The Sales Tax and My Vote

Liar that I am, I recently promised a closer look at the For and Against Ballot information for Measure R. Then I realized that was boring. And besides, Streetsblog already covered it in Dana Gabbard's endorsement piece.

Instead, why don't y'all help me vote? Laid out before me right now is my absentee ballot. I'm mailing it Monday night and then leaving on a week and a half trip to the East Coast (hopefully I'll come back with some first hand reports on SEPTA in Philly and MBTA in Boston). What that means is that if there's something on the ballot I don't care about, any crazy comment you leave on Sunday or Monday is liable to sway my vote. Anything I don't receive comment on I'll likely leave blank, as I generally believe 'tis better not to vote when I have no idea what the hell I'm voting for.

Let's go section by section with my usual meandering commentary (skip to the bottom for Measure R):

President: Obama. This seems as "duh" an election as there could ever be and I'm right in his demographic (upper class white youth). I expect he's going to win and be absolutely screwed thanks to the flaming turd George-W is leaving on his doorstep. On the plus side, I think that he'll increase funding for nationwide infrastructure and that could have serious beneficial consequences for the LA Metro system.

House is no contest as there's literally no other option for me but Berman. My State Senator vote goes to Fran Pavley through the simplifying effects of party-line voting.

State Assembly vote goes with a resounding hell yeah to my boy Mike Feuer, the only guy in the state government trying to help LA out of our transit quagmire.

Judicial, Judges for Superior Court. Okay, I don't know whether any of you get the same judges to vote on as me in Sherman Oaks, but I never know what the hell they want me to do with these non-partisan judge races. They make no sense to me, and usually lead me into bad decisions. For instance, last year I voted based on the the racial makeup of people's last names, which prompted the following discussion between me and my girlfriend:

Girlfiend (who happens to be Asian because I'm a walking stereotype): Who do you vote for?
Me: People with Jewish names.
Girlfriend: That's totally racist!
Me: Who should I vote for then?
Girlfriend: People with Asian names!

If you've got a dog in any of these races, let me know and they've got my vote.

STATE MEASURES
Prop 1A - High Speed Rail: This is a yes vote for me. I know that the promises being made are bunk and I know that it can't possibly be completed on time or for this amount of money, but I think we've so violently shortchanged our infrastructure in this state and in this country that this will be worth it in the long run. This train system likely won't help in the next ten years, but thirty years from now we may be really darn glad we've got it, and if we aren't, then guess what, thirty years after that we may finally be glad we have it.

Prop 2 - Standards for Storing Farm Animals: No idea. Never heard of this. Any suggestions? My gut says yes because even chickens deserve to stretch their legs, but for all I know the fine print on this says T. Boone Pickens gets 10 billion dollars from the state for chicken research.

Prop 3 - Children's Hospital Bond Act: Hard to vote against Childrens' hospitals but again, I know nothing about this. Anyone got a take on this?

Prop 4 - Some sort of Abortion Parental Notificaiton Thing: Getting real sick of having to vote on abortion issues every damn year. This is a no.

Prop 5 - Nonviolent Drug Offense Sentencing: A friend facebooked me to vote yes on this, so I guess I will. My general philosophy is that drug laws in this country are totally broken, and I say that as someone who went through all of college without putting anything stronger than Cherry Coke in my body. Still, I have no idea if this is any kind of improvement.

Prop 6 - Police/Law Enforcement Funding Increase: I'm voting no. I hate propositions that enforce minimum spending amounts on the legislature. Plus, this has the stink of prison guard union all over it.

Prop 7 - Renewable Energy Generation: Right, now this is the T. Boone Pickens one, right? I can't keep this and Prop 10 straight. Thoughts?

Prop 8 - Stop Gay People from Marrying: No no no no no. I'm gonna be so pissed off when this thing passes on election night. Does the Mormon church really think this is the best use of twenty million dollars? This is going to stick gay rights into a standstill for the next twenty years.

Prop 9 - Victim Notification for Parole Hearings: Umm, sure. I guess.

Prop 10 - Alternative Fuel and Renewable Energy Bonds: I really have no idea where this money is going. I guess I'll vote yes because 5 billion dollars now seems meaningless to me in our current disastrous economy of bailouts and bank failures, and hey, maybe we'll get lucky and some guy will use the money to build a perpetual motion machine in his garage.

Prop 11 - Redistricting: I'm voting yes for this. California's government is completely broken. I'm a Democrat, but I honestly wouldn't care if this hurt the state's democrat majority. There are absolutely no competitive districts right now and that means every person we elect is an extremist nut job. Frankly though, this won't fix the real problem. What we need is to get rid of the 2/3rds vote requirement on the budget, a surely impossible fight, but one that if won would destroy the Republican party as it exists in this state today and probably save the state's future.

Prop 12 - Veterans Bond Act: This seems like something the federal government should be doing.

And ....... DRUMROLL

Measure R - Yes. When it comes down to it the question is simple, will this measure do more good things than bad things and will it be worth it? I think we're drowning right now. Traffic is killing this city and our transit system is barely scraping by. This will not fix many things that need fixing, but it'll be one more step in the right direction, with the potential, however unlikely, to drastically improve the lives of many Los Angelenos. I'm going to do something odd and not argue about the specific projects in the bill. I think good arguments could be made for most of them and against some, but I sense that no one reading this is going to be persuaded one way or the other by my opinion on the Wilshire subway line or the downtown connector. So let's discuss it in more general terms.

At the most basic level, I find a lot of the arguments against this measure hard to swallow. I've read the comments from people who are against it, and what's most disturbing is that it seems to be losing people it should be winning. Bike advocates, bus advocates, rail advocates ... Everyone seems angry that it doesn't service their pet issue well enough. Not enough bike money, not enough Gold Line money, not enough not enough not enough. If this passes, I'm confident it will be a good thing; how good will depend on Metro, a disturbing thought certainly, but this is a once in a decade chance to start addressing real problems today instead of in imaginary online transit maps. I'm not saying trust Metro, I'm saying that the status quo is unacceptable because we are completely lacking in the actual tools necessary to deal with our transit problems. This will provide some of the tools, and it will be up to all of us in the city to press and drive to make sure they're used wisely. We can bitch and moan all we want, but at the end of the day, the current system is fundamentally incapable of achieving our goals without a massive infusion of funding. Measure R, if it passes, will allow the Los Angeles transit community to take its arguments out of the theoretical and into the practical.

Having said all this, I'm expecting Measure R to fail. There seems to be no serious effort on behalf of the bill with less than a month to go before election day. I expect voters to read it over, having literally seen it for the first time on the ballot, and to then vote for it with something like a 55% level, well beneath the necessary two-thirds. I truly hope that its opponents in the transit community are right and there's some better version of this bill just around the corner, but frankly, I think they're kidding themselves. I think at best we're looking at a five year wait before we get another bite at the apple and nothing about the direction this country is headed in makes me think the next bill is going to be better than this one.

And so, speaking for me personally, and not the rest of the Bus Bench gang, I urge you to vote yes on Measure R. It'll do good things that need to get done, and it'll set the stage for bigger, better steps in the future.

Comments

[browne]

You think 8 will pass? I get so shocked when things like this pass. I talk very negative, but in the end I always assume people will do the right thing. I still get shocked, but I still have faith.

This is totally crazy, but in the past before I realized a name doesn't necessarily dictate a person being conservative or liberal I used to vote for people with Jewish last names if I didn't know who people were, because all of the Jewish people I knew were liberal in the very extreme way. Of course I later realized this was prejudice and crazy, because I probably ended up putting some Clarence Thomas person in office just because of that, so now I just don't vote if I don't know the person.

Even a good stereotype is bad.

[rawdawgbuffalo]

Nice spot u have here, hope u don’t mind the drive by, do chk me out one day

rawdawgbuffalo and if u like what u read, maybe u will come back, even Blog Roll Me

[Sirinya]

I wanted to let you all now that Bruins for Traffic Relief, the student transit advocacy group @ UCLA, just had its first Measure R awareness event on Friday. Check out the pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=27912921099&view=all

[soledadenmasa]

I could do the first hand reports on the T...

[BusTard]

soledadenmasa: What is the "T"?

[soledadenmasa]

Bustard,
The T is the MBTA's nickname. Everyone refers to it as the T.