Posted on 07/28/2006 9:01:57 PM PDT by calcowgirl
General Election - November 7, 2006
Prop. 1A Transportation Funding Protection: YES! For years, the Legislature has raided our highway taxes for general fund spending. Though it’s more window dressing than relief, this measure makes it marginally harder to do so.
Prop. 1B Transportation Bond: NO! Although some of this money is for long overdue road construction, most goes for equipment, maintenance and social programs that will be obsolete decades before our children have finished paying off the debt. Californians pay the third highest tax per gallon of gasoline in the country – and yet we rank 43rd in per capita spending on highways. Our neglected roads are not the taxpayers’ fault.
Prop. 1C Housing Bond: NO! Economics 1: When something is plentiful, it’s cheap; when it is scarce, it’s expensive. Housing prices have skyrocketed because governmental regulations have kept the supply of new housing from meeting the demand. By pouring more (borrowed) money into the market without reducing those restrictions, the effect will be to force UP both home prices and taxes.
Prop. 1D Education Bond: NO! Five billion dollars of new school spending is apparently not enough – so here comes another school bond. But once again, most of the money is going for stuff that won’t be around when our children are still paying off the debt. Won’t our kids have their own schools to repaint without paying for painting that was done 30 years ago?
Prop. 1E Levee Bond: YES! Almost all of this money goes for levee construction that our great-grandchildren will use. Why should anyone outside of Sacramento care? Collapse of the Delta levees means collapse of the state water project – and billions of dollars of state liabilities paid for by ALL taxpayers. This is a classic ounce of prevention saving a pound of cure.
Prop. 83 Jessica’s Law: YES! Placed on the ballot by initiative when the legislature failed to act, this proposition is named for the little Florida girl who was killed by a released sex-offender. Prop. 83 prohibits felony registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park and requires lifetime GPS monitoring.
Prop. 84 Park Bond: NO! A grab bag of local pork projects (some exempt from competitive bidding requirements and conflict of interest laws) paid for by a generation of taxpayers.
Prop. 85 Parental Notification: YES! Your 16-year-old daughter cannot use a tanning bed or get her ears pierced without your written consent, but she can undergo a surgical abortion without you even being notified. This measure restores your right to know what is happening to your own child.
Prop. 86 Cigarette Tax: NO! Why should non-smokers care about a measure that increases the tax on a pack of cigarettes to $2.60? Because it gives smokers a huge incentive to avoid the entire tax by buying cigarettes through friends or family out of state. And who do you think the government will be coming after to make up the resulting drop in cigarette tax collections?
Prop. 87 Oil Tax: NO! Just when you thought gasoline taxes were high enough, along comes this gem to increase them more. Another economics lesson: When you tax something, you get less of it and the price goes up.
Prop. 88 Parcel Tax: NO! Here’s yet another way to get into your pocket: add an extra $50 to your annual property tax bill for still more money for schools. What makes anyone think this money will get any closer to the classroom than the $11,000+ per student we already pump in?
Prop. 89 Taxpayer Funding of Campaigns: NO! I love this one – force taxpayers to foot the bill for politicians’ campaigns. But remember Thomas Jefferson’s warning: "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
Prop. 90 Protect Our Homes: YES! Restores the Fifth Amendment property rights protections in the Bill of Rights that the U.S. Supreme Court shredded with its infamous Kelo decision. Prop. 90 prohibits local officials from seizing homes and businesses for the profit of politically well-connected private interests, and requires government to pay you for any damage it does to your property.
Can you elaborate your view on 1A?
"Emminent domain has outlived it's purpose, and needs to be terminated; this is a minimum first step toward that goal."
Emminent domain should NOT be terminated. It SHOULD be restricted to what it was originally intended.
Roads, some public facilities would be justified uses, as in history.
What needs to happen is to prevent city council's (acting as Redevelopment districts) from taking your home to put up a big box center.
I have experience with redevelopment, in two cities. My own town stopped short of using ED to take residences. Before Kelo, by several years.
Some urban redevelopment is very beneficial. Some "blight" is really bad.
It is the abuses that need to be stopped. The USSC decision was horrible. But they invited local jurisdictions to make rules.
That is a baseless assumption. It's the suburbs that are dotted with schools and parks; the cities tend to have their schools somewhat centralized. 83 would help to keep them out of young family neighborhoods. 2000 feet is less than 1/2 mile.
Some roads would be justified, and Some public facilities would also be justified, but at this point, all ventures in this area should require voter approval at a high level, such as 2/3.
I will absolutely vote for 90!
Thanks for the ping.
Jessica's Law's no-live zone is bone of political contention
By Shane Goldmacher
July 13th, 2006
A November initiative to toughen penalties and place new restrictions on where past sex offenders can live essentially would make the city of San Francisco a sexual-predator-free zone, according to maps produced by the Senate Office of Research.
If passed, the measure would prohibit convicted sex offenders from living within 2000 feet of any school or park where children play.
In San Francisco, one of the nation's most densely populated cities, that leaves only a few square blocks as inhabitable for registered sex offenders. The largest areas that would remain open to past predators would be the airport region, downtown's industrial zones and cemetery-dense Colma--none of which contain much, if any, residential housing.
"We're really clear: It is going to be harder to find a place to live, particularly in the most dense areas, of which San Francisco would be the most," said Sen. George Runner, R-Antelope Valley, who along with his wife, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, R-Lancaster, spearheaded the campaign to put the measure on the ballot.
Runner, while challenging the specifics of the Senate map, says that there will be difficulties in predator placement, but they are worth the potential benefit.
Regardless, the state's infrastructure is in such bad shape, I would vote in favor of a state-wide bond measure if it truly focused on improving roads and highways. Unfortunately, Prop 1B is not that proposal. It has very little to do with improving roads but includes a slew of non-infrastructure items (e.g. maintenance expenses, bus retrofits, etc.) that should be paid out of ongoing revenues, NOT bonds.
The Senate Office of Research map is balony. They simply define every piece of lawn, and every publicly owned property in the city as a park. They have an axe to grind.
The Supremes dumped eminent domain into the laps of the several states with the Kelo deicision.
So-called "blight" is in the eye of the beholder. If the property is truly "blight," the property can be condemned without eminent domain. Urban development groups are among the largest abusers of property rights with their creative interpretations and creation of the "economic blight" concept.
Reason enough for another NO vote.
I'll be voting NO on Prop 1A. I think it's totally window-dressing (smoke and mirros) AND it lets them defer all prior borrowed monies for a longer time period. Under existing law, all monies need to be paid back by 2009. Prop 1A extends it to 2016.LAO: "In addition, the measure lays out a new schedule to repay the Proposition 42 suspensions that occurred in 2003‑04 and 2004‑05. Specifically, the suspended amounts must be repaid and dedicated to transportation uses no later than June 30, 2016, at a specified minimum annual rate of repayment."
I tried to find more about it, but came up empty. Do you have any further details/links?
NO
And that alone is sufficient reason to vote no IMO.
An enlightening search string is Hiram Johnson. Johnson's 1911 contributions to California's constitutional processes have endured.
Their corruption began in the 1980's and today, 20 years later, they have devolved into a standard tool of the governing class, to sidestep original protections and intent.
Maintenance of due process protections requires constant vigilence. Three easy steps can be implemented to return the original intent of the legislation:
1) Time: Adequate time for judicial review before presentaion to the voters
2) Strict Interpretation: A through review of the proposal to assure strict compliance with the single issue clause.
3) Super-Majority Status: Those matters involving taxation or significant expenditures should require super-majority approval to conform to original intent and existing, constitutional protections.
This is one of my pet-peeves, along with the legislature making these issues "urgency measures" and bypassing the Attorney General in the process of drafting the Ballot Title and Summary, instead mandating their own biased language.
So? My point was more about how it has become a commonplace thing, rather than a rarity. That the public feels the need to employ it so much reflects poorly on the legislature, whose job it is to be addressing these things.
Hmmm. Isn't exposing yourself in public one of the things that can get you on the "sex offender" list? One day of arrests at the Frisco Gay Pride parade could depopulate the city.
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