elections
so the elections were this past tuesday. democrats regained control of both houses of congress, which i think is pretty great. my main worry right now is that they won’t do anything, or at least won’t do anything visible, and as a result won’t live up to the expectations that the voters are currently placing on them. in that case, people will be just as disenchanted in them as they have been with the republicans, and the dems will lose in 2008, both in the presidency and in congress.
i’m really hoping that this won’t happen, but the democrats really need to start doing things. before, they could use the excuse that the republicans were blocking them. now that this is no longer the case, i’d like to see something real. raise the minimum wage. implement real security measures and appropriately split up the security funding. improve our education systems and give us back our financial aid. invest for once in amtrak and true transportation alternatives, not ever-widening highways. please guys. you have a golden opportunity right now. don’t blow it.
things on the local level have been more depressing, however. the governator won with a pretty significant margin, and i’m not really surprised. this is mostly because (a) our democratic candidate has apparently been as unclear as ever about what exactly he wants to do and how he plans to do it, and (b) arnold went decidedly more to the center right before election season kicked in. i can only hope that now that the election is over, he won’t go back to his republican hackery and will realize that this state needs moderate political views, not conservative ones.
there were also a bunch of state measures (propositions) that we had on the ballot. i was also a bit depressed by how these turned out. uneventfully and almost unsurprisingly, all of the bond measures - i.e. the selling of bonds to fund various public works projects - passed. as berkeley beetle pointed out, it’s probably because voters were really happy about spending money now and making other people pay it back later. now onto the measures themselves:
i’m really hoping that this won’t happen, but the democrats really need to start doing things. before, they could use the excuse that the republicans were blocking them. now that this is no longer the case, i’d like to see something real. raise the minimum wage. implement real security measures and appropriately split up the security funding. improve our education systems and give us back our financial aid. invest for once in amtrak and true transportation alternatives, not ever-widening highways. please guys. you have a golden opportunity right now. don’t blow it.
things on the local level have been more depressing, however. the governator won with a pretty significant margin, and i’m not really surprised. this is mostly because (a) our democratic candidate has apparently been as unclear as ever about what exactly he wants to do and how he plans to do it, and (b) arnold went decidedly more to the center right before election season kicked in. i can only hope that now that the election is over, he won’t go back to his republican hackery and will realize that this state needs moderate political views, not conservative ones.
there were also a bunch of state measures (propositions) that we had on the ballot. i was also a bit depressed by how these turned out. uneventfully and almost unsurprisingly, all of the bond measures - i.e. the selling of bonds to fund various public works projects - passed. as berkeley beetle pointed out, it’s probably because voters were really happy about spending money now and making other people pay it back later. now onto the measures themselves:
- prop 83 - would implement the GPS tracker program for sex offenders that has been implemented in a number of other places around the country. i was personally against this, because to be honest, apart from putting in place a huge-ass bureaucracy to monitor the sex offenders and the large capital investment in setting up the tracking system and tagging all previous offenders with the GPS devices, i don’t think this program would do much. GPS signals can suck in some areas, and nothing stops the sex offender from doing his business while staying happily at home. the proposition passed overwhelmingly, since people are apparently just paranoid about sex offenders and common sense flies out the window along with that.
- prop 84 - would sell bonds to fund the improvement and securement of safe, clean drinking water supplies, as well as other water resources (i.e. rivers, lakes, etc), and state parks. i guess this falls under the “spend money now and make others pay later” category, so maybe it shouldn’t be as much of a surprise that it passed. regardless, this is good for the environment, so all the better.
- prop 85 - would require parental notification before a minor can get an abortion. my mom says that it’s been on the ballot during each election she’s voted in, and i know for certain that it was on the ballot during last year’s special election. needless to say, it failed, and that’s good to hear.
- prop 86 - would have raised california’s cigarette tax by a whopping $2.60/pack on average. with the current tax at 87 cents, the total new tax would be $3.47/pack, the highest in the nation. state-wide, NJ is currently the leader with $2.575/pack, and combined with local taxes, Chicago has the highest tax in the nation at $3.66/pack (NYC, btw, is $3/pack). while the programs that this proposition would fund - children’s health programs - might appear a bit unrelated to cigarettes, and perhaps anti-smoking programs would be better suited recipients of the tax revenue, i was still for this. mainly this is because it would make cigarettes ridiculously expensive and would discourage new smokers, including teens, from starting to smoke in the first place. it’s also been shown that higher taxes do lower smoking rates as some people decide that they really can’t afford to smoke anymore (consider that with this proposition, the average price for a pack of cigs would be almost $7). regardless, this failed by just 5%, and it’s really a shame.
- prop 87 - would charge oil producers a graduated tax, dependent on the market value of a barrel of oil (think income tax), for crude oil extracted from california lands and waters. the money collected would be used to fund the research of alternative energy sources. as always, people didn’t think too hard about this one and decided their gut instinct - that gasoline prices were going to immediately shoot up - control their brains on this one. the proposition failed by a whole 10%, which is too bad. oil companies are raking in record profits and it’s about time we got something out of it.
- prop 88 - would institute a flat, $50 property tax charged on each parcel of land to the owner of that land. the money would then be used to fund school construction projects to alleviate overcrowding, textbook purchases, and safety improvements. this proposition fared the worst out of all, and failed by nearly 55%. it looks like it didn’t have strong support, and even new jersey, my favorite state to match california up to, doesn’t have a statewide education tax. oh well.
- prop 89 - would set up a fund for providing candidates running for statewide office (i.e. state assembly, governor, etc.) with money to finance their campaigns. opting into the system would be optional. in addition, if a publicly-financed candidate was faced with a privately-funded opponent, the fund would match funding for the public candidate so that his funding was on-par with his opponent’s. additionally, the proposition imposed much stricter accountability and reporting regulations with respect to campaign finances. lastly, it greatly lowered the maximum donation limits by private parties, PACs, corporations, etc. to candidates. to me, this looked like the perfect plan to make elections fair for once, and prevent extremely rich candidates from “buying” their way into office. the rest of california apparently didn’t buy this argument, and condemned this proposition to the wastebasket. 89 failed by a margin of 50%. then again, as the facebook group in its favor said, the millions spent against prop 89 is just an illustration of what is wrong with the system.
- prop 90 - would amend current eminent domain regulations by making it harder for governments to justify the taking of private property under the guise of eminent domain. sounds good, right? wrong. the proposition would also make governments (state, county, local) liable for laws and regulations that somehow affected the owner’s potential use of the building. for example, if a city passes a new ordinance that says that all buildings in the downtown area must be no taller than 5 stories, a office-building owner could sue the city for the potential loses that he would have due to the fact that he can’t build a sixth story and rent it out. as you can see, there would be no end to such litigation and cities would be forced to pay out these “loses,” until they eventually ran out of money, i guess. thankfully, this proposition didn’t pass, so there isn’t too much to worry about. it is worth noting, however, that 90, along with 86, was one of the closer propositions that failed, with only a 5% margin of defeat.