You should have read the rules to filling out your ballot and the possibly also the information about the Dad Guide before progressing to this page.

November 2004

This is an important election. The soul of the nation and the security of the world are at stake. If the good guys win, we can’t relax—we still have a nation where half the voters are blind to the evil that currently resides in the White House. If the bad guys win, we have to fight back and hunker down for the long haul to reclaim truth, justice, and the American Way as promised and protected over the past two centuries.

Principles

In addition to the usual Dad Guide rules that have evolved over the years, I have added a new one: What Would Dennis Do? There is a lot of stupid junk on the ballot, but when you boil it down, the question is: is it about people or property? Who pays, all of us or the rich people? Using the Dennis Rule will help sort out the dilemmas.

President/Vice President

No question here. Vote Kerry/Edwards. Dennis agrees.

Evil, stupidity, pernicious radical ideology, and ruination of all that we have believed to be the essential positive qualities of America on the one hand, or at least the hope of returning to principle, honesty, and democracy.

The most amazing thing about this race is that it’s close. How can half the voters believe the lies coming from this president and his radical coup?

Even though a vote in California is worth a lot less than a vote in Wisconsin or New Mexico this year, it remains very important to overwhelm the popular vote for Kerry.

United States Senator

Another easy one: Vote for Barbara Boxer.

Her opponent is an ideological Republican, and there are already far too many of those in the Senate.

Congress

Anna Eshoo. Solid Dem, and we need to take back the House.

State Senator

Elaine Alquist. This is a hold-the-nose and vote Democrat. We have to hold the Legislature to resist the extremist Republicans. Of course, the Legislature is complete dysfunctional, and both sides of the aisle belong in Folsom rather than Sacramento. Better our dysfunction than theirs..

State Assembly

Sally Lieber. One of the most annoying legislators in Sacramento, but at least she is on the right (correct) side of the issues. Definitely not a Byron Sher, but we’ll take it.

Fremont Union High School District Board

Vote for incumbents Nancy Newton and Homer Tong.

They have paid their dues, and are reasonable intelligent people grappling with the ugly challenges of shrinking resources in a completely stupid educational finance structure in California.

The third candidate violates all the Dad Guide principles: no statement in the voter handbook, AWOL for candidates forums, and lists his first profession as “father.” He made a previous run for the Sunnyvale City Council that was completely clueless.

Judges

Enrique Colin, based on endorsements.

Picking judges is always tough because there is never enough info. Dad Guide rules: look between the lines for commitment to prevention, flexibility for alternatives. Generally if the cops endorse, my antennae go up and I start to itch.

County School Board

Jeff Ota.

County Office of Education is a strange animal. It doesn’t run schools, but provides administrative support services to school districts and oversees special ed programs. It has a pretty big budget, but it’s also a hidden branch of government that is not very accountable to the public. You could make a good argument that we don’t need the County Office at all.

Interesting choice for candidates. Bill Evers is a Hoover think tank education specialist making his first attempt to put theory into practice. He was a conservative student at Stanford when I was there. Smart guy, good academic endorsements, lots of good ideas about making charter schools work, but I suspect better in the abstract.

Jeff Ota is young, Stanford engineer, Santa Clara prof, and has actually served on a school board, and came up through San Jose public schools on the East Side. He’s won lots of endorsements.

My choice: Ota. If there were two seats I’d say put them both on.

State Propositions

Ai yai yai yai. Far too many. Far too stupid. Give me the initiative to ban initiatives. Hiram Johnson did not have this in mind when he put the initiative process in the Calif constitution a century ago. And on top of initiative idiocy is the Legislature’s idiocy—putting measures on the ballot that deal with issues that the Legislature should have dealt with, messing up deadlines so that we have to have several voter guides, and screwing up proposals that the courts had to split up.

1A

Keep the state’s hands out of the pockets of local government
Yes. A flawed compromise, but better than what we would have without it. Allows the state to hijack billions from cities and counties this year and next year, and then caps any future grabs.

Prop 1A and Prop 65 deal with the same issue. Prop 65 was put on the ballot by cities and counties. Only when it qualified did the Gov pay attention to cities, and the result was a compromise for the state budget that produced 1A. Vote Yes on both—Prop 65 is better than 1A, but no one is campaigning for it, and we need at least one of them to win.

59

Public records, open government (but it exempts the state and the Legislature)
Yes, with some reluctance. Plenty of laws already on the books, but this would put it in the state constitution. Government should be open, but being on the receiving end of endless public records requests, it’s a real pain in the ass. Unfortunately there are too many governments that stiff citizens and media, which makes it tough for everybody else.

This would be a much better measure if it included the state government and the Legislature—they love to pass laws to shackle local government but exempt the state. The Dad Guide notes that Gary Wesley opposes it—therefore we vote for it.

60

Poison pill for Prop 62—Open primaries
Vote No. We have too many extremists in the Legislature. This goes with a Yes vote on Prop 62.

This was put on the ballot by the Legislature to kill Prop 62. Both the Reeps and the Dems hate the open primary because they fear it would weaken party identification and power. Poorly drafted, hasty, and had to be split into two measures.

60A

Surplus state property Would require state to use the sale of surplus property to pay off state budget deficit bonds. Doesn’t require the sale itself.

61

Children’s Hospital Bonds
Yes. This calls in the Dennis Rule, as well as the Gary Wesley Rule.

62

Open primaries. Competes with Prop 60
Yes, with reluctance.

Definitely a poli sci wonk issue. All the official parties, including both Reeps and Dems, are opposed. The Gov is for. Mayor Ron is for.

The idea is that open primaries, by allowing everybody to vote for the most suitable candidates regardless of party registration, would give us less extreme and more acceptable people to vote for. This theoretically could lead to a Legislature that is less polarized by the excesses of both parties.

You also could have a bizarre situation where the top two vote getters in the primary would be from the same party.

Of course, this could open a whole bunch of new games for elections, since Reeps can vote for Dems, and Dems can vote for Reeps in the primary if this passes. Small parties, such as Greens, are opposed, since they feel they will get lost in the crowd even more than they are now. California voters approved a variation in 1996, but technical problems caused the US Supremes to throw it out. Presumably this measure passes the court test (another example of the argument to get rid of initiatives.)

63

Mental health, tax on millionaires
Use the Dennis Rule: vote yes.

The idea is to use a 1% tax on the incomes of people earning $1 million or more a year to pay for the expansion of mental health services. Sounds good to me. If you’re making $1 million, you can afford $10,000 for the rest of us. Of course, the millionaires don’t like the idea—horrors, they might all move to Nevada to escape the tax.

Of course, this is really bad tax policy, because we should have a progressive tax structure that pays for all genuine public needs. But since the current fashion of tax cutting is radically redirecting wealth to the already rich, I think we can tolerate this flaw.

64

Limits on whistleblower lawsuits
Vote No. Dennis Rule. Sierra Club Rule. Chamber of Commerce Rule.

This is a proposal to limit the ability of Erin Brokavitch to sue corporations that are messing with people’s health and are polluting the environment. True, there are some excesses of trial lawyers who go overboard—but they are nothing compared to the excesses of Enrons, Haliburtons, Exxons, big tobacco, chemical, oil, etc. Follow the money: support comes from the polluters club and the insurance companies. Opposition comes from environmental and health orgs.

65

Protect local government budgets from the depredations of the State Legislature
This goes with Prop 1A. Vote yes.

The Legislature hated prop 65 because they believe local money belongs to the state, and the initiative would prevent them from hijacking city and county revenues.

Prop 1A is not as good, but OK to vote yes too.

66

Lighten up the “3 Strikes” law
Vote yes. Dennis Rule.

The 3 Three Strikes law is draconian and cruel, and does not prevent crime. It does increase the size of prisons and distorts the state budget. And it locks up people for life on the third strike, even it if is not serious.

This proposition puts some common sense, flexibility, and compassion back into sentencing. This is why the Reeps and the prosecutors don’t like it.

67

Telephone tax surcharge for emergency services
Yes, reluctantly. Another clumsy tax measure to address an important need. Clumsy because there is no real link between the tax and the payer with the services to be funded and provided. On the other hand, it’s not a bad alternative in the face of a broken fiscal system that no one is willing or able to fix. Follow the money—opponents are the all the phone companies. They are screaming: “400% tax increase!” That translates to an increase from 11 cents to 55 cents a month on our phone bill. We get more than that from the loose change we pick up on the sidewalk in front of the Brute house.

Most of the new money will pay for hospital emergency rooms, which are otherwise going broke because the health and hospital system doesn’t pay for uninsured ER patients. Consider this a semi-reasonable attempt to put a progressive tax measure in place so that people who can afford to pay for a lot of phone usage will pay for those who can’t.

68

More Indian gambling.
No. Always no. Even the proponents have already given up on this one.

This would expand casino and racetrack gambling throughout the state to non-tribal operators in urban areas. Enough already.

69

DNA database
Yes, with reservations.

The measure would collect DNA samples from everybody arrested for a felony, regardless if they are convicted. Thus, it pits civil liberty protection and fears about loss of privacy against the very real advantage of tracking the real culprits in violent crimes. My rationale comes down to this: a lot of people have been released from death row because of DNA evidence that became available through data banks that did not exist in the original trial.

The privacy concerns do resonate, however. DNA is more than a fingerprint, and samples can hold a lot of personal data that the Bush totalitarian state could put to nefarious uses if they were competent. Because the proposition is an initiative, it has some serious flaws.

70

More Indian gambling casinos
No. Companion to Prop 68.

Amazing. I agree with the Gov and the Taxpayers Association on this one. The Indian gambling interests are actively corrupting the political process. Only good thing to come to light out of this is that the Agua Caliente Band actually bought the endorsement of the Jarvis-Gann anti-tax people for nearly $2 million. So much for principles, and now their dishonesty is out there for everyone to see.

71

Stem cell research bond
No. This is based on fiscal reasons, not moral or partisan reasons. $3 billion is a ton of money to borrow at a time when the state is in the pit of debt and recession. Stem cell research is a good idea, but this is not a good way for us to pay for it. This would put more money into stem cell research than all other health research combine in California. This should be done by the feds—yet another reason to throw Bush and his ideologues out of the White House.

Biggest beneficiaries are venture capitalists who won’t have to put private money into bioscience start-ups. Don’ be fooled—this is corporate welfare masquerading as a moral cause, and the return on the investment is a fairy tale.

Wow. I agree with mossback Tom McClintock. Yikes!

72

Health care coverage, businesses required to provide it to employees
Yes. Dennis Rule. Howard Jarvis Rule. Chamber of Commerce Rule.

Our health insurance “system” sucks. So the question is, who really pays? Society, individuals, government, or businesses? We all pay in the end, but the currency is different if you are sick or injured without insurance. Does it make California less competitive? Yes. So did the 40-hour workweek, the end of child labor, and air and water quality protection.

From the perspective of small businesses with more than 20 employees, this measure is a genuine problem, however. It adds one more uncontrolled cost to the payroll, and doesn’t increase sales or profits. On the other hand, we all pay when people don’t see the doctor because they can’t afford it and end up getting really sick instead. Until we have a rational system for national health care and insurance that includes everyone and not just people with jobs, we’ll have to accept proposals that enlarge coverage rather than shrink it.

County Ballot Measures

These three measures are linked—they are all about binding arbitration for a select group of County employees, including attorneys in the District Attorney’s Office, nurses, and jail guards. Binding arbitration is always a bad idea for public employees because it allows expensive budget decisions to be made by non-elected and unaccountable arbitrators, and it gives a huge advantage in bargaining to already highly-paid employees such as cops, firefighters, and in this case, lawyers in a zero-sum game of tight government budgets.

A

Requires salaries to be based on “prevailing wage” for comparable employee classes in other comparable local governments.
Yes. Poison pill put on the ballot by the Board of Supervisors to counter the initiative Measure C put on by the County unions. For example, instead of comparing the district attorney salaries to the private sector, as currently done, this would use public sector lawyers as a standard.

B

Voter approval for arbitrator decisions.
Yes. Another poison pill put on by the Board.

This would require any arbitrator decision made under Measure C (if the measure is approved) to go to the voters for approval.

C

Binding Arbitration for County lawyers, guards, and nurses
No. The actual initiative.

Fascinating cast of characters—even though the measure was put on by County unions representing nurses, lawyers and guards, it is opposed by the Central Labor Council because it would take money away from other County employees represented by unions.

School Measures

L

Fremont Union High School District parcel tax
Yes. Of course, the cost is paid by property owners in the district, rather than those of us who may be living or renting outside of the territory. On the other hand, we all pay when there is not enough money for schools and we have crappy education. If you think education is expensive, think of the cost of no education.

Of course, the usual gang of suspects who prefer to starve the public good by opposing taxes for anything are against this. The Libertarian and Taxpayer Association Rules apply for both L and P. Unfortunately this takes a 2/3 approval—one no vote equals two yes votes. That’s democracy for you.

We can afford it—and without this, many of Rosina’s teacher buds will be on the block looking at pink slips this year. Scary.

P

Sunnyvale School District school bonds.
Yes. See above.

Because this is a bond and not a general tax, it only requires 55% approval. The money goes for improving and repairing facilities.