shannon_a

Another election day.

K. and I voted after I got off work, then rewarded ourselves with Top Dog and reading of Harry Dresden (book #8, I think) over in one of our favorite hideyholes on campus. Sadly, it was getting dark as I read, so that'll be the last opportunity to do that until Spring (unless we find a better-lit corner of campus, but that'll probably rob us of the privacy we enjoy near Stephens Hall).

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As I told K., I felt like this was largely a positive election for those of us here in California. By the time election day came around, it was pretty obvious that Brown and Boxer would both win their fights and that proposition 23--a piece of crap legislation pushed forth by Texas oil companies to try and destroy our environmental laws related to global warning--was going to fail.

So, it was just a question of how many good proposals were going to go through (though I usually rail against our screwed up prop system).

In early returns it looks like Prop 19 is going to fail. It's a marijuana legalization law which I think would have been a good way to make people think more carefully about which drugs we legalize and what we don't legalize. Ah well. We'll just continue supporting the criminal elements that deal pot for a few more years.

Prop 21 is similarly going to fail, it seems, which is a shame. That one would have put back some of the vehicle registration fee that Gov. S. so foolishly gave away upon his entry to office--plunging us into years of deficit--and used it for state parks.

But, Prop 25 is looking like its on the good side, and that's an important one because it takes away the entirely screwed-up 67% majority required to pass budgets in California. It's become just about impossible in this era of obstruction politics.

Locally Berkeley Measure R is up a ways, which offers up a new green-friendly plan to rebuild Downtown. It went on the ballot after NIMBY idiots (who are unfortunately plentiful in Berkeley) blocked the previous downtown plan (by going to Berkeley's screwed up Measure system). It's actually mostly recommendations, but one of the few parts that has teeth weakens Berkeley's historic landmarks laws which are a total trainwreck. Because of them, places in Berkeley are abandoned and fall into terrible, unusable disrepair because the owners aren't allowed to rebuild or replace them. So we get blights on neighborhoods, instead of new construction. That's a pretty great example of idealism failing when it runs into reality, and the sad things is that people Just Don't Get It.

And Albany Measure F also seems to be up enough that it's probably in. That's a local vehicle registration fee that'll go toward roads, with even 5% marked for bicycling improvements. Yay.

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Of course there's a great slaughter in the House of Representatives nationwide. It was obvious it was going to happen, and the question of whether it was +53R (as many people forecast) or +63R (which seems closer to the case) is pretty irrelevant to me. History and the economy both stood against the Democrats and nothing was likely to change that from the moment they won so big in 2008.

I am continually astounded, however, by what cowards most Democratic politicians are, and how poor of game players they are.

What idiot decided not to vote on reinstating the middle-class tax cuts without the millionaire tax cuts before the election? You know, when they either had a threat to keep Republicans from voting against the middle class or else something serious to present to the voters if they did?

What idiot decided not to trumpet the fact that Obama did give the middle-class a tax cut? What idiot decided not to trumpet the fact that insurance companies can no longer refuse children insurance because of pre-existing conditions? What idiot let the Republicans control the economic narrative by saying that the Democrats were spending too much money without saying that they've cut the deficit each year since Bush the Younger left office? What idiot didn't make the Republicans constant obstructionism of the last two years an issue?

Unfortunately, all too often the answer is: all of them.

Now, the worst of Democrats over the last four years have been the Blue Dogs, supposedly fiscal conservative Democrats. I didn't understand why they were pushing so hard against health care, when (1) it was actually fiscally responsible, with reports showing it resulting in reduced spending, and (2) if it failed they were the most likely people to lose their seats because they were largely in very Republican districts.

Sure enough, tonight the Blue Dog coalition has been reduced by over half. That's the Blue Dogs, not the progressive coalition. And, I say, good riddance. Hopefully their power has been gutted.

Now, the question is, are Republicans going to spend the next two years sitting on their thumbs, like they did the last two years. If so, retaking the House will just be an election away.

Let's face it. Right now, it certainly looks like the corporations are well on their way to takeover of this country. Most politicians are so in their pockets that they put their good above our own, and because they're hanging on the corporate teat, those same corrupted politicians--from both parties, I should note--get elected again and again.

This year, the similarly corrupt Supreme Court (c.f., Bush v. Gore, 2000) made an absolutely horrendous decision that again pushed the dangerous idea that corporations are people, deserving of all inalienable rights, by saying that the law could not restrict their spending in elections. (And I'd complain about the idea that "money = free speech", and it's surely stupid too, but nothing compared to the belief that corporations are deserving of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so help us god.)

And year by year Congress has been increasing copyrights to keep Mickey Mouse protected, which is simultaneously ensuring that corporations can extend their creative monopolies for many, many decades, giving them the power and clout they need to corrupt the next generation of law makers and Supreme Court justices.

Nowhere is this creation of a corporatocracy as evident as in California, where our severely broken proposition system is this year being turned against the people of the United States of America by the companies. We have not one, but two propositions on the ballot that were created for corporations, paid for by corporations, and are solely intended to benefit those same corporations.

Prop 16 makes it very difficult for communities to create civic power utilities that would compete with PG&E.

Prop 17 is some insurance bullshit funded by an insurance company, which really says it all.

In some ways it's a replay of 2008 when we had the Mormon Corporation, Inc., come into California and flood millions of dollars into passing prop 8. I think other companies saw that terrible precedent and realized that they could have their way with the state too.

Meanwhile, we have the flipside in California. Little prop 15 is intended to start pushing our elections back to public funding. It's probably too little, too late, given the $41+M that PG&E has spent on prop 16 (99% of the total funding) and the $15+M that Mercury Insurance has spent on prop 17 (98% of the total funding). But it's still worth voting for.

Are Californians really stupid enough to fall for this type of crap? The final polls before the election say yes: props 16 + 17 were up by a hair while prop 15 was barely failing.

Unless we're very lucky today, from 20 years in the future SkyNet may mark today as the day that the Rise of the Coporations truly took hold.

So, y'know, if you're in California, get out and vote. We really need to send a big "FUCK YOU" to PG&E and MERCURY INSURANCE, else next time there will be four corporate propositions, the year after that eight, and a bit after that we'll just give up and let them do the governing ... officially.