Californians say NO to common sense

by Chris   ⋅   November 9, 2005   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

Well, the fallout from the Special Election has hit. My fellow Californians voted NO on some pretty common sense issues. For example, preventing California from spending more money than it has, preventing lawmakers from drawing their own voting districts, and extending the length of time needed before teachers achieve tenureship.

With the miasma of misinformation and scare tactics generated by special interest groups, and the decision, based almost entirely on partisan agenda, on the part of such popular California “progressive” democratic organizations as MoveOn and ActForChange not to educate voters, but rather to tell them to fear the evil Republican power grab, and to vote NO on all measures, I guess it shouldn’t be any surprise that that these issues had a terrible time at the polls. But somehow, I had hoped Californians had a little more sense than they exhibited.

Take for example the media blitz that labeled Schwarzenegger an enemy of education. According to commercials, Schwarzenegger, the evil republican bandit, had cut school funding last year and now sought to attack our precious, hard working teachers. Nevermind the fact that our state pays its teachers some of the highest wages in the nation, or the fact that with all the money spent on said teachers we still manage to maintain one of the worst academic ratings in the nation (our state’s public schools system ranks roughly 48th when it comes to literacy), or the fact that Schwarzenegger never actually cut school funding.

That’s right. He never cut school funding.

You see, money for California schools is appropriated based on the projected income of the state. Our great state assumed it would make more money from tax payers during the fiscal year than it actually did. Thus, the projected education budget was greater than the funds available, and had to be adjusted accordingly. Though the schools got less than they had expected, Schwarzenegger still increased school funding over the previous year by $3 billion.

Or take the Redistricting initiative. In walking down the halls of my school I noticed a sign stating “Schwarzenegger seeks to Terminate Representative Democracy in California.” What? Schwarzenegger is seeking to set up a totalitarian regime? I’m not sure what’s more distrubing, whether people actually believed the flyer, or how it got approved for posting on the school bulletin boards. Either way, again, it was not the case.

For this one I just ask that you imagine a high school student council race. Imagine that two candidates were running, and that in order to win, one had to make sure that 3 out of 5 groups had to vote. The only catch is that the most popular candidate gets to pick which people constitute the five groups. It takes no stretch of the imagination that the popular candidate could make three groups consisting of likeminded popular people, and leave two groups to the nerds and outcasts. The same thing happens with the current legal system, though, granted, not on such simple basis. The defeated proposition would have stripped the power to choose district lines from the lawmakers, and given it to a group of retired judges. In the example above, this would be akin to giving the right to choose the electing groups to the school principal rather than a specific candidate.

Now, I’m not a Republican, as I have no interest in money grubbing or warmaking, nor do I have the requisite disdain for intelligence or bleeding heart liberalism to associate myself with the Democratic party, but the outcome of the Special Election I find quite frustrating. If anything, this election further reiterated voters would rather listen to slogans than research issues themselves. I mean, research takes work right? And we’re a populace that prefers other people do our work for us. That way we can blame them for any problems that result.

Gah! California.

– Chris Nelson

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