For Kossacks who are unable - for whatever reason - to do their own due diligence regarding this year's CA propositions, I'm going to address each measure and indicate the "party line" vote. This way, CA Kossacks who can't do the research will at least know how to vote a "straight progressive ticket" with respect to the measures. Where I happen to personally disagree with the party line, I will indicate the way I intend to vote, accompanied by an explanation of why I've strayed from the party line. And yes, there basically is a "party line" with respect to this year's ballot. (My union tells me so.)
First, however, I'm going to call attention to the most important race in the entire state...
SECRETARY OF STATE
VOTE FOR DEBRA BOWEN
This is the most important race in California - maybe in the whole country - this year. As each new instance of Diebold's hackability comes to light, Californians must remember that one of the first official actions of Bowen's opponent, Bruce McPherson, was to quietly re-certify Diebold's TSx machine without even waiting to hear what the Independent Testing Authority had to say about the company's anti-hacking modifications. After a perfunctory and illusory show of stewardship late last year, in which McPherson punted the Diebold issue back to a testing board funded by voting machine vendors, Californians will again be voting on Diebold machines. The Brad Blog has an excellent compendium of information about McPherson who is clearly vying to become this year's Kenneth Blackwell.
Bowen knows electronic voting like no one else in the country and you can watch her skewer McPherson point-by-point here (RealPlayer, I think). She is such a powerhouse - see for yourself.
I'm doing a fair amount of volunteer work for the Bowen campaign. Her race is my highest priority this election season and I would urge all CA Kossacks to give her a few hours - and a few bucks - over the next few weeks. The sanctity of voting depends on it. DEBRA BOWEN.
Now, onto the...
BALLOT MEASURES
PROP 1A pdf
Party Line Vote: YES
My Vote: NO
I don't believe California is in a position to keep any revenue out of the general fund and certainly not revenue that would otherwise be earmarked for projects as notoriously costly, problematic and graft-ridden as transportation work. The roughly $43 billion in bond measures on this year's ballot mean that the state is facing an additional $1.5 billion a year of principal and interest payments on these bonds alone. This in addition to the $3+ billion/year the state is already paying on prior bonds.
If we need to convert revenue taken from the fuel used to power Hummers and use it for research into alternative energy or for universal healthcare or education or any valid cause, by God I want my legislature to the have the ability to do it. CA gas tax revenues are enormous. I'll be damned if I want all that money going to initiatives that put more vehicles on the road, which use more gas, which generates more gas revenue, which makes more freeways which put more vehicles on the road and so on and so on.
I'm also damned if I know why the party line vote is a yes. I'll have to call my union on that one.
PROP 1B pdf
Party Line Vote: YES
My Vote: NO
$20 billion for transportation projects to ease congestion, yet it spends three times more money on freeway construction than it does on public transportation (which is the only real way to ease congestion). The measure also touts itself as the "Highway Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality and Port Security" bill, yet a grand total of 0.5% of it is devoted to port security. When the CA Taxpayers' Association supports a $20 billion bond, you should have your bullshit detector on high gain.
PROP 1C pdf
Party Line Vote: YES
My Vote: YES
$190 million/year in P/I payments for homeless shelters, housing for seniors and 87,000 new jobs seems like a pretty good deal. Is it so wrong to be in agreement with the CA Taxpayers' Association??
PROP 1D pdf
Party Line Vote: YES
My Vote: YES
$10 billion is a painfully large sum of money, but if Schwarzenegger won't spend what it takes on education, we're going to have to do it ourselves. Money goes to construct 6,500 new K-12 classrooms and 3,000 community college classrooms as well as money for earthquake retrofitting of existing structures. As a Los Angeles resident with two small children who may (or may not) be entering the LA Public School system, I can say that it will take big efforts - and big money - to put California schools where they ought to be.
PROP 1E pdf
Party Line Vote: YES
My Vote: YES
The Sacramento Delta is another Katrina waiting to happen, only this time, the event would cripple the most populous state in the nation. The Delta is the nation's largest estuary system. It supplies two-thirds of the state's drinking water, irrigates most of the Central Valley and contains 40,000 acres of wetlands. In this age of global warming, with its utterly ass-backward weather, it's more important than ever to do what's necessary to protect at-risk infrastructure. Imagine what might happen if the Delta levee system was breached and two-thirds of the state's drinking water was exposed to every rusty chemical drum between Sacramento and Stockton.
This the sort of scenario governments need to be preparing for and the fact that the legislature put this bill to the California voters by a combined vote of 98-10 is a good sign. $4.1 billion well spent in my humble opinion.
PROP 83 pdf
Party Line Vote: ----
My Vote: YES
"Jessica's Law" is named for 9 year-old Jessica Lunsford, who was kidnapped, assaulted and buried alive by a convicted sex offender who had failed to report where he lived. By far the most controversial provision is lifetime GPS monitoring of offenders once they're released. Opponents say it's a stiff penalty for those who leave prison to live law-abiding lives thereafter. They're right. However, I don't give a shit.
As a father of two young girls, I cannot draw a moral equivalence between the lifetime of embarrassment suffered by a child molester who's forced to wear a wristband transmitter and the lifetime of suffering endured by victims and their families. If it helps the cops keep tabs on sex offenders and if it serves as a deterrent - as just about every law enforcement agency in the state seems to believe - I'm for it.
PROP 84 pdf
Party Line Vote: YES
My Vote: NO
I desperately wanted to vote for this bill as a solid companion measure to Prop 1E (which, of course, I strongly support). In fact, I have agonized over this decision more than over any other measure. After all, without water, there is no California.
Had the measure been solely about water (both the water supply and our coastal waters & beaches) and had it come in at one-third to half the cost, I'd be all over it. Unfortunately, it's more of a blanket environmental bill that is laden with a number of what I consider "luxury items" for a state that is desperate to control its debt and improve its bond rating. Among these are: $1.08 billion for parks and park management including $100 million for new "nature education" facilities and $450 million for forest conservation programs - $45 million of which is devoted to the protection of ranches and farms.
I'm as much an environmentalist as the next guy. However, I simply do not believe that California is in a position to undertake the cost of this bill at a time when we're facing so many important challenges and doing so under the leadership of a miserable boob like Schwarzenegger. When we've got the state back in Democratic control, when the state's billionaires are contributing their fair share of the revenue, when we've paid down some of our debt and when, God willing, we've staffed the federal government with people who will actually help the states face their challenges, I'll be the first guy to sign the $6 billion environmental initiative petition.
We're simply not there and, as much as it hurts me, this measure is one that I believe falls in the "keeping our powder dry" category.
PROP 85 pdf
Party Line Vote: NO
My Vote: NO
An obvious push by the radical right to chip away at Roe and one I'm frankly tired of seeing. The measure is also wrapped in a kind of laughable irony, insofar as the only people it'll affect are anti-choice parents - the ones who will forbid the procedure when the doctor calls. There must be a whole bunch of unwanted pregnancy among daughters of wingnuts for them to self-legislate like this, huh?
My wife and I? We'll know when our daughters get pregnant. They'll tell us. They'll want to tell us, regardless of whether the circumstances were joyous or desperate.
Wingnut families need a law. My family doesn't.
PROP 86 pdf
Party Line Vote: YES
My Vote: NO
PROP 86: Improvements to CA healthcare, paid for by working stiffs who can't afford their own health insurance. How progressive!!
I'm sorry but if you're in a low wage job, busting your ass for some awful corporation and some asshole boss and barely making ends meet doing it - all while paying your taxes and being nice to your fellow man - the highlight of your entire fucking day is the five minutes you spend outside, burning a smoky treat and forgetting about the car payment you're two months behind on.
Add another $2.60 to the price of a pack and a whole lot of people are gonna go medieval on our asses.
Smokers have been pushed out of our restaurants, out of our bars, out of public parks and out of our airplanes. You'd be hard pressed to find a square inch of American soil where smokers are blackening the lungs of innocent bystanders anymore. They've been vilified and persecuted and driven into a dark corner of our society and seeing as how I'm a guy who has always fought for the underdog, I've had just about enough of it.
Y'wanna tax tobacco executives? Great. None of them smoke anyway. Wanna tax the execs at McDonalds and Hostess and Coca Cola? Great. Shit, I'd be up for a tax on elected officials who vote for measures that cause pollution. But when some poor bastard is already spending 10% of his disposable income on an activity he really enjoys - one that no longer seems to pose a threat to anyone - adding 50% to its cost is pretty fucking cruel. It's akin to passing legislation that makes it illegal for poor people to smoke in their own homes.
Prop 86 will also create an entirely new black market and give the illegal Mexicans the wingnuts are so worried about a few little boxes to carry across the border in exchange for safe passage.
So I'm going to flick a lit butt at this measure and side, reluctantly, with Big Tobacco. And I don't even smoke.
PROP 87 pdf
Party Line Vote: YES
My Vote: YEAH, BABY!
A $4 billion tax on oil companies? WHERE DO I SIGN UP?? If Louisiana had its shit together enough to do the same thing, the Katrina clean up wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime.
PROP 88 pdf
Party Line Vote: NO
My Vote: YES
Anyone who bought a home in Southern California prior to 2003 has seen its value double - at a bare minimum. People who bought $200,000 houses in Studio City in 1996 are selling them for $700,000. So, as someone who's sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars I didn't earn, I find the notion that $50 a year is too much for California's homeowners to pay on behalf of improving our schools a little... uhh... retarded.
PROP 89 pdf
Party Line Vote: ----
My Vote: OH, HELL YES!
Most of organized labor is giving no recommendation on this measure, in part because it'll take their money out of politics, too. But they're not urging a NO vote, either, because passage of public financing is ultimately GOOD for labor and good for every average person. The Progressive party line on 89 is a major "YES." Best of all, Prop 89 is paid for by the same corporations who've been screwing CA taxpayers all along!
What better place than California to put this concept to the test. If we make it work, it'll become a model for other states and might one day end up saving our democracy.
PROP 90 pdf
Party Line Vote: NO
My Vote: OVER MY DEAD BODY
This is perhaps the most evil measure ever to tar the California ballot.
Funded by a gang of big real estate developers, the fine print way back at the end of prop 90 makes the state liable for money developers could (!) have made by putting a toxic waste dump in the backyard of your new gated community, but weren't allowed to make because a zoning law prevented them from building the dump beside a neighborhood. A few years into Prop 90, the state would be bankrupt and we'd all be sending our taxes to some McMansion in Rio Lindo Estates at Newhall Ranch.
I wish we had the balls to draft bills like this!
Sadly, we don't. So we're left to fight this motherfucker every way we can. I'm going to do some phonebanking on behalf of Debra Bowen this week. Believe me, I will tack my NO ON 90 message onto every phone call I make. You should, too.
The Los Angeles Propositions
I'm voting NO ON H because of my YES vote on 1C, which is a bigger, stronger measure that will help the homeless in the whole state, not just in Los Angeles.
I'm voting YES ON J (greater freedom on the construction of fire stations) and OH, HELL YES! ON R (city council term limits and restrictions on lobbyists).
RECAP
Measure Party Line Me
1A YES NO
1B YES NO
1C YES YES
1D YES YES
1E YES YES
83 ---- YES
84 YES NO
85 NO NO
86 YES NO
87 YES YES
88 NO YES
89 ---- YES
90 NO NO
LA H ---- NO
LA J ---- YES
LA R ---- YES
UPDATE: At the request of ortcutt, I'm including the various recommendation of three different CA Democratic Party organizations.
For the record, the California Democratic Party endorses:
1A: Yes, 1B: Yes, 1C: Yes, 1D: Yes, 1E: Yes, 83: Yes, 84: Yes, 85: No, 86: Yes, 87: Yes, 88: No, 89: No recommendation, 90: No.
The LA Democratic Party endorses the same slate as the CDP.
The SF Democratic Party endorses: 1A: Yes
1B: Yes,
1C: Yes,
1D: Yes,
1E: Yes,
83: No,
84: Yes,
85: No,
86: Yes,
87: Yes,
88: No,
89: Yes,
90: No.
The "party line" votes I indicate are the ones I got from my union.