Does everyone remember that very principled, financially conservative, socially conservative Republican who ran for Governor during the recall election?  Yes, this is THAT Tom McClintock.

McClintock is one of the most principled politicians I have ever seen.  He leaves himself open to criticisms because he refuses to bend his principles when voting or speaking so as to avoid politically sticky situations.  Even the stanch Democrats I know have a great deal of respect for McClintock’s integrity.  They’d never vote for him… mostly because they know he’d follow through on his promises.

And just what are his promises/goals?  Everything I want in a candidate:

• Wants to balance the budget without bonds or raising taxes
• Wants to bring an end to illegal immigration
• Wants to bring legislative reform like redistricting
• Wants to protect protect life at all stages
• Wants to encourage businesses to come to California without compromising on important worker protections.

He’s my kind of candidate.  Vote for McClintock!

OK, that was a lot of no’s in a row.  Just to prove I’m not a negative kinda guy, I’ll vote yes on one…

OK, not really.  I don’t know about you but it has disgusted me to see the federal supreme court undermine the high standard that eminent domain has always been held to and then to see activist and snobby towns infringe on what I believe to be the rights of citizens to maintain ownership of land.

Proposition 90 will solve this growning problem by enshrining it in the state constitution that eminent domain can only be used for public works projects.

I must admit that prop. 89 is an enticing proposition.  It’s an attempt to reign in campaign spending and it has a mechanism to do it that avoids the constitutional issues that most reforms do.  It does this by using public funds to match the money raised by private campaign contributors.  The idea is that there will be no benefit to raising your own money because every dollar you raise, your opponent will get as well.  To double the effect, the publicly funded candidate won’t be answering any questions about being a toy of special interests.  The result would be that every candidate would voluntarily sign up for this program and therefore all candidates would be publically funded at a much lower level than they currently collect.

At least that’s the theory.

The problem is that while it may work, California will potentially be footing a VERY large bill during the transition phase and potentially indefinitely if it never accomplishes its goal.  That’s too much of a risk in our financially strapped state to take.

I’ll give prop. 88 credit that I won’t give most of the proposition: it’s at least honest in what it’s attempting to do.  What it is attempting to do is fix our schools by increasing property taxes.  I’ll also give it credit for not using a bond approach that seem so popular these days because it doesn’t have to combat the “you’re raising taxes!” argument.

All of that said, I just don’t think dumping more money into the public schools at this juncture fixes anything.  We already spend more than most states per child yet we continue to perform towards the bottom in standarized testing.  The problem is not money, it’s the educational system as driven by the CTA.  Until that is fixed, I won’t be voting for any new taxes for education.  It’s just wasted money.

The “new” model for propositions is to find a topic that Californians are upset about and then write a proposition that funels a bunch of funding to your favorite special interest group as the solution to that problem.  Proposition 87 uses this technique and so does prop. 86.

The special interest groups in this case are HMO’s and hospitals.  They want extra money and are trying to argue that cigarette smokers cost them a fortune so they should get the extra tax money on cigarette smokers that comes from this tax supposedly goaled at reducing smoking.

Don’t be fooled.

It’s not about smoking, it’s about finding an excuse to put money in HMO’s pockets.

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.

Sorry I didn’t write much this week.  I had the flu, my laptop died and critical prototypes arrived at work.  I was working like dog while my head throbbed and at the same time completely clueless lacking all the data on my laptop (thank God for the eventually restored backups).

But to make sure I don’t break my predictions statistics, here is a one-liner for each game this Saturday:

• Cal 45, UCLA 13.
• Oregon 31, Washington 24
• ASU 28, OSU 24
• WSU 24, Arizona 10
• Stanford 6, USC 35

More next week.

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.