You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2016.
Here are my recommendations for the 17 (count them: 17) proposition on the California Ballot this fall. You can gauge my support based on how it’s typed – from YES! to YES to yes to no to NO to NO!
51 – School bonds: YES
Today’s students will be supporting me in my old age. I want them well educated. Children in substandard buildings do 6-11% less well than children in excellent school facilities. Sometimes local school districts can’t afford to improve their facilities without some help from others in the state, so let’s come together to give our children their best chance at their best education.
52 – State Fees on Hospitals: YES
This makes permanent (it would require a 2/3 vote to cancel or reduce the fees) a fee that the Legislature routinely raises and maintains, paid by private hospitals, to be in compliance with federal regulations that qualify California for MediCal funding. Until we have MediCare for everyone, we need insurance programs like MediCal, and making sure we’re eligible for federal funding for the program is completely worthwhile.
53 – Statewide voter approval of revenue bonds: NO
Let the Legislature legislate. If they think state funding of a local project to deal with a crisis situation (like the drought or rising sea levels is appropriate) or some other local need (like building a new public hospital), let them fund it. There’s no reason the people of Fresno should be able to stop the construction of a hospital in San Diego, but if this passes, this could happen.
54 – Public posting of legislation: yes
Sure, more transparency in government is a good thing.
55 – Tax extension for education and healthcare: YES
This would extend for another 12 years (2018-2030) part of the tax increase voters approved in 2012. Impacts those making $250,000/yr (couples making $500,000/yr) or more. We need to support education. Those who can most easily afford to pay this extra tax burden should do so. Again, let’s come together to give our children their best chance at their best education.
56 – Cigarette tax: no
An excellent idea that the Legislature should do – but this shouldn’t be an initiative. So I’ll be voting “no” (or abstaining) on this one.
57 – Criminal Sentences; Juvenile Proceedings: YES!
I worked in juvenile justice for three and a half years while in seminary and immediately after seminary and saw first-hand how much our juvenile justice system needs to be overhauled. If the Legislature won’t do it, we should. And the proposals in this proposition are sound.
58 – English Language Education: yes
This allows for more local control of education, allowing individual school districts to decide how they will teach non-English speaking students. Prop 227 (1998) was a racist, xenophobic proposition and it’s high time it was overturned.
59 – Campaign Finance: yes
This referendum is only advisory and it is sufficiently open-ended to get my support. Citizens United was a travesty of justice and needs to be overturned. Note that the League of Women Voters of California opposes it, but I support it because it is only advisory.
60 – Adult films; condoms: no
Should people performing sex acts in pornographic movies use condoms? Yes. Does requiring it need a citizen’s initiative to make it happen? No. This is something the Legislature should do; legislating is what we elected them to do.
61 – State prescription drug purchases: YES
The state spends roughly $3.8 billion (with a B) each year on pharmaceuticals (Medi-Cal, state hospitals, prisons). That’s about half of all prescriptions purchased in in the state. This initiative seeks to reduce costs by leveraging that purchasing power. Seems like a darn good idea to me.
62 – Replaces the death penalty with Life Without Parole: YES!
The Legislature should have done this years ago. They’re not acting, so we will.
63 – Firearms, Ammunition Sales: yes
Tightens regulations on background checks and the sale, purchase, and import of ammunition in California. The Legislature should be doing this, and they have taken steps, but they’re not acting fast enough, so I give this a soft “yes.”
64 – Marijuana Legalization: no
Sure, marijuana should be legalized and regulated like alcohol, but the Legislature should do this, and it’s not urgent. We can wait for the Legislature to act.
65 – Charge for plastic bags: NO!
This is a green-washing initiative proposed by the out-of-state manufacturers of plastic shopping bags to try to stop the banning of plastic shopping bags. Can you say, “Self interest”? I knew you could. It’s dressed up to look like a pro-environmental proposition, but it’s not.
66 – Death Penalty procedures: NO!
This poorly written measure would greatly increase California’s risk of executing an innocent person by shortening the time for appeals and limiting the prisoner’s ability to present new evidence of their innocence. Let’s just save a bunch of money and make sure we don’t kill someone who is innocent by doing away with the death penalty (by voting “yes” on Prop 62).
67 – Ban on single-use plastic bags: YES
Retain California’s plastic bag ban. The question on a referendum is not intuitive; you are being asked if you want to retain the new law. Vote YES to keep the 2014 statewide law prohibiting single-use carryout bags.
Click here for a summary of my positions, along side those of the California Council of Churches IMPACT, the League of Women Voters-CA, the Sierra Club, and the California Democratic Party.
“The International Geological Conference suggested last month that in about 1950 the earth entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene epoch, marked by a human impact on the earth so profound that humans are not likely to survive it. The previous epoch, the Holocene, with 12,000 years of stable climate since the last iceage, was the period when human civilization developed. Among the first marks of this new epoch were the radioactive elements from nuclear bomb tests that were blown into the stratosphere before settling down into the earth. Another sign is the emission of carbon gases that are causing global warming, the rise of sea levels, and the extinction of some plant and animal life.”
From the 28 Sept. 2016 edition of Christian Century, page 9, citing the 29 August edition of the Guardian.
“Agnotology is the word Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor coined to describe the deliberate dissemination and misinformation, often to try to sell a product. The tobacco industry developed a strategy to cast doubt on scientific studies showing that smoking causes cancer. In politics, the campaign to cast doubts on President Obama’s national origins was an example of agnotology. Climate deniers use a similar strategy. The news media often perpetuate agnotology in the interest of offering a balanced perspective, and the Internet provides a platform for people to pose as experts while engaging in agnotology. ‘We live in a world of radical ignorance, and the marvel is that any kind of truth cuts through the noise,’ says Proctor.”
Quoted from the 16 March 2016 edition of Christian Century, page 9. The cite the BBC, January 6, as their source.
If you haven’t seen the documentary (or read the book) Merchants of Doubt, I highly recommend it. It’s all about how agnotology is used by corporations to increase profits. Right now, Standing Rock Sioux are protesting the building of an oil pipeline, the Dakota Access Pipeline. To counter this protest, it appears that pro-pipeline organization (read: Big Oil) has directly or indirectly created fake Twitter accounts to make it look like there is public support for the pipeline.
Read more about the Standing Rock protests at http://www.democracynow.org/topics/dakota_access (where there are old stories and up-to-date stories listed.
“When you register for a driver’s license in the United States you are asked if you’d like to be an organ donor. It’s an ‘opt-in’ question, and only about 40 percent of people choose that option. In Spain, Portugal, and Austria, you’re considered an organ donor unless you opt out. In those countries about 99 percent of the people are registered as organ donors, and there are a higher number of transplants as a result.”
Quoted from Christian Century, 31 August 2016 edition, page 9. They cite ProPublica, July 27 as their source.
Until we can get the ‘opt-in’ changed to an ‘opt-out’ policy in these United States, please make sure you’re an organ donor.
“What if every adult citizen received a universal basic income — a stipend of $10,000 each year, with a smaller allowance for children? Would people stop working? Would those in poverty use their stipend wisely or foolishly? An experiment along these lines was tried in Manitoba in the 1970s. The quality of life went up, hospitalizations went down, more teens stayed in school, and the rate of work changed very little. Richard Nixon tried to get a universal income bill through Congress. Support for universal income has come from the left and the right. It’s a way to eliminate paternalistic government programs and at the same time reduce poverty and give workers more options and leverage in the marketplace.”
Quoted from Christian Century, 20 July 2016 edition, page 8. They cite the New Yorker, June 20 as their source.
I have long thought that a universal basic income would be a great idea, but I thought it was my radical lefty learning that supported it. But of course conservatives like the idea — if it shuts down some government programs. And libertarians (if they’re willing to admit that we have an obligation to help our impoverished neighbors) would love the idea of it coming with no strings attached (small government and all that). Of course, I want to pay for it by adding additional tax brackets at the top of incomes and taxing them heavily, but that’s another story.
It is immoral for a corporation to be making money off of the incarceration of people. If we the people must lock some people up, we the people should be doing it. In other words, it is a governmental responsibility.
And there’s evidence to show that private prisons are a bad idea in other ways:
“In order to write about the inner workings of a private prison, journalist Shane Bauer took a prison guard position at a Louisiana prison for four months, at $9 an hour. The prison is operated by Corrections Corporation of America, whose CEO made $3.4 million in 2015, nearly 19 times the amount paid to the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. During Bauer’s time as a corrections officer, the federal Department of Corrections temporarily took charge of the prison due to a rash of stabbings among inmates. Thirty-four percent of prison guards suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder, a rate higher than that for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Correctional officers commit suicide two and a half time more frequently than the general population.”
Quoted from Christian Century, 3 August 2016 edition, page 9. They cite Mother Jones, July/August as their source.
Diana Butler Bass reminded me that the 10th anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks was a Sunday. I don’t think I talked much about it during our worship service that day. It was Rally Day, the day that we kick off a new Sunday School year, and we want to have a festive feel to the day.
This year, the 15th anniversary, 9/11 is a Sunday again. It’s Rally Day again at my church (though I wasn’t there today). I suspect my colleague didn’t make much of the anniversary either.
I think we make a thing of the multiple-of-five anniversaries of events because we have five fingers on each hand. That’s also probably why we use base 10 for mathematics. And why we get excited when the odometer in our cars turns from 99,999 to 100,000, but not from 99,998 to 99,999. And why we got excited about the beginning of a new millennium on the evening of 12/31/99, even though the millennium didn’t really begin for another year.
And so, another anniversary comes, and it’s a multiple-of-five anniversary. As a nation we pause and remember. I’m staying away from the news, but I’ll be politicians are trying to make hay out of the anniversary.
For the families who lost loved ones on 9/11/01, I’m sure each anniversary was and is devastating. I can’t imagine the depth of loss the experienced and experience now. I can’t imagine what their grief was and is like. And I’m a pretty imaginative guy. This blog post isn’t for or about those people. This is about the rest of us.
I’ve been listening to Diana Butler Bass read her book Grounded as I’ve been driving this week. Today, as it turned out, I heard her section on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. She quotes the Dalai Lama, and I’m putting that quote here because I think it is the most important thing for the rest of us to remember:
A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is: What you wish to experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience in your own life, and in the world…. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they are safe. If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand. If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another. Those others are waiting for you now…. They are looking to you for love.
Jeff's Jottings 