Here’s the latest on the ballot propositions (Remember, you can find the Calitics endorsements here).  

• Prop. 1A & Prop. 3: The California Budget Project put together an analysis of these two bond measures (for some reason they left off Prop. 12).  It’s a decent enough overview, but of course the CBP is aggressively neutral, and the questions they raise have answers they refuse to list.  For example, they ask:

Will high-speed rail gain access to rail corridors used by commercial and commuter trains? High-speed  trains likely will require access to rail corridors – so-called right-of-way – currently used or owned by commercial or commuter train operators. The growth in freight transport at California’s ports and increased ridership on California’s commuter rail lines may mean that high-speed trains may have difficulty gaining required rights-of-way in certain highly trafficked corridors.

Or maybe not!  Let’s not bother to delve into this any further!  

That’s kind of the tone the whole paper takes.  These projects could be laudable!  Then again, they cost money!  Good luck, California!  One would think that some hard numbers about the role of public infrastructure investments during economic downturns or the need for job creation engines or how to reach emissions reductions targets without mass transit improvements could have entered the picture.

• Prop. 2: You know that an issue has gone mainstream when Oprah devotes an hour to it.  Prop. 2 will essentially get an hour-long infomercial on daytime talk today, and that’s as good as gold. Their ads, starkly displaying the effects of animal cruelty, are powerful and effective as well.  But in addition, I hope that Prop. 2 advocates make the argument about a comprehensive food policy that understands the externalities of eating meat ought to be built into the product itself:

It will be argued that moving animals off feedlots and back onto farms will raise the price of meat. It probably will – as it should. You will need to make the case that paying the real cost of meat, and therefore eating less of it, is a good thing for our health, for the environment, for our dwindling reserves of fresh water and for the welfare of the animals. Meat and milk production represent the food industry’s greatest burden on the environment; a recent U.N. study estimated that the world’s livestock alone account for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases, more than all forms of transportation combined. (According to one study, a pound of feedlot beef also takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce.) And while animals living on farms will still emit their share of greenhouse gases, grazing them on grass and returning their waste to the soil will substantially offset their carbon hoof prints, as will getting ruminant animals off grain. A bushel of grain takes approximately a half gallon of oil to produce; grass can be grown with little more than sunshine.

This is about stopping brutality, but also about intelligent food policy that would decrease risks and burdens on the environment and public health.

• Prop. 4: A very effective ad from the No on 4 team has returned to the airwaves:

Two years ago, opponents of a parental notification initiative on abortion put out a chilling ad. It depicted a soap bubble floating in the air in a seemingly tranquil setting of a residential backyard. The bubble drifted by windows of a house, where angry voices and rumbling noises suggested violence taking place inside.

Now the bubble commercial that opponents used to defeat Proposition 85 is back. This time, with identical treatment and text, it is being used in the campaign against another parental notification initiative, Proposition 4.

The commercial neglects to mention provisions in the initiative that allow a minor to petition a juvenile court judge to waive the parental notification requirement. It ends (with only the proposition number changed) by saying Prop 4 “would force girls to notify an abusive or violent parent that they are pregnant, and this puts them in real danger. Please think outside your bubble and vote no on Prop. 4.”

The ad is here.  The commercial neglects to mention that provision because it’s a crap provision – the minor has to accuse the parent of mistreatment and claim that she fears physical or emotional abuse, which is really a great position in which to put a minor.  And the idea of a 17 year-old going to a judge is just nonsensical.

• Prop. 5: Why look at this!  The US Sentencing Commission is considering alternatives to prison for nonviolent drug offenders.

The commission’s consideration of alternatives to incarceration reflects its determination to persuade Congress to ease federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws that contributed to explosive growth in the prison population. The laws were enacted in the mid-1980s, principally to address a crime epidemic related to crack cocaine. But in recent years, federal judges, public defenders and probation officials have argued that mandatory sentences imprison first-time offenders unnecessarily and disproportionately affect minorities.

Don’t these people know that sentencing commissions with expert experience in the issues shouldn’t be trusted to carry out guidelines and recommendations on sentencing?  This of course should only be left to politicians who worry about attack ads claiming that they’re soft on crime!  After all, look how well that’s worked in California: 1,000 straight laws over 30 years increasing sentences, overcrowded prisons, costs of incarceration outpacing education and billions of dollars needed to fix an unconstitutionally cruel prison healthcare system!  Clearly, the legislature has this covered, right?  So there’s no need to vote yes on Prop. 5, because that would be too “risky.”  What we have now is working so well.

• Prop. 8: This being the biggest and most expensive initiative on the ballot, there’s a lot of news here.  Fresno priest Father Geoffrey Farrow took a stand against Prop. 8 recently and it resulted in his firing.  His is a heroic story of someone coming forward at great personal cost to commit to equality and tolerance.  That is the meaning of courage.

Peter Schrag has an article out about the lies of Yes on 8.

The ad, on behalf of Proposition 8, features a law professor from Pepperdine University who cites a federal appellate court decision in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal. The decision affirms a lower court ruling denying parents of a couple of young children the right to be notified when gay marriage is discussed in their classrooms.

“Think it can’t happen?” says the professor. “It’s already happened.”

But the insinuation about what might happen in California is wildly misleading. It relies on a set of leaps likely to land the leaper in a logical ditch. In the case of one of the kids, the court said, “(T)here is no evidence of systemic indoctrination. There is no allegation that Joey was asked to affirm gay marriage.”

If you want to see bigger lies than that, check out this deeply insulting ad targeted to the Chinese community.

On the lighter side, here’s a slick amateur ad for No on 8 playing off the ubiquitous Mac/PC spots.

• Prop. 10: Speaking of lying in campaign ads, have you met T. Boone Pickens?

The ad capitalizes on popular sentiment for clean, efficient and secure energy – and no new taxes. What goes unadvertised might stir the public’s distaste for special interest-driven initiatives, particularly those that increase state debt.

Nearly all $13 million in campaign contributions so far has come from Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who stands to profit from its passage. Pickens is founder of Clean Energy Fuels Corp. of Seal Beach, the nation’s largest supplier of natural gas for fleets of vehicles, including Sacramento city and county garbage trucks.

More than half of the $5 billion would be spent on rebates to companies and consumers that buy environmentally friendlier vehicles. And most of that rebate money is dedicated to heavy-duty trucks and vans, the kind of fleet vehicles that Pickens’ company supplies.

A few nuggets for you:

• A Superior Court judge in Alameda County has ruled that cell phone companies cannot charge early-termination fees, and has ordered that Sprint return $18.2 million dollars to consumers.  This will probably get fought on appeal, but right on.  The concept of fee for service has worked pretty well for most of consumer capitalism, as has being nice to your customers instead of bullying them into compliance.

• There’s been a lot of outrage at the LA City Council’s ruling banning new fast-food restaurants from breaking ground in South LA for a year.  Actually, far from being an issue of infringing on freedom, it’s a little thing called land use, and every city has them – even the one that the outraged Will Saletan lives in.  

I’m pretty skeptical that these proposed South LA regulations will do any good. But it’s not unique or unusual for land use regulations to exist. And working class people around the country suffer dramatically larger concrete harms from the sort of commonplace suburbanist regulations that Saletan’s been living with, without apparent complaint, in Chevy Chase. Those kind of regulations are bad for the environment, bad for public health, and serve to use the power of the state to redistribute upwards. So if you’re going to rail against land use regulations, maybe pick the ones that really hurt people.

• In environmental news, Senate leaders like Barbara Boxer are calling for the resignation of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for his preferring ideology over science, defying the advice of his own staff, evading oversight and misleading Congress, particularly about refusing the California waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions.  They’re also asking the Attorney General to investigate whether Johnson perjured himself at one of the California waiver hearings in Congress.  In addition, Jerry Brown is suing the EPA for their refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions at the nation’s ports.

• And this is pretty interesting, turns out the Sarah of “Sarah’s Law” (parental notification) doesn’t have the squeaky-clean image her sponsors claim:

Backers of a ballot measure that would require parents to be notified before an abortion is performed on a minor acknowledged Friday that the 15-year-old on which “Sarah’s Law” is based had a child and was in a common-law marriage before she died of complications from an abortion in 1994 […]

A lawsuit co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood Affiliates and filed Friday in Sacramento County Superior Court asks the Secretary of State to remove the girl’s story and other information it deemed misleading, including any reference to “Sarah’s Law,” from the material submitted for the official voter guide.

“If you can’t believe the Sarah story, there’s a lot in the ballot argument you can’t believe,” said Ana Sandoval, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood and the campaign against Proposition 4.

Using someone’s life story for political means, and wrongly at that.  Good people.

Ok, your turn.