Kevin's Weblog

Okay, I suck and totally failed to get around to writing on this before election day. But, since I oddly find myself with a little time now, here’s my final decisions:

Prop 73 — I already wrote about this one, and I still say “no”.

Prop 74 — NO. I was leaning towards this one at first, because I’m not convinced that teacher “tenure” has any real justification. However, the political context of this prop leaves a bad taste in my mouth and, on consideration, I don’t really believe that the problem with our schools is that we can’t fire enough teachers either. Since I have no strong argument for this measure, I vote no.

Prop 75 — NO. Pretty much a no-brainer. This is a classic pro-business, anti-worker tactic. I’m not anti-business, but I strongly believe that employees have just as much right to organize as employers do. Corporations would never stand for having to poll their shareholders at this level of granularity, and unions shouldn’t have to either.

Prop 76 — NO. I didn’t have much time to look at this, and the issue is too complicated for me to feel comfortable endorsing this solution without more research.

Prop 77 — YES. I have reservations about this amendment; particularly the voter approval mechanism. However, I think this is the most critical issue on the ballot this year. California democracy is deeply broken, in large part because of the entrenched nature of our districts. It will be nearly impossible to acheive any other meaningful reform through the legislature until that problem is fixed. For that reason, I’m willing to give this proposal a chance.

Props 78 and 79 — NO and NO. Again, I’ve had not enough time to think about a highly complex issue.

Prop 80 — NO. Again, the complexity issue comes into play, but I also think this is a knee-jerk reaction to the singular events of a couple years ago. The deregulation of the California power market was done in a fundamentally flawed way. That doesn’t mean that deregulation is a necessarily bad idea, or that re-regulation is the right response. We need to revise the rules, but we also need to keep the positive aspects of markets in play. The issue of energy in California isn’t going away, and we are going to need some clever ideas to keep things working in the future. Personally, I think that market incentives are generally the right way to acheive this.