While you weren’t paying attention, the LA Times got word of the Supreme Court decision on Prop 8. No, they don’t actually have any word from the court, but “some people are saying”:

The California Supreme Court is expected to uphold Proposition 8, November’s ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, with a decision coming in the next few weeks.(LAT 5/7/09)

Oh, well, if some people are saying, then it must be true.

The article goes on to talk about the broad-based, grassroots movement for repeal of Prop 8. Throughout the state, you have what we never had in the run-up to Prop 8, a true neighbor to neighbor outreach program.  We have more field efforts now, before there is even a measure filed with the AG’s office, than we ever did during the “campaign.” From established Progressive and LGBT organizations to brand new grassroots teams, this thing is bubbling up.  Just like Jaws: The Revenge, this time it’s personal, because also like Jaws: The Revenge, Prop 8 was a horrible movie.

But, this is still the first time that progressives have ever worked to put an affirmative measure before the people. The Right’s GOTV “marriage protection” measure Prop 22 got well over 60% of the vote, yet Prop 8 just barely squeaked by.  The tide is turning. But of course, the Right wants to freeze time right there:

“There’s no doubt the other side is going to try to make great hay out of Iowa and Maine . . . but none of those places are California. And California voters have now twice voted on this,” he said. “What part of ‘No’ don’t they understand?”

Well, this is just rich, coming from California’s Social Right. How many times has parental notification gone down now? Let’s see, there was Prop 73, then Prop 85, and then Prop 4. So, that would be 3, or, to be exact, 3 more times than progressives have tried to put marriage equality on the ballot.  Really, Mr. Schubert? You are going to use that line and expect to get away with brutalizing the scions of logic?

Oh, surely Socrates and Plato are spinning wildly in their graves right about now.

Elected Officials – straight party line this time, all good candidates.

Barack Obama for President of the United States of America

Mike Thompson for US Congress, first district

Lois Wolk for California State Senate, fifth district

Mariko Yamada for State Assembly, eighth district

California Propositions and Initiatives on the flip…

California Propositions and Initiatives

YES on Prop 1A

High speed rail is good for Yolo County, good for California, a good investment for the future. Click the link for the detailed argument.

YES on Prop 2

While I have friends who are moved to support 2 by the whole cruelty to animals aspect of this bill, the bottom line for me is the issue of safe food production. Right now, the crowded conditions in factory farms lead to stressed animal immune systems, a disease-prone environment, massive pollution problems because of the waste issues with that densely packed cage farm environment, higher use of antibiotics to try and control resulting diseases, and thus a much higher risk to the general human population of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Bills similar to prop 2 have been passed in several Western states, and their ag economies have not collapsed as some of the no on 2 ads have claimed. While this would have been a stronger bill had it also held imported eggs and meat to the same standards so as to avoid a race to the bottom undercutting CA farms, as well as some funding to ease the cost of transition, the fact of the matter is that the status quo is a health risk, and giving the animals enough room in their cages to turn around should make things better, both for the animals and (most importantly IMO) the people of California who eat them.

And if you haven’t read any of Michael Pollan’s books on the subject (Omnivore’s Dillemma for the in-depth take, In Defense of Food for the Cliff’s Notes version), I strongly recommend them. This is not like the sentimental “don’t eat horses” prop a few years back (which I opposed on grounds of absurdity – meat is meat), this has implications for the quality of the food we eat, and ultimately of whether we want to further the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by giving them a perfect environment in our crowded factory farms. When those antibiotics stop working because we bred superbugs in those cramped cages, the cages will have to get a lot bigger anyway (if not outright abandoned), and it’ll hurt our ag economy a hell of a lot more.

Meh on Prop 3 – no recommendation

I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, it’s a vote for local pork, as one of the children’s hospitals the funds would be used for is the UCD med center hospital. And who could vote against sick children? On the other hand, I’m edgy about bonds, given how bad the credit situation is right now, and am less than pleased that public bond money would be used – 80% – to finance private children’s hospitals. Taxpayer money ought to be used for public goods.

NO on Prop 4

I am so sick and tired of having to beat back this stupid anti-abortion trojan horse every other election. Once again, this prop would force teenaged girls to ask their parents for permission to have an abortion, unless they ran through an intimidating and no doubt complex bureaucratic gauntlet by going to a judge and pleading their case. As with the last several times the fundamentalists threw this one up against the wall, the problem here is that the teens who are afraid to tell their parents about being pregnant in the first place often have reason to be, whether it’s because they were victims of incest, or are afraid of being physically beaten by their parents, are afraid of being thrown out on the street in punishment for their “sin,” or are just afraid of their parents forbidding the abortion and forcing the teenager to carry their child to term. Life is not perfect, and while many of us have happy families and adequate communication between parents and children, one does not write laws based on the best case scenario.

Rather, the law needs to be written with an awareness of the complexity of life and difficult situations that people – and yes, even minors – find themselves in. Prop 4, like its predecessors, is so fixated on the questionable “right” of parental authority over their children that it completely ignores the cruel way that this bill would heap suffering on vulnerable people in an already painfully difficult situation. Do we really want to be forcing pregnant teenagers in abusive or disfunctional families, possibly in an incest case, to be reporting their choice to have an abortion to those same people, being forced against their will to carry a fetus to term in their own body?

Prop 4 plays upon the anxieties of parents with teenage daughters, but gives little concern for the well being of those daughters themselves. It is wrong headed and cruel, and should be rejected just as the past two tries were.

YES on Prop 5

The drug war has been a colossal failure on all fronts. We have thrown so many people in prison that the courts have found California to be in violation of basic constitutional standards. Many of those prisoners committed no violent crime, but are in there as part of the “warehouse ’em all and forget about ’em” mentality that has sadly been a part of the fabric of California politics since at least the “law and order” Reagan Governorship. We pay more for prisons than universities in Calfiornia, even though it is far cheaper to send a kid to college than lock them away. Rates of drug use have not fallen, and drug use is common throughout all racial and economic classes, but rates of prosecution are highly racially biased all the same. Locking up nonviolent drug users is a failed solution to what was never a legal problem in the first place. Countries where drugs are not dealt with in this ham-fisted and draconian manner have far lower rates of drug use, ironically enough. Notably, those countries also have far better treatment options than California.

It isn’t working.

Prop 5 seeks to reverse that trend by diverting nonviolent drug offenders into treatment programs instead of prisons. The law and order industry, from police unions to prison workers unions to Yolo County’s very own ignore-state-law-when-he-disagrees-with-it DA Jeff Reisig is adamantly opposed to this because it cuts at their source of funding. That is to be expected, everyone fights for their meal ticket after all, and a lot of people make a lot of money off this costly and counterproductive war against the citizens of California.

But as a taxpayer and a human being, anything that dials back the use of incarceration as a dumb hammer to deal with complex social problems (and some that aren’t problems at all; in my opinion, drug use without antisocial behavior should not even be a crime, although prop 5 does not push things that far) is a good thing, and long overdue. No people that believe that they are, at heart, their brother’s and sister’s keeper have any business locking people away for petty offenses and leaving them to rot in prison.

The “law and order” incarceration-mad approach of the drug war has incontrovertibly failed, in California and nationwide. Prop 5 is a step away from a fiscal and moral abyss. Take it.

NO on Prop 6

The converse of prop 5, prop 6 is yet another in a long line of “tough on crime” initiatives locking in ever-expanding public funds for an ever-more draconian war against the poor and the nonwhite in this state under the guise of fighting crime. This time it’s gangs, with prop 6 increasing the penalty for any crime if the person who did it has been labeled as a gang member (which, as we saw in West Sac not too long ago, can be abused by ambitious DAs to label whole communities as “gangs” and then persecute them collectively for whatever crimes are committed in their midst). This whole “tough” mentality does not work, and is wrecking our budget while producing nothing of value to the state except fat payrolls for the prison workers union. Enough, no more money thrown down that hole, let’s try something different.

YES on Prop 7

Prop 7 would require that all utilities – public as well as private – get a large and expanding % of their power generated by big renewable power projects in the decades to come. The only problem with this proposition is that they stepped on some environmental groups’ toes by not consulting them before they put it on the ballot, so the Sierra Club and others decided to fight against it out of pique. We desperately need big solar and wind projects in this state ASAP, if we are going to turn ourselves around on global warming and insulate us from what looks to be a rise in the price of natural gas in the decades to come. This will not solve all problems – there needs to be a place for small projects, especially solar roofs, in any comprehensive solution – and is not intended as such, but what it does do is serve as one big silver BB that can be used to get us closer to where we need to be with big power projects.

I have read all the criticisms, and they strike me as not particularly valid. We need to think big, and prop 7 does that by gibving us both needed regulation and funding to make it happen.

NO on Prop 8

My marriage and family have been a bedrock in my life. I cannot imagine trying to weather life’s storms alone, without that companionship, trust, and love. How could I ever tell two people in love that they aren’t as good as me, that they should not be treated equally under the law, that their marriage, their companionship, trust and love are inferior to my own, and that they should either divorce or not marry?

Please do the right thing and vote no on 8. Marriage is too precious, too important to be used as a cynical pawn in the culture wars. If you want to protect marriage, work on your own, Lord knows none of ours are perfect anyways.

No on Hate. No on 8. (Click the link for the full argument)

NO on Prop 9

This is yet another of these “law and order” bills, this time sold as a “victim’s rights” initiative. It would give the families of crime victims more grounds to object at parole hearings, make parole harder to get, and generally keep more people in jail for longer period of time.

It’s an effective emotional argument, but it cloaks the very dire financial consequences of continuing to put more and more people in jail for longer and longer periods of time. Something has got to give. If it had a tax hike connected to pay for the damn thing, at least it would be honest, but it doesn’t even go that far. Just another unfunded mandate that doesn’t make anything better for the money spent, except if you’re a prison guard.

NO on Prop 10

This is something that sounds pretty good until you read the fine print. Texas oil zillionaire T. Boone PIckens has funded this one in hopes of making a mint off of the natural gas market by subsidizing a fleet of natural gas-burning cars. This does nothing for global warming or carbon emissions, plays into our unsustainable suburban low density development model, will create a competitor with power plants for natural gas (thus bidding the price up and making electricity and heating more expensive), does little for the common good, and makes a rich Texan oilman even richer. While I have some grudging respect for T. Boone’s efforts to give visibility to the huge issue of Peak OIl, this prop is a total non-starter.

NO on Prop 11

It’s a scam to protect the Republican party and conservative democrats cloaked in good government nonpartisan “reform” language. While there might be a better way to draw districts, prop 11 isn’t it. Don’t fall for it. (Click the link for the extended argument)

YES on Prop 12

CalVet has been around forever, it works, it costs the state next to nothing, and it has helped out generations of Calfiornia veterans. Given the huge number of vets that Bush’s little imperial adventures have produced, and the economic strains the Bush administration’s VA cutbacks, miserly pay, stoploss backdoor draft, and extended tours of duty has posed to veterans and their families, we owe it to them to make it easier for them and their families to buy houses, farms and start businesses. It’s good for California, and it’s the right thing to do. The only way this could be improved as a bill is if it was expanded to the population at large, but even as is, it’s a no-brainer.

Local Ballot Measures

YES on Measure N

Measure N would give Davis an essentially blank city charter that could be amended in the future to adapt city law to whatever sorts of thing we as a community wanted to do. Right now, Davis is a common law city, which means that what we can do on a variety of issues is constrained by whatever the state legislature says we can. Personally, I think the Davis electorate is intelligent, educated and engaged enough to make a charter work, and have not found any of the arguments against a charter to be compelling at all. Besides, just think of all the fun letters to the editor battles in the Enterprise a charter could create!

Seriously, though, from choice voting to district elections to financing solar panels on roofs like Berkeley did to creating a Davis Public Utility to broadening our tax base beyond just property and sales tax, to all other sorts of stuff, the freedom this would give Davis to choose its own path and experiment without asking permission from the utterly useless state government (thanks in no small part to prop 13) makes it a good idea in my opinion.

YES on Measure W

In short, as I say with with every election with a school bond on the ballot, you’re a bad person if you vote against a school bond. This bond would fund a whole bunch of teachers in the Davis Joint Unified School District that will otherwise be cut for a pittance, given the kind of money that flies aroiund this town. If you have the money to buy a house, if you have the money to drive a nice car, if you have a kid in Davis schools, if you plan on getting old and want talented educated doctors and nurses taking care of you, or a thriving knowledge economy keeping those tax coffers full so that you can retire in security with Social Security or your 401K, you have no excuse not to vote for W.

It reality is that simple. If you vote against this thing, your neighbors will be justifiably mad at you for wrecking their kids’ education and property values. Do the right thing, public schools are at the very foundation of modern society, and deliver tremendous value at a very low taxpayer cost.

originally at surf putah

I mean this is really getting out of hand. And before it goes any further, we need to establish a few things that the Yes on 8 campaign seems not to understand.

The current state of marriage does not make the words “bride” and “groom” hate speech. Gays are not the same as unicorns. No matter what Tom McClintock thinks, gays are not dogs either. The notion- in this country of all places- that equality would be “armageddon” should be outrageous to anyone. And most certainly, eliminating human rights would not be the same as defeating Hitler. Just stop. But hey- Yes on 8: if you’ve got an actual point, let’s hear it. No really. One that’s true.

So far there isn’t one. I’m actually a little surprised. Given the tens of millions being rushed to California by Mormons and the great monied patrons of the religious right and the lather being worked up, you’d think that somewhere there would be a reasoned argument. Even if it wasn’t front and center. There’s lying and there’s fear mongering and there’s divisiveness. I’ve gotten those messages. And it’s all capped by the evocation of the most horrific genocide the world has ever known.

And then there’s The Call. Leading untold thousands to my city on Saturday to pray for Proposition 8. You do that. I’d like to think that this will be a positive event, but nothing so far leads me to expect a break from the nonstop divisiveness and the out-and-out lying and the histrionics (not to run this into the ground, but in the world of rhetoric, a Hitler comparison is the last stop on the hyperbole express). I’m sick of it, and if that’s what I can expect on Saturday, take it elsewhere. I’m sick of the lies, I’m sick of the blackmail of my local small businesses, I’m sick of this being considered a remotely appropriate level of political discourse, and most of all I’m sick of being told that people are not created equal. That’s the entire point of this country existing. It’s the very first self-evident truth. Don’t get angry at me if you don’t like it. Take it up with the Declaration of Independence.

So while Prop 8 supporters pile into Qualcomm to pray, the Courage Campaign is joining with other allies of equality and freedom calling for volunteers to stop Prop 4 and Prop 8. When Rick Jacobs emailed Courage members earlier today, he noted that “the religious right is calling Proposition 8 its ‘decisive last stand,'” which tells you the stakes on this. If you doubt at all how seriously they’re taking it, check out the Call video on the volunteer page. It’s pretty shocking.

Look: this is how the religious right keeps winning elections. For all the (very important) stories of voter suppression and ballot box rigging and corruption, the fundamental strategy hinges on drowning everyone in so much vitriol and general negativity that they give up entirely and stay home. It can’t work this time. We can’t let it. There’s simply too much on the line. At a time that it’s almost hackneyed already to rally around hope and change, it’s all the more vital that California stand up collectively and say enough is ENOUGH. Lying to us won’t work. Trying to wear us down with the rhetoric of alienation will not keep us home. Trying to make us miserable will not keep us quiet.

6 days left. I’m spending my Saturday with Lou Engle and James Dobson because there’s some question as to whether equality is a human right in this country. How can we allow this to be a debate any longer? Enough is enough. Do something. And if you have time, do one more thing. If we don’t stop this crap now, then when?

full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign

It’s 2008, and even in California the religious right is attempting to punish young women for having sex by bringing back illegal abortion. Progressives are starting to fight back, but the bad new is Yes on Prop 4 is still leading.

The last two times they put this anti-choice crap on the ballot, California voters wisely rejected it. This time, people aren’t paying enough attention with so many other races and issues grabbing the headlines.

Please help with your time or money

A couple of days ago I wrote a diary entitled Stay for Change.  I am encouraging Californians to stay in the state.  Walk precincts and make calls here in California.  And despite all the text messages and emails you get, please we need you here!

We need you here to defeat Prop 8, so that we retain marriage equality and we aren’t stuck with a second class citizenship. We need you here at home, so that we can defeat Proposition 4 to preserve the safety of our teens and choice in California. We need you here to help kick start the greatest public works project in a generation with California’s High Speed Rail project (Prop 1A).

And we need you here to elect More And Better Democrats.  Across California we are fighting for a reasonable budget. A budget that doesn’t get defined by the race to the bottom Republicans. To do that, we need 2/3 majorities in both the Senate and the Assembly.  Admittedly that will be tough, perhaps even impossible in the Senate. But the closer we get to 2/3, the easier it is to pass a reasonable budget. In the Senate, Hannah-Beth Jackson (19th) is our best shot to pick up a seat. In the Assembly we have some great candidates. You’ll find two, Alyson Huber (AD-10) and Manuel Perez (AD-80) on The Calitics ActBlue Page.

But while the need for money is omnipresent, we need boots on the ground.  So, Stay for Change so that California can be the first state to stand up for equality. Stay for Change. Let’s tell the Republicans that they can’t just cut and cut and cut into the heart of our budget, and expect to find a solution.

This is California. We have the people right here in this state to defeat these terrible props, and accomplish our goals.  But we need some progressives to stay here in California.

So, if you would like to travel, I have provided a list of exotic locales where you can help some great candidates right here in California.  And if you would like to help right at home, well there are offices for No on Prop 8 across the state. You can find events to protect teen safety by defeating Prop 4 right here.

Stay for Change, and click here for contact info for lots of candidates.