Here in California we have a wonderful thing called direct democracy. And by wonderful, I mean catastrophic. The California initiative process is a pretty clear demonstration that as bad as government can sometimes be at organizing itself, it’s not nearly so bad as what happens if the people get involved.
Anyways, there are 11 on the ballot this year. Here is my run-through of how I’ll be voting.
30 – Tax hikes to pay for schools. YES. There are two competing propositions to deal with the educational shortfall. This is the one supported by the vast majority of the Democratic establishment. In a sane world, Gov. Brown and the legislature could have just passed it as a normal law. But we live in California, which is not a sane world, so it has to go to the voters. Speaking as someone who is a grad student in the UC system, this is pretty darn important to get done.
31 – Budget micromanagement. NO. I’m not positive this is a bad idea. But it’s precisely the sort of ridiculously specific policy stuff that has no business in the realm of initiatives. In addition, it fails one of my key heuristic devices when judging propositions. The people who support it do so in a bunch of extreme mushy-mouthed language about ‘reform’ and ‘forward’ and ‘bipartisan’ and ‘transparent’ without any real details. If I’m going to lock something into place, I want to be certain that it’s fixing a real problem and fixing it well.
32 – Restrictions on political contribution. NO. See my heuristic above, but times one million. This is being sold as reform that ‘goes as far as the Constitution allows’ to limit campaign contributions. Which is code for targeting unions. Look, Citizens United is terrible. This initiative makes it a lot worse.
33 – Auto insurance reform. NO. Ugh. This one helps no one except for some auto companies. And it’s ludicrous that it should be up for a statewide vote at all.
34 – End the death penalty. Emphatic YES. The death penalty is a travesty of justice. The state has no business killing its own citizens, regardless of what they’ve done. This initiative is, sadly, probably going to fail. Despite the fact that, even on utilitarian terms, the death penalty is an abject failure. It doesn’t deter, it costs millions, and it is really really really racist. But people love their vengeance, so…
35 – Human trafficking. NO. See above. This may be a good policy, but it is not something that needs to be taken care of at the initiative-level. I worry about the vagueness of the regulations it would impose, and it would be a serious pain to fix any problems as they emerge if this thing is embedded as a proposition.
36 – Three strikes. YES. The three strikes law is terrible. This wouldn’t get rid of it, but would at least require that the third offense has to be a serious crime. It’s a tiny bit of a loaf, but it’s better than nothing. This one is an easy call for me since my presumption is basically always to vote in favor of the rights of prisoners. There are a massive number of social forces balanced against them and almost no one to advocate for them. So any little thing that gets this far is almost certain to be better than the status quo.
37 – GMO labeling. NO. Ugh. The outrage over GMOs is a pretty good example of what is wrong with our country. All food is genetically modified. Have you ever seen what corn looked like before it was cultivated? Do you know that kale, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage are all the same damn plant? How did that happen? Artificial cross-breeding. As in, genetic modification. The Punnett Square is a diagram for genetic modification.
I did some pretty extensive research about GMOs a few years back and there is basically no evidence that they are dangerous. They pose no health risks, they are no more susceptible to the dangers of monoculture than ‘normal’ crops. And so on.
The problem is not GMOs, it’s the entire apparatus of industrial agriculture. And while GMOs don’t fix those problems, they do potentially help at the margins. Crops which are fixed to need less water require less damaging irrigation. Crops which are nitrogen-fixed don’t require as much terrible terrible industrial fertilizer.
And the real, actual problem with GMOs is the way they are connected with international trade regimes. The relationship between intellectual property law and seed design, the way that this generates rather extreme corporate control over farmers in the global South, these are real problems. But labeling GMOs does absolutely nothing to fix them.
In short, all the people with Yes on 37 signs in their front yard, who can’t be bothered to at least get a Yes on 34 or Yes on 36 sign need to take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves why they care so much about the faux-problems of yuppies and care not a whit for the real problems of the actual downtrodden in California.
38 – The other tax initiative to pay for education. NO. I’ll just defer to Kevin Drum on this one, for a spot-on rant about the insanity of our system. If this proposition contributes to Prop 30 failing, I will fly off the handle.
39 – Tax treatment for multi-state business. YES. I’m a bit torn on this one, but ultimately chose to support. There’s a pretty silly loophole in California law that prevents it from gathering about $1 billion taxes due to the nature of out-of-state businesses. Given how hard it is to pass any law about taxes through the legislature (thanks to Prop 13), this seems like the only way to get it done. This proposition does, unfortunately, target about half of the revenue, which is the sort of ballot-box budgeting that drives me up the wall. But a) it’s toward energy efficiency which isn’t the worst thing to spend on. And b) it’s a temporary earmark, only lasting five years. Given the likelihood of passing an alternative to this within the next five years, I’ll take the money and run.
40 – Redistricting. YES. This one is perhaps the silliest of them all. The state Republicans put it on the ballot, but then gave up on it. But the way it’s phrased, you have to vote YES to preserve the status quo. There is no one supporting a No vote, including the people who got it on the ballot. But it can’t be removed. And given the confusion caused by needing to affirm a proposition to preserve the status quo, I bet it only gets about 60%
One Response to California propositions – November 2012