons. In 99% of all cases where the mother dies during a pregnancy, the baby dies too (not that this was hard to figure out). Allowing a mother to kill a baby who is going to die anyway to save their own life is reasonable enough.

Similarly on the other side of the equation, even if one stands for abortion “rights”, one has to accept that it is a serious decision and not one that should be taken lightly. Children have a tendancy to do that, take too lightly serious decisions. The reality is that a 16 year old can’t get a flu shot without their parents CONSENT. All prop. 73 is asking is that abortion clinics NOTIFY the parents (i.e. the parents can’t even stop the child from going through with it because they don’t need to give consent). The main excuse thrown out there is that there are children who have abusive parents, who couldn’t tell their parents without risking further abuse. In my opinion, this is a stupid argument for a number of reasons:

1. There is a provision in the law to allow children to get a judicial bypass.
2. Despite arguments against reason #1 about it being a too complicated process for the child to get a judicial bypass, I guarantee you that clinics like planned parenthood will help children through the process (to the point of abusing it by knowing the judges who will grant the bypass even when it shouldn’t be).
3. The child doesn’t have to notify the parents, the clinic does that. This allows the child to have physical separation if needed.
4. This state has some of the most comprehensive child abuse laws in the world. If a parent is abusing a child, these laws already exist to protect them.
5. This is a corner case affecting a VERY small percentage of children.

The reality is that most children who don’t want to talk to their parents, don’t want to talk to them because they don’t want to face the music regarding the choices in their lives. We shouldn’t give children that choice. Parents should be involved in these decisions. Notifying parents so that they can talk to their children (and remember that is all this proposition does, it does NOT require parental consent) about this choice, is the right thing to do.

My endorsement: YES on prop. 73

Proposition 74 is simple enough. It changes tenure from 2 years to 5 years of employment. It also makes it easier for school districts to fire teachers after they have been tenured. Being no fan of tenure, my heart is sympathetic to this measure. That said, the more and more I think about this measure, the more and more I think that this measure falls short and is somewhat misdirected at what needs to be done. Tenure needs to be removed in public education (K-12). It doesn’t have a place there. If it were to remain, it needs to be changed to where it is granted to exceptional teachers after a number of years of service, instead of automatically envoked after a set number of years. That’s the way it is in colleges. A professor doesn’t just get tenure after a few years of work. No, the professor has to be recommended to the tenure committee and the committee must approve the tenure. (Along these lines, there was a teacher that was fired recently, not because she wasn’t acceptably good, but because it had now been two years and if she wasn’t fired, she would have been tenured and near impossible to let go if her acceptable performance deteriorated.)

With these thoughts in mind, I’ve decided I’m against prop. 74. If this measure passes, the state’s attention will turn elsewhere and real reform in teacher employment will not be examined. I’ll wait for a proposition that actually does something meaningful.

My endorsement: NO on prop. 74

This proposition is one of two propositions that I consider to be critical and not only worthy of a single issue recall, but nearly critical that it passes. Let’s be honest, the entire government of California from top to bottom is controlled by special interests. Our elected officials can not become elected officials unless they submit to the special interests and accept their donations (that implicitely require voting in certain ways down the road). Even our proposition process is overrun with special interest money. Want proof: what’s the number one campaign in terms of revenue spent in this special election? If you guessed the “No on 75 campaign”, you’re right!

This must stop! and prop 75 will slow it down by making sure that union members actually support the campaigning of their unions. Public employee unions are by far the biggest special interests in this state with the most to lose from reform. Don’t buy their ads about how they’re all noble and good. They’re not. They’re a union. Teachers unions aren’t in business to make sure that kids get a good education. They’re in business to make sure that teachers get paid well. The same is true of nurses unions, they aren’t in business to protect patients but make sure nurses are paid well. Don’t get me wrong, I think nurses and teachers should get a good salary with good benefits. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that the unions crap about being solely well intentioned ‘only for the good of California’ organizations is 100% pure bullshit. There job is to protect their union members whether or not (the key point) it is in the best interest of California.

Furthermore, these unions have gone beyond their charter (protecting their union members) to do a great deal of political campaigning not directly related to their union members employment. It has angered Wendy and I to no end to see the CTA spending her money on campaigns for issues and candidates we deplore. Could we opt out of giving them that money? Yes, but it is fairly complicated AND (more importantly) requires that she quit the union and lose out on all the other benefits outside of collective bargaining (like life ensurance availability) that the union provides as well as being ostrocized for not being a member of the union. It’s not as simple as the unions will have you believe.

The unions argue that their members support them. If that’s true, they have nothing to worry about. If that’s the case, everyone will sign up for having the political campaign donations taken out of their paycheck and all that will be lost is a little bit of administrative time and money. But everyone knows that is NOT what is going to happen. No, what is going to happen is that large percentages of members will opt out and that percentage will only increase as the union asks for more and more money to campaign with. Unions will turn back into unions: entities that do collecive bargaining instead of political action committeee funded by public employees.

The number one complaint I hear about this bill is that it doesn’t affect corporations, only unions. That’s a good complaint. We need to reign them in too. However, unlike prop. 74 where it’s passing will take focus off the subject, prop. 75 passing will only ramp up the desire to see a another proposition (heck we may even see it out of the legislature) that will similarly reign in corporate spending. Prop. 75 can only help in this regard because if it fails, the effort to reign in big business will die too.

My endorsement: YES on prop. 75

Returning to my philosophy that propositions should only be used when absolutely necessary, I just don’t see this prop as being that important. The reality is that the legislature makes the budget every year and the governor approves it. These people SHOULD be able to do one of their most important jobs. Additionaly, I’m totally against having arbitrary metrics of how much spending will get spend on certain programs. Furthermore, I don’t see a need to do midyear spending corrections if we’ve made a good budget and are willing to make corrections the following year.

Sadly, our legislature has let us down. They’ve continued to outspend their revenue as well as playing all kinds of games to get around the spending limits we’ve put in place in the past. Because of this, I sympathize with those who support this bill. We DO need to get our budget situation under control. That said, the right solution to this problem is to elect new legislators. If we put the right people in office, they’ll solve the problem.

Since there is already a “proper” solution to our budgetary problems, there is no reason to make the water any muddier in our budget laws by passing this proposition.

My endorsement: NO on prop. 76

OK, this is by far the most important proposition to come to the voters in a long time if not in the history of the proposition process. This prop is very much at the core of why the proposition process exists. We have a legislature that has jury rigged the system to ensure that they get re-elected. As I heard one commentator say, the legislators pick us, not the other way around. This results in a situation where it is nearly impossible for us to elect new legislators who will fix this problem. The only way it can be fixed is to bypass the legislators and do it ourselves.

We need an impartial committee to draw district borders. Having the legislature do it is the stupidest idea we ever had. The opposition argues that retired judges are no better. I think that is complete BS. Are retired judges completely impartial? No, they aren’t. But they also don’t have any personal interest in the matter either. They’re retired, so they aren’t going to be running for election. They can’t accept any political donations, so they can’t get rich drawing biased borders. And if that isn’t good enough for you, there is a selection process that uses selections from both sides of the isle to put in a lottery system, so it will be very difficult for anyone to influence who the judges are that do the districting. And if THAT isn’t enough, the 3 judge panel has to unanimously vote to accept the borders, which will prevent any 2 judges from using their majority in the proceedings to strong arm the third.

Finally, and this is one of the most overlooked parts of the issue, after the judges draw up the districts, the new districts have to be voted on by us, just like we vote for the propositions. So if the borders are screwed up by the judges, we have a chance to reject them and start the process over with new judges using the lottery process.

With all of these built in protections, how can anyone say that prop. 77 wouldn’t be an improvement?

Everyone agrees that the current district situation is a mess. The opposition claims that this is a flawed attempt. Putting aside for a minute that there real motivation is to keep the status quo (and that’s the TRUTH behind their complaints), what is their alternative that they’re proposing? “Let a bi-partisan committee of legislators do it.” THAT’S HOW WE GOT HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE YOU BOZOS!!!! What happened when we had the legislature do it was that BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats agreed to carve up the state so that the Dems would get heavily democratic leaning districts and the Republicans would get the opposite. Both sides were happy because they protected their own elected seats. Bipartisanship does not help you with redistricting, it’s that simple, because both sides have a motivation to make deals in this fashion to protect themselves.

Need further proof that this isn’t just a Republican power play attempt to get more seats in the legislature? How about this: Many prominent Republicans are against this measure including all the ones who’s district I’m in. I’ve gotten letter after letter telling me to vote against 77 with all kinds of bogus reasons.

Sorry guys, I’m doing the right thing.

My endorsement: YES on prop. 77

There are two prescription drug discount measures on the ballot. This is the one that is endorsed by the drug companies. Need I say any more?

My endorsement: NO on prop. 78

This is the second prescription drug discount measure. This one is endorsed by the various social services organizations. Basically, this measure would create a new organization in the state government that’s job was to negotiate drug prices with the companies and then pass those reduced drug prices on to the patients. Because of the realities of limited supply, they’ll also be responsible for determining who is going to get these cheaper drugs.

Somehow I’m pretty pesimistic about yet ANOTHER government health care organization being created. We’ve already got to many. Add this to my normal stance of vote no when in doubt and you get my endorsement.

My endorsement: NO on prop. 79

Most people don’t even know that this proposition is on the ballot. This is the stealth measure that is totally forgotten amongst a list of emotionally charged props.

The goal of this measure is to clean up the mess that caused the electricity shortages a few years ago. It decides to go the route or re-regulating a portion of that which was deregulated.

This is another case of a partially baked proposal. The problem a few years ago was that the front end price of electricity was set by the PUC but the back end price (the price that our electric company paid) was being determined by the market. The result was that the electric companies were paying WAY more for electricity than they were able to charge for it.

I think the right solution to the problem is to deregulate the front end. When consumers can reap the benefits of dramatically reducing their electric bills by using less energy at peak times, the price of electricity will follow a more traditional supply vs. demand curve.

This proposition takes us the other direction by forcing more entities back under the regulation of the PUC. The PUC is one of the worst run organizations in the country. Not much more needs to be said.

My endorsement: NO on prop. 80

Well, the smoke and mirrors campaigners are at it again. This time they’re calling foul on the Prop. 75 proponents. In this article the president of the CTA claims “their campaign rivals broke the law by sending an e-mail to 90,000 schoolteachers at work-site computers claiming that their union is on the verge of bankruptcy.”

At first I was unsure if what they were claiming was illegal was that their opponents lied or misled. That brought scoffs of large laughter from yours truly. Lock up every member of the CTA for aiding and abetting and put every CTA official in a maximum security prision if that’s against the law.

No, what she’s claiming is illegal is that these messages were sent to the teachers work e-mail addresses.

Uh huh…

OK, I’m as big an opponent of spam as there is but this is not spam. Unsolicited mail is not the same thing as spam. If I send a message to my brother asking him if he wants to come to see me sometime, unless he asked me to e-mail him about coming to visit, that message is unsolicited. No, spam is the sending of messages indiscriminately to as many people as possible. Specifically getting the e-mail addresses of a bunch of teachers and sending them a message about their union is not spam, it’s politics.

But that’s not really what the CTA boss is trying to get them on. There is a clause in the California Education code that says you can’t misuse equipment that belongs to the school. By sending a bunch of e-mails to the teachers at their work computers, a bunch of computers were “misused”.

What a hunk of bunk. If the e-mails had been sent from a school computer, you might be able to claim that. But the schools setup these accounts so that the teachers can receive outside messages that are relevant to their job. It’s hard to argue that this e-mail is not relevant.

What the CTA is REALLY upset about is that it is targeting its members. This is really a turf war.

Furthermore, the point about bankruptcy is more viable than one would think. Here’s the scenario: The CTA is paying $50 million to stop Prop. 75. However, they don’t have this money right now. So they’re assessing the teachers $60 each for the next 3 years. That’s where the problem comes in. If 75 passes, they could be in a situation where the majority of their union members opt out of the political campaign contributions. Since that $50 million can not come from regular dues, they could conceivably have a $50 million dollar bill they can’t pay. Add this to the fact that they already have $34 million in outstanding loans and you can see why they could (and the operative word is could) be in real trouble if Prop. 75 passes. Toss in the fact that the actual statement in the e-mail is “Our current leadership is on the verge of bankrupting the CTA to fund a political agenda that many of us do not support.” and one can see why the content of the message if far from deceptive.

Need it be any more clear why the CTA is going to do whatever it takes including morgage it’s future to defeat Prop. 75? They will lie; they will deceive; they will call foul over minor or false things; they will distract; they will demonize; they will smear; they will scream at the top of their lungs; they will do WHATEVER it takes.

I’ve said for a LONG time that allowing indian gambling was a bad thing for California. More importantly I’ve said for the same period of time that indian gambling has nothing to do with “Native American Self Reliance” and everything to do with greed and a desired monopoly on gambling.

Well, it’s becoming more and more clear how right I am/was. Case in point, measure G on the ballot in Yuba county (that’s north of Sacramento for those not familiar with the intricacies of California geography). Measure G would give public support for a indian casino in the county at a defined location off of highway 65. Guess who the major financial supporter of the ‘No on G’ campaign is? If you guessed the indian casino about 30 miles down highway 65 in the Sacramento area called Thunder Valley, you’d be right!

See it’s not about “self reliance for all native americans”. If it was, the Thunder Valley folks would be happy to see another casino join in the mix so that they too could be “self reliant”. No, it’s about greed and the Thunder Valley folks, now that they’ve got their cash cow rolling, are willing to protect in whatever way necessary their cash cow.

See this article for the needed references.