Those of you not living in California, feel free to buzz off and pick your noses or whatever. Eat some paste.)
My fellow Californians,
On May 19th, we have a super-exciting Special Election! I love these things. These are the elections where we spend a lot of money trying to fix or undo all the things that a bunch of morons voted into law in previous elections.
This particular special election is based around the Great California Budget Crisis of 2008-20091.
Let's start with an overview about why we have this budget crisis. It's quite simple, really, and has to do with the following cycle of madness:
A) The state budget is determined legislatively: the state's constitution says how much we have to set aside for any one program (be it education, super trains, or even government salaries)
B) The state budget requires a super-majority to pass (that's 2/3s of the State Legislature who have to agree to the budget)
C) The state budget is constitutionally required to balance
D) Any fucking lunatic can write any fucking lunatic amendment or proposition and get it on the ballot without much effort, which brings us back to the madness of item A, above
You may be thinking to yourself, "Self, I'm pretty sure the problem is the fault of all those dirty Republicans!" (or, if you're a Republican, you may want to blame the Democrats). You couldn't be more unbelievably wrong!
The roots of our problem lie with Proposition 13, voted into law in 1978 (so it's really your parents' fault, if they are from here). Now you may be asking yourself, "Self, what does a cap on property taxes have to do with our budget crisis?" I'm glad you asked!
Not much.
It's a secondary clause in the legalese that's the killer. In layman's terms (cribbed from the wiki):
"In addition to lowering property taxes, the initiative also contained language requiring a two-thirds majority in both legislative houses for future increases in all state tax rates or amounts of revenue collected, including income tax rates. It also requires two-thirds vote majority in local elections for local governments wishing to raise special taxes."
So this is where we get our utterly moronic "Super Majority" bit from. 2/3rds of our elected officials have to agree to raise taxes - any taxes. And as we all know, getting 2/3rds of a bunch of people who have vested interests in getting re-elected to agree to raise taxes. . . well. It's just not gonna happen.
(Warren Buffet, Ahnuld's economic adviser and like, the richest guy in the world, suggested that it be repealed to help avoid problems like this.)
By and large, Californians enjoy spending money on programs. Some of these programs are smart while some are lunatic and stupid. However, the quality of these programs really doesn't matter because I think that we, as a state, seem to think that money just comes from some magic fountain someplace. A measure says that the budget will allocate seven billion dollars for reforestation? Sure! Who knows where the money comes from; that's the governor's problem. Write it into the constitution, stat!
(This may be why a state of liberal Democrats needs to have Republican governors. We need a father figure.)
So that brings us to the special election, which is a mash of both good ideas and bad ideas. Pete Rates does a pretty good job of laying out the props and which ones are good and bad.
I suggest you familiarize yourself with it (read: don't be a douchebag; understand what the fuck is going on).
I pretty much agree with everything he says though I'm still vacillating on Prop 1A (I may likely vote "NO" on it). As a general rule, I vote NO on everything, especially if it isn't very clear, or it seems like a band-aid on a problem. Voting "No" never makes things worse while voting "Yes" can (small government FTW!).
I should write up a manifesto for my new political party, which I am tentatively calling the Antidouchbagitarian Party.
I definitely agree with his argument against Prop 1F - specifically that it comes across as vindictive and childish.
Anyways. Go vote on May 19th, and don't be a douchebag when you do so.
1. Who knew that there would be a Wikipedia entry about this?
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Really, I'd like to see all of these props fail. I'd like the *idea* of ballot propositions to fail. Direct democracy sounds good in theory, but in practice, there's a reason we elect representatives and pay them to think about these things. Having a weird subset of the population listen to scare ads for a few weeks and then vote on ballot propositions is no way to run a government.
Time for a State Constitutional Convention!
I am gonna vote yes on 1D and 1E because it reduces the constraints, but otherwise I'm leaning towards "NO" on everything.
i keep yammering on about a constitutional convention too, and sometimes hear noises that one might happen, but does anyone know an organization that is seriously pushing for one? i'd love to throw money/time at such a group.
or, we'll have to start one, which would be just silly. "nerds for a sensible constitution" ...
What does 1A do in the short-term? It extends the temporary tax increases (already in place for fiscal 2009-2010). There's a bill that the legislature has already passed that only goes into effect if 1A passes (the "Mandatory Cuts"), but the legislature doesn't need a ballot initiative to do that.
If the goal is just to extend those tax increases, we can do that with a measure that does much less long-term damage. And we can take the time to get it right, because they're already in place for 2009-2010.
http://www.bayareacouncil.org/takeactio
The Governator is in favor:
http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifor
Looks like Newsom is pro Convention:
http://www.gavinnewsom.com/issues/budge
I've been ranting to James about this for years. Let's have Prop 2 next year -- Make Californians admit that even liberals like myself have to be able to add...
I think the fact that we want to raid their funds demonstrates that we need to give ourselves the flexibility to re-evaluate our priorities on a regular basis ("to budget"), rather than locking things in even if they're self-sustaining.
What makes this problem really bad is that a company-owned home need never change hands. Create a company per house and sell the company rather than selling the asset it owns. I appreciate the creativity, but in the end we all get fucked.
We might like the idea of low taxes on our homes. And I have to agree that taxing houses and other buildings is a miserable idea.
BUT ... and it is a big BUT ... the more important part of the property tax is the portion that falls on land value. When we suppress THAT part, we get trouble, with a capital T.
Taxing land value is the route to economic justice, to an economy that makes room for all of us, in which all of us are essentially equals. He who owns very valuable land pays tax in proportion to the value of his holdings; he who rents pays nothing (directly) in taxes, but the portion of his rent which represents land value -- as opposed to the value of the building or of other services the landlord provides -- is passed through to the commons, rather than retained by the landlord.
Landlording, under this scenario, would not be the awesomely profitable business that Proposition 13 permits it to be, and tenants -- about 50% of California's residents, and who knows what percentage of California's businesses -- would not be forced to pay twice (once to the landlord and then again in the form of sales and income and other taxes).
GET RID OF PROP 13, and California will once again become a good place to live. Reduce the reliance on sales and income taxes, and untax California's buildings. JUST TAX LAND VALUE. Share the tax burden according to the value of each party's land holdings.
Opportunity for all (except the land speculators). A vibrant economy. Equality with respect to access to the basics.
Which part of that is unappetizing?