Hope is not a plan

Proposition 73 -- recommend voting "no"

This proposed legislation is designed to add an additional parental notification step before a minor can undergo an abortion procedure. The introductory language presents the legislation as an effort to keep parents "informed of potential health-related risks to their children" and promote "parent-child communication and parental responsibility."

In fact, it's another effort to place more roadblocks in the way of abortion.

Some salient points:

Following delivery of notification, there's a required 48-hour reflection period. Notifications must be sent by signature-restricted, certified mail with return receipt. That's quite a barrier on its own.

Abortion without parental notification is allowed in case of a medical emergency or for emancipated minors. Should the doctor screw this part up, the resulting civil case has a bonus penalty for the doc in question -- the parent or guardian can simply choose to recover $10,000 "any time prior to the rendering of a final judgment." There could be a growth industry in "clinic-chasing" lawyers just going for the $10,000 hit.

An otherwise "unqualified" minor can attempt to petition for permission to have an abortion without parental notification. This represents a series of roadblocks, of course. First, there's the ability to make it away not only to a clinic, but also to the courts. Imagine a girl stuck in an abusive or restrictive home trying to make her way to the center of local civil government, walking down the halls past people she or her parents may know, for her "confidential" hearing. What if she's in a small town where her family knows the judge? What if she's in a conservative community where a judge places family, even abusive family, above her freedom? What if she lives on a farm in the Central Valley and would need a car to make it to the appropriate courthouse? The petition concept is a weak attempt to make borderline voters feel like Proposition 73 is a good idea.

The definition of "abortion" refers to a procedure that will "cause the death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born." This is an effort to enshrine in law a definition of life and what constitutes a child.

Overall, I feel that this is an unethical attempt to slowly increase barriers to abortion. I refer to it as unethical not because it attempts to restrict abortion, but because it does it in an underhanded manner, trying to slip in restrictions in the guise of "protecting" young women. It says something important that those who are attempting to make people's decisions for them try to gain that power by misrepresentation.

Proposition 74 -- recommend voting "no"

This proposition would relax the rules around firing teachers, both by extending the probationary period for teachers and by removing many of the procedures for dismissal of unsatisfactory teachers. The need for this legislation has not been demonstrated by its proponents, and as a result I believe it is an attempt to parlay an emotional response into unnecessary economic power over teachers.

The probationary period would increase markedly, from two years to five. This seems excessive, despite the introductory declaration that "Experts believe that a teacher's ultimate potential and skill level cannot be fully assessed within just two years." If that's so, why is there no positive statement about how many years it does take to assess skill and potential? The absence of this information suggests that even if the ideal evaluation period is not two years, it's not five either. Prior to 1984, the probationary period was three years. Were there fewer dismissals then?

The second substantial change this legislation would enact is allowing sections 44934 and 44938 in the Education Code to be bypassed completely. I've included their full text in the extended, but the gist of it is that these sections require advance written notice of 45 or 90 days prior to acting on assertions of "Unprofessional conduct" (i.e. being an unethical teacher) or "Unsatisfactory performance" (i.e. being a poor teacher), respectively. I also read the loss of 44934 as letting school districts carry out suspensions that would otherwise be in violatoin of standing collective bargaining agreements.

The arguments in favor of Proposition 74 mention lurid anecdotes of dismissals that cost school districts $100,000 or $300,000. Of course, there's no indication that this is the norm and, as this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune mentions, there's not a lot of hard data on what's actually going on in school districts. According to the Legistlative Analyst's Office, as cited in the article, many teacher problems involve negotiated settlements, with outright dismissals occurring about ten per year for the past decade.

This proposition removes substantial safeguards from what is already a low paying, often difficult job. Especially given the lack of positive data supporting the existence of the problems it is meant to address, this proposition instead reads as an effort to give the state executive leverage to save money by being able to bully teachers. I do not look forward to our school system if this passes and teachers are routinely dismissed in their fifth year as a cost-saving measure.

Previously:

Prop 73: No

Proposition 75 -- recommend voting "no"

This proposition would add legislation requiring public (that is, government) employees to specifically sign off on the use of any part of their union dues for political purposes. This is a change from the current situation in which a union, whether it represents private or public employees, can choose to spend union dues for political purposes without specific approval from each employee.

This proposition is an attempt at union breaking. I suspect the target is the teachers' union, but it generally impacts public employees' unions unfairly. There are two statements in the introductory text of this proposition that demonstrate the weak and misleading basis of this proposed legislation:

(d) It is fundamentally unfair to force public employees to give money to political activities or candidates they do not support.

It is no more or less unfair than it is to "force" private employees to give money to political activities they don't support. It is the nature of large, democratic organizations that not all the members will agree with all of the organization's actions. If enough people disagree, they may change or take over union leadership, or precipitate the formation of a new union. I have personally been a part of a union whose protection I didn't personally need, but I understood the need for the union for the majority of the employees.

Again, this is the nature of democracy. If the concept is that "having my money used for something I don't like" is wrong, then individual voters need the right to refuse to pay taxes while their government is doing something they dislike. I don't see that happening any time soon.

(e) Because public money is involved, the public has a right to ensure that public employees have a right to approve the use of their dues or fees to support the political objectives of their labor organization.

Ludicrous. Does the public also have a right to mandate that public employees only buy low-emission cars with their paychecks? Once the money is paid to the employee, it is entirely up to the employee what they do with it.

This legislation is an attempt to reduce the power of a specific subset of unions; the arguments presented above are a dishonest attempt to make it seem like something other than that.

Previously:

Prop 74: No
Prop 73: No

Proposition 76 -- recommend voting "no" (though I really like some parts of it)

This proposition would amend the California constitution to significantly alter how our state budgeting works. First, it would cap overall expenditures to an amount equal to the prior year's expenditures adjusted upward by the average of the increase in General Fund revenues over the preceding three years. Excess revenues in a given year would go into a special fund to be dipped into in later years when expenditures fall below revenues. This part of the proposition would serve to smooth out the state budget over time, ideally minimizing the effects of economic downturns.

It would also allow the governor to fairly liberallly cut expenditures should revenues drop below projected levels and the legislature fails to decide on cuts on its own within a month or a month and a half, depending. This is one major sticking point for opponents, as it would be reasonably easy to "cook the books" just a bit and then use this measure to hack unfavored programs.

The proposition would also modify school spending quite a bit, removing some of the requirements that guarantee funding, as well as giving the governor more time to pay back the $3.4 billion borrowed from schools during the earlier portion of his time in office. The near-freeze on the requirements for school expenditures means that even if the legislature hugely increases school funding in a given year, this would not "reset" the required amount in the next budget year. This could, theoretically, allow more flexibility in allocating money when the budget is flush...except, of course, for the expenditure growth limit discussed above.

The proposed changes would also free up money in the Motor Vehicle and Public Transit accounts, allowing their funds to be loaned to the General Fund without any special restrictions (previously this money could only be loaned back to the General Fund under special circumstances).

Overall, I wish that this proposition consisted only of the cap on spending increases. I like the way in which that would smooth out spending over time and buffer effectively against economic downturns. The rest is tempting, but I distrust the ability of the governor to declare a fiscal emergency.

People in the California Department of Education generally aren't fond of this measure, seeing it as an attempt to crack Prop 98 and reduce our already very low (on a per-student basis) school spending.

If you want to go slightly numb, here's the final 2005 state budget. Most instructive is the letter from the governor detailing his line-item vetoes or spending reductions, with explanations. Skimming through it very quickly also gives one a bit of an overview on where money goes in our state. I couldn't recommend places to cut spending at a glance, though.

Previously:

Prop 75: No
Prop 74: No
Prop 73: No

Proposition 77 -- recommend voting "no"

This proposed amendment to the California constitution would completely change the way legislative districts are determined. Under the current method, which would be removed by this proposition, the legislature basically determines state Senate and Assembly districts, as well as Congressional and Board of Equalization districts. Currently, the districts are set up such that seated legislators are highly unlikely to be voted out of office, by dint of picking a voter pool that is highly likely to vote for them.

Under the proposed method in the proposition, legislators would nominate retired judges by a complex method that is designed to prevent "gaming" the system. Protections against gaming include requiring equal representation of the two largest parties among an initial pool of 24 candidates, then subsequently requiring legislators to nominate opposing party judges from this pool. This second picking step is carried out by the majority and minority leaders of the two largest parties in each of the Assembly and Senate. This winnows the choices down to 12. From this set, each of the four legislators mentioned above may then choose to have one candidate removed without cause, potentially narrowing the field to eight. From this eight, three are drawn by lot. One candidate from each of the major parties must be present in the three, or the drawing is repeated until that condition is met.

Once the three retired judges, now termed "Special Masters," are chosen, they are then tasked to draw new districts following each U.S. census (every ten years) as well as one special redistricting right now, before the upcoming primary election.

When redistricting, the Masters are told to comply with these criteria in the order listed: (1) district over whole counties, (2) create fewest county fragments possible, (3) district whole cities if possible and (4) create fewest city fragments possible.

Each districting is immediately applied, but subject to voter approval in the next election. To be clear, this means that one election happens with the new districting, the approval appearing on the same ballot as the election that uses the new districts. This is one of the complaints against this proposition. If a redistricting plan does not comply with the requirements above, there is also the option to make a legal complaint within forty-five days of the presentation of the redistricting plan.

There's additional controversy about this proposition because of a legal battle over whether the signatures for it were collected unconstitutionally (because the language on the proposition given to the Attorney General to appear on the ballot differed from that on the proposition as it was used to gather signatures). It was eventually ruled that the voters should have a chance to decide. This bothers me, though I doubt most of the petitioner signatories read the text of the proposition when they signed.

The topic of redistricting reform in California has naturally been discussed at great length:

An overview from the Institute of Governmental Studies at Berkeley

An overview of redistricting methods by the National Conference of State Legislatures

A discussion of Arizona's current method, which most closely matches the proposed method in this proposition. The redistricting carried out by the Arizona commission suffered a last-minute legal challenge, despite generally appearing to proceed smoothly.

Overall, even after the measures taken to prevent gaming of the system and with the voter approval, I don't see the advantage of putting redistricting in the hands of a commission. Right now, the districts end up fairly partisan, but it does yield an overall state representation that matches the population fairly closely. As demographics change, legislative seat occupants will change and districts will change.

My ideal redistricting method would do something such as starting from the Northwest corner of the state and marking out a square that represents 1/n of the population (where n is the total number of districts of the given type). The next square would then start at the remaining available northwestern point and so on.

This will never happen.

Previously:

Prop 76: No
Prop 75: No
Prop 74: No
Prop 73: No

Proposition 78 -- recommend voting "no"

This proposition is billed as creating a state agency to help provide cheaper medications for lower-income Californians. The arguments against it claim that it is a misdirect by pharmaceutical companies designed to distract from the competing proposition, 79. I'm inclined to agree.

The first danger sign is that it defines "Lowest commercial price" as excluding purchases by government agencies. The upshot of this is that the bulk discounts achieved by large buyers such as Medical and Medicare will not be used to benchmark prices for the discounts to be negotiated based on this legislation. Basically, the state government agrees to disconnect from its otherwise massive negotiating power. This alone is a huge downcheck.

To qualify for assistance, you may earn up to 300% of the federally defined poverty line and may not have insurance, Medi-Cal, children's health insurance, disability or any other program. There's also an annual application that costs $15.

...and pharmaceutical advertising can be given out as "outreach" (see Chapter 3 of the proposition).

The proposition is also preloaded with "kill conditions" under which the agency can be shut down entirely.

There are several elements that, individually, would inspire me to vote "no" on this proposition. The idea that pharmaceutical advertising can be handed out to fulfill a mandate for outreach is unpleasant.

Previously:

Prop 77: No
Prop 76: No
Prop 75: No
Prop 74: No
Prop 73: No

Proposition 79 -- recommend voting "yes"

This proposition competes with Proposition 78, proposing an alternate approach to reducing prescription medication costs. To begin with, the qualifications for this proposition are much more inclusive, allowing pariticipation by state residents at up to 400% of the poverty line who do not have Medi-Cal or Healthy Families coverage, or any residents who have medical expenses equal to 5% or more of their income.

The negotiations would not be benchmarked to prices that exclude government-negotiated rates, which means that the full power of government agencies would theoretically combine to push drug prices down. The annual fee would be $10 and no advertising of any kind would be allowed in outreach literature.

Two completely novel elements are a regulatory commission and outlawing of price profiteering. The regulatory commission would be constructed from an eclectic set of people not associated with the pharmaceutical industry and would be charged with reviewing access to and pricing of prescription drugs. The proposition rather vaguely outlaws illegal profiteering, allowing the attorney general or any interested citizen to take up a case against a pharmaceutical company. This last part is the big sticking point of the legislation, but as the backers point out, pharmaceutical companies already press their own cases heavily in the court system.

Overall, I go with a "yes" recommendation on this, with my primary opposing concern being the potential for unnecessary civil cases being allowed by the vague definition of profiteering. As with all propositions, there is a severability clause, so it may be that this section could be ruled out as unenforceable or too vague without invalidating the remainder of the legislation.

Previously:

Prop 78: No
Prop 77: No
Prop 76: No
Prop 75: No
Prop 74: No
Prop 73: No

You can track voting results as districts report in here:

http://vote2005.ss.ca.gov

The site also tracks how the voting has gone on a county-by-county basis. It's much as you might expect. For example, the voting for Prop 73 (Parental notification for abortions) is a spine of "No" running down the coast -- though sadly stopping short of Orange County and my home town of San Diego -- with a body of "Yes" filling in the inland area, but for the rogue counties of Mono, Alpine and Nevada.

Check out the map for 73 here.

Thanks to Honeyfields for finding this site.

In other election news, San Francisco residents have voted to ban handguns. As the article points out, only Washington, D.C. and Chicago have similar bans.

You can read about the most recent California election results on both Al Jazeera and Xinhua.

Impressive. Of course, Al Jazeera cares because it's reporting on this mid-term election as a possible trend of backlash against the Republican party, whereas Xinhua is playing on the concept of Schwarzenegger as flailing celebrity.

Proposition 81 -- Recommend voting "no" (though I'm not totally happy about that)

It's election time again. Along with voting in various primary elections, the upcoming June 6th election gives you the chance to vote on two state propositions, and likely one or more local laws as well.

The first of the two statewide measures is Proposition 81, which would issue up to $600 million in bonds for the express purpose of building and renovating public library facilities statewide. This follows an earlier bond measure that left the state's needs unsatisfied.

Honestly, the return on investment for libraries is pretty good -- estimates I hit in my research ranged from a two- to five-fold return on investment. However, this is not measured in terms of money going back into state funds, and I'm concerned about adding more debt on top of our current debt right now. I understand that bond measures are a way to attempt to work around inability to alter policy in the legislature, and they may seem more palatable to voters who are inappropriately tax averse, but this line from the rebuttal to the argument against does not convince me:

"Under Prop. 81, the annual interest and principal payment will eb less than $2 per California resident..."

I'd prefer to pay that $2 in up-front taxes and have a state-owned principal that could be invested, gain wealth, and be used to fund libraries.

Other than the fact that it is a bond measure, the rest of the proposition is very well written to help build and support libraries statewide.

The other proposition this year is one that would levy an additional 1.7% tax on income over $400,000 for individuals (or $544,000 for heads of household, or $800,000 for married couples) to pay for universal preschool. Just to be clear, the additional tax is for income over the listed amount, so if you make $450,000, you're only being tapped for an additional 1.7% on the last $50,000. The program described would cover three hours a day and attempt to provide quality, universl preschool for every kid in the state.

The RAND corporation, in their study on the costs and benefits of universal preschool in California conservatively estimate that each dollar spent on preschool will generate $2.62 in returns for the state. Again, this is their conservative estimate; the estimated range goes from $2 to $4, and even that might be bumped up an additional 30-50% by trying to factor in less tangible outcomes such as reduced child neglect and abuse.

The arguments against Prop 82 in the voter guide are particularly misleading, and bear mentioning here. They state that a majority of California kids are in preschool, while factoring in settings without defined, qualified teachers -- daycare, for example. Not the same as preschool. In addition, they try to scare voters with the possibility of a "parent tax" -- this is due to a clause that, under exceptionally bad circumstances, would ask for a parent contribution while never refusing access to preschool even if a child's parents can't afford to contribute anything. There's the even more misleading statement that, "Proposition 82 could force the Legislature to raise taxes on all of us if the revenues aren't enough." This is "true" in exactly the same way that a desire for, say, better roads could "force" the legislature to raise taxes -- nothing in the proposed law requires it. Finally, they suggest as an alternative to universal preschool the money could fund "150 miles of new freeway lanes to ease traffic congestion."

There you go. What's better than universal preschool, which benefits us all both financially and by reducing abuse, neglect and the crime and problems that follow? One new lane from San Diego to Los Angeles.

Put your money in now and enjoy the better state you get to retire in. Vote yes on 82.

Previously:

Prop 81: No (sadly)

You know your state is a world power when it's making environmental agreements with sovereign nations.

Today, Tony Blair and Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a joint mission statement indicating that:

Britain and California will "commit to urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote low carbon technologies".

And:

"California and the UK recognise the linkages between climate change, energy security, human health and robust economic growth," it adds.

"Working together, California and the UK commit to build upon current efforts, share experiences, find new solutions and work to educate the public on the need for aggressive action to address climate change and promote energy diversity."

They are also looking at potential cooperation on an emissions-trading plan.

A spokesman for the British consulate denied that this is a workaround for President Bush, who withdrew from the Kyoto global warming accord and has been proactively shunning news of the need for environmentally driven changes for years.

Of course, on the whole, it makes sense for the UK (GDP $1.83 trillion) and California (GDP $1.54 trillion) to work together. And, if one did want to work around the executive, it's better to deal with 12.5% of the American economy than nothing at all.

The next election is sneaking up on us -- just over a month and change away, we'll all get to vote on a number of exciting new proposed laws, and possibly some new local officials as well. As before, I'll be reviewing this year's crop of propositions and giving each an up or down recommendation. This year, we have (now with links to my reviews added as the reviews are completed):

1A: Transportation Funding Protection Recommend "No"
1B: Highway Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality, Port Security Recommend "No"
1C: Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Recommend "No"
1D: Kindergarten - University Public Education Facilities Recommend "No" with caveat
1E: Disaster Preparedness and Flood Prevention Recommend "No"
83: Sex Offenders, Punishment, Residence Restrictions, Monitoring Recommend "No" (change of position)
84: Water Quality, Safety and Supply. Flood Control. Park Improvements and more. Recommend "No"
85: Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor's Pregnancy. Recommend "No"
86: Tax on Cigarettes. Recommend "Yes"
87: Alternative Energy. Research, Production, Incentives, Oil Tax. Recommend "Yes"
88: Education Funding. Property Tax. Recommend "Yes"
89: Political Campaigns. Public Financing. Corporate Tax Increase. Spending Limits. Recommend "Yes"
90: Government Acquisition of Private Property. Recommend "No"

Whew. That's quite a bit. I'll try to review each in a timely manner.

If you just can't wait for your sample ballot and voter information guide, you can read the full text of all the propositions at the Secretary of State's web site.

Proposition 86: Tax on Cigarettes. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute

If you've heard of any of this year's propositions, you've probably heard of this one. It's been on the receiving end of a blitz of negative campaigning, calling it another tax and decrying how only a minimal portion of its revenues will actually go to smoking prevention. Let's take a look at what it actually does and see how those ads might, just possibly, be shilling for big tobacco.

Prop 86 would add a 13 cent tax on each cigarette, and by extension (due to current California law) comparable tax increases on chewing tobacco and all other tobacco products. This would take the form of an excise tax, meaning that sales tax would be built on top of it. Funds pulled in by this new excise tax would go toward a number of health-related areas. First, money would go to backfill funds lost by Prop 10, which also taxes cigarettes. This would ensure that Prop 10's mandated early childhood development programs would not lose out just because people cut back on taxable smoking after the price increase. Of the money remaining after this backfill, 5% would go into the Health and Disease Research Account, funding studies on tobacco control and various cancers (breast, lung, other cancers). 42.25% would go into the Health Maintenance and Disease Prevention Account, providing health coverage for poor children, prevention and care programs for heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, cancer, asthma and putting money into a number of tobacco control and prevention programs. Finally, 52.75% would go into the Health Treatment and Services Account, which would put money into nursing education, nonprofit clinics, tobacco cessation, rural health services and, above all, paying money to hospitals for emergency and trauma care given to people who can't pay.

On the face of it, it might seem hard to argue with taxing cigarettes (a health care cost for the state) to support state public health. Hey, some people might even quit smoking in response. The major complaints levied against this, other than the tired call of "it's another tax" (this is hardly an income tax...) are that most of it doesn't go to tobacco prevention, that it pushes money into "greedy hospitals," and that it exempts hospitals from antitrust laws.

To the first argument, I say "So what?" It's a straw man. Taxes from cigarettes don't have to go to fighting smoking. Heck, you could tax cigarettes (a luxury) and put the money into roads or public transit (necessities) and it would make perfect sense. Taxing tobacco and putting the money into health care is a good fit, but not a necessary one.

To the second argument, I might simply point out that Doctor's Medical Center in West Contra Costa County is closing after estimated losses of $1.5 million per month. If you want to fight medical costs, fight pharma. Don't think that avoiding a tax on a known cancer-causing luxury good that could help keep hospital emergency departments open is a good way to send some kind of message.

To the third argument, I direct you to the fact that the exemption is solely for the purpose of letting hospitals work together to arrange disaster emergency services that are mandated by this proposition. It's a cheap trick to suggest that trying to keep hospitals from getting into trouble for cooperating on disaster drills is some ploy by those hospitals to "pull one over" on us. As a solid counterpunch, the law limits hospitals in the amount they can charge low-income patients and in their ability to sic debt collectors on patients. I admit that when I heard of an antitrust exemption I was suspicious, but having read the text of the law, it's nothing. Certainly nothing like what the counter-ads suggest.

You can get a read for the purpose behind a campaign by the quality of its arguments. The anti-86 ads push hard on a straw man argument, distrust of medical costs and a lie by omission (they mention antitrust, but completely without its incredibly restrictive context). If someone has to mislead you to get your vote, you know even they don't believe their own position. Prop 86 is a positive, in more ways than one.

You can read the text of Prop 86 here.

Tobacco companies have spent more than $69.9 million ($69,900,000) opposing Prop 86. You can read more about that by clicking here.

You can read my other reviews and recommendations on the propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 85: Waiting Period And Parental Notification Before Termination Of Minor's Pregnancy. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

Two elections ago, opponents of abortion introduced Prop 73, which they subtitled "Parent's Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative". This time around, they've resurrected the exact same measure with a more honest name. That said, it's still the same idea, with the same fundamental problems. Briefly:

This proposition would introduce a parental notification requirement prior to an abortion, with a 48-hour reflection period. This completely ignores the risks posed to young women coming from abusive or unhealthy home environments.

The young woman does have the option of going to a juvenile court to try and petition for the ability to go ahead without parental notification. The court is then obligated to make a judgment by 5pm the following day. As before, try to imagine a young woman somewhere in the Central Valley, with no access to a car or public transit, trying to make it to the juvenile court that's sixty miles away, twice in two days without her abusive father or mother noticing.

Once again, this proposition would allow parents to levy civil charges against a doctor who failed to notify them prior to performing an abortion. At any time prior to judgment, the parents could simply take $10,000 from the doctor in question. Again, I fear the clinic-chasing industry this could generate, with lawyers hunting for the free $10K.

As before, the notification must be sent certified mail, with delivery restriction and signature required, as well as a parallel mailing via first class mail. This part adds a touch of work for a doctor's office, but is the most reasonable part of the prop.

In reviewing Prop 86, I mentioned that you can gain vital understanding about a cause by the way it is argued. The arguments for Prop 86 focus on the unsupported idea that lack of parental notification laws lets young girls be pressured into sex (and then abortions) by sexual predators, and that abortion clinics callously profit from performing abortions on minors. Scanning through the capitalized words in the argument for this proposition, I see that the key concepts are PARENTS, SCHOOL-AGE GIRLS, ADULT MEN, SEXUAL ABUSE, and RAPE. The take-home message of the argument is that your daughters are being raped and forced to have abortions. In contrast, the arguments against this measure point out that it is impossible to legislate family communication, and that many young women come from dangerous homes where they are already being sexually abused, or face violence rather than caring should they find themselves pregnant.

This is my assertion: This kind of proposition is the lazy and callous way out. If you are a genuine opponent of abortion, I recommend that you lobby for greater funding for health and safety education for kids, especially at-risk kids. I recommend combined programs that are oriented toward helping kids lead healthy lifestyles, supporting abstinence and understanding safer sex measures, such that we can prevent dangerous behaviors, unwanted pregnancies and, at the end of the day, abortions. You could even support counseling for parents to help them not respond with violence, or to identify abusers more effectively. If a young woman feels she can talk with her parents or a counselor safely, she will. Forcing her to face parents she can't talk to will not make things better.

It is not worth the lives and health of our young women to promote your political goals.

You can read the text of Prop 85 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations on the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 84: Water Quality, Safety and Supply. Flood Control. Natural Resource Protection. Park Improvements. Bonds. Initiative Statute. - recommend No

Up front, I must say that it kills me to recommend against a proposition with such laudable goals. Proposition 84 is a bond measure that would put up $5.4 billion in bonds to fund water quality management (divided among the major water regions of the state, such as the Sacramento Delta and the Los Angeles area), protection of lakes, rivers and streams, flood control measures (oriented toward mapping, bolstering management efforts and giving state matching funds to local governments for similar efforts), substainable communities (urban greening and competitive grants to regional and local parks), protection of coastal waters, enhancement and repair of parks and recreation facilities, forest and wildlife conservation and statewide water planning.

As I said, laudable. There is nothing sneaky or underhanded in there, and all the goals are excellent. I support them. However, a $5.4 billion bond measure requires a payoff, over thirty years, of $10.5 billion. I would much prefer to see money paid out directly, now, by our legislature.

In what will become, I think, a regular feature of these reviews, let me touch briefly on the disingenuous claims made in the arguments for and against this proposition.

For: "Yes on 84 will not raise taxes..."

That's their emphasis, not mine. This is frankly dishonest. It does not literally raise taxes, of course. It just shovels a $10.5 billion debt onto Californians for the next thirty years.

Against: "This proposal eliminates protections against corruption and favoritism in current law and it bypasses our competitive bidding system."

Also false. The proposition eliminates competitive bidding for one allotment of $10 million tasked for emergency flood care - out of a bond measure that's worth $5.4 billion. It also does exempt the measure from some controls that require that regulations be vetted by the Office of Administrative Law, but per my reading of the appropriate text from the Government Code, this does not affect how the money is spent, but how any potential resulting rules are written (that is, they won't be vetted for clarity).

I'm disappointed that the authors put forward the misdirection tactic of claiming "no new taxes," but as we'll see in Prop 1E, our legislature does this as well. I'm similarly disappointed that the argument against pushes so hard on an allocation method that applies to less than 0.2% of the money involved.

You can read the text of Prop 84 here.

You can reach my reviews and recommendations on other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 1E: Disaster Preparedness and Flood Prevention Bond Act of 2006. - recommend No

Proposition 1E is part of a raft of five legislative measures designed to help rebuild California infrastructure. Prop 1E is focused on flood control and emergency preparedness measures, proposing putting up bonds worth $4.1 billion to pay for them. As I noted with Prop 84, even bond measures with entirely laudable goals face the fundamental problem that they load dramatic debt onto the state for the next thirty years -- in this case, $4.1 billion now requires a payoff of $8 billion later. For that reason alone, I must again recommend against this measure, and suggest that we all pressure our legislature to pay that money up front, now, out of our state budget.

The core expenditure in Prop 1E is a bolus of $3 billion directed to flood control and disaster preparedness measures in the Central Valley and the Sacramento Delta region. If you're a Southern California resident and these names aren't jumping out at you, the former is where the bulk of California's agriculture lives and the latter is the most consistent source of state flooding news as the rivers overflow every so often. $3 billion would be a substantial amount to direct to flood prevention in these areas; however, the current estimated price tag for the required refurbishing in the Cental Valley and the Delta comes to $7-12 billion. That is, anywhere from twice to four times the amount of the bond. I'm not convinced that making it a quarter of our way to the goal is worth $8 billion in debt. The scope of the problem suggests that incremental, up-front expenditures are really what is required.

Sadly, the argument for Prop 1E hauls out the same "no taxes" argument, saying "YES ON 1E: STRICT ACCOUNTABILITY AND NO NEW TAXES". Although it is not a literal tax, an $8 billion debt is effectively a tax on our future, and is not sound policy.

For the record, our state legislative bodies voted overwhelmingly for this bond measure. I recommend going back to them and telling them to start paying for these repairs directly, rather than mortgaging the future to avoid any hint of taxes now.

You can read the text of Prop 1E here.

You can reach my reviews of and recommendations on the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 87: Alternative Energy. Research, Production, Incentives. Tax on California Oil Producers. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. - recommend Yes

Prop 87 levies a tax on oil extracted from the land or waters of the state of California, directing the money so derived to efforts to transition our state over to clean, alternative energy sources. Specifically, it would tax oil generated in this state from 1.5-6%, depending on the current price, to feed into a trust fund that is capped at $4 billion. This trust fund would, in turn, pay out, with 57.5% going to reduction of gasoline and diesel use (including funding alternative fuel vehicles as well as ethanol and biodiesel), 26.75% going to research and innovation, 9.75% going to commercialization (providing matching funds to commercial developers), 2.5% to vocational training and 3.55 to public education and administration. The stated goal is to take California down 25% from its current level of petroleum use by the target date of 2017.

Given that California currently sucks down 16 billion gallons of petroleum products a year, chopping off 4 billion of this in a decade is not merely a good idea -- it might be underkill. That said, it's instructive to consider the arguments against, and then who's making those arguments.

Opponents of 87 claim that it generates new state bureacracy, allows the spending of $4 billion outside the state budgetary review process, reduces revenues for fire and public safety and doesn't give any money to schools.

I'll let you in on the punchline first -- these are misdirections. Prop 87 allows spending $4 billion "outside the state budgetary review process" because it collects an additional $4 billion from new sources -- specifically, oil companies that had record profits last year. This is the same reason no money goes to schools from this $4 billion -- it's entirely new money, not carved out of the state budget. The claim that less money will go to emergency services comes from the assessment that the tax-deductible nature of this new severance tax will result in $10 million less in income tax on oil companies annually (of which, a very small fraction would have been directed into emergency services). I'll trade that $10 million annually to get the $200-400 million annually that this new tax is estimated to pull in.

Here's another secret -- oil companies operating in California will pay about $14 million in income tax during the 2006-2007 fiscal year (that $10 million doesn't seem like such a loss now, does it?). In contrast, let's look at how much money they've put down opposing Prop 87:

• Chevron: $29 million
• Occidental Oil and Gas: $4.75 million
• Area Energy, LLP: $12.6 million
• Plains Exploration & Production Corp. (of Texas): $1.2 million
• Other out-of-state contributors: over $200,000
• Other in-state contributors: millions

That's right. Oil companies have put down more than $48 million ($48,000,000), or about three years of their current income tax tally, to avoid this measure. That speaks volumes.

Members of all political parties agree that alternative energy is critical. It's a national defense issue as much as it is an environmental and public health issue. Right now, 42% of California's oil needs are supplied from foreign sources. That means such stalwarts as Saudia Arabia, Iran and Venezuela form the basis of our defense and economic prosperity. We know from history that foreign oil producers can, and will, embargo us to make us cave. That's ridiculous, and it has to change. We can't let callous near-sightedness in oil companies make us vulnerable.

You can read the text of Prop 87 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations on the other propositions by clicking here.

You can see the source information for money spent opposing Prop 87 here and here.

Proposition 88: Education Funding. Real Property Parcel Tax. Initiative Consitutional Amendment and Statute. - recommend Yes

Prop 88 would add an extra $50 property tax on each parcel (e.g. a house, a business lot) and funnel the resulting funds into education. This $50 tax would not apply to people over 65 or the severely disabled. The estimated $450 million this would collect each year would be channeled as follows:

• First, money would be pushed into the General Fund to account for any other tax income lost due to deductions taken based on the new tax
  
• $175 million would go into class size reduction (grades K-12)
  
• $100 million would go into textbooks and instructional materials
  
• $100 million would go into school safety
  
• $85 million would go into "achievement" grants that supply funds to schools that are not otherwise being funded by state educational bonds, based on the presence of high-achieving students ($500 per student in the 6-10th percentile)
  
• $10 million for a longitudinal study of educational effectiveness
  

The observant among you might notice that this totals more than $450 million. Prop 88 accounts for this, requiring that expenditures be proportionally modified to match the actual revenue earned by the tax. It doesn't dip into outside general fund monies, in other words. As a corollary, the money can't be diverted into the general fund, either, and must be spent on the educational channels indicated above.

Along with the "it's another tax" argument against Prop 88, the opposing argument says that "your money goes to the State Legislature, which decides who gets your tax money..." This is a liberal interpretation of the actual text, which says that:

Funds appropriated pursuant to paragraphs (1) to (3), inclusive, of subdivision (b) shall be apportioned directly to school districts, county officers of education, and public charter schools on a per-pupil basis. Using variables and data that are objective, measurable, and auditable, the Legislature shall weight the per-pupil allocation to account for differential pupil-level costs associated with achieving state and federal achievement standards based on disabilities, English proficiency, or socioeconomic status.

Your money doesn't "go" to the legislature, although they are required to apportion it in a transparent manner. It doesn't surprise me that the opposing argument rings the twin bells of "taxes" and "fattened legislature", inasmuch as they don't have a lot of socially responsible ground to stand on. As you can see here, contributions to the opposing effort come largely from the Howard Jarvis Association (which dislikes any new tax) and from real estate developers.

Property taxes in California have been kept artificially low by Prop 13 -- especially taxes on business properties, which are typically leased out and thus not subject to revaluing following resale. Schools, largely supported by such taxes, have thus taken a funding hit for years, failing to receive funding in proportion with how many students we have in this state.

$50 is about the cost of a typical single month of cable television service, or a tank of gas for many vehicles, or one game for a home gaming system -- but taken altogether across the state, it could provide nearly half a billion dollars of additional educational funding, with all the benefits that entails.

Definitely worth it.

You can read the text of Prop 88 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations on the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 1A: Transportation Funding Protection. Legislative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

Prop 1A is a relatively inoffensive and concise bit of legislation that would add additional restrictions on how gas tax money (about $2 billion/year) is spent. A previous proposition, 42, put in place some protections on this money, requiring that it be spent for transportation needs unless the governor declares a financial emergency. He has since done this twice, once partially and once fully, in the last two years or so. Prop 1A would impose the following restrictions:

• Money diverted from the gas tax to the General Fund would have to be repaid, with interest
• More money could not be diverted in a subsequent year until all such repayment was completed
• No more than two fiscal years could be declared "emergency" years (that allow such diversion) in any ten-year window

As I said, concise and inoffensive. I'm against Prop 1A simply because I think our state legislature needs at least the responsiveness allowed by current law (in which a two-thirds vote and a declaration by the governor is required to declare a fiscal emergency and redirect gas tax money) to let our state weather potential fiscal or material emergencies.

Money for Prop 1A has come from pretty much anyone with an interest in transportation in one form or another, including housing construction companies, power companies, cargo transportation firms, banks, title companies, business groups, Native American groups and so forth. There are no committees working against Prop 1A.

Overall, I'm not a big fan of additional spending constraints. If you can't trust two thirds of our legislature to properly decide when there is or isn't an emergency, that suggests that you need to replace your current legislators.

You can see who's supporting Prop 1A financially here.

You can read the full text of Prop 1A here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 1B: Highway Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality, and Port Security Bond Act of 2006 - recommend No

Prop 1B is the second proposition in a raft of propositions kicked out by our legislature that are ostensibly oriented toward rebuilding California. It would authorize the state to issue bonds worth $19 billion to fund transportation projects. Of that $19 billion, $11.3 billion would go to highway and local road improvement (including a $1 billion allotment for State Route 99, which parallels Interstate 5 through the Central Valley and serves Bakersfield, Visalia, Fresno and Merced), $4 billion to public transit (largely to local rail programs), $3.2 billion to improving goods movement and air quality, and $1.5 billion for safety and security measures.

The goal of Prop 1B -- supporting our transportation infrastructure -- is clearly a good one. I'm even impressed by the attention paid to public transit. I am less impressed, however, by the grotesque bill of $39 billion California will have to pay to get this $19 billion up front. That's $20 billion burned on interest over the years -- and I guarantee that future generations will be looking back at us and bitterly complaining about how the debt load from our era is keeping them from maintaining transportation infrastructure.

As with Prop 1A, major supporters of this proposition include construction companies and road building groups, as well as the Automobile Club of Southern California and The California Alliance for Jobs, a group representing the interests of construction firms that has spent about a million dollars pushing this specific proposition.

Arguments for Prop 1B note that if we continue to underfund infrastructure as we've been doing, future generations will face an "infrastructure deficit" that they can't catch up with. True. Of course, if we borrow massively now to partially fill the current gap, then we're just swapping one future deficit with another. That's a no-win situation.

In the argument for, supporters of 1B once again trot out the claim that bond measures magically provide money "without raising taxes."

Spare me from arguments based on the financial wisdom of a college freshman with his first credit card. $39 billion in debt is a bad idea.

You can see who's spending money for Prop 1B here.

You can read the full text of Prop 1B here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations on the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 1C: Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Act of 2006. - recommend No

Prop 1C is the third of five propositions placed on the ballot by the legislature. Like the others, 1C is oriented toward state infrastructure -- in this case, housing.

Prop 1C is another bond measure, issuing $2.85 billion in bonds to fund various housing and residential projects. As with every other bond measure, Prop 1C would incur a considerable debt, costing $6.1 billion to pay off. The $2.85 would be split up as follows:

• $1.35 billion to development programs, including urban development (such as parks, sewer, transit and environmental cleanup), development near public transit and parks funding
• $625 million to home ownership programs such as assisting home ownership in low-income households and down payment assistance
• $590 million to provide loans for multifamily housing, housing with associated healthcare and housing for homeless youth
• $285 million to other housing programs including farmworker housing and homeless shelters

Yet again, the arguments for Prop 1C claim that it requires no new taxes. Once again, I have to point out that adopting over $3 billion in debt on top of the actual money that's going into housing and residential projects simply means $3 billion less to spend on housing or city development in the future. I agree with each and every one of the target projects for Prop 1C, but not with the use of a bond measure as a dodge around raising taxes or reapportioning money from other projects.

A convincing argument for this proposition (and others like it) has to be based on a cost-benefit analysis that demonstrates a net cost savings over the next three decades for a bond measure and its associated debt versus just paying the money incrementally as we go along. Otherwise, you're arguing for money to face infrastructure problems now at the expense of being able to deal with those problems later (and those problems will always exist).

Money supporting Prop 1C comes from people with a social welfare interest in city development, as well as from folks with a financial interest, including real estate developers, builders and so on.

You can see who's supporting Prop 1C here.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 90: Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

Prop 90 is intended to provide strong protection for property rights. It's being billed as protection against eminent domain, but in fact it goes far beyond that, buttressing property owners against any possible loss of value due to government decisions. Specifically, Prop 90 has three major provisions:

• Property can only be seized by eminent domain if it's going to be transferred to a public agency for a public use, rather than to a (different) private owner
• If seized property stops being used for the public good, it must be returned to the original owner, or heirs thereof
• The killer one: any revaluation of property value as a consequence of government action counts as "damage" that must be compensated by the government

When people refer to the "trap" in Prop 90, they're talking about that last one. The first two rules pertaining to eminent domain are quite reasonable, and I would love to see them on the ballot again at a later date. I agree that it's wrong and unhealthy that eminent domain has been used to convert housing to shopping malls. However, depending on how the court interprets "substantial economic loss," we could see a spate of law suits every time any new law goes into effect that can be interpreted to affect the value of a property. Naturally, this has the potential to bleed the state dry as irate property owners flood it in lawsuits.

So, who's supporting Prop 90? Oddly enough, the biggest contributions (over $3.3 million!) have come from out-of-state donors in Illinois, Colorado and New York. Maybe it makes me provincial, but I'm not keen on out-of-state political interests attempting to break my state.

Money to oppose Prop 90 has come in dribs and drabs from the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club, as well as individual small donors. Given that Prop 90 would make enforcement of even current environmental laws potentially crippling for the state, it's not surprising that the League and Club are opposed.

I'm frustrated that Prop 90 bundles a good idea -- constraining eminent domain -- with a terrible, terrible idea that will hemmorhage our state into oblivion. It's dishonest to combine these two concepts together and then parade people who have suffered from eminent domain around like sick children to grab sympathy and votes.

You can see who's supporting and opposing Prop 90 here.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 1D: Kindergarten - University Public Education Facilities Bond Act of 2006. - recommend No (with caveat)

Proposition 1D is the fourth of five infrastructure propositions put onto this year's ballot by the legislature. As its title suggests, Prop 1D is a bond measure designed to raise money to modernize older and build new K-12 and university-level facilities. It would issue $10.4 billion in bonds, which would cost about $20.3 billion to pay back.

Money from Prop 1D would be split about 70:30 between K-12 and university education. At the K-12 level, $3.3 billion would go into modernization, $1.9 billion would go into new construction (with up to 10.5% of that for seismic retrofitting), $500 million would go to building of new charter schools facilities, another $500 milion would go to career technical education programs, $1 billion to new construction at severely crowded schools, and $100 million to grants to promote use of materials that "include the attributes of high-performance schools" (I was unable to find a definition for this term). At the university level, $1.51 billion would go to community colleges, $890 million would go to the UC system, and $690 million would go to the Cal State system.

Prop 1D is another straightforward bond measure, as its relative brevity shows. It shares the same problem the other bond measures share, that of building up substantial debt. At the moment, I can't support accruing that kind of debt to build new facilities.

This brings me to the caveat mentioned above. I have looked, extensively, into research that relates money spent up front on education to social and economic benefits downstream. There are clear correlations between having education at all and economic prosperity and social gain. For example, completion of a high-school-level education correlates with reduced rates of drug use and crime, and increased salary and economic output. Projections on "what would have happened if the U.S. hadn't funded as much education" suggest that we'd be at about 80% of our current economic output. The Rand study on universal preschool demonstrated that it would have been a net economic gain for California. With all that said, I have been unable to find anything that supports the idea that improving physical facilities leads to an improvement in graduation rates and educational success.

That may sound like an obvious connection, but after substantial searching I have not yet found supporting evidence. I encourage anyone who reads this and does know about such studies to please point me toward them. It might change my mind. In the meantime, I must go with my "no" recommendation on Prop 1D.

Prop 1D has received funding from groups that support various public education institutions (individual groups supporting each UC campus, each Cal State campus, and one group that represents community colleges as a whole) and from a plethora of construction firms.

You can examine financial support for Prop 1D here.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations on the other propositions by clicking here.

Scott Baugh, head of the Orange County Republican Party is urging Republican candidate for the House Tan D. Nguyen to drop out of the race against incumbent Loretta Sanchez, following an apparent direct link between Mr. Nguyen and a letter that was recently circulated to Latino households in the area. The letter, mailed to 14,000 Democratic voters in Orance County, said (translated from Spanish):

"You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

Note that it said if you are an immigrant, you can't vote (which is quite, quite untrue, or our governor couldn't vote for all those propositions he supports this November). The Attorney General's office is looking into prosecuting this both as attempted voter intimidation and as a hate crime. For his part, Nguyen has lamely offered that "The mailer was flawed and ill-conceived," which is much like saying, "The mugging was flawed and ill-conceived" and hoping that'll let you stay out of jail.

Credit goes to Baugh for not trying to back such a dirty play, along with a little pity for having this happen on his watch.

I'm just plain old fascinated that someone named Tan Nguyen -- not even a "Bob" or "Michael" Nguyen, but a "Tan" Nguyen -- thought it was at all okay to disenfranchise immigrant voters to win. Thus my Malkin reference above. There's a certain branch of radical right-winger who cannot, under any circumstances, see how what they're doing or calling for applies to themselves, even though in the Nguyen-Malkin world, we'd logically go ahead and disenfranchise Vietnamese voters while we're interning Filipinos.

Sad, stupid and wrong.

The S.F. Chronicle story

Edit: Here's the Spanish text of the letter (apologies for ditching the accents):

Saludos --

Se le envia esta carta debido a que recientemente ud. fue registrado para votar. Si ud. es ciudadano de los Estados Unidos, se le ruega a que particpipe en el proceso democratico de la votaction.

We're sending you this letter because you recently registered to vote. If you're a U.S. citizen, we encourage you to participate in the democratic process and vote.

(So far, so good.)

Se la avisa que si su residencia en este pais es ilegal o si es emigrado, votar en una elecion federal es un delito que podra resultar in encarcelamiento, y si sera deportado por votar sin tener derecho a ello.

You are advised that if you are an illegal resident in this country or you are an immigrant, it is a crime to vote in a Federal election, and you could end up in jail or deported for doing so.

(Not so good. Keeping in mind that natural-born American citizens have been successfully disenfranchised by people saying, "Oh, you can't vote if you haven't paid your taxes/gas bill/etc", how would you parse the "if you are an immigrant, it is a crime to vote" statement? I'm the child of an immigrant -- don't worry, the English-speaking variety -- so I admit on not keen on this intentionally deceptive phrasing, especially aimed at an already-vulnerable population. I'll repeat again that native-born Americans have been successfully tricked out of the right to vote via propaganda campaigns in the past; do you think naturalized citizens are inherently smarter than native-born ones? If so, you should probably be pro-immigration...)

De la misma manera, se le avisa que el gobierno de los Estados Unidos esta instalando un nuevo sistema computerizado para verificar los nombres de todos los nuevos registrados que voten en las elecciones de octubre y noviembre. Organizaciones en contra de la emigracion podran pedir informacion de este nuevo sistema computerizado.

At the same time, you are advised that the U.S. government has installed a new computerized system to verify the names of all new registrants that vote in the October and November election. Organizations opposed to immigration can obtain information from this computerized system.

(They're lying. There is no national verification system for new voters for this election -- in fact, as documented recently on many news sources, there's no way for states to even talk to each other about who they have registered -- thus causing concerns about voter fraud that have nothing to do with immigrants. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 mandated state-level registration databases, which do exist. They just don't talk to each other at all or contain any verifying information -- it's just names and addresses.

If I were a naturalized citizen of Latino descent living in an area with a Minuteman group, I'd be pretty scared about that whole "your personal information handed out to anti-immigration groups" idea.)

No como en Mexico, aqui no se aporta ningun incentivo para votar. En los Estados Unidos no hay tarjeta de registro para votar. Por lo tanto, es inutil y peligroso votar en cualquier eleccion si ud. no es ciudadano de los Estados Unidos.

Unlike Mexico, here is this no incentive to vote. In the U.S. there is no voter registration card. For this reason it is useless and dangerous to vote in any election if you aren't a citizen of the United States.

(Say what? What's the incentive to vote in Mexico, other than the normal incentive of wanting to choose your government? As far as I can tell, the voter registration card in Mexico does not provide benefits beyond being able to vote. Perhaps someone can clarify that for me. This entire paragraph is fairly nonsequiter, but the take-home message is "voting scary and dangerous.")

No le haga caso a ningun politico qu le diga lo contrario. Estos solo velan por sus propios intereses. Solo quieren ganar las elecciones, sin importarles en lo mas minimo que le pase a ud.

Do not listen to any politician who tells you otherwise. They only take care of their own interests. They only want to win elections, without caring what happens to you.

(The final nail -- "Don't listen to anyone else! Even if they point out that naturalized citizens can vote! They don't care about you!")

A comment on my post about Tan Nguyen prompted me to track down the original Spanish-language version of the letter and translate it myself. People have been insisting that it's pro-citizen-voting, but I found it worse than I actually expected.

In short, after opening with a throwaway "we encourage citizens to vote" line, it not only misleadingly says that immigrants can't vote, but also that a national computer system is collecting everyone's information, and that anti-immigration groups will be able to access it. There is no national system accessible to anti-immigration groups. If I were a naturalized citizen of Latino descent living in an area with a Minuteman group, I'd be pretty freaked out by the concept of my registration information being handed out freely to militants who oppose my presence in the country. The letter ends with another nonsequiter threat of jail time, and urges the reader not to listen to any other politicians who might tell them they're allowed to vote.

I've posted the full Spanish text, with my translation, here.

Of course, all of this can obfuscate a key point -- this was sent to 14,000 registered Democrats. Why wasn't it sent to registered Republicans? Why wasn't it sent out in English? In Vietnamese? Surely Tan knows an illegal immigrant or two...

Proposition 83: Sex Offenders. Sexually Violent Predators. Punishment, Residence Restrictions and Monitoring. Initiative Statute. - recommend No (I changed my recommendation on this given doubts about the GPS and residency requirements)

Prop 83, called "Jessica's Law" by its proponents, is a prop that would restructure a number of sex-offense-related penalties, modify how sex offenders are treated after their jail time is done, and build a GPS tracking system for registered sex offenders.

Prop 83 modifies a reasonably large chunk of the penal code as it relates to sex crimes. Among the notable changes:

• An attempted sexual assault during a home invasion would rate life with the possibility of parole
• The age gap to quality for "aggravated sexual assault of a child" (under 14) would be reduced from 10 years to 7 years (that is, if you are 7 or more years older than the child, it becomes an "aggravated" assault)
• Possession of child pornography would automatically be a felony
• Attempting to contact a minor with intent to commit various offenses would qualify as "intent to commit" those offenses (this is geared toward allowing prosecution of people attempting to pick up kids online)
• The definition of "violent felony" is amended to include sodomy and oral copulation committed with a threat of future retaliation (that is, a threat such as "If you resist, I'll come back later and kill you" would automatically up the crime from a felony to a "violent felony"). Prior "violent felonies" in a criminal record lead to longer sentences for any subsequent offenses
• It would remove a ten year "timeout" on consideration of prior convictions in enhancing (adding to) jail time for new convictions
• It would add "spousal rape" to the list of crimes that, as prior convictions, lead to enhanced prison sentences
• It would increase certain fines for sex offenses
• It expands the list of circumstances that can bump up penalties for sex offenses -- the most notable addition here being that administration of a controlled substance is one of these penalty enhancers, even if it was administered without threat (previously, administration of a controlled substance was only an enhancer if a threat was used to make the person take it)
• It would increase the length of parole for people released from "life" convictions from 5 to 10 years
• It would increase the prohibited zone (in which sex offenders can not life) around public parks and schools from about 1,300 feet to 2,000 feet.
• Along with a few other things, the other two big features are the GPS system and a reworking of psychiatric holds on sex crime convicts, as I'll discuss below

Under certain circumstances, a person can be defined as a "sexually violent predator" (SVP) and held in a psychiatric facility after their jail time is completed. The current rules for classifying someone as an SVP require two victims during separate crimes and a mental health determination. Prop 83 would revise this to require only one victim. Also under current law, someone classed as an SVP receives a court hearing every two years to determine if they should still be held in a psychiatric facility. Prop 83 would revise this regulation to no longer require the biannual court review, instead requiring an annual medical determination.

Prop 83 would also require GPS tracking of certain sex offenders. Specifically, GPS tracking would be required for parolees during the period of their parole, and for registered sex offenders for the duration of their registered time. Note that in many cases, this means the person will be subject to GPS monitoring for life, as their status as a registered sex offender is lifelong. The estimated cost of this monitoring is on the order of $200 million or more per year. Offenders subject to monitoring would be required to cover the cost of their monitoring, subject to their ability to pay. In addition, certain fines for sex offenses would be bumped up by $100-300, with the added money going to DNA testing labs, the DoJ DNA testing fund, and to the monitoring effort.

There are quite reasonable arguments for and against certain components of Prop 83. Opponents argue that habitual sex offenders habitually avoid registration anyway, so the GPS system will not help. In addition, there are complaints that certain offenses (primarily statuatory rape) will lead to lifelong complications for people, as it will prevent them living near schools and parks. Arguments for Prop 83 hinge on the promise of increased protection against sex crimes, especially protection of children.

I am not a big fan of the police state concept. California's prisons are overflowing, including a lot of people whose primary crime is being an addict. That said, sex offenders -- especially those who qualify as "violent" under the current (or Prop 83-modified) penal code are exactly who should be occupying our prisons. The strength of Prop 83, for me, is its enhancement of penalties for sex offenses, including psychiatric containment for the specific subset of sexually violent predators. It is possible that these are individuals who can be rehabilitated, but they're toward the end of a long, long line of more viable prospects such as addicts and petty criminals. Maybe one day we'll work our way through that list, but in the meantime I prefer not to take it on faith that violent sex offenders are all better just because they've been in prison for a decade.

Financial support for Prop 83 includes a lot of people you'd expect it to -- police agencies, sheriff's groups and so forth -- and a couple I didn't expect to find. Notable standouts giving large donations include the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians and Desert Valley Medical Group in Victorville, CA. I was so curious about both groups (each gave $150,000) that I called them up to see if they had anything to say on the topic. Although Desert Valley had no prepared comment, the Viejas Band was pleasingly responsive. Bob Scheid, in charge of press and media relations, was good enough to get back to me and explain why Viejas was involved in this proposition.

Paraphrasing our telephone conversation: The Viejas band has a well-known reputation for nurturing children and honoring elders. Although this latter aspect of tribal life -- honoring elders -- is more commonly known, Viejas has a strong commitment to education and healthcare for its kids, as part of their goal of nurturing and protecting future leaders in the tribe and in the community. When they saw the initial petition going around for this proposition, they decided that it fit with their priorities, and that they wanted to see it receive a public hearing and debate. That's why they helped in the drive to get it on the ballot (something I didn't know they were involved in). As Mr. Scheid said, "the timing and the issue were right."

I'd like to thank Mr. Scheid and the Viejas people in general for being so responsive to a random private citizen calling to ask them about their politics.

My conclusion about Prop 83 is that I am fully in favor of the extended penalties and the changes to the psychiatric hold policy for sexually violent predators. I am unsure whether the $200 million annual outlay for the GPS will really yield enhanced protection, and I imagine it will receive some amount of legal challenge before it is enacted.

Edit: Following convincing arguments, I think the GPS program will probably not do much to help with the problem of sexual predators, and the new residency requirements will literally force registered offenders out of cities (which might drive them into other states -- I'm not sure what happens then). I still really want to see a package of enhanced penalties and the ability to hold violent offenders indefinitely based on medical cause, but I think the GPS system and residency rules represent too heavy a burden to go with those benefits. Thus, I've decided to vote against 83.

You can see who's supporting the effort for Prop 83 here.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

As I mentioned in my earlier review of Prop 86, there's been a lot of advertising on the air and in the mail opposing Prop 86. The core message of the no on prop 86 campaign is that "it's a new tax, and less than 10% of it goes to helping people stop smoking." A piece of junk mail I tossed today went so far as to claim that less than 10% goes for this purpose, and the rest goes to "bureaucratic programs."

As a wise commentator pointed out on the radio earlier this week, by definition, any operation of more than one person has organization -- that is, a bureaucracy. It's a bad buzzword, but it also applies to everything from a family dinner to the IRS.

This "less than 10%" argument is a shameless misdirection -- that is, it's basically a lie. Sure, about 10% of the money gained does go to smoking cessation. But as I pointed out earlier, the smoking lobby that says this is basically trying to convince you that that's the point of Prop 86, and therefore it's a failure.

This is a lie.

Prop 86 is a tax on a luxury item (one that happens to cost our health care system a ton of money) that feeds money into the healthcare system. It's nice that a massive healthcare cost item (smoking) is being used to support health care in the state under Prop 86, but there's zero cause to imagine taxes on cigarettes can only go into smoking cessation programs. Prop 86 taxes cigarettes to help provide medical care to people. Simple, logical and sane.

I understand having your cigarettes cost more money may be upsetting. That said, I'm upset that you're raising my health insurance costs -- and you are, because health insurance costs are distributed across all the insured folks. I want money flowing back into our overburdened hospitals so that they're there when I need them, when you need them, and when our neighbors need them. A tax on a luxury item is a good, good way to handle this.

...and, since I didn't do this before, who's spending all that money to oppose Prop 86? Major contributors include:

• R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company - $22,610,000
• Cigar Association of America, Inc. - $900,000
• Philip Morris USA, Inc. - $23,900,000
• U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. - $2,311,000
• Commonwealth Brands, Inc. - $1,250,000

...and that's just the big ones. That's over $69.9 million ($69,900,000) in money spent to block Prop 86 by tobacco companies.

I encourage you all to write letters to the editor and otherwise let people know just who's fibbing to you about Prop 86, because it's the people who stand to gain the most money from continuing to sell mass quantities of cigarettes in our state, and they do not have your best interests at heart.

You can see the full list of who's spending money on Prop 86 here.

Proposition 89: Political Campaigns. Public Financing. Corporate Tax Increase. Campaign Contribution and Expenditure Limits. Initiative Statute. - recommend Yes

Prop 89 is a nearly comprehensive package of campaign finance reform measures that would sharply curtail campaign fundraising from a number of sources while offering government money to candidates instead. This money would be derived from a slight bump in the state corporate income tax, from 8.84% to 9.04% (a 0.20% increase). Positions covered by this prop would include governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, controller, insurance commissioner, superintendent of public education, senate, assembly and board of equalization.

Prop 89 would lower contribution limits as well as lowering the amount of money candidates and corporations could spend in support of ballot measures. Generally, 89 cuts allowed contributions from individuals and small committees to fund candidates by 5-6 fold, and imposes a new cap on donations from state political parties to candidates. It would not limit expenditures on ballot measures by individuals (that would be unconstitutional) or by political action groups.

To receive public funding, a candidate would have to acquire between 750 and 25,000 $5 donations from individuals in the state (the numbers become higher as you go from assembly member up to governor). A qualifying candidate could raise "seed money" up to 18 months prior to a given primary election -- this would not be state funding, but would not disqualify them from receiving state funding following the primary. All recipients of public money would be required to participate in public debates.

In the event that a candidate receiving public money faced a candidate receiving private money who had more than a given amount, the public money would be increased in parallel (not necessarily to match, though).

Campaign debts would also have to be repaid or written off within 90 days of the election for which they were incurred. Note that many candidates currently carry campaign debt well past this point, especially for larger positions.

Arguments for Prop 89 have hammered the drum of "stop the corruption", pegging on the large amount of corporate financial involvement in elections in California.

Arguments against Prop 89 are a mix of the legitimate and the less so. They maintain that Prop 89 is a "power grab" by a single special interest. Indeed, 89 is almost completely supported by $2.8 million in contributions from the CA Nurses Association PAC. Notably, the campaign finance limitations of Prop 89 vis-a-vis bond measures would not apply to PACs such as the Nurses Association. Another argument against Prop 89, that it's a "tax increase to support negative campaigning" is purely ridiculous. Given the substantial caps on campaign spending Prop 89 would impose, it would necessarily reduce negative campaigning.

People spending money against Prop 89 include various insurance companies, Miller, the Western Growers PAC, Sempra, PG&E, SoCal Edison, the CA Farm Bureau, Chevron and various real estate companies.

Prop 89 would, indeed, introduce some radical spending controls in California elections. I had some hesitation about that at first, but consider this: combined corporate spending against Props 86 and 87 sums to more than $118 million ($118,000,000). That's over three bucks for every person in the state. Do you think we, as citizens, can match that spending power?

I'd rather not have political debate washed out by a flood of corporate money every time they take issue with a proposition or candidate.

You can see who's spending money on Prop 89 here.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read reviews and recommendations on the other propositions by clicking here.

I've made an effort to break down, in detail, this year's batch of propositions. Here's a reprise of my list of reviews, with links to each review and a very, very short summary of why I'm recommending a "Yes" or "No" on each:

1A: Transportation Funding Protection No, because it would limit our state's ability to alter spending to match emergencies or pressing needs.
1B: Highway Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality, Port Security No, because it would incur massive debt, rather than spending money up front for safety, traffic and ports.
1C: Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund No, again because it would incur huge debt rather than taking responsibility and paying for these items up front.
1D: Kindergarten - University Public Education Facilities No, because it would incur debt without showing that the return on facilities means we should use bond measures rather than spending the money piecemeal.
1E: Disaster Preparedness and Flood Prevention No, because it would build debt for something that should be handled by continuous spending, each year.
83: Sex Offenders, Punishment, Residence Restrictions, Monitoring Change of position: No, because the GPS system is unlikely to help prevent sex offenses, and because the new residency rules would hinder, rather then help. However, I still support the concept of enhanced prison sentencing and medical containment for violent sex offenders, and would like to see those components reissued and enacted on their own.
84: Water Quality, Safety and Supply. Flood Control. Park Improvements and more. No, because it would incur debt now for something that should be handled by continuous spending, each year.
85: Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor's Pregnancy. No, because it would endanger the most vulnerable of our young women by forcing them toward back-room abortions or subjecting them to increased family violence.
86: Tax on Cigarettes. Yes, because it would tax a luxury item and health care expense to help support our state's overburdened health care system.
87: Alternative Energy. Research, Production, Incentives, Oil Tax. Yes, because it would tax profit-rich fossil fuels producers to help develop a new fuel technology that is critical to our national security and state financial health.
88: Education Funding. Property Tax. Yes, because it funds education, which will feed directly back into our state's prosperity.
89: Political Campaigns. Public Financing. Corporate Tax Increase. Spending Limits. Yes, because it will keep corporations from destroying public debate with a deluge of money.
90: Government Acquisition of Private Property. No, because it would bleed the state dry with frivolous lawsuits by corporate land owners.

Again, each linked page has a full review of the appropriate proposition, as well as my recommendation, links to the proposition text and links to information on who's funding the political effort for and against the prop.

Some general comments:

Props 1B-E, which came from our legislature, represent an unwillingness on the part of the legislature to actually represent us and make financial decisions. These bond measures, which would produce an aggregate $73.4 billion ($73,400,000,00) in debt, are a dodge around having to decide to either increase taxes or move money away from current spending. I understand the political motivation here. Raised taxes and decreased funding are very evident to voters who are directly affected, whereas incurring debt -- even debt that amounts to about $2,000 per current resident of this state -- is an abstract concept. My personal requirements for a bond measure are that either (1) we can reasonably estimate that it will pay off more than the total debt load over time (for example, universal preschool met this requirement) or (2) it can jumpstart a new industry in this state. I'm not callously asking that everything have a financial reward with point 1; I just want to know why we need to incur debt rather than paying incrementally. If you can convince me that debt up front is the best approach, I'll vote for the proposition.

Props 86 and 87 are both being hammered by multimullion dollar campaigns against which focus on misdirections and other near-lies in the hopes that people will not actually read what the proposed laws would do. My fear is that this is all too likely.

Prop 85 is a tired retread of the parental notification law effort that was tried once before. Let me repeat it here -- using young, vulnerable women as a political tool in an attempt to incrementally limit abortion is cynical and cruel. Prop 85 specifically targets a group that is most at risk, most in need of help and completely unable to vote against it. If you want to keep young women from getting abortions, I recommend putting effort into keeping them safe, giving them opportunities and helping them out of dangerous situations. Any of those would be superior to endangering their lives to make a point.

Prop 83 has brought by far the most commentary my way (and was the only Prop for which I actually contacted some of the supporters). Following due consideration, I've decided to change my vote to "No" on this prop.

My support of 83 was largely driven by the paired concepts of enhanced penalties for offenses and indefinite containment of violent offenders for medical cause. I still support both concepts, and would like to see them enacted statewide.

That said, I am unconvinced that the GPS monitoring system will help, and I have been convinced that the new residency rules will actually cause problems by driving registered offenders out of cities. While this might be good for me personally (I actually live literally next to a public park, and in a park-laden city...I don't know if you can find a place here that's not within 2,000 feet of a park or school), this becomes a "make it someone else's problem" approach. I can't support that.

I've updated my general voting guide and the entry on Prop 83 to reflect this change of opinion.

I'm not sure how much this will matter to others, inasmuch as election day is tomorrow, and nearly half of the voters in California have already voted absentee. Still, I wanted it to reflect my change of opinion.

I'm going to briefly discuss how the propositions fared in this year's elections, but first let me point out this comparison. The map on the left is Prop 73, the first "parental notification" prop, from 2005, and the map on the right is this year's reprise of the exact same concept, Prop 85. On the left, red counties voted majority against. On the right, blue counties voted majority against.

Prop 73 was put down by a 52.8% against vote; Prop 85 was put down by a 54.1% against vote. This may reflect demographic shift in who voted this time, however, note that the counties that went against this time include more in the center of the state, and bridged a gap running down the coast.

As I said in my review, Props 73 and 85 are cynical and harsh ways to try and prevent abortion by targeting those who have no direct power to vote against it. To those who supported it, I recommend taking a cue from David Kuo and understanding that the solution to problems that lead to abortions -- especially among young women -- will not come through legislation that makes life harder for the young girls in question. Abortions among this age group are a symptom of other problems, problems that can be addressed socially (and even perhaps through constructive legislation that builds social programs).

More on the other props in the extended.

The web site of the California Secretary of State (Debra Bowen, by the way) has many useful pages, including one where you can check on the status of proposed initiatives.

There, for example, you can learn that the 2008 primary election will feature a proposition concerning transportation funding.

You also can watch the developing story of an attempt to not only ban same-sex marriage in the state, but to be flat-out cruel to people, same-sex or otherwise, who are committed partners but aren't actually married. An initiative titled "Marriage. Elimination of Domestic Partnership Rights." failed to make it on the ballot when it was circulated between late June and late November. Now, with nearly the exact same wording, it's been circulated again. They needed 598,105 signatures to get it on the ballot; according to the Secretary of State's website, it's in the "raw count of signatures" stage (followed, I think, by validation of those signatures if the raw count passes the needed amount).

Were this another "marriage is a man and a woman, and the rest of you can have civil unions" approach, then it would be something I might disagree with, but can definitely understand. But it's not. Here's the summary text:

Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between one man and one woman is valid or recognized in California. Prohibits decreasing marriage rights shared by one man and one woman. Voids or makes unenforceable certain rights and obligations conferred by California law on same-sex and heterosexual couples registered as domestic partners, concerning subject areas including, but not limited to, community property, intestate succession, stepparent adoption, child custody, child support, hospital visitation, health care decisions for an incapacitated partner, insurance benefits, death benefits, and recovery for wrongful death. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local governments: Unknown, but potential increased costs for state and local governments. The impact would depend in large part on future court interpretations. (06-0029.)

You got that? Not only can't you get a marriage, if you're not married (even if you are a man and a woman in a lifelong union) you can't:

• Own shared property
  
• Both have custody of your kids
  
• Share insurance
  
• Visit your loved ones in the hospital
  
• Take care of an incapacitated loved one
  
• Or receive any kind of benefit from your partner's insurance, or any settlements should something happen to them
  

That's not protecting the concept of marriage. That's cruelty.

But then it's not about protecting a sacred institution, really. Fortunately, it's also not about success. Larry Bowler and Randy Thomasson, backers of this initiative, have been trying to get it through since at least sometime in 2005, with repeated failures.

Randy's self-promotion page says that he's all about family values and protecting marriage. I'd think that rather than keeping unmarried people from having some of the legal rights of marriage, it'd be a lot more important to provide counseling and other resources to cut down the divorce rate. After all, an unmarried guy and gal getting to see each other in the hospital is a lot less destructive to the institution of marriage than one in every two marriages failing.

But that would be hard. And Randy and friends wouldn't get to control other people.

In Spring of 2006, Kaiser Permanente got caught dumping a patient in downtown Los Angeles, well over ten miles from the medical facility she'd been in and from her own home.

Now, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center appears to have done Kaiser one better, dumping a paraplegic patient on the street. Apparently, Hollywood Pres has been accused of this before. This time, witnesses actually recorded the license plate number of the truck from which the man was dumped.

It's good to see increasing intolerance for this kind of behavior.

As I've mentioned before, the California Secretary of State's website has a page devoted to the proposition pipeline. Briefly, this page lists the status of propositions as they make their way through that pipeline, tracking their progress from the Attorney General's office, then into circulation for signatures, then on to signature counting and verification, and finally to the ballot proper, if the proposition makes it that far.

It is at once a good preview of what's coming up and a window into what people would like to see on the ballot -- although in some cases, that's almost certainly not going to happen. Let's take a look...

Propositions you will be voting on in the near future

Transportation funding - On the February, 2008 primary ballot, this prop attempts, once again, to completely sequester transportation funds away from the rest of the state budget. I've recommended against this before, and I suspect I will again.

High-speed passenger train - On the November, 2008 general election ballot, this prop would start building on a high-speed rail system connecting the major metropoli of California, starting with a Los Angeles to SF connection. Interesting.

Propositions waiting on signature verification

Community college funding - It looks like this one would restructure how community colleges are run, as well as capping student fees.

Propositions waiting on the signature count

Single-payer health care - Another attempt at a state healthcare system. Just at a glance, I think this will fail, if for no other reason than that it appears to actually prevent people from having their own private insurance. I just don't see that going over well -- and there will certainly be a ton of money spent against this one, come election time.

Failed props that you won't be voting on

Single-house legislature - This prop sought to enact sweeping changes in California's legislature, collapsing it into one, fairly compact body of fifty to eight members, elected for two years at a time in a "non-partisan manner", whatever that means.

Initiatives in circulation

Here's where the entertainment value starts. These are would-be props currently being passed around to collect signatures. Some will likely make it on the ballot, others are plain goofy.

Temporary jail facilities - This prop seeks to allow temporary jail facilities to be used to deal with jail overcrowding. This is a huge issue in California -- we even recently tried to outsource prisoners to another state (that didn't work). The prop would also limit workers comp payments made to prisoners. Note that this all concerns county prisons and prisoners only.

Unlimited compensation - This is the first goofy one. Remember Prop 90, with its sneaky third clause that would have bled taxpayers dry and destroyed environmental and zoning laws? This one is Prop 90 +++. Not only does it make the government (and individual public employees!) far more sue-able, it also "Requires public entity taking private property to compensate owner at owner’s stated value, without limitation or review." So if there's a blighted, broken-down home on your block full of crack dealers, the owner can just say "Yeah, it's worth ten million dollars," and your local city council either coughs up the unreasonable cash or leaves it alone. Feels like someone woke up on the wacky side of libertarianism when they wrote this one.

Tangible ballots - This is a straightforward proposition that would require that all voting, electronic or otherwise, yield a physical ballot that can be counted "through use of ordinary physical senses." Assuming there's nothing sneaky in there, I approve of this one. It's way to easy to spoof contemporary voting machines.

Recording of contacts with peace officers - Let me just quote this one:

Requires peace officers to create an audio-visual recording of all contacts with or searches of citizens. Requires that a copy of the recording be provided to affected citizens who are arrested and charged with a crime. Mandates dismissal of pending criminal charges for arrests after January 1, 1996, if the individual charged did not receive a copy of an audio-visual recording of the related contact or search. Requires two-thirds vote of Legislature to amend provisions.

Did you follow that? Police have to make video recordings of all contacts with citizens. Not only that, but any pending charges for arrests after 1996 -- so, for the last decade -- will be dropped if that wasn't done. This one's the winner for pure goofiness. I just imagine the proponent has a pending criminal case from 1997 or something, and they're hoping to get this passed in time to get off. I can't think of any real, sane reason to retroactively apply a requirement for videorecording for all citizen contacts.

Bonus points if the idea of police officers videotaping you every time they talk to you makes you uncomfortable. Sounds like there might be some privacy issues there, right?

Wealth tax - Would add in several hundred billion in taxes. Yeah, this one's not getting enough signatures.

Term limits - Reduces the maximum state legislature term from 14 to 12 years, and makes this cumulative across both houses, with some exceptions for folks who are in office right now. I'm not so hot on term limits, but I could see this accruing enough signatures.

Workers' comp - This would expand the power and scope of workers' comp. If this does garner enough signatures, it's going to be buried in money spent by the opposition campaign.

Redistricting I - Redistricting is a popular topic for propositions. The last shot taken at redistricting would have handed it off to three retired judges. This one would use a panel of eleven registered voters. I'm still not won over. Fortunately, we have...

Redistricting II - Don't like three judges or eleven voters? What about...a panel of eleven voters. The explanatory summary for these two redistricting props is almost exactly the same, except that one is estimated to raise costs, the other to lower them. The monetary devil, I suppose, is in the details.

That's the current prop pipeline for 2008 -- and there's more to come! Even as you read this, another eight propositions are being reviewed by the Attorney General's office.

Harm reduction is the notion that public policy should be aimed at saving lives and keeping people healthy, rather than moralizing at them at the expense of everyone's public health. A classic example of harm reduction at work is needle exchange programs, in which people can bring in used hypodermic needles and acquire brand-new, sterile ones.

The California State Assembly this week moved toward greater harm reduction with a vote to repeal a ban on funding needle exchange programs with state money:

Despite opponents' assertions that needle exchange programs promote drug use, they have been legal in California since at least 1999, if authorized by a city or county. Local and state funding of the programs is also legal, but California law prohibits the use of state grants to pay for the needles themselves. The federal government does not fund the programs.

On Friday, the Office of AIDS in the state Department of Health Services approved $750,000 a year for three years to 10 needle exchange programs to cover staff costs, program expansion and purchase of any materials except needles. They include programs in Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz and an organization in Alameda County.

People who say that needle exchange programs promote drug use like making baseless assertions without bothering to check in with the public-health benefits of these programs. Consider the case of Australia, which moved into needle exchange programs in a big way in the early 90s. A recent study looking at the return on investment in Australian needle exchange programs showed that cities with such programs saw an annual 18.6% drop in HIV prevalence, compared with an annual 8.1% increase in cities without such programs. In other words, the total HIV burden on cities actually drops when needle exchange programs are in place.

So that means fewer people with HIV, and fewer deaths -- but it also means massive cost savings. Needle-exchange programs have cost various Australian governments $130 million since their inception in the early 90s...but over the course of that decade, they saved those same governments at least $2.4 billion. A 1700% return on investment would be awesome if you hit it in the stock market, and is just as amazing when it's your tax dollars being saved.

Harm reduction means setting aside the desire to punish and moralize, instead choosing to help your fellow humans first and foremost. In doing so, we usually realize that we, too, benefit from this approach -- both in compassion and in hard, empirical finance.

The open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine hits us on the international and the state level with two opinion and analysis pieces on the topic of disease and its prevention.

At the international level, Kouyate et al tell us about The Great Failure of Malaria Control in Africa, with a specific focus on the situation in Burkina Faso. As they remind us, the scope of malaria in Africa is epic, and its impact epicly terrible.

Malaria remains the most important parasitic disease affecting humans [1]. Every year, there are some 5 billion clinical episodes resembling malaria, some 600 million clinical malaria cases, and about 1 million malaria deaths [2]. The great majority of the malaria burden falls on the poor rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and most deaths occur in young children [1,2]. Malaria is considered a major barrier to the development of SSA [3].

In addition, treatment and prevention measures just aren't taking hold. Despite being tremendously effective in preventing malaria, insecticide-treated netting is still massively underutilized. In addition, treatment options for people suffering from malaria are limited. In the case of Burkina Faso, the country's entire health budget amounts to $9 per person per year. Consider that not just in light of whatever you had for lunch yesterday, but also based on the expected six fever or malaria episodes each child will suffer each year, and the $2 cost of treatment for each such episode (just to clarify, that's $12 of treatment each should should receive each year, on average...and that's just treatment, and not prevention, research, or any other function of health spending).

Drug-resistant forms of malaria are spreading, and knowledge about which drugs are now out of date, or may still work, has not been spreading to match.

The authors end by calling for a realistic approach to treatment of malaria in very poor African nations:

Unfortunately there is no ideal world. As sufficient funds for high coverage provision of ACT [artemisinin-based combination therapy -- the most medically effective approach, but also quite expensive] are currently not available, an appropriate interim solution would be to use a pragmatic combination of two affordable drugs. The obvious choice would be the combination of pyrimethamine–sulfadoxine and amodiaquine, which has been shown to be as effective as ACT in a number of SSA countries, including Burkina Faso [38–40].

However, after it became clear that Burkina Faso would not receive GFATM funds for the purchase of ACT, the NMCP of Burkina Faso asked the World Bank to use a portion of an existing US$12 million loan from the Global Strategy and Booster Program to purchase pyrimethamine–sulfadoxine and amodiaquine as an interim solution. This request was rejected with the argument that WHO recommends only ACT. As a result, chloroquine remains factually the first-line malaria treatment in Burkina Faso. These observations support the view that SSA countries continue to be victims of ignorance and lack of coordination between external donors and international organisations [41,42].

So, to summarize, Burkina Faso went to the world bank asking for money for the drugs it could afford, but the World Bank refused, being only willing to give money for the one treatment recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Of course, the problem here is that $12 million worth of ACT wouldn't have done the job. The authors hope that international agencies will get their act together and stop making decisions that punish poor nations for being poor by refusing them any kind of medical assistance.

Moving from the international scene to the California scene, Grudzen and Kerndt ask if it's time to regulate the adult film industry. As they point out, the adult film industry is a multi-billion dollar industry ($9-13 billion, which if you have a good memory, is about a thousand times as much money as the entire country of Burkina Faso requested from the World Bank for malaria treatment), although it formally employs a fairly small pool of people -- 1,200-1,500 performers. Throughout this article, the authors focus on an estimated 200 production companies. These latter two values feel like underestimates.

Their big issue is with the fact that pornography was legalized by case law rather than by statute, and thus is not nearly as regulated as most other industries that involve bodily fluids (such as being an EMT, for example). The performers are typically required to engage in unprotected, often high-risk sex acts, with the expected consequences:

The current practice of periodic HIV and STD testing may detect some disease early, but often fails to prevent transmission. The most recent HIV outbreak occurred when three performers who had been compliant with monthly screening contracted HIV in April of 2004 [6]. At that time, a male performer who had tested HIV negative only three days earlier infected three of 14 female performers.

Other STDs are also highly prevalent in the industry. Among 825 performers screened in 2000–2001, 7.7% of females and 5.5% of males had chlamydia, and 2% overall had gonorrhea [7]. These rates are much higher than in patients visiting family planning clinics, where chlamydia and gonorrhea rates were 4.0% and 0.7%, respectively [8]. Some might argue that this program of STD testing keeps rates of HIV and other STDs lower than in other sex-related industries, and in fact, a recent study of prostitutes in San Francisco found 6.8% and 12.4% positivity rates for chlamydia and gonorrhea, higher than rates in the adult film industry [9].

Notably, as an isolated public health issue, this is unfortunate for the people involved, but really doesn't matter nearly as much as some others. But the authors point out that it isn't just the performers who are affected:

The portrayal of unsafe sex in adult films may also influence viewer behavior. In the same way that images of smoking in films romanticize tobacco use, viewers of these adult films may idealize unprotected sex [16]. The increasingly high-risk sexual behavior viewed by large audiences on television and the Internet could decrease condom use. Requiring condoms may influence viewers to see them as normative or even sexually appealing, and devalue unsafe sex. With the growing accessibility of adult film to mainstream America, portrayals of condom use onscreen could increase condom use among viewers, thereby promoting public health.

In contrast to heterosexual adult films, homosexual-targeted productions more consistently require condoms. Due to the large number of HIV-positive performers, there is no requirement for HIV testing and condom use is the norm. Despite the ubiquitous use of condoms, homosexual adult movies are popular and profitable for production companies. In fact, there is some evidence that homosexual male audiences would not tolerate movies with unsafe sex, likely due to their proximity to many with HIV in the homosexual community. Some homosexual audiences regard watching sex without condoms as “watching death on the screen” [16].

They then cite other models of partially or wholly regulated sex industries:

Legislators can look to Nevada for a model for the successful regulation of a legal sex-related industry. Since the institution of mandatory condoms in Nevada's brothels in 1988, not a single sex worker has contracted HIV [17]. Workers must be repeatedly tested for HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia to maintain a state health and work card. There are numerous other international models for condom enforcement in sex work, from Mexico City to Amsterdam. While there is no clear model for mandatory condom use in adult film, Brazil boasts an 80% condom usage rate in their adult films [18], while still maintaining a large share of the international market as the world's second largest adult film industry [18]. This suggests that condom use in adult films does not have to erode profitability.

It's worth adding that condom use is really important in the Brazilian industry, because of the HIV problem that appeared there before condom use became as prevalent as it is. Indeed, the most recent industry-wide HIV scare in the United States was spurred by American performers working in Brazil and contracting HIV.

Both articles ask us to take a practical, harm-reduction-oriented approach to a public health issue. In the case of the adult film industry, our touchiness about this topic keeps us from openly addressing the fact that we've set up a world where no one in my workplace can give me an aspirin, but a film company can mandate risky sex acts as a condition of employment. In the case of malaria, we are reminded that we shouldn't deny money for all but the "best" solutions, and should concentrate on enacting the "good" solutions that these nations can actually afford.

My home county is burning down again. This time it's much worse than the fires of a few years ago. According to the AP wire, as reported on KNBC in Los Angeles, the statewide evacuation estimate is about 900,000 people now, with over 500,000 of those in San Diego (meaning they're evacuating a sixth of the county). The reporter cited this as the largest peacetime movement of Americans in the history of the country.

Here's a schematic view of the burn in San Diego county as of earlier today:

(This map courtesy San Diego news station CBS 8)

Here's a satellite view of the smoke plumes heading out to sea from southern California:

People, especially in Orange County, have been complaining about the lack of available resources. Credit the firefighters for making their case, over and over again for decades, for additional resources. San Diego county alone probably needs another thousand firefighters, give or take. No credit to representatives who now complain about the lack of resources while vigorously opposing "big government" and refusing to pay taxes, believing that infrastructure and infrastructure defense solves itself.

Also no credit to all of you who fear terrorists more than anything else, when our long history and our very recent history show that, short of a terrorist group with a nuclear weapon, there is nothing that even a motivated group of terrorists could do that can match the trauma of this kind of super-disaster.

We don't have enough firefighters to put fires down and keep them down. Right now, they're skipping from place to place, not sleeping, just fencing with the flames and hoping the winds will change.

CNN coverage

You can get live feeds from SoCal news stations (such as KNBC) at wwiTV.

The State of California today filed suit against the U.S. Federal government to push the EPA to approve a two-year-old California law mandating a 30% reduction in vehicle emissions (in new vehicles) by 2016. American auto manufacturers have been fighting this law, saying that it will hurt their ability to compete and other random nonsense -- nonsense, because the California law will apply equally to vehicles from foreign and domestic manufacturers. Were they honest, auto industry representatives would just out and out admit that they know California is a bellwether for nation-wide legislation impacting human health and safety, and they'd like to keep us off laws like this as long as possible. They've been very successful nationally, although that was with the backing of a Republican legislature that happily let automotive emissions standards stagnate for well over a decade.

Since the California law is stricter than current Federal standards, the state needs a waiver from EPA before it can go ahead and enforce the law. The official word from EPA is that they'll have a "decision" by the end of the year. It is not terribly surprising that the current EPA, hamstrung by manipulation from industry carpetbaggers associated with the Bush administration, had not even reached a decision about when it was going to decide whether or not to allow California to police our own air -- not until we sued.

Pathetic, but expected. The last word here goes to our governor:

Speaking at a news conference, Mr Schwarzenegger accused the federal government of "ignoring the will of tens of millions of people" by failing to approve the legislation.

"There's no legal basis for Washington to stand in our way."

BBC article

It's election time once again in California. As we and all the other states push our primaries up toward the beginning of the year, let's not forget that in addition to throwing some weight behind a presidential candidate or two, we also need to vote on a number of propositions.

This February's proposition count is seven, although with a certain degree of redundancy in the final four. Once again, I'll be reviewing the propositions and giving each one an up or down recommendation (adding links as the reviews are completed). This year, we have:

91: Transportation Funding Protection, again - Recommend "No" (and so do its former backers)
92: Community Colleges Funding and Governance - Recommend "No"
93: State Legislator Term Limits - Recommend "No"
94: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No"
95: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No"
96: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No"
97: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No"

Prop 91 was superseded by the successful passage of successful passage of Prop 1A in 2006, and is now redundant.

The four Indian Gaming Compact props all ratify gambling agreements made between the Governor and a given Indian group in 2006.

Proposition 91: Transportation Funds. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

California sees quite a few fights over transportation funding. The intent is completely sound, in that we can't afford to let our infrastructure decline. In 2006, Proposition 1A passed with a very similar, albeit less strict than proposed in Prop 91, approach to this issue. Under the relatively new rules enacted by the passage of 1A, the governor must declare a financial emergency to divert funds from the Transportation Fund to the General Fund, and the money must be repaid within three years of the diversion. In addition, having this money "out on loan" means that you can't divert money in a subsequent year until the diverted money is repaid. Finally, only two years in any ten can be declared to be fiscal emergencies.

So what does Prop 91 add to the mix? There are a few changes:

• The governor can no longer issue emergency declarations from the 2007-2008 fiscal year onward.
• All money diverted from Transportation to the General Fund prior to July of 2007 must be paid back to the Transportation Fund by 2017.
• The legislature may, by statute, loan Transportation money to the General Fund, but the money must be paid back within a year

If you've checked in with your voter information guide, you'll notice that there's an argument against Prop 91, but no argument for it. This is because the people behind Prop 91 were happy enough with the rules proposed by Prop 1A, and put their full weight behind that. Prop 91, however, did end up qualifying for the ballot, and once you qualify a proposition, you can't retract it. As such, no one is out there trying to get 91 passed, because they thought 1A was plenty good enough.

Given that 91 is a stricter version of 1A, and I was already recommending against 1A, I have to agree with them.

You can track the minimal money spent opposing Prop 91 here.

You can read the full text of Prop 91 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 92: Community Colleges. Funding. Governance. Fees. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. - recommend No

Per its wiki entry, the California community college system is the largest higher education system in the world, serving 2.5 million students across 109 community colleges within 72 districts. If you've never been in the community college system, you may be unfamiliar with the relatively wide range of programs within a given community college. In addition to various 2-year degrees, the community college system also offers a host of professional training courses. I was certified as an EMT a number of years ago at Merritt College in Oakland (I've since let that certification lapse). In addition to training EMTs, Merritt also trains nurses and radiology technicians (and probably many other vocations I haven't looked for).

The current community college system was established, and is maintained, by legislation (in contrast, the K-12 system, for example, is part of the state constitution). Prop 92 seeks to change this, incorporating the community college system into the constitution, as well as revising how it is managed at the state level and how it is funded. The last set of changes, in funding, are the important meat of this Proposition.

As part of incorporating the system into the constitution, Prop 92 would replace the current board of governors with, well, another board of governors -- but constitutionally mandated, this time. There are some compositional changes as well. The new board would comprise 19 members, at least 12 of them from the "public," including a mix of former or current district board members, community college employees, and faculty members. In addition, the two students positions have been changed from multi-year affairs with no voting in the first year of service into one-year appointments with voting allowed right away.

The board is explicitly not given authority over wages or hours at the district level. It is also explicitly not a new state agency.

The major changes, and the source of all the arguments for and against this Proposition, come on the financial side. There are a couple significant changes.

First, the community colleges are given their own, defined slice of the general education fund. In the past, community colleges netted about 10-11% of general education funding (education funding, in turn, is legally required to receive at least 40% of the General Fund each year). Per Prop 92, the defined chunk of community college funding would be at least 10.46% (so right in the normal range), with increases keyed to a new metric for "student enrollment." Instead of attempting to measure actual student enrollment each year, the law would key the "change in enrollment" (and related changes in funding) to the larger of the increase in state population between 17-21 and 22-25. In essence, rather than measuring current enrollment, the proposed law would attempt to estimate the possible enrollment pool and assign funding based on that estimate.

Second, a small change removes the requirement that any state mandates requiring expenditures at the community college district level be checked by the Department of Finanace to make sure that sufficient funding is available. Note that at the same time the proposed law prevents the Board of Governors from mandating wages or hours, so any large impact in this area would have to come from other things (e.g. requiring that all community colleges update their computers).

Third, Prop 92 would ratchet community college fees back from $20 per semester unit to $15 per semester unit. Historically, community colleges were free up until 1984. In the past decade, fees have run between $11 and $26 per semester unit. Under the current fee level, a student taking a full year of classes (30 units) pays $600. Under the revised fee structure, they would end up paying $450 for the same course load. Fees would then be raised in a manner keyed to increases in the income of California residents. Notably, all fee increases must be rounded down to the nearest dollar. The practical upshot of this last rule is that fee increases will be especially rare. The jump from $15 to $16 would require nearly a 7% increase in average income in this state. Consider, in this context, the fact that the average income for a family of four appears to have jumped about 2-3% in each of the last couple years (income estimates taken from here). The legislative analyst notes that the required level of year-to-year income increase has happened only once in the last two decades.

The ratcheting back and locking in of fees naturally means less income for community college districts (about $70 million per year, as things stand). Rather than offering cheaper education that's also worse, Proposition 92 seeks to fill in this fee difference for those community college districts who don't receive needed funding from the General Fund. Presumably, some portion of the increased revenue directed toward the community colleges -- about $300 million per year -- will go to filling in this difference.

Financial backing for this proposition comes from a mix of community college associations (that is, nonprofits that try to support their local community colleges), staff and faculty groups, and construction firms. Financial opposition comes largely from the California Teachers Association, who argue that it amounts to an unfunded mandate that will damage community colleges and damage other education in California.

I have some of the same concerns as the CTA, in that it's not especially clear where the money here magically comes from. I am also quite leery of the somewhat subtle attempt to lock community college fees in at $15. Although I appreciate the argument that many people do, indeed, choose not to attend community college when fees go up slightly, I would also appreciate more research on the completion rate for people who are willing to pay an extra $150 a year versus those who aren't (or, briefly, are we losing the people who don't finish anyway, or are we driving away people who are likely to finish?).

My own community college experience was that my transit costs and textbook fees both outstripped my actual registration fees.

Although attending a community college verifiably leads to greater income, and although we definitely need the vocational wing of our community colleges to provide more critical members of society (EMTs, nurses, and so forth), Proposition 92 appears to be a financial train wreck waiting to happen. Based on that, I can't give it a positive recommendation.

You can track expenditures for and against Prop 92 (about three quarters of a million on both sides) here.

You can read the full text of Prop 92 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 93: Limits On Legislator's Terms In Office. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

I am of two minds about term limits. On one hand, citizens should be able to vote for the individual they want to vote for, for as many terms as they want, as long as they feel that the individual is representing them. That said, in practice, a career in politics, and the concept of a career politician who can keep winning over and over again and stay in office indefinitely (like Strum Thurmond, who was more or less a puppet of his staff toward the end) is problematic. If you can stay in office forever, what would you do to do so?

Currently in California, we allow a maximum of two Senate terms (4 years each) and two Assembly terms (3 years each) per person. Prop 93 would revise the state constitution to do away with that limit, and replace it with an aggregate limit of 12 years of service in the state legislature in either house (so, for example, you could do Assembly-Assembly-Assembly-Assembly, or Assembly-Assembly-Senate, or Senate-Senate-Senate, or other, quirkier options like Senate-Assembly-Senate).

There are two key caveats to the new rule. The first is that you can't run for an office that would take you over the 12-year limit. The second, and the one that has the "against" came crying foul, is that a person who is already in office when this limit passes is allowed to serve the full 12 years in that office (assuming they win reelection). The upshot of this rule is that if someone served two terms in the Assembly, and is now in their first term in the Senate, they could do another 8 years in the Senate for a total of 18 years.

That's why this might seem like a hack to keep current state legislators in office for as long as possible.

As always, it's good to look at the money, especially with millions spent on both sides.

On the "pro" side, we have an aggregation of interest groups. The three in the half-million dollar club are the California Teachers Association PAC, the California State Council of Service Employees, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Walking down the list, we get a tour of various other groups, ranging from the California Dental Association through PG&E, Blue Cross, SoCal Edison....and a bunch of groups supporting Assembly members who are up for re-election.

In short, these are, indeed, people who feel that one or more people in office represents their interests well, and want to keep them there.

On the "against," side, almost all the money -- a couple million -- comes from U.S. Term Limits, a nonprofit group that tries to get term limits enacted at all levels nationwide. As the rebuttal to their argument indicates, one of their members was recently indicted for election-related fraud in Oklahoma. Their other major appearance on the national scene was in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. vs. Thornton in 1995, when the Supreme Court ruled that states can't impose requirements for service in the U.S. Congress that are stricter than those set in the U.S. Constitution.

So, in short, this is a fight between a host of people who want their chosen representative(s) to stay in office longer and a nonprofit group that is dedicated to the cause of term limits across the board.

In this particular fight, I'm going to have to come down on the side of maintaining our current term limits. Although I may not be fond of anyone from out of state putting money into our state, I'm similarly not fond at all of laws being enacted on the back of donations from power companies and law firms within our state. For the moment, for lack of a better way to dissuade politicians from the path of rabid careerism, I'll opt to stay with our current limits.

Of course, even within term limits, people an be awfully destructive in their rabid desire to hit that golden second term. We're still in search of a good solution.

You can look at the financial backing for and against Prop 93 by clicking here.

You can read the full text of Prop 93 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 94: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - recommend "No"
Proposition 95: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - recommend "No"
Proposition 96: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - recommend "No"
Proposition 97: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - recommend "No"

In 2006, the Governor negotiated new gambling agreements with several Southern California tribes. This new agreement allowed each of the tribes to expand its stock of "Nevade-style" slot machines several fold, bumped construction projects out from under the aegis of the California Environmental Quality Act (instead requiring a different form of environmental certification), and altered the flow of money from the tribes to the State such that instead of going to the Special Distribution Fund, money would go to the General Fund. This last, I'm sure, was a strong attraction to the Governor in a time of fiscal problems.

The placement of a referendum on the ballot stalled each of these four agreements. Each one has, in effect, put into our hands the decision to accept the governor's agreement with that tribe, or not. As the changes are the same for each tribe, and the groups fighting for and against each Proposition are the same across all four, I've batched them into this one entry. For the record, here's the lineup:

Proposition 94 is a referendum on a new agreement with the Pechanga Indians in Riverside county.
Proposition 95 is a referendum on a new agreement with the Morongo Indians, also in Riverside county.
Proposition 96 is a referendum on a new agreement with the Sycuan Indians in my home county, San Diego.
Proposition 97 is a referendum on a new agreement with the Agua Caliente Indians, also in Riverside county.

I shortened all the Indian Bands' names for clarity.

On this kind of issue, we know who's going to be spending money for it (and the four groups sure did spend their money, in the multiple millions). Despite the public face of fire departments and other nice public figures being presented as the against argument, however, the money tells us that this is a pure financial battle. The opposition to Props 94-97 is funded mostly by other Indian groups not included in the 2006 agreement, as well as contributions from non-Indian gambling facilities -- mostly places like Hollywood Park and Bay Meadows.

This is, in other words, a business fight. So who do we believe?

I opt for "neither." Instead, it's probably best to do a pragmatic, financial breakdown of the 2006 agreement and how it compares with similar agreements in other states. Peter Dreier of Occidental College has done just that, as cited here. The basic numbers suggest that we could do better. Other states have secured portions of gambling revenue that are from two to four times as large as ours (in percentage terms -- the 2006 agreement would net us 12.6% of gambling revenues from the Agua Caliente group, for example, and comparisons with other states suggest we could be getting 25-50% instead). Dr. Dreier makes a convincing argument that they can afford to hand over a larger profit share, too. I'm going to completely ignore all of Dreier's other arguments, because, fundamentally, if the business arrangement is poor, then nothing else needs to be discussed.

Since it sounds like we can, convincingly, do better, I believe we should. The last decade especially has seen governments at all levels failing to adequately use their massive leverage to negotiate good deals for us, the citizens. Although this opportunity to check another bad deal was doubtless brought about by a conflict between interested business parties, it's still a good chance to send the Governor back for a second, and better, try.

You can check out all the financial backers on both sides here. Although I've linked to the one for Prop 94, the exact same groups are pushing on all four propositions, so you don't need to look farther than the first one.

You can read the full texts of each of the propositions here. Note that as each one is a referendum, the text simply refers to ratifying the prior agreement, with no additional details about that agreement. In this case, the Legislative Analyst's report is required reading if you really want to understand what's going on.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for other propositions by clicking here.

This February, you'll be voting on seven propositions. Three represent the normal fare, with attempts to constrain our use of transportation funding, to reorganize community colleges, and to alter, yet again, term limits in the state legislature. The final four are actually referenda on gaming agreements negotiated by the Governor in 2006 between the state and a handful of Indian tribes.

Below, you'll find links to each of my proposition reviews, along with my recommended vote on the proposition and a concise explanation of why I'm making that recommendation. As always, click on through for the full review, a complete explanation of my recommendation, and helpful links to the text of the proposed law and lists of financial backers for and against the proposition.

91: Transportation Funding Protection, again - Recommend "No" because it is redundant, since Prop 1A passed in the last election
92: Community Colleges Funding and Governance - Recommend "No" because it would wreak financial havoc at the state and community college district levels
93: State Legislator Term Limits - Recommend "No" because it is clearly an effort to keep current legislators in office, rather than an actual attempt at reform
94: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No" because we should renegotiate for a better financial deal
95: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No" because we should renegotiate for a better financial deal
96: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No" because we should renegotiate for a better financial deal
97: Referendum on Amendment to Indian Gaming Compact - Recommend "No" because we should renegotiate for a better financial deal

As a reminder for all those Californians, this year's primary election is tomorrow, Tuesday, February 5.

If you need to find your polling place, you can click here for a list of phone numbers to call and websites to check.

If you need some background info on the three propositions and four referendums that are on the ballot this year, you can click here for links to all my summaries (each summary includes linkouts to the actual proposition/referendum text, as well as links to information on whose been campaigning for either side of each issue, summaries of the proposed laws and their effects, and my opinion on the measure).

About halfway into this year, California is scheduled to crash right into a $14.5 billion budget deficit. As the governor negotiates with the legislature over budget cuts, he's ordered a package of immediate budget cuts meant to carve $100 million off the budget, possibly to push doomsday back just a little further.

The comprehensive budget cut package is meant to hack away about half the deficit, although it does so on the back of additional borrowing, delayed debt payments, and other delayed payments. One has to imagine that current budget problems would only have been exacerbated by the recent community college and transportation funding lock-in propositions.

One proposed solution to our current budget problems is the farming out of the state lottery to private industry. The governor's office recently backed down from repeated claims that this will yield $37 billion -- half up front, half over time. The very recent release of analyses of this proposal by a number of major investment banks show that the governor's office is using the highest end of the most optimistic projection. While Lehman Brothers suggested such a deal could be worth $16.1-37 billion over 40 years, most of the analyses put the range at $7-29 billion.

Moreover, to make the venture more attractive and command a higher price from an outside company, California might have to relax its gambling laws and allow a major expansion of the lottery. Critics say that means Schwarzenegger would be balancing the budget on the backs of the working class and the many poor people who avidly buy tickets.

Without that expansion, the projected up-front value of the deal is a mere $2 billion, which puts only a mid-sized dent in our budget deficit. And if we were to dramatically expand the lottery, we assuredly could do that within state control.

Leasing the lottery would require approval from the Legislature and a majority of the voters. Similar proposals are circulating in more than a dozen other states, including New York, Florida and Texas.

"There's a reason no state has yet gone through with this," said state Sen. Dean Florez, chairman of the committee that oversees the lottery. "Putting lottery terminals in malls in every floor, where pay phones used to be, that raises serious questions."

Proposition 98: Eminent Domain. Limits on Government Authority. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

Eminent domain is the concept that, under proper circumstances, your government can claim your property for the greater good, more or less. The sticking point comes in deciding when this is acceptable (note that it is, in principle, Constitutional), and how much compensation you should receive. A classic case of "obviously good" eminent domain might involve a city government using that power to buy a crackhouse froma slumlord, converting it into a community center. A classic "obviously bad" case of eminent domain involves buying up large swathes or property at cut-rate prices, then handing them over to a private developer to build a mall.

I'm sure someone can argue about the obviousness of either case, but the argument over defining and limiting eminent domain is one that's been going on for a while, and the appeal of not having your personal property bought out from under you against your will is clear.

That said, Prop 98 is not simply another take on an eminent domain amendment. It proposes to do two things:

1) Prohibit taking or private property for private use, where private use is defined as transfer of ownership or use of that property to something other than a public agency.

2) Completely remove rent control.

This second goal is mentioned nowhere in the stated goals of the proposition, and is, instead, slipped into the definitions portion of the text, in the definition of the term "Taken":

"Taken" includes transferring the ownership, occupancy, or use of property from a private owner to a public agency or to any person or entity other than a public agency, or limiting the price a private owner may charge another person to purchase, occupy or use his or her real property.

The fact that this was "snuck" into the text in the manner in which it was added makes it clear that the proposition's authors were hoping that many people would get on board with the generally laudable goal of not having homes seized to make room for malls, without realizing that they might accidentally be voting to allow themselves to be priced completely out of the rental market. That's unfortunate, as it's never a good sign when someone is attempting to trick the electorate into voting for their law.

As always, we want to follow the money. Who's paying for Prop 98's campaign? Major supporters include the California Association of Realtors Issues PAC, the AOA Apartment Owners Association PAC, and the California Farm Bureau Federation. Major individual donors to the cause include the Chicago-based Equity Lifestyles Properties, Peninsula area landlord John Vidovich who appears to have a history of tenant issues concerning rent, and mobile-home-park owner Thomas Coates (who appears to have given around half a million). The rest of the pro-98 donor list comprises a myriad of rental management companies, mobile home park owners, and individual property owners.

It seems clear, based on the money, that the breaking of rent control is the primary concern of the major donors.

Opposition to 98 comes from a variety of neighborhood groups, including several centered in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. Significant contributions against 98 have also come from the Service Employees International Union, the California Teachers Association, the California State Association of Electrical Workers, Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Audubon Society, and other environmental and labor groups. In a nutshell, that's environmental groups and unions representing lower-paid workers. The interest here is probably split between people who are concerned about the way Prop 98 would limit the ability to put restrictions on property use and people who are concerned about their union members being priced out of their homes.

We just recently saw another attempt at a disingenuous "eminent domain" bill that would have other collateral damage. Proposition 90, which voters rejected in 2006, included text that would have required extensive payouts from government agencies any time a law might have been deemed to have reduced the value of a property. Proposition 98 includes that provision and does it one better by attempting to introduce a statewide revocation of rent control. For this reason, I have to continue to recommend voting "no" on Prop 98, just as I recommended voting "no" on Prop 90.

You can find out more about who's paying money for and against Prop 98 by clicking here.

You can read the Legislative Analyst's summary and the full text of Prop 98 by clicking here.

Proposition 99: Eminent Domain. Limits on Government Acquisition of Owner-Occupied Residence. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend Yes

Over in my review of Prop 98, I discuss the general concept of eminent domain. Prop 98, while purporting to be about eminent domain, contains a major deal-breaker in the form of the statewide revocation of rent control. Prop 99, offered by many groups as an alternative, is a highly constrained take on eminent domain limitation. Very concisely, it would prevent the seizing of an owner-occupied residential property (i.e. a home) for a purpose other than improving public safety or providing public services. Once again, the nightmare case of housing seized to let a developer build a mall is prevented. Prop 99 does not, however, include any of the language present in 98 that would prevent rent controls or require payouts for perceived changes in property value due to government action.

Financial support for Prop 99 comes from many of the same groups that oppose 98. As a reminder, this includes a number of labor unions and environmental groups. There are no groups listed as being in opposition to 99.

You can read more about the groups supporting Prop 99 financially by clicking here.

You can read the Legislative Analyst's summary and the full text of Prop 99 by clicking here.

This Tuesday, June 3, 2008 is a statewide primary election. At the same time, we'll be voting on two propositions, both nominally concerning limiting eminent domain, although Prop 98 appears to primarily be an attempt to revoke rent control rather than an attempt to limit eminent domain.

Here are the links to the two summaries this time around:

Prop 98: Eminent Domain (revoking rent control) - recommend "No"
Prop 99: Eminent Domain. Limits on government acquisition of private homes. - recommend "Yes"

In a little over a month, we have the next general election. In California, this comes bundled with a whopping twelve propositions this time around. As always, I'll review them one at a time, providing a summary of the proposition, some additional relevant background, a view of who's providing the funding for and against, and my up or down recommendation for each (and, as always, I'll put links into this post as I complete the reviews).

This November, we are being asked to vote on:

1A: High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act - recommend "No"
2: Standards for Confining Farm Animals - recommend "No"
3: Children's Hospital Bond Act - recommend "No"
4: Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of a Minor's Pregnancy (again) - recommend "No"
5: Nonviolent Drug Offenses; Sentencing, Parole, and Rehabilitation - recommend "Yes"
6: Police and Law Enforcement Funding; Criminal Penalties and Laws - recommend "No"
7: Renewable Energy Generation - recommend "No"
8: Elimination of Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry - recommend "No"
9: Criminal Justice System; Victim's Rights - recommend "No"
10: Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy - recommend "No"
11: Redistricting (again) - recommend "No"
12: Veterans' Bond Act of 2008 - recommend "Yes"

Proposition 1A: Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act. - recommend No

Update: Look to the comments for an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of this proposition. I am going to stay with my "No" recommendation.

As the legislative analyst's summary tells us, the state of California created the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 1996 to set up an intercity, 200+ mph rail system linking the major metropolitan areas of California, with a first goal of linking northern and southern California.

Delving into the actual text of the proposed legislation, we find a bond measure that would take out $9.95 billion in bonds (thanks to commentor Rafael for catching my error here), at an estimated cost of $19.4 billion over thirty years, to fund the development of high-speed rail and upgrades to local rail to link the two systems together. Specifically, the funding is broken down like so:

$950 million is dedicated to that second task, of funding "capital improvements to intercity and commuter rail lines and urban rail systems" to connect them to the projected high-speed rail system. $190 million of this goes to the state Department of Transportation, with the remainder going to local transit agencies. This latter portion comes with strings attached, namely that the local transit agency has to provide matching funds, and that it can't reduce its spending below its average spending across the 1998-2001 period. I have no idea why that period was chosen, but there you go.

The remaining roughly $9 billion (fixed, per above) goes to building the high-speed rail system itself. The assigned goal for this money is to first complete a rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and then fill in routes linking Oakland and San Jose, Sacramento and Merced, Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, The Inland Empire and San Diego, and Los Angeles and Irvine. This money also comes with some strings attached. First, it can't be used for the operating costs of the rail system -- just construction. Second, it can only be used for half of those construction costs, with the other half to be acquired some other way, "including, but not limited to, federal funds, funds from revenue bonds, and local funds."

That last bit might give you some pause. What happens if the other half can't be found anywhere? Hard to say.

It's nearly impossible to evaluate something like this in free space. With that in mind, we might want to take a look at two recently created high-speed rail systems, those of Korea and Taiwan.

The Korean high-speed rail system, the KTX, connects Seoul to Daegu and to Mokpo via a branched system. Currently, it represents about 200 miles of track, not all of it fully enabled to be high speed. Although it was initially costed at about $5 billion, the system to date has ended up costing about $18 billion to build, taking 12 years to start operation. It initially had ridership issues, but that has picked up, with a concomitant drop in air and road travel. The system itself has generated $3 billion in income since its opening.

The Taiwanese high speed rail system just started operation in 2007, after about 7 years of construction. Also covering about 200 miles of track, this system has come in at about $15 billion so far. As it just opened last year, there's obviously not much to say about ridership, although there have been some concerns about production quality.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority estimated the cost to build the full California rail system at $45 billion -- so obviously they don't think they're going to cover it all in one go right now, with only $9 billion in state money and a presumptive $9 billion in matching funds from somewhere. Is $45 billion a reasonable number?

Consider that the Korean and Taiwanese systems both clocked in around the $15-18 billion range to cover 200 miles of tracks. Consider also that the San Francisco to Los Angeles line alone is 381 miles. The remaining proposed routes add another 350 miles of track, for a grand total of about 730 miles of track. If we presume to extrapolate from the Korean and Taiwanese experiences, we're looking at $54-65 billion for the full system, and $28-34 billion for the SF to LA route.

If we presume the full matching funds, it's looking suspiciously like Prop 1A will only get us from San Francisco to Paso Robles. As nice as Paso Robles is, it's only halfway to Los Angeles.

I think the imbalance between the available funds and the likely costs ultimately makes this impractical right now, especially funding it via a bond measure.

So who's putting money into the effort for or against this proposition? Well, as it happens, there are no groups putting money up against it. Major groups contributing money in support of Prop 1A include the Members Voice of the State Building Trades ($50,000), the California American Council of Engineering Companies Issues Fund ($25,000), the California Alliance for Jobs Rebuild California Committee ($200,000, and sporting a cumbersome name), the Association of California High Speed Trains ($24,000), and the Californians for Safe & Reliable High Speed Rail ($54,000). A number of architecture, construction, and engineering firms also contributed in the tens of thousands of dollars range. Contributors there include companies like HDR, HNTB, Systra, Alstom, Hatch Mott MacDonald, and Parsons Brinckerhoff Americas. Nothing especially shocking in either set of contributors.

You can read the full list of people putting money into supporting Prop 1A here.

You can read the full text of Prop 1A here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 2: Standards for Confining Farm Animals. Initiative Statute. - recommend No

Proposition two is a concise bill that would alter the regulations that say how certain farm animals can be kept in California. Specifically, it would expand the required space for egg-laying hens, pregnant pigs, and calves grown for veal. Under the proposed law, these animals would have to be given enough space to turn freely, and to stretch their limbs without reaching the sides of their living spaces. You can accurately surmise from this that these animals are not currently given that much space.

The appeal of this proposition is obvious. The idea of an animal that spends much or all of its life literally unable to move is unpleasant. The animal certainly can't appreciate it much. This is why I buy cage-free, vegetable-fed chickens.

However, this change in the law would solely affect farming within California. That suggests that California farms would have to shoulder the added costs while still competing with farms outside the state. What impact is this likely to have on California farming?

The Agricultural Issues Center at UC Davis has addressed the potential impact of Prop 2 on the egg industry in California in their report titled Economic Effects of Proposed Restrictions on Egg-laying Hen Housing in California. They make a number of salient points:

• The egg industry is a significant part of California agriculture, with a value ranging from $213 million in 2006 to $337 million in 2007
• The California egg industry actively competes with egg production nationwide, although we are a net importer, as we generate 6% of the nation's eggs and consume 12%
• Current non-cage production in California amounts to 5% of the total
• Costs for non-cage production are at least 20% higher than cage growing, and might go even higher if companies were required to solely use non-cage production (many companies do a mix of both methods)
• A typical hen flock has a two-year life cycle, making it easy for companies to expand their flocks
• Covering the entire capacity of the California egg industry would entail less than a 10% expansion of the industry in other states

Their report comes to this conclusion:

Our analysis indicates that the expected impact would be the almost complete elimination of egg production in California within the six-year adjustment period. Non-cage production costs are simply too far above the costs of the cage systems used in other states to allow California producers to compete with imported eggs in the conventional egg market. The most likely outcome, therefore, is the elimination of almost all of the California egg industry over a few years.

Who's weighing in for or against this proposition?

On the "for" side, we have an impressive array of private citizens. Alongside them, we have significant donations from groups such as The Fund for Animals, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and The Humane Society of the United States. The Humane Society is by far the largest contributor, donating over a million dollars in support of Prop 2. If you go through to their website, you'll also see that they have this as a front-page issue.

On the "against" side, we have a number of farms and farm industry groups. As you might expect, this includes groups like the California Egg Marketing Association, the Demler Egg Ranch of San Jacinto, the Pine Hill Egg Ranch in Ramona, and others. In addition, however, there are significant contributions from out-of-state farms and companies. For example, Mississippi-based egg producer Cal-Maine Foods has donated over half a million dollars to the effort against Prop 2.

Clearly, from the nationwide money coming in on both sides of the debate, this is being viewed as a test issue. Indeed, California law does often presage changes in the law nationwide. Consider what's being debated over in Prop 8. That said, I think there's a fundamental problem with letting our state be the test case for this change in the law.

Simply put, a yes vote on Prop 2 probably means killing 90-95% of the egg production industry in California. Leaving aside the pig- and calf-related aspects of this proposition, that alone is untenable. Although I approve of the proposition's goals, its immediate outcome will be the loss of a hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs, with no net change in the living conditions of the animals involved in production -- just a change in their location. I am not generally a true believer in the power of the market, but in this case, I think more can be achieved, with less destruction for the state's agriculture industry, by "voting with your wallet" and buying eggs produced in a cage-free environment. I've been doing that, and will continue to do that. I prefer that to simply outsourcing the egg industry to the rest of the nation.

To see who's providing money in support of Prop 2, click here.

To see who's providing money against Prop 2, click here.

You can read the full text of Prop 2 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 4: Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor's Pregnancy. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

This is the third time in recent memory that fundamentally the exact same proposition has been placed on the ballot. It was initially floated under the somewhat misleading name of Prop 73: Parents' Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative. When that was defeated, it appeared once more on the ballot as the more accurately titled Prop 85: Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor's Pregnancy. Both propositions were voted down. The opening text of Prop 4 runs with the dishonesty of Prop 73 and refers to itself as the "Child and Teen Safety and Stop Predators Act." After all, who could vote against child safety and stopping predators?

Looking to the meat of Prop 4, it puts forward almost exactly the same new laws as Prop 73 did in 2005 and as Prop 85 did in 2006. These include a parental notification required by a personal physician's visit or a certified letter 48 hours in advance of a minor's abortion, except in cases of immediate medical emergency. As before, a physician who provided an abortion in violation of the rules could face $10,000 in civil penalties. Also as before, the minor can potentially challenge the need for notification in juvenile court, with the court being obligated to decide by 5pm on the second day after the filing.

Let's reflect, again, on the ridiculous notion of a young woman somewhere in the Central Valley, with no access to a car or public transit, trying to make it to the juvenile court that's sixty miles away, twice in two days without her abusive father or mother noticing.

One might hope that a physician, trained to recognize the signs (and they are), could determine that a minor's home situation is abusive, and that parental notification should not be required. Prop 4 tells us that parental notification can be waived if the physician makes a written report of known or suspect child abuse and, 48 hours ahead of the abortion, delivers notice of the waived notification to an adult in the household.

In other words, in cases of abuse by a family member, you're allowed to notify a family member.

That's sick. Unlike the two previous propositions, which seemed mainly like attempts to make it very hard for a minor to get an abortion, this one will actually make it hard for minors in desperate home situations to seek the care they need.

Why is this "notification of a parent no matter what" clause such an issue? Well, let's look at the numbers. For male perpetrators of child abuse, including sexual abuse (which men are significantly more prone to than women):

51% are the biological father
1% are the adoptive father
8% are the stepfather
10% are the mom's boyfriend
5% were "combination" fathers (that is, some mix of above categories -- think briefly, you'll see how that works)
26% were nonparents

(I presume some rounding errors here, as this sums to a little over 100%)

So, in a full 75% of cases of child abuse by a male, it's clearly by an adult in the household. Either the authors of the proposition didn't do their research, or they fully realize that this proposed law is about blocking abortion, and not about "preventing sexual predators from using secret abortions to conceal sexual exploitation of minors." With the notification going to the predators in question, the abortion may be prevented, but the exploitation will continue.

I'll quote what I said at the end of my review of Prop 85:

This kind of proposition is the lazy and callous way out. If you are a genuine opponent of abortion, I recommend that you lobby for greater funding for health and safety education for kids, especially at-risk kids. I recommend combined programs that are oriented toward helping kids lead healthy lifestyles, supporting abstinence and understanding safer sex measures, such that we can prevent dangerous behaviors, unwanted pregnancies and, at the end of the day, abortions. You could even support counseling for parents to help them not respond with violence, or to identify abusers more effectively. If a young woman feels she can talk with her parents or a counselor safely, she will. Forcing her to face parents she can't talk to will not make things better.

Let me add that the proper response to two failures to pass a notification law was not to draft an even more dangerous version of that law that will get more young women beaten or raped by abusive parents. It might have been to propose a law for more funding to seek solutions. But not this.

Major funding in support of this bill includes several hundred thousand from San Diego Reader publisher James Holman and two hundred thousand dollars from the Knights of Columbus, who are involved in a major anti-abortion push during this election season.

Major funding against this bill comes in the form of a couple million from Planned Parenthood, bolstered by several hundred thousand from the California Teachers Association, and a number of significant donations from private citizens.

We can take a moment to point out that the California Teachers Association is probably not fundamentally anti-child, and that may say something about this proposed law.

You can see who's providing money in support of Prop 4 by clicking here.

You can see who's providing money against Prop 4 by clicking here, here, here, and here.

You can read the full text of Prop 4 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Two years ago, Congressional candidate Tan Nguyen sent out a letter that looked suspiciously like it was meant to scare Latino Democrats into staying home on election day. The Orange County Republican Party quickly stepped as far away from Tan as they could, reasonably enough, and he was left to protest lamely that his "mailing was flawed."

Apparently, he was also less-than-forthcoming when the Department of Justice came around to investigate whether he had violated federal voting laws. Now, the DoJ has indicted Tan Nguyen on federal obstruction of justice charges. Here's part of the DoJ press release:

The grand jury alleged that Nguyen knowingly misled state investigators who were investigating the circumstances surrounding the mailing of the letter. The indictment also alleges that Nguyen's actions were intended to prevent communication to federal law enforcement officers of information relating to Nguyen's involvement in the production and dissemination of the letter and to whether the letter violated federal election laws, including interfering with the federally protected right to vote in federal elections.

An indictment is merely an accusation, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. If convicted, Nguyen faces up to 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release. Nguyen will receive a summons to appear in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana for his initial appearance and post-indictment arraignment on Oct.14, 2008.

Proposition 5: Nonviolent Drug Offenses. Sentencing, Parole and Rehabilitation. Initiative Statute. - recommend Yes

I'll preface this by saying that Prop 5 is quite long, and I read the whole thing (as I always do). Quite long.

Proposition 5 is an extensive revamping of California drug law as it pertains to punishment and treatment of nonviolent drug offenders. It would restructure the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation into a bipartite system, with one portion devoted to the prison system, and a second portion devoted parole and treatment systems. In addition, it would alter the criminal penalties for possession of limited amounts of marijuana.

We'll tackle this as three parts, with restructuring first, changes in how drug offenders are handled second, and marijuana third.

As mentioned in the introduction, Prop 5 would restructure the Department of Corrections into a two-part system, each led by its own Secretary -- one being the Secretary of Corrections (who will remain in charge of the prison system), the other being the Secretary of Rehabilitation and Parole (who would be given authority over parole and drug treatments for offenders). Some additional restructuring would increase the size of the Board of Parole Hearings from 17 to 29 commissioners, and would alter some undersecretary jobs from durations of "at the pleasure of the Governor" to 5-year periods. A clause within Prop 5 emphasizes that job losses due to this restructuring are to be minimized. This is important, as parts of the general Corrections structure will be slid wholesale into the new Rehabilitation and Parole subsection, and one might be concerned that this could be used as an excuse to fire and then rehire experienced Corrections employees to cut down costs.

The vast bulk of Prop 5 is taken up with a general restructuring of how drug offenders are handled.

First, the list of nonviolent drug offenses is modified. Being under the influence and possession of drug paraphernalia both become nonviolent drug offenses. In contrast, transportation of drugs for sale no longer kinds as a nonviolent possession offense.

The big change is the creation of a three-track treatment system for people who have committed nonviolent drug offenses (and they do really mean three tracks -- they're called Track I, Track II, and Track III). Very briefly, Track I is reserved for nonviolent offenders who also don't have a history of violence. To enter Track I, an offender must plead guilty, and then has their judgment deferred if they enter Track I treatment. Per my reading of it, judgment can then be reconsidered later -- there's the possibility that a judge could waive the judgment on successful completion of treatment. However, the offender always has their guilt plea hanging over their head, which matters, because if you screw up the treatment in Track I...

...then you can be bumped to Track II. Going into Track II, you're going to have to shoulder that guilty verdict, but if you successfully complete drug treatment, you don't have to register as a drug offender. People who fail to finish in Track II, or who have a history of some kind of violent offenses (not the current one), can be bumped onto or initially placed onto Track III.

People who have committed a serious felony can't be on Track III. Individuals on Track III may still be require to be on parole as well, and a judge can require parole even after treatment is completed.

In short, the three tracks of drug treatment amount to fairly limited but important differences in strictness. In Track I, a drug offender can avoid formal judgment by completing treatment. In Track II, a drug offender can avoid parole by completing treatment. In Track III, the offender gets to not be in jail.

Prop 5 also modifies parole rules in general, such that "technicality" violations -- that is, parole violations that do not involve actually committing a crime -- do not automatically rescind parole. In addition, the results of drug tests taken during participation in required treatment cannot be used to further incriminate a person who is in mandated treatment.

Notably, detox programs and mental care programs that are applied in noncustodial settings do not count as treatment for the purposes of this program.

This law would require the setting aside of $150 million for drug treatment programs in 2009, and then $460 million per year annually afterward. This would replace the $100 million that is currently appropriated annually for drug treatment programs. Funding would be distributed as follows:

15% to youth programs
15% to Track I
60% to Track II
10% to Track III

In addition, 1% is to be used to fund university studies to track the effectiveness and financial impact of this drug treatment program.

The text is long, but that's what it amounts to. Over on the side of marijuana, the law would be changed such that possession of less than 28.5 grams of marijuana would not longer be a misdemeanor. Instead, it would be an infraction -- similar to a traffic ticket -- with a fine of $100 (with a maximum of $100 in add-on fees). Those under eighteen get to pay that same infraction fine and be sent to an instructional course on drug abuse.

So what does this all come to? The Legislative Financial Analysis tallies the added costs at $1 billion per year, balanced pretty much evenly by projected savings of $1 billion per year. The costs come from treatment programs, and the savings come from not imprisoning drug offenders. Layered on top of this is a projected additional $2.5 billion in one-time savings from not building a certain amount of new prison space. From a cost perspective, this appears to be a clear win.

Objections to this proposition can be expected to come from people who see it as being "soft on crime." Unfortunately, a moralistic approach to drugs policy has not been successful in the United States -- nor is it easily supportable from an ethical point of view. After all, how is the abuse of a given illegal drug ethically different from the abuse of a legal drug such as alcohol? Both are destructive, personally and generally. In the case of alcohol, we very reasonably punish people for offenses committed while abusing the drug, but we simply ship people off for treatment when they are abusing alcohol to the detriment of only themselves.

Last year, our state legislature voted to repeal a ban on funding needle exchange programs. This was a good start on harm reduction -- that is, approaches to health policy that focus on reducing the harm to people, rather than on punishing them for their abuse of a substance. As I noted in that post, harm reduction works. The example I cited in that post:

Needle-exchange programs have cost various Australian governments $130 million since their inception in the early 90s...but over the course of that decade, they saved those same governments at least $2.4 billion.

These savings come in reduced HIV rates, reductions in other diseases, and so forth. It is reasonable to expect that aggressively attacking addiction rather than jailing nonviolent drug offenders in environments where drugs are readily accessible will result in similar net savings in terms of public expenditure and in terms of years of disability prevented in the (former) addict pool.

I assert that arguments against treatment-oriented approaches for nonviolent offenders must be able to clearly explain why nonviolent alcohol abuse should not also be criminalized.

Funding in support of Prop 5 comes largely from private citizens, with a couple of big donations from names you may recognize. Biggest among these names is George Soros, who has given well over a million dollars in support of this proposition. In addition, several hundred thousand has come from the Drug Policy Alliance Network, an organization promoting "alternatives to the drug war."

Money against Prop 5 comes in the form of a smattering of donations from police and similar organizations. Major donations opposing Prop 5 come from the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation and the California Narcotics Officers' Association.

To see the full list of contributors supporting Prop 5, click here.

To see the full list of contributors opposing Prop 5, click here.

You can read the full text of Prop 5 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 10: Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy. Bonds. Initiative Statute. - recommend No

In 2006, Californians rejected Prop 87, which would have levied an additional tax on oil companies to generate an extra $4 billion in money to be directed toward getting us onto an alternative energy track. As a state that uses 16 billion gallons of petroleum products a year as well as one of the biggest science innovation centers in the world, this seemed like a good fit for us. Prop 10 is one of two measures on the ballot this time around that uses "Renewable Energy" in the name. Unlike Prop 87, 10 doesn't try to levy a tax on oil producers, so they haven't been fighting it tooth and nail the way they fought 87.

In fact, Prop 10 looks suspiciously like a company's "investment" in adjusting California law to get hundreds of millions of dollars at our expense.

So what would Prop 10 do?

Prop 10 proposes to issue $5 billion in bonds to cover a number of purposes. As always, that's $5 billion that will eventually cost about $10 billion for the state to pay off over thirty years. Prop 10 proposes to use the money as follows:

• $3.425 billion to subsidize the purchase of alternative-fuel vehicles, with natural gas vehicles included in this category
• $1.25 billion for research and development of renewable energy, with 80% of that to be used for researchering solar power
• $200 million to eight major California cities to fund renewable energy programs and retraining of workers to adapt ot new renewable energy jobs (the cities are Los Angeles, San Diego, Long Beach, Irvine, San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno, and Sacramento).

Pretty straightforward. When I read this proposition, I was immediately surprised. Does it make sense to put the state into hock for $10 billion largely to give moderate financial incentives to people to buy alternative fuel vehicles? Wouldn't it be better for the majority of the money go to funding in-state research, so that the eventual massive profits from alternative fuel technologies can have their home in California, much in the way the profits from the computer industry historically have?

Sounds like it's time to look at the backers.

The primary financial backer for Prop 10 is Clean Energy, a company that, to quote their site, "is the largest provider of natural gas for transportation in North America." Clean Energy was founded by T. Boone Pickens, who was the primary individual involved in getting 10 on the ballot in the first place. Clean Energy has pushed about $7.75 million (that's million) into trying to get you to vote for Prop 10. It's worth it for them, though -- the subsidy just for the heaviest of natural-gas powered vehicles is worth $250 million.

That's quite a return on an investment of about $8 million, and that's just the heavy-duty vehicles.

There are no significant contributions in opposition to this proposition.

One of the unfortunate side effects of California's citizen-based proposition system is that anyone who can collect enough signatures can get something on the ballot. The upshot here is that a genuine groundswell of popular support may get things done when the legislature can't. The downside is evident in cases like this one, where a single corporation can view the legislative process of the state of California as an investment to be gamed. I don't personally feel like subsidizing one company's purchases and market, especially not when we'll be building up debt to do it. It is, in a word, a scam, and I have to recommend against it.

The corollary to this, by the way, is that you absolutely must read the text of a proposed law when someone walks up to you at the beach or the park and says, "Hey, wanna sign this petition?" The name and the petition-taker's word alone just aren't good enough. They are, after all, being paid to get you to sign.

You can take a look at the money pushing for Prop 10 here.

You can read the full text of Prop 10 here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 11: Redistricting. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. - recommend No

Redistricting proponents have a curious fascination with handing away control over the power of redistricting to very, very small groups of people. Back in 2005, Prop 77 proposed handing over the power to draw legislative districts within California to a group of three retired judges. This time around, Prop 11 proposes to put the power to draw districts into the hands of fourteen people.

Currently, the state legislature draws state Senate and Assembly districts, as well as Congressional and Board of Equalization districts. As proponents of some kind of revision of the process point out, the legislators tend to draw their districts such that most of the voters in a given district will vote one way. This, in turn, makes it less likely that incumbents of a given party will be kicked out of office. It has also generated some oddly tortuous voting districts that go through or around parts of cities.

Prop 11 proposes to have all future redistricting done by a committee of fourteen people. Five of them will be from the "biggest" party in the state, five more from the "second biggest," then the remaining four from neither of those. Or, to decipher the clever code, it would be five Democrats, five Republicans, and four members of other parties. This group of fourteen people would be solely responsible for redrawing all legislative districts, starting in 2011 and then every decade thereafter (so, 2011, 2021, 2031). Obviously, the membership of the committee is expected to change each time, and there are procedures for selecting the committee.

Anyone can apply to be on the committee. A review panel consisting of three randomly chosen auditors (actual auditors, chosen from the rolls of the California Board of Accountancy) will narrow this down to 60 "most qualified" applicants. Members of the state legislature can then knock people out of contention, jury-selection-style, until a final panel of fourteen people is chosen.

Prop 11 would also make itself hard to amend, requiring a two-thirds approval vote in each house of the state Legislature, and the nebulous requirement that any amendments "further the purposes" of the law contained in Prop 11.

I am extremely dubious of any proposal to hand off power from my elected representatives to a small group of people who can't be easily checked or recalled from office. It behooves us to recall that power given away from elected representatives to an unelected central authority is rarely returned.

Prop 11 includes one laudable bit of text, suggesting that the geographic integrity of cities, counties, and neighborhoods should be respected as much as possible. Should another redistricting proposal appear on a future ballot, I recommend that it stick to this point. If districts were simply required to be, say, squares, that alone would have a great impact on the many issues that opponents of the current method have. There's no need to hand off our power to a much-less-accountable group when there are simpler solutions available.

A look through the major contributors list suggests that a number of corporations think that focusing redistricting on a smaller group of people will mean reduced lobbying costs for them in the future. Contributors pushing for Prop 11 include Blue Cross of California (recently renamed Anthem), the California Chiropractic Association, Sony Pictures, Safeway, the California Association of Health Underwriters, Sempra, Beny Alagem of Alagem Capital Group, Blue Shield of California, Oracle, Paramount, W. Howard Lester of Williams Sonoma, the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, Haim Saban, Charles Schwab, and, curiously, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, who gave $250,000. Two political groups gave significant monetary support, with hundreds of thousands coming from both Governor Schwarzenegger's political action group and the curiously named "Hold Politicians Accountable" group. Curiously named, I say, since Prop 11 would "keep them accountable" by handing the unaccountable powers off to people who can't even be voted out.

Major donations against Prop 11 come from the Democratic State Central Committee and the California Correctional Peace Officers fund.

You can look at the full list of financial backers of Prop 11 by clicking here, here, and here.

You can look at the full list of financial opponents of Prop 11 by clicking here.

You can read the full test of Prop 11 by clicking here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 7: Renewable Energy Generation. Initiative Statute. - recommend No

Proposition 7 is one of two propositions ostensibly oriented toward increasing renewable energy use in California on this year's ballot. Unlike the other one -- Prop 11 -- this one does seem to be making a legitimate attempt to increase the use of renewables, but it appears to be so poorly written that it needs to be bounced for its authors to reconsider for next time.

Prop 7 would enact a series of restructurings in state energy law that would set new renewable energy targets, hand off many of the responsibilities of the Public Utilities Commission to the Energy Commission, change how penalties are applied for not reaching targets, and change how new generation and transmission are both procured.

Currently, California has a target of 20% renewable energy source use by both investor-owned utilities and out-of-state utilities by 2010. Prop 7 would revise this requirement, adding a requirement of 40% renewables by 2020 and 50% renewables by 2025. In addition, it would make the significant change of requiring publicly owned utilities -- that is, government-owned utilities -- to hit these renewable targets. It would not, however, give the Energy Commission the authority of approve or reject contracts entered into by these publicly owned utilities. "Renewable" energy sources are defined currently as solar, biomass, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, renewable fuel cell, small hydroelectric, and other, similar options.

Prop 7 would hand over the job of setting the market rate of electricity from the Public Utilities Commission to the Energy Commission. It would also require consideration of the benefits of renewables (e.g. the value of reduced carbon production) into setting the market rate for renewable electricity. Renewable electricity costs are capped at 10% above the "regular price" -- opponents somewhat disingenuously refer to this as "locking in" the price at the more expensive level. That's irksome, but par for the course.

The penalty rate for missing renewable energy procurement targets would actually be reduced under the revised law, from $0.05 per kilowatt-hour (KWH) to $0.01 per KWH. However, the current cap on penalties would be removed, making the potential penalties for failing to hit these targets potentially open-eneded. As with other proposed laws along similar lines, power companies would not be allowed to be recovered from customers, although there's no explanation of what happens if a company can't meet its expenses following penalties.

The Energy Commission is tasked by Prop 7 to identify "Solar and Clean Energy Zones" that have "potential for solar and clean energy resources." Nothing special appears to happen in these zones, so this appears to be an advisory role for the Commission.

The revised law would contract the decision period for authorization of construction of new solar and clean energy facilities from 12-18 months down to 6 months, with 100 days for public comment. In addition, the Energy Commission would have to certify construction of any new transmission lines, with a 90-day consideration period. Producers that are primarily out of state would be largely exempted from this rule.

Finally, the Energy Commission would be allowed to buy, sell, and lease land to advance the cause of renewable energy.

As you may have gathered from the body of this summary, the single biggest flaw in Prop 7 is that it sets procurement requirements and customer-cost limits without providing a clear explanation for (1) how we can even enforce the no-passing-on-of-costs rule and (2) what happens to a company that runs out of money trying to hit the rules. Also, inasmuch as these new rules would apply to publicly owned utilities, it's possible that a local government could go broke from a combination of renewable energy costs and penalties.

The primary supporter of Prop 7, to the tune of a bit over seven million dollars, is Peter Sperling, vice chairman of the Board of Directors for the Apollo Group. As much as that name might suggest a self-interested solar energy company, Apollo is actually the company behind the near-ubiquitous University of Phoenix, purveyor of continuing and adult education courses.

Opposition to Prop 7 comes from California's large, investor-owned energy companies. Pacific Gas and Electric donated nearly 14 million dollars to oppose Prop 7, with Edison International coming in a close second with about 13.7 million.

You can check out the full list of financial backers supporting Prop 7 here.

You can look at the full list of financial opponents to Prop 7 here.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions here.

Proposition 6: Police and Law Enforcement Funding. Criminal Penalties and Laws. Initiative Statute. - recommend No

Proposition 6 is another one of the long ones on this year's ballot. Unlike Prop 5, Prop 6 covers a lot of different territory, changing current law in a number of places and adding new funding and some new programs. Very generally, it adds money to the tune of $500 million a year to various public safety related programs and increases the severity of punishments for a range of violent, firearms, and gang-related crimes, with an expected $500 million worth of new prison building to match.

I've broken it down below, but I think the salient facts are that this proposition will result in a lot of new state spending and will represent a significant bump in our prison population. I'll note here that the argument in favor of this proposition asserts that it "returns taxpayers' money to local law enforcement without raising taxes." This is clearly disingenuous, as this proposition would add half a billion in new spending annually. Simply not bothering to figure out where that money is coming from does not count as not raising taxes.

Cost aside, if there were empirical evidence that putting a lot of people in prison would lead to a marked decrease in crime overall, then we could do a cost-benefit analysis and compare the benefit of this approach to other approaches, like explicitly hiring more police officers. Unfortunately, the case here is not clear. Even on the major web site in support of this proposition, the evidence is weak. They mainly cite crime stats, and point out that we need more police officers. Given that there does seem to be evidence for crime reduction as a consequence of increased police presence, it's curious that Prop 6 spends so much money and effort increasing penalties and doing things other than simply funding more police officers.

I approve of the witness-tampering related changes to the law in this proposition, but would prefer that they be passed without the rest of this material.

As I said, it's a long proposition. Let's try to break it down.

Programs

Prop 6 adds and builds on a number of public safety programs. This is expected to result in an extra $500 million in spending, annually, with year-to-year increases as it requires many of these programs to inrease their funding in lockstep with inflation.

First of all, it would establish the Office of Public Safety Education and Information, tasked with the dissemination of crime statistics and information about things such as Three Strikes, Jessica's Law, and so forth. It would be required to maintain a webs ite with a public safety information page, crime victim information and support, and so forth. This program would receive $12.5 million in funding each year (adjusted for inflation -- just assume that's true from here on out), with 20% to be sent off to support Sheriff's departments participting in the Victim Information and Notification Everyday (VINE) program, and 80% to other county police departments.

It would also establish the California Early Intervention, Rehabilitation, and Accountability Commission, tasked with studying rehabilitation and deterrence programs, then to release its findings to the public. It's also supposed to recommend and propose standards relating to rehabilitation and deterrence. There's an interesting clause contained within the section establishing this Commission. In addition to these general-sounding goals, the section of Prop 6 that establishes this commission requires that early intervention and rehabilitation programs have clearly defined goals and tracking -- basically, a moderately specific call for accountability in these programs.

Notably, Prop 6 would remove the requirements for community-based representatives to be involved in councils required the development of local action plans relating to juvenile crime and delinquency. It would also remove the ability to use community punishments plans in dealing with these issues.

Prop 6 would also remove mental health, drug, alcohol, and other county departments other than probation from eligibility for Youthful Offender Block Grant Fund money.

Following these adjustments, Prop 6 swings in a giant funding package spread across a number of current or new state organizations. If you're reading through and doing the arithmetic, you'll see that the funding discussed amounts to almost a billion dollars annually. Keep in mind that in many cases the values shown are increases to already-funded programs -- this is why the annual increase in expenditures from this proposition is expected to come in at about half a billion (or, more briefly, roughly half a billion of the amount discussed is already being spent on the listed programs). Okay, let's start looking at the funding additions and changes. We have:

$92.5 million to assist in housing youthful offenders

$50 million for the Juvenile Probation Facility and Supervision Fund, to cover juvenile facility repair and renovation, juvenile probation, and juvenile deferred judgment programs.

$10 million to the Crimestopper Reward Reimbursement Fund, to reimburse awards given out by groups and individuals in support of solving felony cases. In other words, if you as a private citizen offer a $5,000 reward for information about a person who murdered someone you know, and you end up paying out that reward, then this fund would reimburse you.

$20 million to the Parolee Reentry Fund to fund contracts for parolee mentoring and workforce programs.

$500 million to the Citizens Option for Public Safety programs (COPS, yes), with half to go the local jurisdictions, and half to go to the Safe Neighborhood Fund. The latter fund is spread across various city anti-gang and anti-violent crime groups, multiagency task forces, county sheriffs, county jails, GPS tracking, and other purposes. The single biggest share, slightly over a quarter, goes to county probation departments.

$10 million to the Safe Neighborhoods Compliance Enforcement Fund. This is meant to support work that eliminates public funding of tenancies that are occupied by people involved in drug, gang, or other criminal activity.

It would also renew and make perpetual the Central Valley Rural Crime Prevention Program, and the Central Coast Rural Crime Prevention Program. Between them, they support crime prevention efforts in Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare, Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and San Benito counties. There is no specific funding set aside for these programs.

It also starts the Victim Trauma Recovery Fund to provide comprehensive recovery services for crime victims, with grant money awarded to up to five sites.

It allows counties to start child advocacy centers, which sound like a pretty solid idea -- the goal is to have one clearinghouse where specially trained people can coordinate any inteviews a child may have to undergo as part of a criminal or other investigation, to try to reduce the number of separate interviews a child has to undergo. Prop 6 creates the Child Advocacy Center Fund to support this concept.

Finally, Prop 6 seriously shifts where money from the State Penalty Fund goes. The main change is to yank basically all the money that's going into the Driver Training Penalty Assessment Fund, with the shifted money going to Corrections Training, Victim-Witness Assistance, and the new Victim Trauma Recovery Fund and Child Advocacy Center Fund.

A lot of stuff, right?

Laws

Prop 6 would also revise a number of laws related to gangs, felonies, and other crimes. Most of the revisions tend toward making punishments for these crimes more severe than they currently are.

One notable exception here is a revision to laws relating to witness testimony. First, Prop 6 would alter the legal meaning of "unavailable as a witness" to include a potential witness who is actually at a hearing, but for some reasons refuses to testify. Second, it would allow second-hand repeating of testimony (e.g. "I heard Bob say that Joe committed this crime") in cases where the statement is being given in a case against someone who somehow caused the original speaker to be unavailable as a witness (e.g. by killing them). Both of these changes appear to be oriented toward removing the incentive to mess with witnesses. The laws relating to witness tampering would also change, such that a series of tampering offenses would be classed as felonies, punishable by 2-4 years in prison.

Vandalism crimes would have their cash value aggregated for the purposes of determining punishment if they are "part of a common plan" -- gang tagging, for example. The expected effect here would be to bump up the punishment for some people involved in vandalism.

Penalties would be increased for home invasions and carjackings, as well as threats directed toward judges, jurors, prosecutors, public defenders, and similar figures. In addition, laws that currently give enhanced penalties for theft of on-duty ambulances and emergency vehicles would now apply at all times, on-duty or off.

The laws around street gangs undergo a number of revisions. Nuisance injunctions become contempt of court, which appears to mean that someone can summarily be given jail time and a fine. In addition, cumulative violations would result in bigger and bigger jail times. It would enhance jail times for accessories to crimes committed as part of a gang. Recruiting a minor under the age of 14 would yield another 5 years of punishment on top of the normal for recruiting for a gang. The recruiter would also count as a principal for any subsequent felonies committed by their recruits within a year after recruiting. Prop 6 also introduces the ability to sue a street gang by its assumed name (e.g. charging the local Pirus with a vandalism charge as a group). Finally, this proposition generically doubles the prison terms for committing felonies for a gang.

Prop 6 also adds some changes relating to drug and weapon possession. It adds an extra ten years of prison time for firearms convictions on the part of someone who was already barred from possessing a firearm, as well as adding some new rules relating to firearms use from a car. Firearms and gang penalties can also stack under the revised rules in Prop 6.

Prison Overcrowding

Finally, Prop 6 authorizes temporary emergency jails and treatment facilities to avoid early release as a response to prison overcrowding. These temporary facilities still have to be staffed by regular Department of Corrections employees.

Back to the supporters

Financial support for Prop 6 comes from a number of people who are currently running for office, as well as the group Crime Victims United of California and a number of law enforcement-related groups. The single largest contributor, coming in with a million dollars, is Henry Nicolaus (his name is misspelled in the listing as "Nicholaus"). He's a businessman in Aliso Viejo without a lot of background information available.

Money opposing Prop 6 comes from a collection of civil rights and government employee associations. The major rights contributor is the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. On the professional association side, major contributoins opposing Prop 6 come from the California State Council of Service Employees, the California Federation of Teachers, and the California Teachers Association.

You can view the full information on funding in support of Proposition 6 by clicking here and here.

You can view the full information on donations in opposition to Proposition 6 by clicking here and here.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions by clicking here.

Proposition 8: Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. - recommend No

Prop 8 is so straightforward that I'll just quote the entire text of the law it proposes here:

"Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

This is fundamentally an argument of religious ideas, preconceptions, and things that wig some of us out, which doesn't leave much room for breaking down the empirical consequences of this proposition.

The one non-ideological consequence of Prop 8 would be the loss of tens of millions of dollars annually in revenue from the wedding industry as gay couples no longer go through with large-scale ceremonies that go with weddings.

That was, indeed, brief. All the remaining arguments about this issue tend to largely boil down to ideology, although the New York Times has an article addressing a ostensible biological angle to the argument.

As the ballot argument for Prop 8 notes, this is not really about the legal rights of same-gender couples, it's about their right to say, "We're married." Although the "pro" argument asserts that if things are legally the same, then there's no reason to allow same-sex marriage, that's just as reasonable an argument for allowing it. If it's all a legal issue, then what does it matter if a same-sex couple gets to call themselves married? Let's go with Thomas Jefferson on this one:

"But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

We have chosen, in this country, not to force people to live within our religious constraints. I can't be required to eat kosher or to not eat beef; similarly, my Hindu coworker can't be required to eat beef, nor can an orthodox Jew be required to eat pork. I got to choose the church I was christened in as an adult, rather than having to go to a state-defined one. Similarly, no one I know or work with is required to attend a church or other religious location or service.

So it's unclear to me why we need to enshrine in our state constitution that religious meaning of a term, if legally speaking, the rights and obligations of that term are already there. After all, if Mormons can call Jews gentiles, and if I can refer to Genesis through Deuteronomy as "part of the Old Testament" rather than "the Torah," it's hard to see why this issue should be fundamentally different.

As a final note on this issue, the argument for Prop 8 points out that one possible consequence of keeping same-sex marriages legal is that your kids may be taught about it. So? Children are routinely taught about things that don't exactly plug into their parents' beliefs. If your beliefs and ideas are worthwhile, your kids will keep true to them regardless of what's going on in the rest of the world. If your beliefs can't stand up to the outside world, they're not going to last long no matter what is taught in school.

There are so many contributors and groups pushing money at this issue on both sides that I'm not going to review them in depth. As always, you can read about them yourself.

You can see who's spending money for or against Prop 8 here.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions here.

Proposition 9: Criminal Justice System. Victims' Rights. Parole. Initiative Constitutional Amendment and Statute. - recommend No

Proposition 9 is a small package of modifications to the current legal system surrounding victims' rights, restitution, and parole, all oriented toward tilting things more in favor of crime victims and making parole somewhat harder to achieve and maintain. These changes would affect the way the law works during a case, during parole hearings, and for people currently on parole.

In addition to a number of basically unenforceable assertions about victims' rights, Prop 9 would make a few concrete changes. First, it would prevent disclosure of confidential information or records from a crime victim to a defendant in the case. Second, it would let a crime victim refuse an interview, deposition, or discovery request from a defendant or their lawyer.

On the post-conviction side, Prop 9 would require restitution in all cases. Currently, restitution is required unless a judge decides for some reason not to require it -- in most cases, they require it. Prop 9 would remove this role for the judge's discretion. In addition, any restitution payment would have to go to the victim first, effectively prioritizing it over other places that collect portions of restitution money.

Prop 9 would block any potential early release of prisoners as a response to overcrowding. The legislative analyst notes that this hasn't actually happened yet in the state, but Prop 9 would make it unlawful to do so.

Prop 9 would also enact a number of changes in how parole hearings are handled. It would allow unlimited testimony by victims and their families, as well as allowing any number of family members to speak during the hearing (currently, there's a limit of two additional people). It would give affected people who might want to speak at a hearing 90 days notice rather than 30 days notice prior to a hearing. Finally, in the specific case of parole hearings for people with life sentences, it would alter the timeline for the next parole hearing following a rejection of parole, from the current 1-5 years later to 3-15 years later (although the prisoner has the ability to file for an earlier hearing).

Under Prop 9, law enforcement agencies would be required to give crime victims a victim's rights reminder card and a survival and resource guide.

Finally, this proposition would remove legal counsel for people charged with parole violations except in cases where a judge deems the charges to be complex or the person involved to be incompetent to represent themself.

For me, the two big red flags in this proposition are the ability to refuse a deposition and the removal of legal counself for parole violation hearings. As we consider potential legal changes like that, it's important to remember that criminal cases are not always a matter of a violent criminal who is clearly in the wrong, and the victims who are being harassed by the defense counsel. As we know -- especially in this era of DNA testing overturning incorrect convictions -- defendants may be incorrectly identified by eyewitnesses, or otherwise implicated in crimes they didn't commit. Although it's well meaning to try and prevent the defense "putting the victim on trial" via harassing requests for depositions and interviews, it is problematic to deny an innocent accused the ability to check on a crime victim's story to see if there's some undiscovered truth in there that will set justice on the right track. Similarly, it is important that people have legal representation when they are charged with parole violations so that they can understand what exactly is going on.

Or, to put it more briefly, most of us aren't hardened criminals, but some of us may still end up in these situations. Would you feel it was just to have things tilted against you?

By far the largest amount of funding for this proposition comes from Henry Nicolaus, who is also the major funder of the effort supporting Prop 6. Whereas he put about a million into Prop 6, Dr. Nicolaus has donaed nearly five million dollars in support of Prop 9.

Mirroring that, the opponents to Prop 9 are largely the same as the opponents to Prop 6. Major money in opposition to this proposition come from a number of California employee agencies, including multiple teachers associations, as well as the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

You can see who's giving money in support of Prop 9 by clicking here and here.

You can see who's opposing Prop 9 by clicking here.

You can read the full text of this proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions here.

Proposition 12: Veterans' Bond Act of 2008 - recommend Yes

Prop 12 is oddly opaque if you don't know the background it's building on. From the text included, it allows the sale of $900 million in bonds for some purpose defined elsewhere in law. Let's look at the background.

Over eighty years ago, California began selling bonds to help finance the Cal-Vet program, and we have sold about $8.4 billion worth of bonds to date in support of that program. The Cal-Vet program provides home loans to military veterans who served at least 90 days in war- or peacetime (note that the opposition argument is incorrect about this point). The chief advantages of a Cal-Vet loan over other loans is that all qualified applicants receive the same rate, and that the program purchases the home you're buying and then sells it to you, which lets them acquire a very favorable group rate for insurance for the homes they cover.

Note that active duty personnel can also apply for Cal-Vet loans, if they are state residents.

To date, the program has paid for itself, as most veterans have not defaulted on their home loans. On the other hand, the general obligation bonds must be paid off, default or no, so there's no guarantee that default rates won't spike and lead to increased costs from the program. As a consequence, we could expect costs anywhere from the historical "basically nothing" to some significant portion of the full amount.

My opinion on this program is perhaps colored by growing up in San Diego, but California really is a state that in many ways has grown on the back of the United States military. San Diego in particular grew up around a core of military and veteran residents and homeowners. Given this, their history of service, the fact that national-level support sometimes fails them, and that the program supports itself, I am inclined to continue supporting Cal-Vet.

There are no major financial interests pushing for or opposing Prop 12.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions here.

Proposition 3: Children's Hospital Bond Act. Grant Program. Initiative Statute. - recommend No

Proposition 3 is a bond act that would authorize the issuing of just shy of a billion dollars in bonds to fund construction and other capital costs at various children's hospitals in California. These bonds would be paid off over the course of 30 years, for a final cost of about $2 billion.

The funds would be split between UC hospitals and others, with 20% going to the UC system's children's hospitals and the remaining 80% going to children's hospitals outside the UC system. Grants awarded under Prop 3 are supposed to expand access for children who are eligible for government insurance programs, as well as indigent or underserved children, including providing under- or uncompensated care in some cases.

Prop 3 in particular is this year's candidate for annoying arguments for and against a fairly straightforward proposition. The official argument for Prop 3 pulls out this incredibly tired line:

"Proposition 3 does not raise taxes." (except they wrote it in all caps)

This is such fundamental nonsense, yet it must work well enough to bear reuse. Sure, it doesn't raise taxes -- it just builds up a two billion dollar debt. Ridiculous.

On the other side, the argument against tries this one:

"It appears that a driving force behind this measure is to provide a backdoor way of compensating hospitals for treating indigents (including illegal aliens) who don’t pay their way through the front door."

Backdoor? It's clearly there on the front that the grants are meant to help provide support for people who can't pay. This argument against tries to combine the narcissistic "nothing bad has ever happened to me" argument of the mid-Orange-county wanna-be who thinks they'd pay their way, no matter what, with the cheap addition of the bugbear of "it's supporting illegals!"

Shame on both of you. Those are pathetic arguments.

Although I support children's hospitals in general, and despise the arrogant and ignorant "everyone should pay their way no matter what" argument that is included in the opposing stance, I can't support two billion dollars in debt. If we want to make health care for children, especially uninsured children, more of a priority in this state we need to do it the right way, by tackling it in the legislature and restructuring our state's expenditures to support these services, potentially in favor of other items. Although it is logical for the hospitals supporting this proposition to try and support themselves in the face of ridiculous costs and a large population of uninsured children who nonetheless need help, this is not the approach I want to see used to do so.

Major financial support for Proposition 3 comes from, unsurprisingly, a number of children's hospitals throughout the state. Miller Children's Hospital, Loma Linda University Childrens' Hospital, Children's Hospital Oakland, Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, Children's Hospital Central California, Children's Hospital of Orange County, and the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford each gave over eight hundred thousand dollars in support of Prop 3. Children's Hospital of Los Angeles gave about 1.4 million dollars in support of this Prop, bringing the total from all these institutions to about 7.2 million dollars.

You can check out the full list of financial backers of Proposition 3 here.

There are no major financial opponents to Prop 3.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

You can read my reviews and recommendations for the other propositions here.

As I've just finished posting the last of my California proposition reviews and recommendations today, I'm going to once again put up a central link page, this time with the ultra-concise reasoning behind each voting recommendation. As always, click through to the individual entries to read my summary of the propositions, see who's putting up money for or against them, and decide for yourself. Alternately, you can always just take my word for it.

1A: High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act - recommend "No" because even the massive amount of money put aside in this proposition won't complete the most basic rail line from the SF Bay Area to Los Angeles.
2: Standards for Confining Farm Animals - recommend "No" because it will eliminate the egg industry in California, but won't change how animals are raised -- it will just outsource them to other states.
3: Children's Hospital Bond Act - recommend "No" because it would pile on a billion in extra debt at a time when our debt load is already high.
4: Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of a Minor's Pregnancy (again) - recommend "No" because it is even more poorly written than earlier failed versions, and would put young woman in tremendous danger.
5: Nonviolent Drug Offenses; Sentencing, Parole, and Rehabilitation - recommend "Yes" because it would help unburden our jail system and may help reintegrate a significant portion of our criminal base -- drug users -- into productive society.
6: Police and Law Enforcement Funding; Criminal Penalties and Laws - recommend "No" because it would cost a massive amount of money, put many more people in jail, and there is little evidence that it would actually help reduce crime.
7: Renewable Energy Generation - recommend "No" because it is a very poorly written proposition that would screw up the California economy while failing to adequately support renewable energy.
8: Elimination of Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry - recommend "No" because this we don't need to legislate people's religious beliefs.
9: Criminal Justice System; Victim's Rights - recommend "No" because it would remove key rights of the accused and those who are on parole.
10: Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Renewable Energy - recommend "No" because this is a scam to put money into the hands of one corporation at taxpayer expense.
11: Redistricting (again) - recommend "No" because it would remove the power of redistricting from our legally elected representatives and hand it off to a small group of unaccountable people.
12: Veterans' Bond Act of 2008 - recommend "Yes" because it supports home ownership by veterans and this program has historically paid for itself fully, making this a net-no-cost proposition.

Following the successful passage of Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, its proponents are now asking a Federal judge to overturn the California law requirement disclosure of those who have donated $100 or more for a political campaign or cause. Here's what they had to say about it:

Sponsors of California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage asked a federal judge Thursday to overturn state laws that require disclosure of the names and employers of campaign donors of $100 or more, saying the laws invite harassment and chill free speech.

...and...

"This harassment is made possible because of California's unconstitutional campaign finance disclosure rules as applied to ballot measure committees where even donors of as little as $100 must have their names, home addresses and employers listed on public documents," said Ron Prentice, chairman of ProtectMarriage.com, the Yes on 8 committee.

Whatever legitimate need the state might have to collect and publish information on contributors to a ballot measure campaign "ceases to exist the moment the last ballot is cast," the lawsuit said.

The concept here is that disclosure of who's spending money to support a cause "chills" free speech. Let's take a look back at the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There's nothing in there about ensuring the anonymity of speech. I think, in fact, that it's rather a stretch to suggest that anonymity is in any way a fundamental component of freedom of speech. More to the point, the inability to see who is funding support for a political measure would obscure things like the fact that Prop 10 was an attempt by one company to harvest money from our state, which was evident the moment you actually looked at the funding (as I always do).

As for the claim that keeping records of funding past an election is unnecessary...well, that's naive in several ways. It's important to be able to track spending historically, of course, but the assertion that records should be destroyed is also naive because it's impossible. If the state changes its policies such that records will be deleted after an election, I'll simply scrape and archive all the records while they're still available. I'm not sure how helpful it is to the general public to have access limited to the few motivated enough to do this, but there you go.

Most of all, I find it ironic that a group that successfully promoted a change in the California constitution that makes a law out of a religious institution is now claiming first amendment protection from accountability.

It doesn't work that way.

SF Chronicle article

In this most recent election, a majority of you voted 'yes' on Proposition 1A, authorizing the state to take out a hefty chunk of bonds -- assuming matching Federal funds -- in aid of generating a high speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

This week, the Chronicle reports that the California High Speed Rail Authority is coming up well short on its own budget this year.

The California High Speed Rail Authority's budget for the current fiscal year, which ends in June, included $29 million from the sales of high-speed rail bonds authorized by voters in November. But because of the state budget crisis, the credit crisis and the poor market for bonds, the state treasurer has not sold any of the rail bonds.

As a consequence, unless an emergency loan can be arranged, design and engineering work on the proposed line will come to a complete stop in short order. Given that our state budget is currently down a fairly shocking forty billion or so, I think it's likely that the Governor's office will be forced to sideline the rail system in favor of keeping the state running properly, at least for now.

SF Chronicle article

Proposition 1A: "Rainy Day" Budget Stabilization Fund. - recommend No

This is a bad time to be trying to operate an American state. According to this helpful overview from the National Conference of State Legislatures, the majority of states are looking at significant budget shortfalls for Fiscal Year 2009. Interestingly, as much as California is looking like a train wreck for the coming year, it's still in the "Less than 10% of state's general fund" budget gap category, whereas Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama are all in the 10-15% shortfall bracket (one wonders how this fits into that good old frontier independence in Alaska).

NCSL is also tracking states' efforts to overcome their financial deficits here. States are exploring saving money by any number of measures, including shutting down parks, reducing aid to local governments or industries, reducing employee salaries, closing prisons, and so forth. Among the states, California is looking at by far the most severe cut in education funding for FY 2010, with a reduction in $7.3 billion (that said, I don't know how this will influence per-student spending, which is a better metric for this kind of comparison). Moving over to tax increases, most states that are monkeying with general taxes have chosen to play with the sales tax. I suspect this is because people find this the most conceptually inoffensive, as it's just "a little more" skimming off the top rather than a direct debit from your paycheck. In California, this was an increase in the sales tax; in other states it's involved repealing certain sales tax exemptions (e.g. on bottled water in Florida). Some of the states have proposed corporate income tax increases as well (for example, Illinois could potentially raise its corporate income tax rate from 4.8% to 7.2%). There are also proposed increases in selective taxes, such as taxes on liquor.

Proposition 1A is a package of changes in how the state collects and spends money. It would increase the size of the state's "rainy day" fund, would require excess money to be funneled back into state needs in a prioritized order (with education first), and would extend the sales and income tax increases that were enacted for the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years out to 2013. More specifically, it would build the "rainy day" fund up from 5% to 12.5% of the general fund - in other words, in good years, we'd have to funnel money we gained above the historic trend (for the prior ten years) into the rainy day fund first, with the fund to be tapped in years where revenues fall below the trend amount. Some of this money would then go to specific states needs. If Prop 1B passes, $9.3 billion would go to counterbalance current education budget reductions, with another 1.5% of state revenues to go to debt service and infrastructure afterwards.

I am not in principle opposed to many of the concepts undergirding this proposition. It would be better to put more money into "rainy day" funds during times of economic waxing, so that we don't find that we suddenly have a raft of unfundable programs when we go into economic wane. Similarly, the idea of putting funding first into gaps in education and infrastructure seems quite reasonable. I'm not as fond of the raise in sales tax, as that is particularly brutal for everyone in the lower ranges of our economy.

Fundamentally, however, proposition 1A represents an attempt to budget via proposition rather than via legislature. The state of California has seen a series of this propositions, meant to "fix" spending in certain areas (e.g. education) via proposition mandate, rather than relying on the legislature to take care of proper spending. This is heavily rooted in the common belief that politicians are a different species who cannot be relied upon to make proper spending decisions, rather than our legally elected representatives who try to promote the interests of their constituencies. This is best reflected in this quote from the rebuttal to the argument against (that is, an argument for Prop 1A):

"Politicians commit the state to spending it cannot sustain."

Honestly, we as voters like to commit the state to spending it cannot sustain. For example, in the last election, Californians passed Proposition 1A and Proposition 3, both of which added significantly to our state's debt burden. The proposition system is often used to push spending or debt accrual the state cannot sustain which we might expect to find quashed in the legislature.

Most of these measures are workarounds to deal with bloat and delay in the California budget process. However, it seems likely that the fundamental issue here is the supermajority vote requirement for passing our state budget. California is only one of three states (Arkansas and Rhode Island being the other two) that requires more than a simple majority to pass the state's non-educational budget. The upshot of this is that the minority party in one of these states can stall a budget indefinitely and ask for unreasonable compromises. The easy solution to pass a California budget in the current setup, then, is to just give everyone what they want. Consider the following bit from NCSL's evaluation of supermajority budget vote requirements:

There is little empirical evidence identifying the effects of supermajority vote requirements on the budget process. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they may cause states to miss or bump up against their budget deadlines, making it even harder to pass a budget on time. And, according to a new report released by the California Citizens Budget Commission, instead of slowing the growth in state spending, California's two-thirds vote requirement may have the opposite effect, allowing the legislative minority to frustrate the process of reaching compromise by withholding votes for spending in other areas. Ultimately, however, it is important to note that difficult budget decisions are probably more likely to be an obstacle to getting the budget passed on time than the number of votes required.

As they say, there's a dearth of empirical evidence to work with here, so it's hard to say if that final line is anything other than a nicety to say that it's not the fault of the supermajority setup. That said, the simple lateness of the budget each year, which is often pointed to as some sign that the dreaded "politicians" are defective, is more than likely the direct result of requiring a supermajority. This, alone, is disruptive enough to warrant a change.

Notably, there are two propositions in the petition stage right now that would revoke the supermajority requirement for passing a budget and replace it with a 55% majority requirement (one of the two would maintain the supermajority requirement for raising of property taxes). I hope that some version of this makes it onto the ballot, but I am concerned that people will see this as a license to raise taxes rather than as a license to not have to bribe the minority to get a budget passed on time. It's important to recall that no representative is fond of raising taxes on their own constituents - that makes you vulnerable to being voted out of office, and no one likes to lose their job.

In the meantime, I am unwilling to support more proposition-based mandated spending directions, and prefer to hold out until we can remove this particular stumbling block from the path of our state government.

Significant opposition to this proposition comes from various faculty, nurse, public employee, and service employee organizations. Major financial support for it comes from a mix of businesses, including (intriguingly) some cigarette companies. The major business push appears to be from California-oriented businesses, however, including Disney, Universal, and other media companies. Outside of businesses, there have also been significant contributions from school-associated groups. Presumably these groups are interested in the mandate to repay cuts in education funding; I'm not sure about the business interest, but suspect there's some appreciation for the mandated rebuilding of infrastructure, as well as finding a way to get more money into the state via personal income taxes and sales taxes rather than increased corporate income taxes.

You can look at the people spending money for or against this proposition by clicking here.

You can read the full text of the proposition and the legislative analyst's summary here.

Proposition 1B: Education Funding. Payment Plan. - recommend No

As is no doubt apparent from the numbering, Prop 1B is a companion piece to Prop 1A. Specifically, Prop 1B covers the education spending that would be enabled by Prop 1A.

Under the provisions of Prop 1B, if Prop 1A is passed, $9.3 billion would be funneled from the "rainy day" fund established by Prop 1A into K-14 education. That part seems pretty straightforward. The concern, however, is that there's some lack of clarity in how this adjustment to education funding interacts with Prop 98 rules on education funding. One of the potential problems is that under one interpretation of how the final Prop 98 / Prop 1B mix would interact, the new rules would generate several billions in additional state obligations each year. Naturally, this doesn't mix well with our lack of knowledge about (1) when the economy will recover and (2) whether there will ever be a significant downturn in the future (I'm willing to guess there will be).

This proposition contains the same fundamental error I dislike in Prop 1B, that of attempting to budget via proposition rather than using this legislature we voted into office. That said, it's basically just an adjunct to Prop 1A, and as I'm downchecking 1A, I'm downchecking this one as well.

Support for 1B comes from most of the same people as for 1A, including major corporate interests within and outside of our state. You can check on the full list of financial supporters and opposition by clicking here.

You can get to the full text of the proposition and the legislative analysis here.

Proposition 1C: Lottery Modernization Act - recommend No

The legislative analyst's summary tells us that the average Californian spends $83 per year on lottery tickets, which may well seem surprisingly high if you never buy a lottery ticket, but is also significantly below the average across all the states that have lotteries (that average being $190, or $105 for states west of the Mississippi, which may or may not be an interesting commentary in itself). Proposition 1C hopes to up that amount, as well as to reconfigure how California lottery money can be used.

Prop 1C would enact a handful of significant changes to the lottery.

First, it would let the state increase the portion of lottery money taken in that is subsequently kicked back out in payments. Based on examples in other states, higher percentage payouts correlate with higher lottery uptake. The goal, then, would be to increase the purchasing of lottery tickets by making bigger payouts. Higher payouts would naturally impinge on the increased intake of money, but the overall effect would be more net funds coming in from the lottery.

Second, Prop 1C would rework how lottery money is used. Currently, money from the lottery that does not go into payouts, operating the lottery, and advertising for the lottery goes directly into education. Under the revisions in this proposition, the payments would go into the state's General Fund instead. New rules would be put into effect increasing the required payout from the General Fund into education in an attempt to maintain parity on the funding going into education. This may seem arcane and pointless, but makes sense in light of the third change.

Third, this proposition would allow borrowing worth up to $5 billion against future profits from the lottery. The upshot here is that the state could immediately borrow that $5 billion, drop it into the General Fund, and use it to pay off immediate needs, while still maintaining roughly the same level of required lottery payout to education on a year-by-year basis.

The downside of this approach, as indicated in the legislative analysis, is that debt service on this $5 billion in borrowing would have to be paid off by future lottery proceeds, which could eventually lead to the state having an annual deficit in its funding. Or, put more briefly, debt is debt.

The three components of this propositions are not all of equivalent value. The modifications to lottery procedure to increase payouts seem reasonable (putting aside concerns about who the lottery is effectively taxing, which is a separate issue that bears its own evaluation). However, the second and third elements are basically a scheme to generate new debt to dig us out of our short-term budget problems. Consider this disingenuous quote from the argument in favor of Prop 1C:

By modernizing our state lottery, Prop. 1C will immediately raise $5 billion in new revenues without increasing taxes. Our lottery is out of date and underperforming. With a few simple changes, OUR LOTTERY CAN BRING IN MUCH MORE REVENUE TO THE STATE—$5 billion immediately without costing taxpayers a dime, while protecting funding levels for schools currently provided by the lottery.

To be clear, when I say 'disingenuous' I mean 'lying.' I loathe the line of falsehood that suggests that adding $5 billion in additional debt to the state does not raise taxes. Although it literally does not, it's just like saying that you can buy a car with your credit card at "no additional cost to you." The fact that this is their opening line of argument shows that the proponents of this measure know that if you explained it properly that voters would not want to go for it.

An additional giant pile of debt is likely not the best approach to working out our state's economy, and for that reason, I'm recommending against it.

The single strongest supporter for Prop 1C is GTECH, a company that refers to itself as "a leading provider of lottery technology." That's not so surprising.

You can check the full list of financial supporters of Prop 1C by clicking here.

You can get to the full text of the proposition and the legislative analysis here.

Proposition 1D. Protects Children's Services Funding. Helps Balance State Budget. - recommend Yes

Now, that's a misleading title.

I've had this conversation with a good friend of mine in the past, about how every proposition is pretty much named "The Save the Puppies and Kittens and Babies Act" regardless of content.

This bill is utterly straightforward. It pulls Proposition 10 revenues (taken from a state excise tax on cigarettes) that are currently required to be assigned to First 5 programs and lets them be used instead for other state programs for children. This will effectively pull about $600 million into the General Fund and cut the same amount from First 5 programs. In other words, we'd be cutting the First 5 program for the next two years.

As I said, straightforward. This is the kind of program cutting that other states are already planning in response to the current budget crunch. It's also likely to be the kind of budget cutting that is facilitated by not requiring a supermajority to pass a budget (see the Prop 1A analysis for more on this issue.

I'm not at all a fan of cutting children's programs, but looking at the overall state budget, it's not clear to me that there are any specific programs one should be sanguine about cutting. The fact that we have various propositions that have mandated specific spending from certain taxes hinders the state legislature, limiting its flexibility and agility in response to budget problems like our recent economic crash. For this reason, I'm recommending a "yes" on Prop 1D.

Once again, I'll take a moment to highlight some pathetic rhetoric from an argument, in this case the argument against Prop 1D:

Prop. 1D was placed on the ballot by Sacramento politicians to take local funding from children’s health and education programs in every community. These funds were approved by voters in two previous elections. Don’t be fooled by the deceptive ballot description written by Sacramento politicians. Prop. 1D seizes money from local medical, health, and education experts and puts it in the hands of Sacramento politicians and bureaucrats.

Damn those politicians! Oh, wait, no. We voted for them in two previous elections, too.

I'm tired of the lame approach of treating the people we elected to represent us as if they were aliens. You voted for your representative (or, minimally, a majority of people in your district did). If you don't want the budget to operate the way it does, let them know. If they still aren't representing your needs, vote for someone else. If, in the extreme, you think that our legislative system doesn't work, then it's time to promote a proposition that does away with it in favor of something else.

But seriously, the argument that these weird aliens are out to steal your money for nefarious purposes is stupid. Prop 1D "seizes money" and "puts it in the hands of Sacramento politicians" who will then, in turn, use it to pay for different child and family health programs. Well, shucks. That's evil, right?

You can get to the full text of the proposition and the legislative analysis here.

Proposition 1E. Mental Health Services Funding. Temporary Reallocation. Helps Balance State Budget. - recommend Yes

Prop 1E benefits from a more accurate and less misleading title than the very similar Prop 1D. Like Prop 1D, it's an utterly straightforward measure that would redirect funding from an area with legally mandated funding into the General Fund where it would be spent to cover fairly similar state needs. Specifically, this reallocates money that was generated by the 2004 Prop 63 tax on very high incomes, switching it from one batch of mental health programs to cover the costs of the state's Early and Period Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment Program (to the tune of reallocating $460 million or so, total).

Or, in other words, it's a $460 million cut in overall mental health spending in the state.

As I said in my overview of Prop 1D, I am not happy about a cut in these specific services, but I believe our state legislature should be able to reallocate funds more readily, and I do not appreciate the various workarounds people have attempted involving using propositions to mandate specific segments of state spending. With that in mind, I recommend "Yes" on this proposition with the understanding that when there are no specific state programs I want to see receive major cuts, cuts will necessarily have to come from good, quality state programs that help me and my fellow citizens.

You can get to the full text of the proposition and the legislative analysis here.

I apologize for being so late in posting my overviews and recommendations this time around. Here's the roundup of titles and recommendations. As always, you can click on through to each entry for a discussion of the background behind the proposition, what the new law would do if enacted, and links to the text of the law, the legislative analysis, and in many cases additional information on who's backing or opposing the proposition.

Here we go:

Prop 1A. "Rainy Day" Budget Stabilization fund." - recommend "No" because more rules on the use of state funding is not the route to successfully managing our budget.
Prop 1B. Education Funding. - recommend "No" for exactly the same reason as I gave for 1A. Mandated spending rules are not the path to victory here.
Prop 1C. Lottery Modernization Act. - recommend "No" because it is fundamentally a tool to add $5 billion in state debt.
Prop 1D. Children's Services Funding Reallocation. - recommend "Yes" because it frees our state to make necessary if distasteful budget cuts.
Prop 1E. Mental Health Services Funding Reallocation. - recommend "Yes" for the same reason as Prop 1D.
Prop 1F. Elected Official Pay Increase Block During Deficit Years. - recommend "No" because it's foolish and infantile, and will not achieve its stated goal.

And there you go. As always, I welcome comments, and I hope the overviews are useful for your own decision-making process this week.

Props 1A-E failed, with only the pointlessly and uselessly punitive Prop 1F passing. The last minute push against 1D and 1E was unsurprisingly irrational; I saw that enterprising campaigners had peppered the local train station with fliers decrying the victimization of kids by these proposed cuts.

The problem is that there are no significant, nonpainful cuts we can make. The majority of the state budget goes to care, in the trifecta of education, health and wellfare, and prisons. There are no good cuts. If we want to keep the state running without making painful cuts, all of us who still have jobs are going to have to be prepared to pay a lot more in taxes.

Cut or spend. There's no magical third option.

You can see the results from yesterday's special election by clicking here. Officially, the formal final tally isn't done until 35 days after the election, when all absentee ballots and legitimate provisional ballots will be counted, but none of the margins on the propositions are even vaguely close enough for that to make a difference.

The California state supreme court ruled today that Prop 8 is legal, if distasteful.

"All political power is inherent in the people," George said, quoting the Declaration of Rights in the state Constitution. He said the voters' power to amend their Constitution is limited - and might not include a measure that, for example, deprived same-sex couples of the right to raise a family - but that Prop. 8 did not exceed those limits.

It was fundamentally odd to see a legal challenge concerning the constitutionality of a constitutional amendment, and the 6-1 decision follows from that. If the court had somehow come to rule that the amendment were not legal, that would fundamentally break the amendment process going into the future, as each new amendment could potentially face a legitimate challenge to its constitutionality based on its divergence from the standing constitution.

Or, to quote my lawyer friend, "This should be fought in the proposition process."

The one real point of judgment here was whether the passage of Prop 8 invalidated those same-sex marriages that had already taken place. Based on the wording, it didn't seem as if it should be retroactive, and the court has ruled that it is not. So congratulations to those of you who made it in under the wire last year, and to the rest of you, we'll try to help you out on the ballot next time around.

In late 2006, an arsonist's fire killed five Riverside county firefighters. This week, the arsonist was sentenced to be killed after having been found guilty of first degree murder. Concerns about the specific choice of sentences (death versus life imprisonment) aside, I appreciate that he was found guilty of the murders, as "indirect" killings of this type seem to be more prone to escaping that fate.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge W Charles Morgan found that the aggravating circumstances in Oyler's case outweighed the mitigating circumstances.

"He knew that young men and woman would put their lives on the line to protect other people and property and he continued anyway."

Given the Southern California ecosystem, arson is fundamentally a terrorist act, with the potential for far more widespread destruction than most conventional terrorists can manage. Given this, it's important from both the safety and cost standpoints that arsonists be aggressively pursued and quashed.

BBC article

I've posted before about the curious phenomenon of areas that pride themselves on "small government" and "self sufficiency" nonetheless being happy to rake in giant piles of government money, more, in fact, than they put into the system.

At the moment, our state budget is stalled out due to our foolish supermajority rule, and the recalcitrance of the Republican party as buoyed by this rule. I am far from a partisan for the Democrats, but I am frustrated at the willingness of our state's Republicans to commit organizational suicide rather than reach reasonable compromise.

Now, the SF Chronicle is reporting on a review of state income and spending that was commissioned by Assemblymember Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa, which shows, briefly, that our self-reliant 'conservative' counties are pulling down a disproportionate share of state government money.

Marin County was No. 1 in contributions, at $4,793 per person, and San Francisco was No. 3 at $3,578. Modoc was No. 2 in consumption at $2,216 per person, and conservative Tulare was No. 1, with $2,223.

"I don't think voters in the conservative counties understand the connection between the service they are receiving and the votes their representatives are making," Evans said. "Maybe the layers of government are so convoluted that many people don't realize how it works."

Ms. Evans has hit the nail on the head here, as the misunderstanding of the link between money paid in and services received is at the heart of the problem (as I've discussed previously). Note that as the SF staff writer tells us, it's not an issue of 'dumb Republicans' in these areas, either:

The prevailing attitude among the right-wing ranchers and modern hippies who define Modoc County is of fierce self-reliance - but more people here than just about anywhere else depend on welfare checks of some kind to get by.

It is, instead, the difficulty in understanding that money in yields services out, and that these services are critical to our communities existing as we want them to.

In Modoc, the way it works is that if the cuts being proposed go through, near-catastrophe will reign, said County Administrative Officer Mark Charlton.

"You'll be able to translate these cuts into more accidents on the road, more people in jail, more people getting sick," Charlton said.

Right now, counties like mine are funding counties like this - and I am glad we are, because I want my fellow citizens to have good roads, appropriate medical care, and opportunities that will lead people out of poverty and into rewarding work. I understand that my money in yields these things, and that is why I am happy to pay taxes for these purposes.

There are no road faeries, nor are there school or hospital faeries. If we do not pay in for these services, they will disappear, and people will suffer. It's unfortunate that some citizens of the state don't realize that they are those people.

SF Chronicle article

I'm in my home town of San Diego at the moment, rather than my current home in the Bay Area, which gave me the opportunity to run into a canvasser for Equality California at a local mall. I stopped and chatted with her, and learned about EC's mission in the area, which is to bring grass-roots awareness of issues of marriage equality into the areas of the state that voted most heavily for Proposition 8, leading to our current constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

I've already discussed my own objections to the ban (again, here). Briefly, it's a fixing in law of a religious idea. As laws are functionally about the setting of community standards, I'm simply asserting that I think this is a community standard that is far from universal, and on the way out.

If you are in, say, a mall in Orange or San Diego county, you may run into an EC canvasser. You have the opportunity to give them money, but their main point is to spread the idea of equality to people who may not really have given the topic enough thought before they voted (or didn't!) on Proposition 8. From my own experience with San Diego as a home town, I think many, many people simply haven't put themselves in the position of personalizing the people involved. It's different to say "Of course marriage is always heterosexual" than it is to say, "You, Bob and Tom, can not say that you are committed to each other for life." A lot of us just like things to stay the way they are, but when we face a specific case, realize that we're cool with the change. So it goes.

You can learn more about EC at their site. If you see an EC canvasser at the mall, take the time to say hello. They're probably having a pretty long, if rewarding, day.

Apparently we have a state budget.

The condition of California's state budget is world news. That's not so surprising, given the scale of our state economy.

We'll have to see the full spread of budget cuts in the coming week. There was never going to be a pretty solution to this one, but it looks like the pressure against raising taxes won out, so it's all cuts.

As I've discussed previously, there's some irony here, as the ostensibly conservative and self reliant counties whose residents most vigorously oppose any tax increases stand to benefit the most, as they're being floated by counties like mine. This was, if anything, an opportunity to tax us at their benefit. I suppose I could be grateful that they've decided to take a hit rather than cost me money, but I think that's a dysfunctional way to face a financial crisis.

There are a number of untested beliefs at work here. One is that there is cruft to cut from our state budget. This is demonstrably false, and we're seeing the continuing consequences as education and health care take hits. A second is that if we do anything to raise taxes at all, businesses will abandon the state. To this, we have to say, "Well, if there's a tax rate that drives businesses out, let's actually test that." California is already widely rated as a terrible business environment, yet we're still a gigantic, world-scale economy with some of the most important businesses in the world headquartered here. Given that, we clearly have not yet hit the drive-out limit on taxes.

Or, more concisely, I'm sad to see that we'll have more people undereducated and uncared for because we magically believe what we believe.

I strive to be a good citizen. This includes being aware of local and world affairs, voting in each election, giving to local and global charities, and, notably, giving blood.

Giving blood is a remarkably simple, low-effort way to actually save someone's life. This is an opportunity most of us aren't accorded in our daily lives or in our workplaces. By putting aside roughly one hour every two months, you give one of your fellow Americans a chance at something more concrete than simply "a better life" - you give them a chance at life.

Many blood donation centers are run by the American Red Cross. You can find a nearby donation center by going to their site. You may also have non-ARC centers nearby. I personally give at the Stanford Blood Center.

Giving blood is super easy. One hour every two months, and they give you cookies and juice at the end (along with t-shirts, movie tickets, and all sorts of other stuff, really). It's by far the easiest and laziest way to save a life and be a good citizen, and other than that hour, it doesn't cost you one dime.

Give blood, save a life. Easy enough.

In October, our governor requested $4.7 billion in Federal stimulus money. This week, we learn that we've received about half of that amount, with $2.25 billion of it marked for California's much-debated high-speed rail project.

In case you've lost track, the high-speed rail project was authorized by California voters in the form of Prop 1A in the November, 2008 elections. This prop authorized taking out bonds on the order of $10 billion, which equates to $20 billion in debt over thirty years, to build high-speed rail connecting the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. The main constraint on the project as written into the proposition was a requirement for matching Federal money.

With $2.25 billion coming in, that means the High-Speed Rail Authority is now authorized to issue $2.25 billion in bonds to start work on the project. What will that get us?

If you refer back to my original analysis I estimated that the full $9 billion for high-speed rail plus full matching Federal funding would yield a high-speed rail route from San Francisco to Paso Robles. Notably, not Los Angeles. If I extend this same analysis to having just $4.5 billion total to work with, we should expect to be able to generate some 60-70 miles of track.

That's roughly the distance from San Francisco to Morgan Hill (just south of San Jose), or from Los Angeles to Oxnard or Ventura.

That's a significant state debt to take on in exchange for trying to exchange, say, the Peninsula's Caltrain rail system for a high-speed rail system on the same right of way.

Right now, I can't cleanly and quickly make my way around the entire SF Bay Area using public transit. I take Caltrain to and from work, and can exchange from Caltrain to BART or VTA and beyond, but each transfer slows the trip tremendously. It seems as if it would have been rational to seek Federal funding to support metropolitan public transit improvements, as these would in turn directly generate jobs as well as facilitating job growth by connecting commuting employees to employers they could not otherwise reasonably reach.

$2.25 billion in Federal money would buy a lot of trains and buses. Or 60 miles of high-speed rail.

Mountain View Voice

Following the default on a $50 million payment by former property owner Page Mill, a housing complex in East Palo Alto's Woodland Hills neighborhood has reverted to bank control. Following an unsuccessful attempt to auction the properties, Wells Fargo is now left as the owner of 1,800 residential units, making it the single largest landlord in East Palo Alto.

The properties had a county-appointed caretaker since September, when Page Mill stopped maintaining them due to "cash flow issues." According to this article in the Mountain View Voice, local residents are basically pleased that Page Mill has now been entirely removed from the equation, and look forward to better treatment under Wells Fargo's management.