Holy Jungle Primary Batman!

Hey, so the California primary election is Tuesday, and while it will probably be a pretty low turnout affair since both Presidential nomination contests are wrapped up, you should still vote...precisely because it's going to be a low turnout affair and that's when "they" try to pass really stupid, horrible laws through the initiative system and just generally try to ruin our lives.

Well not exactly, I can't actually say that either of the initiatives on the ballot this time are pure, raw evil...but they still deserve to be voted on by more than 30% of the voting population. On top of that, somewhat excitingly, this is going to be the first year in which California has a non-partisan primary...in November, instead of having a Democratic nominee and a Republican nominee to choose between in state legislature and congressional races, the candidates on the ballot will be the top two vote getters from the primary, whatever their party. I don't think this will matter much for Merced, since races here were pretty competitive already...but for someplace like San Francisco it could mean Nancy Pelosi facing serious competition from someone just slightly to her left or right. Or it could mean a massive clusterfuck of underinformed voters who don't even have the shortcut of voting for whichever party holds their loyalty. Anyways, since I know you're all waiting with baited breath, here's how I'll be voting....

Initiatives:

Prop 28 - Yes. This is one of those initiatives that sneaks through my policy against ever voting in favor of any initiatives by virtue of the fact that it undoes some of the evil of an earlier initiative by changing around the way term limits work. Right now, members of the state legislature typically start out in the assembly, stay there until they reach their maximum number of terms, and then afterwards have to compete to win one of a smaller number of seats in a slightly bigger district that may only overlap partially with their previous district to be elected to the state senate if they want to stay in government. This process serves very little purpose other than to confuse the incentives of ambitious young legislators (They're supposed to represent their constituents, but is that their current constituents or the ones they hope to have in just a few years? And should they view the representatives from neighboring districts as allies, or soon to be competition?) and make the assembly the subordinate to the senate in experience instead of equal. If Prop 28 passes, term limits will stay in effect, which is less than ideal, but at least individuals will be able to choose to make a career in either the assembly or the senate, instead of letting graduation from the first to the second be the de facto norm. It probably won't make a huge difference in governance, but I like the idea of my representative spending up to12 years really becoming an expert on the issues of my district...assuming that it's anyone I want to vote for in the first place.

Prop 29 - No. I mean, I hate cancer as much as the next person, but I have several issues with the way this law would work. First of all, the mindset that tries to pay for things that the government should theoretically be doing by getting one set of voters to approve a tax on people who are most likely not the ones voting annoys me. And it annoys me a couple dozen times as much if the tax is also regressive, which a tax on smokers is. I understand the desire to force people to stop smoking (or prevent them from starting) by raising the costs, and I guess there is good data out there that it's a strategy that works, but for some reason I tend to think more about the addicts who won't stop smoking but will now also have less money for their families...and I dunno, it doesn't seem quite fair to me. The real problem I have with this law though is that it would tie up yet another portion of California's tax revenue (sure, a new source of revenue, but it uses up a potential source of revenue that could theoretically be used for something else) for a purpose that marginally informed California voters thought "sounded good." Sure, cancer research is swell...but should we be increasing funding for it while we're slashing the budget for foster kids, people with disabilities, public health inspectors...you name it, we're slashing it? At the very least, that should be a decision that the state legislature has the flexibility to make, and possibly change its mind about in a few years if the economy changes, or if the program does not turn out as well as expected. The initiative process is way too inflexible a process to allow coherent budgeting if anyone can get something passed by identifying something that sounds good (cancer research!) and a group of people to pay for it who sound bad (smokers!), and that's why our state is fucked right now.

Congress:

District 16 - Jim Costa.

I'll cop to not having done nearly enough research on this one, but there's really just no way that I'd elect a Republican to congress, even in a jungle primary. And the one other Democrat who's challenging him doesn't seem to have a website, so yeah...moving on.

State Assembly:

District 21- Adam Gray, I guess.

This race is both interesting and not interesting at the same time. There seems to actually be some controversy, but a lot of it seems to be character based and it's really hard to judge that when you're talking about small time local candidates who only even have a couple of stories in the local newspaper. Adam Gray apparently never graduated from college, which doesn't really bother me at all, and may not have been completely honest about that, which might bother me a little bit, and then described his role working with university students at UC Merced in a way that might have been misleading...which I'd want to understand better before I formed an opinion on it one way or another, because frankly, the terminology could get pretty mixed up quite innocently, or also not so innocently. On the other hand, one of the other candidates might have gotten caught driving under the influence of an illegal substance. Or he might have gotten framed. Why can't they just disagree about property zoning laws, or something I have some hope of understanding? But I'm probably going to vote for Adam Gray despite woeful ignorance because he has a flashy website and seems like he could probably beat the Republican, and it might be all I'm hoping for right now is a dutiful cog in the Democratic machine. (Since no doubt the Republican, despite sounding like a pretty decent guy, would be a dutiful cog in his party's machine and set right to work defunding government).

Local:

Merced County Supervisor, District 2 - ???????

This may be the first election ever where I've gleaned a significant amount of information from lawn signs. Hub Walsh signs seem to correlate well with other signs that I approve of, and I've also seen them on apartment buildings...which I take as a point in his favor in an area where being against apartments and the people who live in them actually seems to be a viable political stance. His opponent, Casey Steed, does not keep quite as good of company in the world of lawn signs, and visiting his website I see discouraging things like a lot of hype about lowering salaries for board members...this is almost never a budgetarily significant amount of money and almost always a sign of a slash and burn attitude towards government.  To be fair though, I don't really see the slash and burn approach in Steed's write ups on various issues. He comes across as a genuinely thoughtful guy, with a slightly Republican tinge to his thinking, but not nearly as reflexively as I was expecting based on where his lawn signs hang out. Hub Walsh's website is much more polished, and while it touches on some good things from my point of view (clean air, safe drinking water, transit, housing "options"), in the end it gives very little away, except that he's a well established guy not really sticking his neck out. So I'm actually a little torn. Steed is endorsed by the Republican party, but that's not a deal breaker for me in local level politics the way it is at the state or federal level, and I like the idea of thoughtful people in office and competitive local politics, so that may be enough to get him my vote. Especially since I'm feeling a little frustrated that in the two state level races I don't see much option except for to vote for the pre-decided, establishment Democrat. I can't quite commit to bucking my party tonight though...maybe I can find more info tomorrow.

Game of Thrones

I don't have anything too particularly interesting to say about Game of Thrones lately, except that I kind of hate the characters they've created to be Robb and Jon's love interests. I mean, it doesn't help that they're only in scenes with Robb or Jon, who were already characters I was wishing the show could just forget about already. Has either shown an ounce of personality this whole time? But now they've gone and inserted these uninteresting, implausible women to share screen time with them...and damnit, I want that screen time back and replaced with one of the Lannisters.

One of the best parts of the series, in my opinion, is the way that it handles womens' roles in a medieval setting. Between Cersei, Sansa, Margaery, and even Myrcella you have a pretty broad theme going on with the reality of arranged marriage, the variety of ways that different characters adapt to the limits of their autonomy, and how they manage to scrounge some power and influence regardless. Even Daenerys, who most of the time is also a character I wish would just toss her screen time back into the pot and get out of the way, is cool to watch as she negotiates the possibility that she could make a strategic match for herself with the guy from Qarth, if she chose to, since her royal lineage is the one thing that his money can't buy otherwise. In contrast, I feel like Florence Nightingale of Westeros and that Eskimo girl ought to be prancing about in comic book style leather bikinis (maybe Eskimo girl's could include a fur cape, for realism) based on the amount that they represent any kind of realistic depiction of the kind of dilemmas that women would face in that kind of society. They're nothing but foils for the already boring male characters they're meant to attract, and it shows, and I'm really hoping they die next episode. (That's the one good thing about the show, if you really truly hate a character, there's at least a 50/50 chance they'll die soon...if only that didn't also apply to the ones you like).

Prep School

So it turns out Mitt Romney was kind of an asshole when he was younger. I mean, I actually have pretty mixed feelings about the whole anti-bullying fervor that's so prominent right now. I'm not a fan of bullies by any means, but I also feel like it doesn't take much courage or introspection to be against one thirteen year old kid beating up another thirteen year old kid, and that it's kind of telling that that's the kind of anti-gay discrimination that we've decided to fixate on. Plus, based on my own memories of middle school...relationships between kids are complex. Sometimes it's the kid throwing the punch that's been picked on the most, and sometimes mockery is a type of self defense too. Or it's a type of flirtation. Or it's who knows what. It doesn't really seem like a situation where a zero tolerance policy is applicable, and the kids I knew at least would be hard to divide up simplistically into victims or perpetrators. 

On the other hand, there is nothing particularly complex about a gang of guys pinning another one down to cut his hair. I don't think it even particularly matters if Romney thought the guy was gay. This was the 1960s after all, long hair was a big deal back then, and it seems just as likely that Romney was showing off his political intolerance. Mostly though I think it shows a sense of humor that's surprisingly lacking in empathy towards other people (or animals...nobody would know that story about the dog if he didn't think it was hilarious).

Anyways, I wasn't going to vote for him anyways, so it doesn't really matter.

Ideal

I've been brooding most of the day about the idea that the problem with same-sex marriage is that it undermines the "ideal" that children should have a mother and a father. First of all, I'm starting to really hate the concept of ideal when it comes to raising children, period. The idea that anybody is either able or willing to approach child rearing from the standpoint of carefully researching what is most close to being perfect and then following it is ridiculous. First of all, most people would have to conclude that neither their or their spouse's genetics should be involved in the process...forget the studies that show that this, that, or the other thing can have a slight downward effect on IQ, to get real results you need to be willing to swap out prospective parents. I'm also fairly sure that any parent genuinely concerned with maximizing their child's safety needs to be willing to do things like give up car travel and move away from high or even moderate air pollution areas. Or on the less serious side, there's baby names. People have no end of opinions about the doom and misery that await a child whose parents give it an unfortunate name...unless that name is the last name. If it's not optional, then suddenly we remember that somehow, we all eventually learn to deal with whatever less-than-ideal hand life deals us, and our children will too.

But getting past the fact that I really, really need to take a break from pregnancy books for a while (and taking for granted that I actually see no reason two same sex parents are less ideal for a child than two opposite sex parents), why, exactly, would you obsess about the non-idealness of a choice that most people aren't even going to consider making? I think this guy (Andrew Cherlin) might have a very good point...raising children in wedlock confers status, and the thing about status is that it needs to be denied to some people in order to retain its worth. At least, looking at it from that perspective makes more sense to me than trying to understand it as some kind of bizarrely selective concern about the welfare of other people's children. Their goal is not to use the law to coerce others into what they consider better lives, I think most people - even those who I wouldn't call particularly rational otherwise - realize that that's unrealistic. We're talking about people who want to be congratulated for the way their personal preferences and good fortune already coincide with "ideal," who are used to being congratulated for it, and who resent whatever minor extent that might be taken away in order to make the world fairer for others.

(Blah blah blah obviously you can't assume that the whole 50% or so of the population that is against gay marriage is against it for the same reason. You can pretty safely assume that there are a wide variety of reasons out there...but this one I hadn't really thought about today, and the more I think about it the more significant I think it is)

Pepper Spray

I may be off the deep end here, but it seems to me that if a police officer shows up at protest in riot gear when he has been ordered not to, and carrying a form of pepper spray that is outside of what his department authorizes him to carry, he is no longer acting as a representative of the police department at that point and is instead just a private citizen. I don't think the law is particularly kind to private citizens who pepper spray college students. I'm absolutely sure that unwillingness to comply with departmental guidelines regarding appropriate limits on force, not just in high stress spur of the moment conditions but with the degree of premeditation required to obtain non-standard pepper spray, should be a disqualification from being a police officer.

Adventures in Pregnancy

Times change

(this is going to be a very basic nub of a post...just jotting down a few thoughts, rather than trying to craft them into an argument, because I probably have time for one and not the other. and you know, it's been two months since I posted anything here. oh also, I'm five months pregnant.)

Back in 2008 I used to joke that the Republican primary candidates represented the three faces of evil in the GOP. John McCain was the scary bomb happy guy, Mike Huckabee was the scary social conservative guy, and Mitt Romney was the greedy rich bastard. And if I had to trust the country with one of those three types, I'd pick the rich bastard. Because you know, at least rich people need the rest of us around to work for them and buy stuff. Now it's 2012, and Rick Santorum has stepped up to be the new scary social conservative guy (now with 50% more scary! although Mike Huckabee with his nice guy persona actually seemed more dangerous to me), they're all scarily bomb happy, and I forget what exactly seemed "safer" about the greedy rich bastard model of Republican. Blame giant recessions, epic unemployment, and being repeatedly told that I need to accept a world in which the basic functions of government cannot be funded because the rich need to pay less in taxes. I certainly don't want Santorum to win, and at this point it seems like there's no chance that I will, but I sure enjoy watching Romney lose. I honestly don't even know that I think Santorum would be a worse president than him. I'm just much more aware these days of how fiscal policy affects me personally, and how my interests do not line up with the greedy rich bastards of the world.

With Obamacare in the Supreme Court right now, I wonder if there's a similar dynamic going on. I worry that we're coming off of 20+ years of the delusion that extreme fiscal conservatism is somehow benign, maybe even slightly noble, and that's why we're living in a world where corporations are people and a federal attempt to fulfill one of the basic functions of government is identical to force feeding people broccoli. I think we really need to start examining the people who have gained reputations as moderates, and asking ourselves whether they really deserve it. Being on good terms with Bill Maher while thinking that keeping the tax rate for millionaires low is more important than funding early intervention for toddlers at a high risk of disability might not cut it.