What’s in a name?

[motivated by someone surprised I'd show support for the Greens]

I think labels are the end of critical thought, by the way. 

There's always been a lot of Green in me: sustainability, taking responsibility rather than passing it along, justice (those concepts share some commonality), democracy (though I lean towards super-majorities rather than simple majorities), nonviolence.  All but the first and last are often touted as traditional American values (for “taking responsibility” read “rugged individualism”).  Even the Dems and Reps recognize the importance of these values.  They espouse them in BIG letters, even if they ignore the devil in the details.  And they lose them in the details because they are so busy fighting for power and maintaining the status quo, that they hardly address the details (though it seems the Dems do a better job than the Reps, which could be the cause for the impression that the Dems aren’t as single-voiced as the Reps).

Dems try to promote some of these, but giving these more than lip service incurs a cost, and asking voters to pay now the full cost of what they want now isn’t a recipe for getting elected in the US.  What’s the saving rate in the US?  How large is the personal debt?  Why do you think the national debt is so high?  Where were credit cards invented?  OK, I don’t know the answer to that one.  But do you see some commonality here?  How do you garner votes?  Promise benefits to the voters that they don’t have to pay for up front. 

The Dems, at least the ones that get elected, know how to get elected; they can’t make the voters pay for all they owe, they can’t make them pay for benefits bestowed “ago.”  But they know the importance of the Green positions.  So they try to tread a middle path but wind up mostly failing.  Still, the idealist in us votes for them because they make us feel good for trying, even if they’re not trying all that hard.

What do the Reps try to do?  Push the costs into the future as long as they can without even paying lip service to what caused it.  Making immediately happy voters, who later come to realize when the debt doesn’t go away easily that government is not working.  We vote for them because we think we’ve paid enough already and we want our due (or perhaps we’re selfish though we don’t admit it).  And they say the things that make us proud to be Americans, so we feel good about voting for them. 

And maybe that dichotomy of feeling good about our voting records but not feeling good about the state of the country is part of the reason for the polarity and high partisanship of politics these days.  We feel something is wrong, but we don’t know what it is, we can’t believe it’s ourselves because we feel good about whom we’re voting for, so it must be the side we don’t vote for, but we don’t know why, and at the root is that the folks we vote for are hood-winking us, so we take that tension out on the folks running against whom we vote for—if only they’d work with the folks we vote for, we’d see some progress!!!  Talk about arm-chair psychology!  Don’t believe for an instance that I know what I’m talking about.

What’s the TEA Party trying to do?  Reduce taxes and reduce the debt.  Good for them, but what are they gonna give up for it?  I’m not seeing any rallying cry behind “Cut entitlements!”  “Reduce the military!”  All I see is “Increase efficiency.” “Reduce fraud.”  After hearing these same nebulous goals/promises for 20+ years, I’m thinking there’s not much left to do on these. 

And what about the Greens?  Nice basic tenets, but they place a lot of blame on corporations.  And I’m not ready to do that.  Sure, the tunnel-vision focus on short term profits of American capitalism can make corporations an emblem of incurring debt for future generations to pay once I’m outta the hot seat and of the dissolution of personal responsibility into a corporate responsibility.  But corporations are made up of individuals.  And ascribing blame to corporations won’t help as much as ascribing blame to the individuals that make up those corporations.    Corporations don’t make decisions, guns, errr, people do.  Dehumanizing the blame is inaccurate and not as effective as holding actual humans accountable for their decisions.  And holding an entire corporation accountable punishes many who are at worst innocent, at best, Yoda notwithstanding, trying to do right. 

And it’s not entirely the corporation’s fault or the decision-makers of the corporations.  We—ok, not you and me, but our legal system and government—created, or at least adopted, the idea of the corporation.  Is the idea of shielding personal liability for a corporation’s actions bad?  I’m pretty sure we’d have fewer jobs if we didn’t have corporations.  On the other hand, corporate actions might be more responsible, though isn’t bad publicity a strong motivator (not enough I’m guessing, look at Halliburton, BP, and Deep Water—how much do you think the possibility of bad publicity motivated their decisions)?  Maybe we could have a sliding scale of personal liability, rather than the almost all-or-none of our corporations law.  The sliding scale, though, would increase the legal uncertainty, which would chill business, but probably not as much as eliminating the liability shield of corporations law.

[OK, now I’m thinking about the pressures of decisions in a business environment.  That topic needs some attention in this blog, I’m thinking….]

So, don’t call me a Green, Dem, Rep, liberal, or conservative.  Once you do, you’ve put me in a box and no longer consider the nuances of my opinions.  Perhaps I align best with the Greens, but I think they’re wrong, way wrong in some important ways. 

I don’t believe anyone fits neatly into any party.  Why do you think setting a party platform is so difficult?  And how can it possibly be that everyone (or even most everyone) who’s against legal abortion is for state’s rights (that seems contradictory!) or an expansive Second Amendment.  Or everyone who’s for a cap and trade CO2 system is for closing Gitmo?  Some of these issues have no overlap.

But you know, most folks probably have a pretty solid overlap of core values.  If we can find that common core, figure out why that commonality can generate diametrically opposed results, we can build consensus, solve problems, and build a better community.  OK there’s another topic that needs some more attention here, too.

11/2010, Prop 25: Why can’t they just agree?

Late budgets cost me money. They cost CA, so they cost me.

I’ve tried to get the legislators to take responsibility, but this year’s budget set a record for being late. I amended the CA constitution to require on time budgets, but the legislators ignored me. I bet if I ignored the constitution they’d go all legal on my butt.

We need an on-time budget more than we need partisan politics. I feel like I’m the last hold out for trying to get the legislators to play nice, to realize they’re playing politics with the lives of real people, but I don’t think they’re listening. I agree that democracy is the oppression of the majority, and I want to be better than that. I think clever, intelligent, dedicated legislators can create something better by listening and accounting for different points of view. I think a 2/3 agreement on a budget should produce a better budget than a 50+1 agreement.

But I don’t see that happening in CA. I think especially now that the flood gates to campaign $$ have opened, legislators will become even more capitalistic. Maximizing their own gains at the expense of the common, or at least the general, good. So, I’m tired of being idealistic here.

We the people have fired warning shots of initiatives at them. Some have passed, some have not. They’ve not listened. I don’t think they’ll cooperate and compromise on a budget in a timely manner, and I don’t think they’ll change the budget procedure to make it easier to get a budget on time, either. So, it’s left to us. And though I hate changing the constitution by a simple majority vote, the budget procedure is in the constitution, so that’s where we have to go to change it. Like Prop 19, this one shows a good use of the initiative process. Sac Bee crappy argument (bare assertions of omissions from the prop with no reasoning as to why the omissions are bad) against notwithstanding, I don’t see any problems with the text of the proposed law.

And OK, I’ll throw them a bone. They worked out a compromise in order to pass last year’s budget. Prop 24 takes away that compromise. Yeah, maybe it was a bad idea, but I won’t fault them for following the procedure I wanted them to follow. I’m tempted to use the initiative process to tell them they screwed up on that compromise, but a budget deal is a complicated thing, and I’m not savvy enough to the details of the budget to know whether this compromise was all that bad/worth it. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt because I’ve not seen anything that says this compromise was terrible.

Oh, and I've filled out my ballot.  That might have eliminated my interest in thinking through any more issues.  Kinda like rendering a verdict when on a jury.  In each case I've been on, we've had extended and interesting debate up to the time we reached our verdict.  Once we reached the verdict, no one was interested in discussing the case anymore.

2010 governor: does it matter?

I had developed the opinion that who wins any given election makes very little difference. Humans are adaptable, and the influence of any particular politician on my day-to-day life is tiny. Especially considering all the checks and balances in our government. It’s nigh impossible for any one person to have a dramatically helpful or hurtful influence.

Now, like all too few (even if it was the majority), I didn’t trust GWB. I didn’t trust him not to go off half-cocked and do something stupid. When my fears proved justified, some asked me if I still thought it didn’t really matter who got elected. Well, my opinion was shaken (but was it stirred?).

I’m now facing a choice between Whitman and Brown and everybody else on the ticket for CA governor. I often give third parties serious consideration and even vote for them when I have confidence who the winner of the election will be. I think diversity of opinion is essential to making the best decisions, and I’m overtired of the grid lock of power struggle that our 2 party system has devolved into and prevents progress, prevents new ideas. So I often look Green. Much of their tenets parallel mine. But I often find their candidates uniformed, unsophisticated, pie-in-the-sky, over-eager idealists so far out of the mainstream that they have no chance to accomplish anything if elected. So my Green vote is more support for a >2 party system and for general principles than it is for the Green candidate.

But this election seems so close between Brown and Whitman that I’ve not even glanced at the Green governor candidate. And though I’d like to think Whitman or Brown doesn’t make a difference, I am shaken. By itself not enough to vote my preference between the two. So I looked at their websites (in addition to reading endorsements). And that piffle helped not a whit. Whitman’s site was all motherhood and apple pie, spouting all sorts of political incantations: Meg will create jobs, Meg will cut government waste, Meg will protect the environment, Meg will improve education, Meg will fix the immigration problem. Lah-ti-dah. Long on apparent commitment, short on details about how.

Brown’s site is a bit fuller in the details, but still pretty thin, still saying the same kinds of things, though slightly different, more tuned to my values. But I know I’m rationalizing here. Yeah, Brown’s best, but Whitman lost me long ago as she fought Poizner to see who could be further right during the primary. And now she’s headed back to the middle? I’m not buying that, particularly because she’s so thin on details, even in the bits of the debates I’ve heard.

I’m scared that Whitman as governor takes the partisanship politics, the governing to stay in power rather than the governing to improve life in the state up to 11. (Though thinking that through makes me think that someday I have to figure out what I think the role government is. Hmm, start with the preamble of the US Constitution?  Still brings a tear to my eye) And Jerry Brown? Well, he invokes strong dislike in many, and that’s something tough to overcome, but I think he is focused on improving CA rather than fighting for power. Maybe he had presidential aspirations last time throgh the state house, but that seems far from his mind now. I think he has a vision for CA, not a vision based on what people will vote for. And I mostly like what I think his vision is, so I’m planning on voting for him.

That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on Green. I’m voting Green for Lieutenant Governor: Castillo. He seems pretty well-grounded based on my trip to his website. I don’t like his focus on prisons, which isn’t bad by itself, but it’s bad how he focuses on it as a means to solve many problems. But the rest of his positions seem pretty solid and well-thought out. Not so cursory and idealistic as many Greens. And if either Newsom or Maldonado wins, no big deal. Either seems OK, and the Lieutenant Governor doesn’t do much of anything anyway!

11/2010 Prop 20: Ready for primetime?

Who should draw the boundaries of electoral regions? Seems obvious that the people already elected out of those regions, right? Talk about a conflict of interest! I voted for Prop 11, which created a citizens panel (5 Reps, 5 Dems, 4 from neither party) to draw the lines. From the group, 3 Reps, 3 Dems, and 3 from neither party must agree to the lines. Prop 11 didn’t extend to the US House. Prop 20 extends it. I’m guessing Prop 11 didn’t go all the way kinda like a cat always leaves that back foot behind when heading into unfamiliar territory. It gave us voters a chance to try this system out before applying it across the board. I was happy to take even the first step, but I wanted to go all the way–call me rash.

Now, I don’t buy the arguments that it’ll reduce partisanship and make races more competitive and elected officials more responsive to their constituents. I think that’d be nice, but it’s wishful thinking. Rather, I don’t like that one knee-jerk election could saddle us with a skewed political balance for 10 years or more. Let’s look at this upcoming election. Strong Democratic swing 2 years ago. Typical reaction back to the other side (Republicans) during the off year election. Has the electorate changed that much over the last 4 years? Have our basic priorities changed all that much? I say, No, it’s a reaction to the labels more than the principles. And I don’t think that change is sufficient to warrant the possibility of district line changes that alter the balance of power.

What should define the lines is, well, I don’t know what. I’m thinking some kind of commonality. I could say that the current process applies that principle by drawing “safe” districts–districts that will keep voting the same way. But I don’t think the current process is built to do that. Rather, it will collect stronger, but fewer, majority districts for the other party as a means to reduce the other party’s legislators. It will draw its own districts so as to siphon off/dilute votes for the other party. By its definition, this method draws lines for political reasons, not commonality reasons.

Drawing lines for commonality reasons provides the opportunity for more voices to be heard in the legislature, and that’s a bedrock principle of the US: the marketplace of free ideas. I’ve found more ideas, more perspectives, more arguments lead to better results. True, at times the diversity can overwhelm and cause stagnation and gridlock, but that’s what we have now anyway, with only 2 ideas–Democratic v. Republican!

So, let’s draw the lines according some kind of local cohesiveness rather than as a means to foster a large scale unity that might not represent me or my neighborhood.

As I work through this one, I realize a danger of the initiative process–amateurs like myself trying to figure out complex issues. Sure my thinking seems to make sense to me, but I’ve studied this subject not at all. What seems natural, though, can be fraught with unanticipated consequences. I look to newspaper endorsements to help me out there, and only the SacBee so far is against it (SJ, LA, SF all for it), and the reasons the SacBee is against it (it’s an experiment, it could reduce CA clout nationally, it narrows the definition of communities of interest) don’t address the fundamental problem of the foxes guarding the henhouse. And that’s the crux for me, all the rest is rationalization.

Leave the politics in the voting. Take it out of the disenfranchisement of the electorate. I think this prop does that. I like the composition of the commission (though I’m a little concerned that it over-represents the Republicans and Democrats). And I like that it requires a majority of each group to agree with the results.

11/2010: Prop 19--what is it good for?

[And by "it" I mean the initiative process]

Prop 19: is it time for legal pot? Well, yes, but that’s not really the question on Prop 19. The question is, is it good law? Figuring that out will go some distance to demarcate the bounds of good uses of the initiative process. Prop 19 legalizes pot but does a poor job of regulating it. Under it you can use and grow pot, and the regulation there seems reasonable–age limits, acreage limits. You can also sell it if you’re licensed, and therein the problems starts.
Prop 19 leaves much to be defined, specifically leaving local governments freedom to control, license, regulate, permit, tax the cultivation, processing, distribution, transportation, sale, and possession of pot (freely quoting from the text of the proposed law). That looks like a power vacuum waiting for a legislature to do something, like the recipe for the anarchy of a patchwork of local regulations. And that leaves me wondering, what’s wrong with that?

I complain time and again that legislating by initiative is micro managing by amateurs. Here is an example of the opposite extreme–providing broad outlines but leaving the details to the professionals, and here specifically leaving those details to them. What better use of the initiative process? No way are the voters gonna parse an initiatives to fully comprehend its nuances. Better is for the initiative to provide the broad brush strokes and for the legislature(s) to fill in the details. And this proposition does just that.

So, as long as I’m for legalizing pot, I should be for this prop. And I’m libertarian enough that I don’t think someone should go to jail for smoking pot (hmmm, isn’t the fine for having under an ounce of pot already just a tax?). But I’m left with one concern–drug testing in the workplace.

The prop says employers can’t discriminate against pot users if the use doesn’t impair their performance. Endorsements against Prop 19 say employers need more flexibility than that to ensure a drug-free workplace. Prop 19 gives the legislature the power to amend it, with some restrictions on amendments to one section, but not the section that addresses workplace drug testing. The same sort of argument applies to the DUI section, which some anti-19 endorsements also argued.

And on to the anarchy issue. The freedom we so cherish in the US implies anarchy. The term “anarchy” is just a pejorative way to express “freedom.” Anti-19 endorsements decry the anarchy this prop would produce, comparing it to the anarchy that resulted from allowing medical marijuana. I’m gonna say our legislatures have and are learning from that experience and are quickly finding out how to regulate legal pot. OK, that’s more of a hope than something I know, though I see local governments are turning their attention to figuring out how to improve control medical marijuana. Is that uncertainty enough to warrant voting against 19?

I don’t think so. I’m ready to tell the legislature(s) to figure out how to make pot pay for itself, rather than be a money pit for my tax dollars.

And with luck, future posts will deal with anarchy and sausage making and whether/why to trust the legislatures to make better law of the details than the general public.

Getting started in the middle

I'm a permanent absentee voter and have voted absentee in CA for 10 years or more.  I figured it gave me a better way to figure out my votes than walking up to the ballot box and figuring it out there.  Seems like I wasn't bright enough to realize even voting at the booth I could research ahead of time.  But a reason that's still valid is that I can vote at my leisure, without having to take time away from work.
For the last few years I've used a spreadsheet to record my thinking and research as I go through my decision process.  I use the Internet to look at endorsements from major papers in CA and in my home burg of San Diego, and I've added those links to the spreadsheet along with tallies of the endorsements.  I find that the papers generally give reasonably well supported arguments for their endorsements, serving as a nice starting off point for my process.  They also give me background and context that don't exist in the Official Voter Guide.
I started tabulating and thinking about the myriad propositions in CA.  I see the allure of the proposition--an opportunity for direct democracy, for the voters to do something their elected representatives won't.  But I'm feeling more and more that the proposition process has run amok, has turned into micromanagement by an emotional and ill-informed electorate railroaded by selfish special interests (by the way, I'm not inherently against special interests, and I generally feel that the special interest name-calling is a specious attack that I ignore).  I came to see voting on the propositions a chore forced on me by these selfish groups and individuals.
But I still work my way through them.  And over the course of a few elections now, I've come to find that with all the arguments flying back and forth between the endorsements in the papers, most of those arguments are mere window-dressing rationalization for the endorsement.  For me, my decision often comes down to one reason.  And when I say "comes down to" that often encompasses working through a lot of issues before I find the one (or just a few) that decides it.
That leads me to my first purpose for this blog--to record my process of whittling down an issue to its crux deciding factor or factors.  And why does the title of this post suggest starting in the middle?  Because for the 11/2010 election, I've worked my way through most of the issues already.  So, I doubt I'll record much of my process this year.  But as the future is difficult to predict with accuracy, I'm a good bit curious to see where this heads to.
And as politics engenders strong opinions and debate, perhaps this blog will see some of that activity.  I vacillate between leaving the comment section wide open and moderating it to contain only what I think are cogent submissions (no ad hominem, please).  Once again, the best way to find out what the future holds is to travel there (kinda like the weather).