Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Excting Prop 84!
When it comes to exciting propositions, nothing beats bond measures like Prop 84. Essentially, the state is going to borrow money to do... uh... stuff. Fixing walls near water or something. Preservation, conservation, blah blah stuff. Mainly, it's a bunch of folks asking the voters to give them money ($5 billion). There's some commission that'll probably be controlled by the same people who wanted to put this on the ballot (like the Health Care thingie here at Cal).
I should also note that a different proposition, 1E, is a legislative bond measure which gets a bunch of money for levees specifically ($4 billion). Also called the "Emotional Spending Caused by Hurricane Katrina Act," it's probably best summarized by the rebuttal to the proponent statement:
After reading Prop. 1E, it won't surprise you to learn that the Legislature adopted it after 3 a.m. when they got tired of arguing. They couldn’t agree on a list of projects or even a list of priorities; they could only agree that THEY WANT MORE OF YOUR MONEY right away. How typical! That's what this $4,090,000,000.00 bond is all about: raising taxes to give Sacramento politicians a blank check based on vague promises that they won't waste our money this time. It's like giving a drunk one more drink for the drive home. The proponents of both measures seem to insist that this won't cost the state money. For those of you unfamiliar with bonds, here's a quick primer: Bonds are loans. Interest must be paid on them. That payment takes the form of money. That is, there'll be an extra bunch of money that needs to be paid every year. Some people call this a spending increase.
Anyway, both of these are pretty dumb ideas. "Give us money, and we will employ our godlike powers to will the state to safety, because if there's anything that can solve a problem, it's a government bureaucracy!" I think I'll endorse NO on both Prop 84 and Prop 1E.
. . .
|
. . .
|
