31st October 2009, 11:13 PM
I know, no major elections. But there might be some local stuff...
Maine, for instance, has FIVE major ballot initiatives, all pretty important.
1 - Gay marriage. 'Yes' is to repeal the law that the legislature passed earlier this year to allow gay marriage, 'no' is to keep it. Obviously I'm very much hoping No wins... This is, obviously, getting the vast majority of the attention, both locally and nationally. Most people outside of Maine probably haven't heard of the rest of these, but might have heard of this one.
2 - A stupid tax bill. Lower the new-car tax! Have towns make up for it by raising everyone's property taxes! Awesome!
3 - Question to repeal a school consolidation law passed recently. I'm sure noone else here cares about this, but this is an important issue here... local control matters a lot, and this harms that by merging districts. But on the other hand, Maine evidently has some of the smallest average school district sizes in the country, in terms of number of students per district, and all those administrators cost money that this reform is supposed to save. I'm really unsure about how I'll vote this one, myself... I've been skeptical about the whole school consolidation thing all along, but it might ultimately be good... I'm not sure.
4 - TABOR II. This, I think, is the most important question to defeat on the entire ballot, even more so than #1 I think... TABOR (the acronym stands for "Taxpayer's Bill of Rights") is another tax idea, that has a hard spending cap based on this year's budgets. Then you can only increase spending at a set, very low rate per year, 3% I think. This can only be changed by BALLOT ISSUES. Town meetings are bound by this as well, so it rips apart local control of tax spending for all towns that have town meetings (which are many of the smaller towns in this state). Horrible, horrible bill! It'd absolutely destroy education funding in Maine... look at what happened to California after their stupid Proposition 13 property-tax-limiting law, several decades back -- their schools went from first in the country to right near the bottom. The only state with a TABOR-like law is Colorado, who think so much of it that they recently voted to suspend it. Awesome.
Oh yeah, and this is the third time they're trying to pass this; things very much like it have failed twice already. I really, really hope that this one fails too... and maybe, someday, hopefully, they'll give up on trying to destroy our state government and accept defeat? Please?
5 - Expansion of medicinal marijuana. Set up state dispensary system to get it to patients, etc. I'm opposed, but I'd bet this passes. If someone could show scientifically proven studies that show actual benefits I'd consider voting the other way, but as is, no way. The issue only exists as a major issue because druggies want marijuana legalized in general anyway, and I'm very much opposed to that...
Anything going on in this election in any of your states? :)
Maine, for instance, has FIVE major ballot initiatives, all pretty important.
1 - Gay marriage. 'Yes' is to repeal the law that the legislature passed earlier this year to allow gay marriage, 'no' is to keep it. Obviously I'm very much hoping No wins... This is, obviously, getting the vast majority of the attention, both locally and nationally. Most people outside of Maine probably haven't heard of the rest of these, but might have heard of this one.
2 - A stupid tax bill. Lower the new-car tax! Have towns make up for it by raising everyone's property taxes! Awesome!
3 - Question to repeal a school consolidation law passed recently. I'm sure noone else here cares about this, but this is an important issue here... local control matters a lot, and this harms that by merging districts. But on the other hand, Maine evidently has some of the smallest average school district sizes in the country, in terms of number of students per district, and all those administrators cost money that this reform is supposed to save. I'm really unsure about how I'll vote this one, myself... I've been skeptical about the whole school consolidation thing all along, but it might ultimately be good... I'm not sure.
4 - TABOR II. This, I think, is the most important question to defeat on the entire ballot, even more so than #1 I think... TABOR (the acronym stands for "Taxpayer's Bill of Rights") is another tax idea, that has a hard spending cap based on this year's budgets. Then you can only increase spending at a set, very low rate per year, 3% I think. This can only be changed by BALLOT ISSUES. Town meetings are bound by this as well, so it rips apart local control of tax spending for all towns that have town meetings (which are many of the smaller towns in this state). Horrible, horrible bill! It'd absolutely destroy education funding in Maine... look at what happened to California after their stupid Proposition 13 property-tax-limiting law, several decades back -- their schools went from first in the country to right near the bottom. The only state with a TABOR-like law is Colorado, who think so much of it that they recently voted to suspend it. Awesome.
Oh yeah, and this is the third time they're trying to pass this; things very much like it have failed twice already. I really, really hope that this one fails too... and maybe, someday, hopefully, they'll give up on trying to destroy our state government and accept defeat? Please?
5 - Expansion of medicinal marijuana. Set up state dispensary system to get it to patients, etc. I'm opposed, but I'd bet this passes. If someone could show scientifically proven studies that show actual benefits I'd consider voting the other way, but as is, no way. The issue only exists as a major issue because druggies want marijuana legalized in general anyway, and I'm very much opposed to that...
Anything going on in this election in any of your states? :)
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