Propositions! 58, 59, 60

I am getting tired, so this fourth installment may be a bit shorter in the descriptions.

Prop 58 - Yes. This would allow for bilingual education in schools, repealing the "English only" Proposition 227 from 1998.  Having the state mandate "English only" for all schools never seemed like a good idea to me - it always felt like it was intended to be more punitive than educational.  Vote Yes.

Prop 59 - Yeah, I guess so, but whatever.  This one doesn't really do anything. Do you want to tell California that it should work to reverse the Citizens United decision?  You can vote yes to do so.  But it seems kind of wasteful to put things like this on the ballot.  And some potential fixes (via constitutional amendment) could cause serious problems, if done wrong. So overall I guess voting yes (assuming you don't like Citizens United) is okay.  Or you could just skip voting on this one.

Prop 60 - No.  This one would require adult film actors to wear condoms during vaginal or anal sex.  Is it just me, or this just a weird thing to have on the ballot?  I found some of the opponents' arguments pretty compelling; I tried to verify some of them by looking at the text of the proposition itself, but it is really detailed and long, and I didn't have the patience to wade through it, but it seems to set up a complicated (and expensive) regulatory and enforcement scheme.  I don't think this is worth doing that for, and I think it has the potential to cause unforeseen problems. And my guess is that it would drive a lot of commercial porn producers out of California, among other things.  Vote no.

Propositions! 55, 56, 57

Here is the third installment in this series re the state propositions.

Prop 55 - Yes.  This would extend for 12 years the existing additional income tax on high earners (over $250,000 for individuals, over $500,000 for couples) that was put in place by Prop 30 in 2012. Most of the money would go to education.  The proposition does not extend the additional sales tax added by Prop 30 - that will expire.  If the bill does not pass, the income tax on high earners would also expire, and go back down to what it was before Prop 30.  This proposition is not an ideal fix, mostly because our tax system in California is fairly messed up.  California gets a large part of its budget from income taxes on high earners; while this may feel fair, it also makes budgeting extremely hard, because high earners tend to have large variations in income from year to year.  Property taxes are generally more stable and predictable, but Proposition 13 has made them a smaller piece of the pie.  That said, until there is a comprehensive overhaul of our tax system, Prop 55 is not an unreasonable stopgap measure.  Vote yes on 55.

Prop 56 - Yes, but without much enthusiasm.  This would increase the tax on cigarettes from 87 cents per pack to $2.87 per pack, and would tax e-cigarettes like tobacco cigarettes (they are not taxed like tobacco cigarettes now).  The money would continue to fund various health and smoking-related programs.  I like that it ups the tax on e-cigarettes; I have some concern about the size of the tax increase, though.  A lot of poor people smoke cigarettes, and this just makes cigarettes a larger expense for them.  If the increase is big enough, it would encourage a black market in cigarettes, which would undercut the purpose of the tax increase. (I don't know how much of a black market there already may be in California.)  I would vote for it for the tax on e-cigarettes, but otherwise I think it may be a bit of an overreach. So I guess it overall it is a yes on 56.

Prop 57 - Yes, definitely.  Proposition 57 would allow more prisoners convicted of non-violent felonies to be eligible for parole, and would provide credits for good behavior and educational activities.  They would still be subject to a public safety screening and a parole hearing - they would not just be released. This is a good thing for a couple reasons.  One, the prisons are overcrowded (and are expensive), and this would help relieve that.  Two, strict sentencing laws (like "three strikes") removed incentives for prisoners to behave well or to get more education, resulting in discipline problems in prisons and high recidivism rates.  This would hopefully change that pattern.  In addition, the bill would change who determines if a juvenile should be tried as an adult - it takes that determination from the prosecutor and gives it to the judge.  It is not clear how much of a difference that will make in practice, but in theory it is fine.  So reducing costs, reducing the number of people locked up in state prison, providing incentives for good behavior, and hopefully reducing recidivism, all at minimal risk to the public seems like a good trade-off to me. So vote yes on 57.

Propositions! 62 and 66

Continuing with two that are important:

Prop 62 - Yes! Yes! Yes! This proposition would repeal the death penalty, and replace it with life in prison without possibility of parole.  It is impossible to get the balance right on the death penalty - you either try to be careful not to execute anyone innocent (because you can't go back and fix it if you do), but then it takes a long time (dragging out resolution for everyone) and is very expensive (like we don't have better things to spend our money on than lawyer hours).  Or you try to do it quick and cheap, but then you increase the risk of killing someone who did not deserve to die (often someone poor and not white). And if you believe in limiting the power of government, stopping them from killing people would be a good start.  Save money, save lives, and speed up justice. Vote YES on 62.

Prop 66 - No! No! No!  This is a countermeasure to 62 by those who want to keep the death penalty.  It would go for the faster, cheaper, kill-more-people-sooner approach.  Revenge is not justice, and having the state kill someone (no matter how heinous the crime) does not fix anything - it just makes the state a killer as well. And by speeding up the process, this proposition makes it more likely that innocent people will be killed at the hands of the state.  Do not support that. Vote NO on 66.

Propositions! 51, 52, 53, 54

Alright, by popular request, here is the first batch of my recommendations on the upcoming statewide ballot measures.

Prop 51 - Eh. This would authorize $9 billion in state bonds to be used towards school construction and improvements.  It would go to K-12 schools and community and state colleges and universities.   I have mixed feelings on this one.  On the one hand, public schools could use money for facilities, and a bond issue is an appropriate way to raise money for capital-intensive projects like this.  On the other hand, it would increase the state's indebtedness (general obligation bonds like these are not free), and opponents point out that this measure is designed to benefit construction companies.  In addition, this is a change in funding, as local school districts can and do issue bonds to fund their needs, and this is a shift to a statewide approach, so Sacramento gets to pick winners and losers (which may not match local needs).  Interestingly, Governor Brown opposes this measure, but lots of local school districts support it.  Go figure.  Feel free to vote either way on this - it is not a disaster if it loses.

Prop 52 - Yes. This is a technical tweak regarding how federal money flows to the state for health care.  Trying to explain it is difficult, and any explanation is likely to be either baffling or soporific.  I would just point out that it is supported by the Democratic, Republican and Green Parties, the California Chamber of Commerce, a bunch of unions, and legislators from both parties.  Seems like a yes vote would be fine.

Prop 53 - No. This would require voter approval for the state to issue revenue bonds for amounts over $2 billion. (Right now they can be approved by the legislature.) Revenue bonds are paid for by users of the project that is funded (like tolls on a bridge), as opposed to just being paid out of the state's general fund like general obligation bonds (see Prop 51 above), so they are less of a burden on taxpayers.  I think the opponents have raised good arguments, including: there is no exemption for emergency projects (think repairs after an earthquake - you want those to happen fast); and some local projects would require a statewide vote, reducing local control.  This is also the pet project of a Central Valley agribusiness owner, Dean Cortopassi.  Seems like overall a poor idea. Vote no.

Prop 54 -Yes.  The main thing this proposition would do is require that a bill be published in print and online at least 72 hours before a vote is taken.  Having seen the legislature use the "gut and amend" process where a bill is suddenly transformed into something radically different and almost immediately voted on with little or no analysis, I think this is a good idea.  Too many important bills end up being voted on at the last minute with no time for anyone to really understand what is in them (other than the staff and/or lobbyist who drafted the new language), resulting in (at best) poorly written laws. I won't say what the worst is.  The legislature needs to do things in a more transparent and deliberative manner.  This is a step in that direction.  Vote yes.

More later - including YES on 62 (ending of death penalty) and No on 66 (speeding up death penalty)

Hillary's Lame Campaign

I want to start by making clear that this is just about the campaign, and not about who should be President or the Democratic nominee.  If you like Hillary Clinton's positions, or Hillary, or think it is important to nominate a woman, by all means vote for Hillary.  If you like Bernie Sanders' positions, or Bernie, or think it is important to nominate a Jewish social democrat, vote for Bernie.  If you like Martin O'Malley (and he is still in the race when you vote), vote for Martin.  (The Republicans are a whole different story...)

What is odd about about Hillary Clinton's campaign is how bad it is.  This is not the first time this has happened - she had the inside track in 2008, but fell apart in the face of the Obama campaign (which admittedly was brilliant, but more on that later).

Facing a surprisingly strong challenge from the left in the person of Bernie Sanders, Clinton's campaign appears to be freaking out, and at a loss as how to counter Sanders' seemingly growing momentum.  (We still have to see how well a Jewish Yankee will play in the Bible Belt.)  In fact, Clinton's campaign seems to mostly be confirming Sanders' criticisms.

Sanders argues that Clinton is the Establishment candidate, and that if you want to change things, you should vote for Sanders, not Clinton, and he has staked out clear and ambitious (and quite possibly unattainable) positions, like single-payer health care and publicly-subsidized college tuition.  He has been critical of Wall Street, and opposed the disastrous war in Iraq.  As a result, he has attracted a following of potential voters who agree with those positions, and who want change.  Sanders excites people with his passion and boldness, and his willingness to take on the powerful entities that seem to have bought control of our political process.

Clinton got to where she is by playing the conventional insider political game, and doing it well.  She built her resume, gained experience and qualifications and name recognition, cultivated the key players in the Democratic party, raised money for the party (and herself), and avoided taking potentially controversial positions.  She maneuvered herself to be the clear party choice, and her positions mirror those of the mainstream party.  So one problem she faces is that when Sanders accuses her of being an Establishment candidate, he is basically correct.

But the bigger problem she faces is how she has responded to Sanders' campaign.  When Sanders makes bold promises of single-payer health plans and free college tuition, Clinton's response is to say, "No, that is not realistic, you are not going to get those things.  I will get you something else. It won't be as nice, but I can get it for you.  No, I can't tell you what it will be."  That simply does not excite people. 

And it also raises a few questions: 1) If you truly believe in those things, why won't you even try to get them?  Do you really believe in those things?  2) If you don't ask for them, you will never get them.  The Republicans will likely oppose anything that a Democratic President proposes, no matter how moderate it is.  Why start off by compromising your real position when the Republicans will oppose it anyway?  You might as well go after what you really want. 3) What will you actually ask for?  What kind of bargaining leverage will you have, particularly if you have already given up the moral high ground?

Another approach that Clinton has taken is to try to discredit Sanders.  First, she built on the above line of reasoning by essentially accusing him of being naive and unsophisticated on how Washington D.C. really works. This one would make sense against someone like Obama in 2008, or maybe Bobby Jindal or Carly Fiorina, but it is simply weird to make that accusation against someone who was in the House of Representatives from 1990 to 2006 and in the Senate since 2006.

She doubled down on this by focusing on foreign policy, which she considers a strength of hers from being Secretary of State.  But she did this by invoking the name of Henry Kissinger, one of the most Establishment figures there is.  In other words, she just confirmed again what Sanders was accusing her of.  Sanders response was simple: "I don't like Kissinger and his policies, and I am going to do something different."

She tried a light version of the Swift Boat attack, by having John Lewis say he never saw Sanders during the civil rights movement.  Again, Lewis is now part of the Democratic Party Establishment, so that again confirmed Sanders' position. And then, given that Sanders' participation in the civil rights movement was pretty clear, Lewis backed down from the implications of his statement.  And this came just after another Establishment figure, Madeleine Albright, had to back down from her statement in support of Clinton (in which she basically said that women who vote for Sanders would burn in hell).

Clinton's response to Sanders has been: "Look, all the really important people, the people you should listen to, the Establishment people, say you should support me."  Not only does this just confirm what Sanders has been saying, the way that Clinton used them has been incredibly inept.  Albright, Lewis and Gloria Steinem (who I think may be sort of part of the Establishment now, but I'm not sure) all seemed to annoy potential Sanders voters more than persuade them to switch to Clinton, and all of them issued apologies or "clarifications" of their remarks.  So that did not work well for Clinton.

Clinton has run a strong conventional campaign, and simply deterred or buried all of the potential conventional opponents, but Sanders is not a conventional opponent, and she seems to be at a loss how to deal with him effectively.  This raises some concerns about how she would do in the general election, depending on who the Republicans eventually nominate.  Clinton may be okay against a conventional opponent, like Jeb Bush.  But given her flailing response to Sanders, how well she could deal with the unconventional but media-savvy Donald Trump is unclear. 

Obama managed to excite people with his soaring rhetoric and inspirational message, while simultaneously not scaring Wall Street and the Democratic Establishment.  That is a difficult maneuver to pull off, and Clinton has not managed to do it.  (Neither did Al Gore or John Kerry, despite their qualifications.) Sanders has not done it either, but he isn't trying to. 

If Clinton wants to solidly win the nomination (without resorting to things like pre-pledged "superdelegates" that will turn off many potential voters), she is going to have to step up the quality of her campaign. So far, her attempts to make Sanders look bad have largely backfired on her.  She should stop those, and focus on making herself look good.

It's Not About the Guns

My apologies to both sides of the current gun control debate - but in my opinion, it is not about the guns.  Guns are a symptom - and a symbol - of a deeper problem.

Let's look first at the argument that guns guarantee our freedom - that guns, and the right to own guns, are a bulwark against a totalitarian government.  In other words, when the federal troops are sent in to put down dissent and popular rebellion, the people will have the means to fight back.

In practice, however, this has not worked so well.  In large part, this is because government repression in the US generally does not involve sending in troops.  When the government passed the Patriot Act, with widespread abridgment of rights, did anyone take to the streets with their guns to right this wrong?  What about when we found out about the NSA's domestic spying?  When we found out that the justification for the Iraq war was a lie?  When we found out about waterboarding, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib? Did we grab our guns to rise up in defense of Edward Snowden and Bradley/Chelsea Manning, who took huge risks to inform us of government lies and overreaching?

Another problem is that repression usually starts with attacks on those who are unpopular.  I do not recall hearing about armed resistance by the general population when the US shipped its own citizens of Japanese descent off to internment camps.  Where was the armed resistance to protect Blacks and Chinese against lynch mobs (often encouraged by local government officials)?  Was there armed resistance to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act? Hitler started with the Communists and Gypsies and homosexuals and Jews, the Puritans in Salem went after "witches," and now political figures in the US are arguing that we should exclude or expel Muslims. In none of these cases did guns in the hands of citizens stop the repression.  In fact, citizens with guns sometimes showed up to assist in the repression, such as the lynching of Blacks and Chinese.  The main recent beneficiary of an arms-bearing citizenry appears to be Cliven Bundy, the rancher who is resisting paying fees for grazing his cows on federal land.  Grazing fees - yes, that is the type of government repression so extreme that it cries out for armed resistance.

Let's look at the argument on the other side - that the ready availability of guns, and especially military-style guns, are a major cause of violence, and particularly mass shootings.  In other words, if we significantly reduced or eliminated access to guns we could also significantly reduce or eliminate violent attacks, and particularly mass shootings.

The problem with this argument is that there are plenty of societies (including the US) that have historically had plenty of guns, and yet did not have nearly so many shootings (mass or individual).

In Israel, almost every 19 and 20 year old is in the Army.  But when they are off duty, they are still in uniform and they still have their military weapon with them.  So in the mall food court, on the bus, walking down the street, most of the male 19 and 20 year olds are carrying an M16.  In womens' restrooms my wife liked to see the various ways that women soldiers answered the question, "What do you do with your Uzi while you fix your makeup?"  The installer at the local art museum wore a pistol, the family on the kibbutz near Gaza kept the Uzi on top of the refrigerator (so the grandkids couldn't reach it).  While Israel certainly has many issues, domestic mass shootings are generally not one of them.

As Michael Moore pointed out in Bowling for Columbine, Canada (at that time) had a similar level of gun ownership as the US, but a much lower homicide rate.  Likewise, Switzerland has a high rate of gun ownership and much lower homicide rate.  Historically, it has been easy for people to acquire guns in the US as well.  So while the US has lots of guns and lots of gun violence, it does not seem to be the guns themselves that are the problem.  In other words, limiting access to guns will likely not solve the problem.

Michael Moore attributed the problem to a culture of fear, and I think he may have something there. Israel and Switzerland have high levels of military participation, which means a couple of things.  First, gun owners there are likely to have significant training in proper gun handling.  In Israel, the soldiers never had a clip in their M16 (except those on guard duty in very dangerous locations, who also had on flak jackets, and tended to look very unhappy).  They were not parading around the fact that they had an assault rifle.

Second, that higher level of military participation may contribute to a feeling of belonging to a larger society, as opposed to the US emphasis on the individual.  The NRA, in its efforts to further the interests of gun manufacturers, has gladly helped stoke the fears of those already afraid because of job losses, economic uncertainty, rapid societal changes, and a black President.  Their pitch: "Are you scared? Buy a gun!" seems to be working, especially when coupled with the extra dose of fear ladled out by Fox News.  Gun sales skyrocketed as the odds improved that Obama would be elected President.  The fear drives the gun sales, meaning that the guns are the symptom, with fear being the underlying cause.

So how to counter fear? With confidence and community, and with actions that address (at least some of) the root causes of fear.  Reducing the economic pressures on the middle and working class would be helpful - if you know that you will have a secure, well-paying job that will allow you to buy a house, support your family, and send your kids to college, you will be a lot less scared.  Making health insurance and college education affordable and ceasing to threaten social security would help, too. Addressing climate change would be helpful - given that there are a lot of credible people saying we have a serious problem, the fact that we are not doing much about it creates anxiety.  Taking steps to increase community and reduce isolation would be helpful - maybe we could have universal service (not just military service) for all high school graduates, where they not only do work for the public good and contribute to local communities, but they can also develop connections and friendships. And finally, turn off the scary movie - don't watch Fox News and the other similar "news" sources whose real message is to be afraid.  We must be able to think rationally and calmly, instead of reacting in fear, which drives bad decisions and lashing out in violence.

If we don't get rid of the fear and isolation, neither buying guns nor banning them will solve our problems.

After Santa Barbara

After the (most recent) mass shooting in Santa Barbara, I posted the following on facebook; I am reposting it here for continued accessibility.

So we live in a surveillance/military state, where the NSA knows who we are talking to and when and for how long, where to get on a plane we must leave our water bottles and put our toiletries in clear bags, where our bus passes and bridge passes and phones track our whereabouts, where the local cops have armored personnel carriers and assault weapons, where we spend massive amounts of our tax dollars on the most advanced weapons ever made.

But are we safe? All of this "war on terror" - at a huge cost to our finances and our freedoms - has done nothing to protect the victims of attacks at Sandy Hook or Washington Navy Yard or Santa Barbara.

Maybe that is because we are looking for terrorists in the wrong place - all of our money and resources are focused on protecting us from "the other," those bearded and turbaned 9/11-style terrorists. But these terror attacks (a "mass shooting" must count as a terror attack) are not by others, but by us - the fellow student, the co-worker, the neighbor, the relative.

Yet we keep focusing on and fearing the other, taking action to counter the latest moves (that we deem suspicious) by Iran or Russia or China or North Korea or al Qaeda or Venezuela or Cuba, and doing little to even think about the source of the domestic shooters (or bombers) who have killed far more Americans, and most of whom having boring, "American" names like Harris or Rodgers.

There is a problem with our society (and it is deeper than, but connected to, guns and misogyny), and I think Michael Moore was partially on the right track when he focused on an American culture of fear. (Which is ironic given our wealth and power.)

But it is not just that - the erosion of a sense of community, or society, or civilization has added to that. The emphasis on the individual, the cult of celebrity and wealth worship, the "greed is good/grab what you can" mentality, the naked use of power and influence, all erode social cohesion and remove barriers to profoundly selfish, fame-seeking acts that harm others, with the killings being an extreme form.

If we were less isolated from each other, less encouraged to victimize each other for our own personal gain, we would be less afraid. There would be fewer guns, less misogyny, and most importantly, fewer killings. Let us strive for connection and overcome fear. Peace to all, and peace to ourselves.