This November, Californians will have 12 state initiatives to vote on. Over the next few days, I’m going to try and cover what I think of each of them.
The right to legislate by initiative is one of the great features of California politics; it’s also one of it’s great failures. As a defense of the people’s interest against legislative action – or inaction – it’s a good thing. The fact that the people’s interests may need to be defended against the Legislature is a horrible thing.
For detailed information on these initiatives, including arguments for and against, go to the California Secretary of State’s site. 1A – Bonds for high-speed rail
2 – Ban ‘factory farming’ of domestic animals
3 – Bonds for designated Children’s hospitals
4 – Parental notification of minor’s intent to have an abortion
6 – Police funding lockup, gang crimes
7 – Renewable energy requirements
Catastrophic deflationary effect.
Marc, this seems like a non sequitur:
If you had said: defense of the people’s interest-good, but it’s used for too many trivial or micromanaging things–bad; then that would have made sense. But the fact that it’s needed is hardly the fault of the initiative process or of those who use it.
TOC, care to unpack that a bit? Thanks.
1) I like the high-speed rail initiative if it really is going to be 220 Mph. Anything above 150 mph would be good enough for connecting SF, AJ, LA, and SD together. But when will it be completed?
2) While I support anti-cruelty measures, I don’t see how it will do much when Californians eat meat that is produced elsewhere in America, and a lot of seafood from Asia.
3) I don’t think this is a good idea. Oppose.
4) Oppose. This will bring out a lot of normal people to vote against leftism, and thus against Obama.
How about this?
1. No
2. No
3. No
4. No
5. No
6. No
7. No
8. No
9. No
10. No
11. No
12. No
I actually like the idea of high speed rail, as well as renewable energy. But this is why there EXISTS a legislature, to enact these things, not shackle the hands of future governors and legislatures to react effectively to emergencies that pop up.
hypoc, does it give you some sort of rush to waste that many column inches in a post?
Heh, good comment. 🙂
Not so much really, wasn’t thinking about that – was mirroring the post for effect.
Hypo, I believe the state Constitution requires bond measures to be submitted for ratification. In this case, the legislature is not at fault. Whether the measure is a good idea, is separate.
Yes – of course.
That’s what I meant, clearly.
It couldn’t be that I’m simply typing without thinking, could it?
Wishard, Oren, you don’t get to answer that question.
1-7 no (seriously, who would buy these junk bonds anyway?)
8-9 yes
10 no
11 yes
12 no
Why are people not in favor of Proposition 2?
Mr BLue: I assume it’s because things like factory chickens and battery eggs cost less at the market.
No to all of them. While I find some worthy, I don’t find the need compelling. I would probably support redistricting reform if I thought it would work, but it looks unwieldy to me and likely to be dominated by horse trading at best, conflicts with other agencies at worst.
I’ll do a post later tonight, but I really, really want 11 to pass. I’m probably going to oppose all of them except the Cal-Vet housing bonds…but I’ll take them on post by post.
A.L.
Yes on 11 for a start on cleaning up gerrymandering. No on everything else.
OK, I waffle on 12, but the state is bloody well broke. I can’t vote for anything that stacks up more junk debt to be either repudiated or dumped on the younger generation.
*1A – Bonds for high-speed rail*: NO. California does not seem to be in a position to take on more debt even for good projects.
*2 – Ban ‘factory farming’ of domestic animals*: YES. To restrain man’s inhumanity to man, and to animals, is a basic and necessary purpose of law.
*3 – Bonds for designated Children’s hospitals*: NO. Limit debt. And I think health spending should be kept as flexible as possible, to be determined by needs at the time, rather than tied to projects that may have the greatest public appeal at a certain time, but down the road may not be the best use of each dollar spent on public health.
*4 – Parental notification of minor’s intent to have an abortion*: YES. In general I support more autonomy for kids, but not if it costs those even younger than them everything.
*5 – Drug rehabilitation*: NO. If you want to save money by shortening parole times, just do that, don’t medicalize everything.
*6 – Police funding lockup, gang crimes*: NO. This looks like an effort to create more crimes and penalties, and may interfere with gun rights too.
*7 – Renewable energy requirements:* NO. This distorts the market for no humane or necessary purpose.
*8 – Bans gay marriage*: YES / … maybe. Yes to teach tyrannical judges who’s boss, no, maybe, I’m uncertain of the merits of gay marriage. But I’m certain judges and layers need to be smacked down. So yes.
*9 – Victims rights*: YES. Protecting the rights of those who have played by the rules is a basic and necessary purpose of the law.
*10 – Renewable energy bonds, alternative fuel vehicles*: NO. More market distortion.
*11 – Redistricting reform*: YES / maybe. Depending on what Armed Liberal says. Is this for real or bogus; what is really going on here?
*12 – Cal-Vet bonds*: NO. More needless market distortion.
General values informing my choices:
Humanity – safety and kindness for man and beast
Autonomy – less criminalization, medicalization, court rule
Reduce debts and tied obligations: flexibility -> efficiency
Market efficiency – let the capitalist system do its work
Not an acronym a politician would love. 🙂
Looking at the comments above: this looks like a tough year to get propositions passed.
Mr Blue: My personal mnemonic for my code of ethics is a tougher sell than that 🙂 …
I strive to balance these five worthy traits:
Diplomacy
Integrity
Courage
Kindness
Skepticism
Hard to win favor many places with that. Motivational posters? Hmm, maybe.
HAHAHAHA! :p Excellent thoughts anyway.
Yeah, thanks. In my mind there’s two pairs of items in tension, drawn as poles in a circle: D-C axis and I-K axis being one way to draw it, with Skepticism ideally applicable everywhere within and without the circle.
But let us return to our muttons.
The fact that the people’s interests may need to be defended against the Legislature is a horrible thing.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Therefore the people’s interests will always need to be defended against those of the legislature.
“Yes” on 4, 8* and 11. “No” on everything else.
With regards to #2, while I appreciate that California voters are looking to destroy their domestic veal industry while giving egg and pork producers in the other 49 States a competitive advantage, I’m against government regulation that destroys jobs and artificially raises the price of food whether it’s trade protectionism, ethanol subsidies or attacks on “factory farming” by the animal “rights” nutters.
And considering that California has asked for a federal bailout, I think the rest of us have a vested interest in the way y’all are so bound and determined to do everything you can to transform yourselves into a third-world country. Don’t get me wrong, we have our share of stupid regulations that kill small businesses while driving companies to the Dakotas and a government for whom spending restraint is a foreign concept. But when California messes things up, the impact reaches much further than Minnesota or most of the other States.
* On general principal because of the way the court arbitrarily redefined civil marriage. Had this been a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn a law enacted through the democratically-elected legislature, I would probably leave this one blank.
_Why are people not in favor of Proposition 2?_
Mainly, I do not share your ethic of kindness to animals, but I think the approach of Proposition 2 is misguided. I think the factory farms raise health and food safety issues that probably can’t be addressed at the state level. Thorley is right; if certain types of livestock production techniques are made illegal in California, then some portion of that production is going to move out of the state and perhaps out of the country. In that case, Californians will have less ability to monitor and control the meat and dairy products they eat.
If California wants lead on this issue, they probably need to work on effective food labeling and inspection.
I don’t understand prop 9, what it’s trying to do/solve.
By default, courts and the justice system exclude and ignore crime victims and witnesses, their concerns, interests, feelings and opinions, focusing instead on the “Sam and Ralph” game between criminals and law enforcement officials. The wolf gets his say. The sheepdog gets his say. Nobody cares what the sheep thinks on any topic.
Before the “victims rights” movement got going, I read a fair amount on how courts were treating victims, and it was not good. It wasn’t just a question of rules but of sentiment, for example the sentiments of a judge who wrote (sorry, no link, this was way back and on dead trees) that for the smooth and orderly processing of courts in aggravated violence cases it was important to keep victims firmly out of the way, and preferably barred from the court altogether when they were not demanded as witnesses because of their emotionality, their desire to ask questions and volunteer opinions about things that were the business of courts and which non-lawyers had no business inquiring about, their silly concerns over things like how had the case been resolved, whether it had been resolved, when the criminal would be coming out on parole, and things of this nature. All of this had to be determined by the court with reference to the injured party in every crime, which is to say the state, and nobody who was not an official of the state hand any business sticking their nose into it.
Simply put: the victims of serious crimes were disempowered twice; first by the criminals and then by the courts.
Leaving aside the details, it is the business of advocates of victims rights to remedy this, so victims are well informed what is going on and when people who may be dangerous to them will be out on the streets again, so that victims can make things like “victim impact statements” saying in court what the crime cost them, or addressing the criminal, so at least they had a say, whether anyone cares what they said or not.
In this case the details are:
bq. * Requires notification to victim and opportunity for input during phases of criminal justice process, including bail, pleas, sentencing and parole.
* Establishes victim safety as consideration in determining bail or release on parole.
* Increases the number of people permitted to attend and testify on behalf of victims at parole hearings.
Reduces the number of parole hearings to which prisoners are entitled.
* Requires that victims receive written notification of their constitutional rights.
* Establishes timelines and procedures concerning parole revocation hearings.
By default, none of this happens. Criminals are informed of their rights, but victims are not informed of their rights. Victim safety need not be a consideration in bail – if Joe said he’s cut off Sally’s head as soon as he was out of the clink, that would have nothing to do with Sally as this is all between Joe and the state. And so on.
When you refuse to recognize victims’ rights, you can put people in bad positions.
Here’s a case in Australia that can serve as an example of what can happen when victims have no rights. (I’ve forgotten some details but not the crux of the case, which shocked respectable opinion because of what the jury did.)
A serial child rapist had taken a great interest in a particular family. He seemed to some but not to others (such as his lawyer) to have a “collect the complete set” attitude. The children, who had lost their parents, were under the guardianship of their grandmother, who cut her own throat in shame at having failed to protect them, and left a suicide note putting the whole moral burden for their safety on their last remaining male relative, a cop.
The boy, being examined by a doctor, had not been interfered with, and the courts took custody of the pedophile, and all was well – sort of.
Only, the judge decided that the pedophile, a small, meek-mannered feeble man, who could hardly stand up to any adult, was no threat to society, and released him on bail. The cop was told the pedophile was still in jail, to keep him from taking an interest in a case that was none of his business. Thus it came as a shock to the cop to learn from a female friend that she had seen the pedophile lurking in the shrubbery adjacent to the playground where the boy he hadn’t gotten to (yet) played.
The cop found that all his colleagues had been lying to him (and the court naturally had informed him of nothing – victim’s rights didn’t exist); and so he went to the police station, collected his service firearm, found out from records where the pedophile lived, and went straight there and shot him dead.
The jury took just under thirty-five minutes to find that he hadn’t done a thing wrong.
Problem solved, in a sense. But there’s got to be a better way.
It can be difficult for courts to involve victims without allowing things to become a circus.
And I don’t know the current state of law in California or whether all the changes proposed are, in context, well judged.
But if you believe in an ideal citizen who has a great deal of autonomy and dignity and who does not receive such safety and moral standing as they may get only as a byproduct of the state (through its court system) protecting itself and its own rules, then I think victims’ rights are important.
You have to try to do something about this.
And I think what’s proposed seems reasonable.
#25 Quoth Mr Blue:
bq. …”Sam and Ralph” game between criminals and law enforcement officials. The wolf gets his say. The sheepdog gets his say. Nobody cares what the sheep thinks on any topic.
“‘Taint funny, Magee.” I never noticed that obvious part of the Warner Brothers cartoon you reference, even though it’s been staring me in the face all along. I am chastened.
Yeah… the sheep / cattle figure of speech regarding the public is old old old.
I agree that the trope can be tiresome. But so can sheeplike behavior.
#27 from Nortius Maximus: “I agree that the trope can be tiresome. But so can sheeplike behavior.”
I agree.
That’s not a problem with victims rights though.
The problem with victims rights is that you might be encouraging horrible people to game the system.
James R. Rummel of Hell in a Handbasket (link) is a quietly brilliant blogger who teaches self defense, and teaches poor victims of serious crime for free, for just the kinds of reasons I am all in favor of.
I’ve just spent some time hunting for a particular post of his. I can’t find it, but it’s there … somewhere. Anyway, he say that he’s become extremely skeptical of helping victims of domestic violence, because he figured out that people were using his services (which he provides at considerable sacrifice to himself) to define their partners as violent and screw them over in court. To deal with this, he put in place some personal rules that stop him from being used in the wrong way. He’s sure that has saved many people from injustice. He’s also pretty sure that in some cases he must have knocked back people who really needed exactly the help he’d offer if he didn’t have to stick to his rules. There is nothing he can do about it.
There are lots of horrible people out there who will game anything they can, and not care that they are depriving other people of desperately needed goods in doing so.
So you have to write victims rights legislation carefully.
But in my opinion, you still have to do it, and in the absence of any indication it’s been done wrong in this case, I’d say “go for it”.
1, 3, 10, 12: no. this is a bad time for California to be borrowing money.
5, 6: no. i don’t approve of mandating spending via initiative.
2: yes. i’ve wavered on this, but i can get on the anti-cruelty bandwagon.
4; no. the voters have said no to this twice already in the last three years, and i resent being asked again.
7: no. if even the environmental activists are opposed, there must be something wrong with it.
8: no. i see absolutely no reason for the state to distinguish between straight marriages and gay marriages, unless it is that the state wishes to tell gay people that their relationships aren’t “real” relationships.
9: no. victim’s rights are a good thing, but the measure also makes it harder to get parole, and makes early release more difficult; this will force us to either (a) build prisons on a large scale or (b) lose control of the prisons to the feds due to overcrowding. I might consider it after we’d committed to paying for the new prisons, but otherwise, this is a back door spending requirement via initiative.
11: maybe. i’m in favor of the goal but don’t understand the implementation.
Thorley, the gay movement has been trapped in a bind on the issue of gay marriage.
The legislature *twice* passed a gay marriage law. Both times the governor vetoed it, saying that either the voters or the courts should decide.
Then the court *did* decide … and many people are saying that, because the court shouldn’t have decided it, they will support making it impossible for the legislature to *ever* decide it.
#29 from aphrael:
bq. _”9: no. victim’s rights are a good thing, but the measure also makes it harder to get parole, and makes early release more difficult; this will force us to either (a) build prisons on a large scale or (b) lose control of the prisons to the feds due to overcrowding. I might consider it after we’d committed to paying for the new prisons, but otherwise, this is a back door spending requirement via initiative.”_
Good argument!
“Let’s punish a lot of innocent people to prove a point to judges and lawyers.”
Forgot “judges” were still boogie-men in lala-land.
At least vote for 8 because you don’t like fags, don’t hide behind some procedural BS.
I’m so confused with how the Lefties are doing. We live in a country where we have always had our own rights, and stand where we choose. Now liberal illuminati are making people feel they no longer have that right. And the media is blowing it up in the news!
I completely agree with the previous comment. States like California are owned by these liberal illuminati and it doesn’t seem like there is any changing that. I lived in CA for a few years and it leans so far to the left that it doesn’t feel like there is any fighting against it, like we don’t really have any say.
Apparently the practical effect of Proposition 2 is: be kind to chickens. (link)
I changed my mind on Proposition 9 – Victims rights, because of the excellent arguments people presented against it in this thread and in this other one: (link).