Prop 25, 26: Majority Rules; Minority shouldn't have veto

I am going YES! on Prop 25 and NO! on Prop 26.

Prop 25 would change the legislative vote requirement to pass a budget from two-thirds to a simple majority. This should help resolve the habitual gridlock every year in passing a budget. Now, the minority party (i.e. Republican) hold the budget hostage. The majority party spends all the time figuring out how to buy a few votes from the other side. Deals are cut, horses are traded, taxes are cut, new spending written in to serve some special interest, and the people lose.

Prop 25 will not help balance the budget. It will not help create new revenues. It will not stop politicization of state budgeting. But it will probably help us take a step in the right direction.

There is legitimate concern that Prop 25 effectively hands control to the Democratic party in California's budget process. That may be true. But at least we'll know who is responsible for a bad budget.

The opponents also allege (and this is controversial) that Prop 25, despite what it claims in BOLD, will allow for new taxes to be passed with only a simple majority. Mm, so what?

Prop 26 on the other hand is clearly a special interest scheme. "It would raise the vote threshold to two-thirds in the Legislature for any fee that benefits the public but does not directly pay for a service the payer receives. (One example: the fees charged to companies that deal with hazardous waste, which help pay to clean up all toxic sites.) Local lawmakers would have to get two-thirds voter approval for such a fee, an unnecessary impingement."

So let's try making passing a budget bill easier, and see how things go. YES! on 25. And let's not make the gridlock worse: NO! on Prop 26.

Prop 20, Prop 27: who draws the lines?

In 2008 the voters of California passed Prop 11, which took away the job of (re) drawing electoral district lines from the legislators, and handed it to a "citizen's commission" consisting of 14 non-political, qualified Californians.

The commission is still the process of being formed. They would start work next year based on the 2010 Census data.

But even before Prop 11 took any meaningful effect, some people want to repeal it all (Prop 27) while others want to add to it (Prop 20). This is ridiculous.

Prop 11 only affected state level districting, leaving the line drawing for US Congress with the state legislature. Now Prop 20 wants to move that responsibility to the citizen's commission as well. Whereas Prop 27 basically wants to restore pre-2008 status quo (while conceding a bit and adding some constraints on the legislature on how they can slice and dice districts).

My initial reaction was, don't tamper with the 2008 decision even before we see the results. So reject both 20 and 27. However, I learn that in the last decade, the geographical distribution of California's population has undergone a very significant change (Central Valley and the South have grown a lot, while the coastal areas have stayed put or slightly shrunk. Also, California's proportion of population to the total US population may have actually shrunk, and so California may lose a seat or two in the US Congress). This makes Prop 20 interesting. I'd like to reduce the chances of politicians redrawing these lines based purely on political and self-serving considerations. (For example, the democrats who are in control of Sacramento would surely get rid of any strong republican district).

So, I am going to go with a YES! on Prop 20 and a NO! on Prop 27.

Prop 19: What were they smoking?

I like the idea of legalizing marijuana. If it is legal, I might even try it sometime. But I have decided to vote NO! on Prop 19. Here is why.

But first a quick summary of of what the Proposition (from the voter guide)

• Allows people 21 years old or older to possess, cultivate, or transport marijuana for personal use.
• Permits local governments to regulate and tax commercial production, distribution, and sale of marijuana to people 21 years old or older.
• Prohibits people from possessing marijuana on school grounds, using in public, or smoking it while minors are present.
• Maintains prohibitions against driving while impaired.
• Limits employers’ ability to address marijuana use to situations where job performance is actually impaired.

Arguments in favor:

• people are doing it anyway. let's stop the hypocrisy
• prohibition has not only failed, but has given raise drug cartel violence (mainly in Mexico), corruption, wasted police resources which could be better used to combat other real crime
• there is allegedly a $16 billion dollar illegal marijuana economy in California, but the state doesn't make a dime from it. legalize, regulate and tax it. we need to money for our schools and our infrastructure
  
• if alcohol can be controlled, so can marijuana (now, minors can allegedly get their hands on pot more easily than alcohol)
  

Arguments against:

• it's a flawed proposition. even if you like legalizing marijuana, Prop 19 is not the way to do it
• prop 19 permits drivers to smoke pot until the moment they start driving
• it doesn't provide any objective standards for determining what constitutes "driving under the influence"
• it prevents employers from taking action against a stoned employee until after something bad happens
  
• employers may not be able to comply with federal drug-free workplace standards, and so California may lose billions of dollars worth of federal contracts
• school districts may lose billions in federal funds
• if such a flawed proposition becomes law, given California's strong law against legislative tampering with what voters enact through ballot initiatives, we may be stuck with a very bad law
  

From what I understand from reading the actual wording, the second against argument above seems disingenuous. Here is the actual wording:

11304. Effect of Act and Definitions.
(a) This act shall not be construed to affect, limit, or amend any statute that forbids impairment while engaging in dangerous activities such as driving, or that penalizes bringing cannabis to a school enrolling pupils in any grade from kindergarten through 12, inclusive.

I am no lawyer, but I think the above clearly allows for other existing or new statutes to stipulate standards for what constitutes "impairment". I can see a law being passed that specifies a legal limit for THC content in blood, for instance, similar to blood alcohol content.

That no such scientific recommendation exists now is a good argument. And that's one of the reasons I don't like this proposition. We shouldn't pass a law that allows millions of people to drive while stoned, and then try to figure out safety standards after the fact.

(BTW, why only K-12 schools? Is it ok to smoke pot in a childcare center?!)

The other argument that swayed me is the one about employers inability to preempt accidents caused by employees potentially impaired by pot. The relevant words in the proposition are these:

No person shall be punished, fined, discriminated against, or be denied any right or privilege for lawfully engaging in any conduct permitted by this act or authorized pursuant to Section 11301. Provided, however, that the existing right of an employer to address consumption that actually impairs job performance by an employee shall not be affected.

This is a stupid way to write a law. (What were the proposition writers smoking?)

Given these two serious flaws, and the last bullet in the against list above, I think it's not a good idea to make Prop 19 law. Perhaps, the better way to legalize pot is by legislation, where it is possible to continually refine the law and plug loopholes.

And then there is the question of what the feds would do. May be as long as the democrats control the white house, they will let this slide (even that is doubtful, given Eric Holder's stance). But once there is a republican president in the white house, we can be sure the feds will be all over the California "sinners".

So for now, legal pot will have to be but a pipe dream.

Prop 21 : Car Tax for California State Parks

With less than a week to go for the election day, I have a lot of homework to cram! To get the feeling of accomplishment, I've made up my mind about the first vote I am going to cast, which is an easy one for me.

YES! on Prop 21.

Proposition 21 would establish an $18 annual vehicle license surcharge to help fund state parks and wildlife programs.

The key features of this prop are:

* flat $18 fee per vehicle per year (larger commercial vehicles exempted)
* no parking fee at State Parks for vehicles that pay this fee
* all monies dedicated to State Parks and wildlife conservation
* explicitly mandates stopping taking money from general fund for State Parks

Quoting from KQED's Prop guide:

"Supporters of the initiative say creating a specific fund for state parks is the only way to preserve them. They also argue that firmer funding for the parks is a good investment because the 80 million annual visits to California's parks boost jobs and increase tax revenues in local communities.

Opponents say that the state is playing a shell game, taking money already set aside for park maintenance and pushing it to the general fund while creating what they say is actually a new tax. The owners of about 6.8 million smaller commercial vehicles would have to pay the fee and some opponents say this creates a hardship on small business owners."

It is true that if the California legislature were working well and passing balanced budgets, this sort of "ballot box budgeting" will be unnecessary at best, and disruptive at worst. But I feel the State Parks are too important to be let to go to waste until the politics cleans up itself. There is no question that something like State Parks upkeep would be the last thing to get funded (even though the opponents of Prop 21 claim that it's fully funded now). The governarator threatened to close down 200 of the 270+ parks just last year! So I am all for this band-aid, which all but the really poor can easily afford.

I also like the idea of dis-incentivising driving by way of taxes, and using the money to do some environmental good. For those who argue that it is unfair to make everyone pay for the parks, when not everyone uses them, I have this to ask: I don't use California State Route 20; I don't want to pay for its maintenance; can I pay less taxes this year?

So stop complaining, and take a hike in a State Park. Soon, you don't even have to pay a parking fee!

Washington Rules

Washington Rules, America's Path To Permanent War by Andrew J. Bacevich

A scathing critique of America's self anointed role as the savior and policeman of the world, and the American military-political nexus that keeps this sham alive out of self interest.

Bacevich traces the development of the American "national security" institution since the beginning of the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs, through the Vietnam era, the first Gulf War and now the Bush and Obama wars. He spares no president since Eisenhower. He saves his most stinging criticism for JFK. By the time he gets to Bush, he settles for mockery. He ends with expressing his deep disappointment in Obama for just continuing to abide by the sixty year old Washington consensus.

He defines what he calls the "sacred trinity" of American foreign policy as : global military presence, global power projection and global interventionism. The trinity exists to implement the American credo, which "summons the United States - and the US alone - to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world. He illustrates with a quick review of America's wars in the last 60 years, how this credo is bunk. He shows how America's philosophy of interventionism has always made matters worse, and how the "semi warriors" in Washington never learn from mistakes. In fact, mistakes get erased from memory by revisionist history telling.

He makes an emotional appeal to turn away from the path of permanent war, which is leading the nation into financial ruin, while making it more and more insecure at the same time. He recommends a 'new trinity':

* the purpose of the U.S. military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests
* the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America
* consistent with Just War tradition, the US should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense

Bacevich also argues that "all volunteer" nature of the military is one of the causes for the problem: by relinquishing their obligations and by not paying attention, the American people have let the powers to be to abuse the military toward furthering their imperialistic designs. He argues, if the people want to impose their will on foreign policy, they need to go back to viewing defending their nation as an obligation of every citizen.

If the impending "ship wreck of monumental proportions" is to avoided, the people must make the choice.