We had our pre-election dinner last night (turkey and beef enchiladas mole), where a bunch of us get together and argue our way through the ballot. Nothing really changed my mind on any of the votes, except that a friend who is an elementary school teacher explained that she was voting against 47 (school bonds), because she considers the various administrations she works for totally inept. So I voted “no” on that.
During dessert, she & I started talking about gun registration. She is a true moderate; doesn’t have a lot of issues with people owning guns, would prefer that they had some training and that they were checked for lunacy and stupidity. But she and I kept going back and forth on registration. She couldn’t see why I had a problem with it, and when I told her about the various go-rounds in which well-meaning SKS and other ‘bad gun’ owners in CA had registered, had their then-legal ownership retroactively made illegal, and then were targeted for confiscation under threat of felony conviction because they had registered, she began to understand my concern. She still favors it, though.
I wish I’d sent her over to this from the Instapundit, for an example of how a) ineffective and b) intrusive this becomes.
I believe that there ought to be a way for the authorities to know if a designated individual has guns, and it would be handy to know what guns s/he has. This would be useful if someone was convicted of a crime, or was under a restraining order, etc. etc.
But until some way can be determined to keep them from being used in small-scale fishing expeditions like these, not to mention large-scale confiscations, I’ll oppose centralized registration.
Don’t forget to vote; drag someone else and get them to vote, too.

Lt. Governor. This largely ceremonial job has only one real benefit…if Davis leaves the state to run for President, the Lt. Governor takes over. Mike Curb (of Lyle Lovett fame) was the Republican Lt. Governor when Jerry Brown was the Democratic Governor, and it definitely kept Jerry home.
To that end, although Cruz Bustamente was a great Assemblyman, my conviction that Gray “ATM” Davis will win the Governorship – albeit without my vote – and immediately start campaigning for President means that I’ll be supporting Bruce McPherson, a Republican in name only from my old stomping grounds at Santa Cruz, CA. Again, I consider Bustamente to be a good guy (as is McPherson), but the only benefit of the seat is that the national Dems will think twice about allowing Davis to even think of moving up in the event it would leave the state house in the R column.
Secretary of State. This campaign for two mid-level pols on the ladder is fairly dull. Neither one has much specific to say…they will both ‘modernize’ the polling process (as a technology professional, I can’t tell you how nervous that makes me…). Kevin Shelley, the Democratic candidate lists Handgun Control Inc. as his first endorsement, so I’m mildly inclined to vote against him. I’ll make this call in the voting booth.
Controller. Steve Westley was a professor of business who went to work for eBay at the right time and did a credible job. I’ve read some of his speeches, and he seems a cut better than most of the candidates. He has teamed up with Phil Angelides to advocate investment in infrastructure, while his opponent is touting his connections to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, so the Democrat gets my nod.
Treasurer. I actually knew Phil Angelides a long time ago, and absolutely would have written him off as a grasping, unimaginative career politician until his election to the State Treasurer’s office. His conduct during the energy crisis, his emphasis on intelligent investment of the State’s funds, and his belief in investing in infrastructure put him far at the head of this group of statewide electeds. If he was running for Governor, I’d vote for him in a heartbeat, and he deserves a ride in this post until he can.
Attorney General. Bill Lockyer has been (with the exception of gun issues) a good AG for the state, and deserves another term.
Insurance Commissioner. Tough choice. Support the insurance companies, or the trial lawyers? I’ll go with the lawyers and support John Garamendi, the Democrat. He did a credible job in the office once before, and his Republican successor disgraced himself.
Superintendent of Public Education. I’ll go with Jack O’Connell, the Democrat, as he has been both a teacher and a school board member, and those are the two constituencies that this job needs to reach.

Someone’s sending a fair amount of traffic my way via my old site (http:armedliberal.blogspot.com), and I can’t get the referrer data to see who it is.
So if you came here via a link to there (how’s that for preposition use?) can you let me know and I’ll get the mysterious them to fix their link…

The other initiatives are:
46 (housing- YES) As I discussed here, the housing crisis is real, and while these bonds will get spent and won’t solve the problem, a few tens of thousands of people will be better housed because we spent this money.
47 (school bonds – NEUTRAL) I know that our public school infrastructure is decaying (I see it every day at my son’s schools, which are relatively good), but I’m uncertain about spending this money now. On one hand, the needs are real, as with housing above; on the other many of the school districts (L.A. Unified) haven’t done a very good job with the money they’ve been given already. I’m probably going to toss a coin tomorrow morning on this one.
48 (combine courts – YES) This makes ministerial changes to state law to reflect the fact that all 58 of California’s counties have combined their Municipal and Superior courts in an effort to streamline and cut costs. This simply changes the state law to eliminate references to ‘Municipal’ courts when there aren’t any.
49 (afterschool care –YES) As noted below this is about positioning Ah-nold to run for Governor (which I think would actually be kinda fun…he’s not an idiot), and incidentally may improve the lives of a few hundred thousand kids. So I’m for it.
50 (water bonds – NO) I’d support 2/3 of the projects in this (excluding the purchases of wetlands in a private and negotiated process from major developers), but the other 1/3 just isn’t palatable at a time when the budget is as crunched as it really is.
51 (‘transportation’ bonds – NO) This is a scam, and the people responsible (yes, Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, this means you) ought to be ashamed.
L.A. County A (Museum and Parks Bonds – NO) I’d love to see a cool new Rem Koolhaas L.A. County museum. Some group of rich people should get together and fund it. At a time when we can’t afford decent schools, police, or a health system, building monuments to high culture (or cathedrals, for that matter) ought to be on the back burner.
L.A. County B (Healthcare – YES) Vote early and often for this one, or in fact your children may die. It is not only my local Level 1 Trauma Center, it is one of three for the entire region. The health finance systems in this country are broken. We need to fix them. While we’re fixing them, we ought to keep the hospitals open. Period.

Below, I talk about ‘opening the eyes’ of the citizenry as a part of defending ourselves against terrorism. Sounds like someone’s ahead of me on this issue.
From my local paper, today’s Daily Breeze (article not online):

Locals asked to aid base security
Uncle Sam wants to enlist the help of South Bay residents in the war against terrorism.
In a move to increase security at Los Angeles Air Force Base, officials have created a program using residents as the front line of defense for the military installation in El Segundo.
Under the Eagle Eyes program, implemented at U.S. Air Force bases around the world since the 9-11 attacks, base personnel educate nearby residents to look out for possible terrorist-related activities and urge them to call in anything suspicious to the military installation via a hotline.
“Every act of terrorism given off some indicators and warnings people can see,” said Special Agent Randall Redlinger, who will oversee the Eage Eyes program at the base. “We want to engage all the Air Force resource and the community’s resources to catch those early indicators and warnings before a terrorist can strike.”

Now multiply this by a thousand, with the neighbors of power stations, hospitals, and airports all attentive and trained on what to be attentive for; add to that someone on the other end of the phone who won’t tell them they have called the wrong number and hang up, and you have the beginnings of a program that will empower the average citizen and leverage government resources without violating civil rights or risking vigilantism.
I believe that we could go further, but am confident that pretty much all parties…the NRA and the VPC…Ted Nugent and Paul McCartney…could agree on something like this.

N.Z. Bear is talking about ‘pack vs. herd’ mentality (hint: packs can protect themselves, herds can’t). His comments are general – the points he covers are:

First Aid training: Do you know how to deal with severe burns? How to stop major bleeding? Your local Red Cross most likely offers both introductory and advanced training in first aid . It is a near certainty that in future terrorist attacks, the first assistance available to victims will come from fellow citizens, not EMS. And of course, while the absolute probability that you will be on the scene at an attack is tiny, training in emergency medical techniques is a skill that would certainly be good to have even in a world totally lacking in terrorists.
Self-Defense: Being able to defend yourself doesn’t necessarily mean carrying a weapon. From women’s self-defense courses to full-blown martial arts studies, the options here are near limitless.
Firearms training: And yes, if guns don’t bother you, by all means, get trained on their proper use and (if your state permits it) obtain a concealed carry permit.

Now, here at Casa de Armed Liberal, we’re certainly not going to argue against first-aid or self-defense. But I think there are a few things to put into the hierarchy before we get there.
I’ll suggest that the most important civil-defense tool any of us can have, we already have…a cell phone.
What’s missing is two things: some work to help educate us what to look for; and someone on the other end who can answer the phone, filter and integrate the information into data and figure out how to act on the data.
Now this doesn’t preclude personal action – where sensible, or where there are few alternatives.
Had the Beltway shooters been discovered by an armed Gunsite grad who was out jogging, there would have possibly been a more positive end to the whole tragedy.
And the passengers on Flight 93 certainly had few options.
But there’s an old phrase in the self-defense business, which says that in most cases, vigilantism isn’t the answer…the answer is to retreat to safety and “be a good witness”.
We need more good witnesses, and systems to allow what they see to be used effectively.
I know this sounds suspiciously like operation TIPS. And while I had issues with this, I always felt stronger about the way this was being sold than what it was. I think that basic training in some things to look out for (I’ve always noted places near my kids’ schools where a shooter would logically be…and if I see someone hanging out there, I pay very careful attention…); and someone on the other end of the phone who can filter, understand, and act on the calls (note that if I saw someone with a gun covering one of my kids’ schools, my reactions might diverge from ‘being a good witness’…but not everyone has the tools and training that I do) would be damn useful.
Some obvious starters: Sadly, most of the ‘casual terrorists’ – the LAX and Beltway shooters included – have given plenty of warning of their attitudes and intentions.
Maybe if someone had called them in? Maybe if someone had taken the call, and done some preliminary investigation?
Gavin de Becker’s book The Gift of Fear points out that while the stunned neighbors interviewed after a spree killing almost always say “He was such a quiet guy…who knew?” But on investigation, there were a lot of reasons someone should have known.
The places we are vulnerable ought to be obvious.
The characteristic behavior of people we ought to be scared of ought to be obvious.
All we need to do is learn to look.
[Addendum: Just did a bit more surfing (between reading “The Phantom Tollbooth” with the Littlest Guy), and have to point to a few more posts: Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who says:

As Jim Henley has remarked, one wonders why, in urgent cases like this, the authorities don’t help us be — not a herd, but a pack.
The answer, of course, is that doing so goes against the institutional DNA of most law-enforcement operations and “security” professionals. Success, to their way of thinking, comes from having information that other people don’t. Of course, in the real world, success also often comes from adding your information to other people’s information. But when the chips are down, this idea doesn’t stick in the minds of law enforcemeent types, unless repeatedly administered with a very large bat.

Well…yes…but it’s not just here. We’ve ceded vast parts of our lives to professionals…we have trainers at the gym, career counselors, marriage counselors, social workers, etc. etc. The veneer of ‘professionalism’ hides some serious rot, and it’s a topic for a later discussion.
Jim Henley launched the metaphor, and takes it a few steps further down the road. A sample:

I see two problems that we need to think about. The first, obvious one, is vigilantism. Now, call me a fire-breathing right-winger (please!) but I’m not convinced that vigilantism is the unalloyed calamity Progressive Humanity considers it to be. At which point the reader demands, But what about the whole, abominable history of lynching in the Jim Crow South? What about mobs with pitchforks shouting “She’s a witch!” What about avengers gunning down acquitted molestation defendents on their front lawns?

And Instapundit takes off on it in a TechCentralStation column:

Regardless of whether or not the D.C. snipers count as “terrorists” under your particular definition (they do under mine, but the authorities seem to be shooting for a much narrower standard) there seems little question that in coming weeks, months, and years we’re going to be dealing with a lot of fast-moving, dispersed threats of the sort that bureaucracies don’t handle very well. (Every domestic-terrorism victory so far, from Flight 93 to bringing down the LAX shooter to spotting the D.C. killers was accomplished by non-law-enforcement individuals, after all). Rather than creating new bureaucracies, we need to be looking at ways of promoting fast-moving, dispersed responses, responses that will involve members of the public as a pack, not a herd. Even if doing so reduces the career satisfaction of shepherds.

Obviously, this calls for a more thoughtful expansion, but in the chance you haven’t read these, read them, and let’s see if I can’t add something to the mix later tonight or tomorrow.]

Proposition 49 is officially the “Before and After Schools Programs” initiative, but it ought to be the “Arnold Schwartzenegger platform for Public Office” initative. The proposition would set aside up to $550 million/year from the General Fund (the amount is formula-driven) for before and after school programs centered in the public schools, based on the argument that for many kids, the schools are the most stable productive environment they have.
The sad reality is that this is true.
One of the key omissions of welfare reform and the entire new job-oriented form of government social programs, is the simple question: “But what about the kids?” We have a nanny three afternoons a week, and I’d estimate that she brings her children over (they get to play with the Littlest Guy, so it’s all good from my point of view) twice a week. She does it because a) she needs to work; and b) her costs for child care are close to or exceed what she can earn. So someone explain to me exactly how, absent a tolerant employer, she is supposed to participate in the labor market, even if she wants to?
I lived in Paris for a while, and one interesting feature of the French social welfare system is the neighborhood crèche, a combination day care center and kindergarten. They are local, free, open during working hours, and generally (in the better neighborhoods where I hung out) good.
Looking at the problems of poverty and broken low-income urban and rural culture in the U.S., I am more and more convinced that the schools will play an increasing role in focusing and delivering social services, not only to the children, but to their parents. (Yeah, yeah, I know…the public schools today can barely teach kids to read…)
This proposition is a first step in that direction, and based on that, I’ll be voting ”yes”.
Plus I want to see a Meathead/Terminator gubernatorial race in ’06.
Check out the Leg. Analyst on this.

…according to Human Rights Watch. The L.A. Times today runs this story:

A leading human rights organization charged today that Palestinians who order and dispatch suicide bombers, including senior leaders, are guilty of war crimes and should be brought to justice.
In a comprehensive, 170-page report, the New York-based Human Rights Watch also says that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat bears “significant political responsibility” for the “repeated deliberate killing” of Israeli civilians in the last two years of blood-soaked conflict.
“The scale and systematic nature of these attacks in 2001 and 2002 meet the definition of a crime against humanity,” the report states. “When these suicide bombings take place in the context of violence that amounts to armed conflict, they are also war crimes.”

Damn.
I’m not sure how they went from groundless accusations about Jenin to this, but it certainly seems like a positive step…

I support Prop 46 (Housing Bonds), albeit with some reservations.
Housing is something I know a bit about; I have a graduate degree in a related field, and some of my earliest professional jobs related to housing laws and development here in California.
The reality is that housing as a good is one that serves a variety of purposes: as shelter, as well as an investment for homeowners and landlords. The kind of housing provided has profound effects on communities, as has been noted from the beginnings of the pro-tenement movements in the 19th century (can you imagine what housing must have been like for tenement housing to have been considered a step up?). The physical nature of has real effects on the social nature of a community, and the economic effects of housing costs have real effects on regional economies as well.
Generally, the government has promoted affordable housing in three ways:
1) Through finance reform – mortgages were five to seven years until FDR came along;
2) Through direct or indirect subsidy – I get an indirect subsidy of about $1,000 a month as a homeowner; other low(er) income homeowners get down payment assistance or below-market loans. Renters get direct subsidies (the old Section 8 certificate) or landlords who will limit their rent and rent the units to low-income households get subsidies in the form of grants, below-market financing, and tax credits which they can then resell.
3) By providing entitlements and infrastructure for housing, allowing more housing to be built, and driving down the cost of the ‘permitted lot’.
2) is a relatively inefficient way to make housing more affordable; it distorts the market, and leads to the overconsumption of housing (The tract homes built after WW2 were 1,100 – 1,250 s.f., with two bedrooms, one bath, and a carport. Entry-level detached housing today is 1,500 – 1,900 s.f. with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a garage). It also leads to the classic SkyBox policy of creating a class of wealthy providers of housing to low-income people through grants and direct subsidy, meaning that political connections suddenly become more valuable than competence.
Prop 46 provides $2.1 Billion for the state to use in subsidizing new affordable housing through a variety of programs targeting variously, farmworkers, low-income renters, veterans, and other targeted classes.
All of them need help. I first heard of Jill Stewart almost twenty years ago, when she wrote a brilliant four-part series in the L.A. Times on the housing crisis just brewing in Los Angeles. We see it today in homelessness (although it is only one factor in a complicated problem), overcrowding (where more than one family will rent an apartment because they simply can’t afford it otherwise), and displacement (as neighborhoods become unaffordable to one economic class, another moves in).
The reality is that in California, particularly coastal California where I live, the shortage of entitlements is one of the roots of the crisis. We expect 20% more people in the Los Angeles SMSA in the next ten years, and yet we will build substantially less housing.
Until we can find the political will to deal with this problem, the best we can do is to dribble out projects and house those few lucky enough to be housed in them.
I’m not thrilled, but I’m voting ”yes” on Proposition 46.

Water is going to be one of the key issues here in California and worldwide in the next decades, as population growth collides with an aging infrastructure.
California Proposition 50 proposes a $3.44 billion general obligation bond issue to be used for a variety of water-related projects.
I support improving the California infrastructure, and believe that intelligent water projects, combined with agricultural and urban conservation are absolutely necessary to get our stare through the first part of this century.
But I oppose this bond measure.
Like Prop 51, it has been co-opted by a series of real estate developers who have contributed to it in the hopes that they will directly benefit. In this case, via the purchase of sensitive wetlands that they cannot realistically develop anyway.
From the O.C. Weekly

In fact, of the $3.44 billion raised by bond sales under the initiative (another $3.46 billion would go to interest payments over 30 years), a paltry $50 million is set aside for “Water Security.” According to the state legislative analyst, more than half of Prop. 50 would pay for land acquisition and Bay Area watershed cleaning.
Prop. 50 sports a huge list of pro-environmental endorsements, including Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Audubon Society and Surfrider Foundation. This support, based on the measure’s ostensible clean-water emphasis, plays a high-profile role in the pro-Prop. 50 campaign.
But more illustrative of the reality behind Prop. 50 is the mammoth list of developer contributors. Not only is there a standard Yes on 50 campaign, but two PACs are also feeding money into the battle: the shrewdly named California Conservation Campaign and the Conservation Action Fund. Together, these PACs have already brought in about $3 million in campaign contributions from big developers. They include:
•Signal Landmark, which owns the controversial Bolsa Chica mesa, donated half a million to the various pro-Prop. 50 campaigns. In court for decades over a plan to cover the mesa with more than a thousand homes, Signal Landmark would benefit heartily from ballot language setting aside “not less than $300 million” in projects in the LA area with “priority” given “to the acquisition of not less than 100 acres” of the Bolsa Chica area.
•Playa Capital Co., which has been trying to develop the Ballona Wetlands in West LA since 1998, has donated a whopping $830,000 to the pro-Prop. 50 fight. Prop. 50 will buy up land and protect coastal wetlands throughout the LA area.
•Cargill, the huge agribusiness conglomerate that recently paid out $1 million to clean up its mess on the Missouri River, has donated $100,000 to the Conservation Action Fund. It owns salt ponds in San Francisco Bay and will benefit heavily from Prop. 50’s $825 million in appropriations for the bay.

We can’t afford not to do something about water here in arid Southern California. But we certainly can’t afford a bond issue like this here in financially strapped California.
So I’m voting ”no” on Prop 50, and I’ll wait for a more public-spirited water bond to support.