Election Guide, November 2018 edition

As I stated back in June 2018, I wonder if I should bother, given the four recently changed aspects of voting I mentioned last time around for the June primary, to wit:

1.  The “Top Two Open Primary”, or legally the Nonpartisan Blanket Primary, which means that the top two contenders face off against each other in the General Election of November, regardless of Party.

2.  Mass voting by mail, with the potential for outright fraud, with “late discovery” manufactured and mailed in ballots and everything else,

3.  A moribund California Republican Party, which could not get to be the #2 primary winner in all too many races, and

4.  For State ballot Propositions, the full and complete “TEXT OF PROPOSED LAW” is no longer there in the Official Voter Information Guide.

But civic duty is still civic duty!  So on I go…..

YOUR CONGRESS(WO)MAN, STATE ASSEMBLY, STATE SENATOR, OR EVEN BOARD OF EQUALIZATION (EXCISE TAX) MEMBER: 

This image says it all:

Now you are probably thinking, “But Curmudgeon, here you are just telling us to Vote 100% Republican or Die, and all of the Democrats are now Commiecrats, and yadda yadda yadda…”

Well, in California that really is the case and the choices really are that stark. In California, the “Blue Dog”, “Boll Weevil”, or “Joe Six-pack” moderate Democrats, that might exist in other Midwestern, Southern or Eastern states, are *extinct*.

Even if you think “Make America Great Again” is a trite and corny slogan, what is their response to it? Either “America Was Never Great”, or worse “Make California Mexico Again”. I am not kidding.

Is the Republican Party’s new flamboyant standard bearer, Donald Trump, uncouth? Sure, but I really don’t care, because that bar was already lowered two decades ago.  And for once, a Republican confronted by a media slanted against him *fights back*. As Abe Lincoln said of the loutish Hiram Ulysses Grant, “I can’t spare that man—he fights!”

I prefer Uncouth Patriots to false Polite Traitors. I take that back-- they NOT even polite Traitors anymore—witness the actual “AntiF(irst)A(mendment)” Mob Violence many of them have been encouraging and stirring up, from foaming at the mouth Maxine Waters to smarmy Charles Schumer. A Republican Congress candidate in the East Bay area was actually physically attacked and beaten up.

GOVERNOR:  John Cox, or Perdition. The choice is that stark.

His sadly favored by the polls opponent, Gavin Newsom, first as mayor of San Francisco and then as Lieutenant Governor, epitomizes all that is wrong and incoherent with California politics. He presided over a city that in the name of ecology bans plastic straws, yet neglects the ecology of basic sanitation, to the point where many city blocks *smell of human poop* from the defecation of homeless people.

I am not joking—try driving to an event or shopping in Union Square, looking for parking in the nearby Tenderloin District, and walking back to Union Square with block after block of this wafting odor, watching your step along the way. Or ride the mass transit into Downtown San Francisco, come up from the Market Street BART or MUNI subway routes, and smell it and watch your step for block after block. Sometimes you will even see people in the act of pooping and peeing. Someone even created a computer phone application to report the poop, “SnapCrap”.

And the solution to impoverished homeless people who cannot afford a place to sleep in that city? Not rounding up and incarceration of any of the poopers, nope, not that.  As Lieutenant Governor, Gavin Newsom offers “Sanctuary” (Sic) to more impoverished and uneducated people, who are not citizens nor legal aliens, making the housing crunch all the more severe. All. For. Votes.

Originally, in the June Primary, I had preferred Travis Allen over John Cox, and I feared that John Cox was another wealthy dilettante from another state who has not seen how legislation works its way through “the Bill Mill” (or often does not). However, John Cox is hammering hard upon the real issues, and Travis Allen is earnestly and loyally stumping for Mr. Cox. I am pleased with this Republican Team Spirit, no matter how uphill the fight.

LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR:  Ed Hernandez, Older and lesser of the two Evils

Between DEM Party Stalinist apparatchik Eleni Kounalakis, and DEM Party Trotskyite Ed Hernandez, it is a matter of which one is less nauseous. Like Gavin Newsom, BOTH epitomize all that is wrong and incoherent with California politics.  

However, consider their ages. With Leftists, Youth (or the lack of it) matters. Eleni Kounalakis is 51, and with her war chest and the nod of the Party bosses, she could well entrench herself politically for years to come. 

Ed Hernandez is 61 and ten years older, has much less Party and money backing, and he might actually rub the wrong way all of the special interests that have made their Faustian bargains with the ruling Demunist Party. Like the people who supported the geriatric dissenter Bernie Sanders for President over the entrenched and younger Party apparatchik Hillary Clinton, I say that if you must vote for one of the two, vote for Hernandez instead. 

SECRETARY OF STATE: Mark Meuser.

An actual election law attorney will be very helpful here, and he is one.

CONTROLLER:  Konstantinos Roditis

TREASURER:  Greg Conlon

Greg Conlon has tried for this office before, and lost before, to John Chiang in 2014 and to Phil Angelides in 2002 before that. He has also tried for the US Senate, the State Senate, and the State Assembly. A “happy warrior”, who gets back up when he is knocked down.  Let’s give him one last hurrah.

ATTORNEY GENERAL:  Steven C. Bailey 

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER: Steve Poizner

Another veteran of the California Political Psychic Wars, like Greg Conlon for Treasurer above.

U.S. SENATOR:   Dianne Feinstein, although I know it’s hard to stomach.

“And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said, “Stick to the Devil you know….””—Rudyard Kipling

Like the Lieutenant Governor contest above, it is hard to be happy with either DEM Party Stalinist apparatchik Dianne Feinstein, or DEM Party Trotskyite Kevin DeLeon.  

Moreover, it is VERY tempting to punish Dianne Feinstein for her disgusting stunt with respect to Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh’s hearing was made into even more of a Kangaroo Court and even more of an accusation by false hearsay than the hearing for Clarence Thomas was, and I did not think that was possible. False and utterly bogus accusations not just going back to younger adult times, but to adolescent minor times. I am waiting for the Demunists to try to destroy a judge based upon alleged grade school bratty behavior next.

However, again AGE is the decisive factor.

The “Very Old Guard” Dianne Feinstein is 85 years old. There is even a chance, however unlikely, that a Governor John Cox could appoint her successor when finally she steps down, or more likely, finally makes that trip across the River Styx.

Meanwhile, her opponent Kevin DeLeon is only 51.

Better to have the Senator senile, no matter how revolting her final actions have become.

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT, YES OR NO REFERENDUM OR PLEBISCITE:

The principle here is:  Does the judge act as an Umpire or Referee in the Game of Politics, or as a sleazy semi-permanent Player who can never be called out? With that principle in mind:

Carol Corrigan:  YES, keep her.

Leondra R. Kruger:  NO, dump her.

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION: Marshall Tuck

His leading opponent, Tony K. Thurmond, is endorsed by Senator Kamala Harris and all the teacher unions. I will leave it at that.

On a related note, Kamala Harris is a worse Senator than even Barbara Boxer was, or Dianne Feinstein has become. At least the two old witches won their election campaigns fair and square and did their homework when pushing their agendas, however loathsome. Kamala Harris gained her first political appointments, and then election campaign backing, by taking off her clothes and spreading her legs and acting as a “sugar baby” mistress for DEM party “sugar daddy” chieftains, most notably state Party Chairman Willie Brown. I am not joking and I am not just writing that because I like to trash leftist Dems. She literally *slept* her way to the top of the California political heap.

NOVEMBER BALLOT PROPOSITIONS:

Prop 1 - Unaffordable Housing Bonds: NO.  

Bonds, meaning DEBT, are only appropriate when an actual capital intensive but long lasting public project (like a freeway, a dam, a community center) is to be built. And there is a bit of that in this.

However, government housing projects, where people live but have no sense of community, have a wretched and unhappy track record. As the old and sweetly sad reggae song went,

 “I remember, when we used to sit, in a Government Yard {British and Jamaican speak for housing project}, in Trenchtown….No Woman, No {as in don’t} Cry….”

But most of this initiative isn’t even that. It is in large part borrowing for tenant assistance programs, so they can better rent existing housing stock. And the rest of you already trying to rent housing who don’t qualify for those? You get to pay off the bonds and you get your rental market bid up!

Prop 2 – Bonds for Homeless Shelters: NO.  

On one level this *is* seductively tempting. Mentally ill Homeless pooping on the streets? Why not build places with toilets for them to be placed where they can defecate and maybe get the help that they need? And this is an initiative with bonds funding actual construction capital projects.

However, the money to pay off those bonds will come from an existing tax which is currently used to fund mental health services for those very same unfortunate people.  This measure will take some money out of mental health services and use it instead to pay off housing bonds.  Result: fewer mental health services.

Prop 3 – Bonds for Parks, AGAIN???  NO, in fact hell NO.

First, even if you like parkland watershed bonds like this, WE JUST PASSED AN INITIATIVE JUST LIKE THIS ONE LAST JUNE. Are you telling me that all those projects were already finished in a few months?

Second, nothing is more annoying than a proposition that claims to have “water supply” provisions, that does not build a single dam to store it. Acquiring more watershed park area is not truly increasing supply.

Third, the State cannot maintain the vast parkland area it already has. It probably should be selling off the parks that hardly anyone enjoys, or which have no known endangered species, and making them productive ranches or something similar again.

Fourth, Bonds, meaning DEBT, are only appropriate when an actual capital intensive but long lasting project, like a Dam, HINT HINT, is to be built. Borrowing for current maintenance of existing parks is folly.

Fifth, too many initiatives like this were approved in the past, LIKE THE ONE LAST JUNE, and we are still paying those off. Vote NO. 

Meanwhile, Governor Brown has already signed legislation aiming towards year-round water restrictions of 55 gallons per person per day – about the per capita water usage of Uganda – effective in two years, even if you’re bailing floodwaters out of your living room one future winter day because the dams were not built to trap and catch them.

Prop 4 – For the Children’s Sake Don’t: NO.  

This bond initiative, unlike other sham bond initiatives, is actually building new public goods, so there is THAT in its favor. This will mean about $1.5 billion in additional debt (about $260 per household in interest and principal) for construction of children’s hospital facilities.

However, there is an Elephant in the Room. How much of those overcrowded children’s hospitals are due to illegal alien mothers making that “anchor baby dash” to birth on American soil so they can definitely stay?  

Prop 5 – Encouraging “empty nesters” to downsize: YES.  

Proposition 13 capped property taxes at one percent of your home’s purchase price, plus two percent per year.  One problem: old people held on to bigger homes they no longer needed in order to keep their lower property tax.  Prop. 60 partially improved this, allowing seniors (older than 55) to keep their lower assessment if they moved into a smaller home.  This measure says they can keep it wherever they are moving, even if they move into one of those “Mello-Roos” special property tax assessment areas which were established as an end run around Proposition 13 of 1978. 

Prop 6 – Stop Paying Through the Nozzle: YES.  

If I saw lots of new road projects being built with the higher gasoline taxes recently imposed (thinking of the proposition passed last June attempting to restrict gas taxes to just road construction and maintenance), I could vote NO here. But I don’t. I see a useless “high speed” (sic) choo-choo getting a new lease on life.

And the existing taxes are only scheduled to soar ever higher.  When fully phased in and combined with previous taxes, you’ll be paying $2 per gallon in taxes before you buy your first drop of gas.  Californians already have the secondhighest state taxes per gallon for gas (only PA exceeding, and PA does not have environmental fuel blend costs on top of that), but we’re always at the bottom in per capita spending for roads.  That isn’t the fault of taxpayers for not paying enough taxes.

Prop 7 – Let’s change “Daylight Savings Time”: YES.  

If you are tired of the utterly pointless “spring-ahead-fall-back” ritual, this prop’s for you.  Initially it was six months of spring forward and six months of fall back, but lately it has been nearly eight months of spring forward and just over four months of fall back, ostensibly to “save” more of that precious daylight. This initiative would allow the legislature to adopt daylight savings time in California year-round.  And let’s just do that. I would rather go to work in the dark than come home in it.

Prop 8 – Price controls for Dialysis: NO.  

This is price control for dialysis – it purports to limit dialysis prices to 115 percent of costs.  Dialysis prices – in fact, all health care prices – are far too high. But does this initiative increase dialysis supply, or decrease dialysis demand? No and no. It is the same Commiecrat Rent Control Mentality (read on for Prop 10 below).  This proposition assures that any new investments in dialysis care won’t be made in California – leaving patients with fewer options to get treatment.  That’s why this measure, which promises to help kidney patients, is opposed by the National Kidney Foundation.

Prop 9 – (Not forgetting it; the courts struck it off the ballot).

Prop 10 – Allowing Local Rent Control again: NO.  

The Demunist repertoire of terrible ideas rise again.  We have not heard much of bad ideas like rent control for over two decades. That is because back in 1995, when Republican Pete Wilson was still Governor and enough Republicans could still win legislative office, The Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act was passed, which nullified local rent control initiatives and laws, on the grounds that cities and counties that passed such laws were only dumping housing problems onto adjacent cities and counties. Such laws can now only happen by state legislature level action, effectively locking them into a Political Crypt. 

What this initiative does is open the locked political crypt again, remove the wooden stakes, and allow Local Rent Control Vampires to once again rise. Keep the wooden stakes firmly in place and the crypt locked.

I live in an area with Slavic immigrants. Among them, there is an old Soviet-era saying, “What good is a free bus ticket in a city with no buses?”  The same is true of rent.  Rent controls are very effective at drying up the supply of rental housing in any community where they’re imposed. Those currently renting do very well, but they hold on to their old apartments and landlords stop building new ones.  Presto: nothing to rent – but at a very affordable price.

Prop 11 – Breaks for Ambulance workers: ???  

The argument for this is that California’s idiotic labor laws forbid ambulance crews from responding to an accident during lunch and other breaks.  However, how enforced is this actually and how many emergency personnel actually do not drop what they are doing if true tragedy strikes?

Prop 12 – Tiny Houses for Food: NO.  

Here’s the latest from the “animals are people too” crowd.  Back in 2008, Californians foolishly passed an initiative forbidding caging livestock and poultry in spaces smaller than their behavioral preferences, because, after all, who wants a grumpy steak?  Among other things, California egg production dropped, prices surged 33 percent and it still sucks to be a chicken.  This makes matters worse by imposing square footage requirements – think of it as a “Tiny House” mandate for your dinner, paid by you. Remember that the same people pushing this want you to eat like you live under Pol Pot.