Stop, Drop and Roll

01 February 2008 | Alameda Community | John Knox White

The California Elections are upon us. I won’t opine on the Presidential race, at this point, I think that even people claiming to be undecided have probably decided who they’ll vote for (there have been some studies recently that show that the decision is actually made based on the first introduction of a candidate and that people don’t tend to change their minds from that point…I’ve been on the fence, but Edwards dropping out removed any doubt that might have lingered for me).

The Alameda (city) Democratic club had a meeting in January to discuss both the candidates and the ballot measures (the ballot measures are near the end of the film. You can watch it here:

The irony is that Edwards was the only presidential candidate to have a representative from Alameda, the rest were from off-island, so we all know what that means…..;-p

The ballot measures are confusing and there’s not a lot of discussion. I’m going to link to the resources I’ve used to make my decisions.

First and foremost, Jeff’s blog. Jeff’s a friend and a very intelligent, critical thinker who researches things to a tee and provides excellent write-ups of his reasoning. Personally, I’m still wavering on Prop 92 (community colleges) but Jeff makes a compelling case for it. You can read his write ups here: http://caelections.blogspot.com/

Other resources

Indy News had a good grid of major statewide organizations and their endorsements.

The Asian Pacific American Democratic Caucus of Alameda County made the following endorsements

And Alameda’s Dan Wood sent out the following (reprinted with his permission):

THE PROPOSITIONS

PROP 91 has to do with transportation. Apparently it’s redundant. I don’t see any arguments in favor of it so I’ll recommend NO.

PROP 92 is about funding community colleges. Our college system has really gotten the short end of the stick lately. Community college is one of our few tickets to upward mobility. I recommend YES.

PROP 93 is a ‘term limits reform’ initiative. While I agree that term limits make it hard for legislators to do their jobs, this particular bill is actually a trick – it creates a loophole for President Pro Tem, Don Perata (my state senator) and Assembly Speaker Fabián Núñez to extend their own terms and power, which I feel both have abused way too much already. We need to do away with harmful term limits in the future – but not support a wolf in sheep’s clothing like this measure. So I recommend NO.

PROP 94-97 is about the Gaming industry. Something like this seems to come up every year. From everything I’ve been able to determine, Indian Gaming makes only a very small number of people VERY wealthy and sucks money out of local economies. These propositions are Governor S’s baby, and I’m not going to buy it. Please vote NO on these.

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