An Average Look at the CA Propositions

Well, I'm sure by now we're all settled (or even entrenched) in our votes for President, Senator, Congressperson, etc. However, most of the state and local propositions were a little less well known to me when The Average Man finally sat down to fill out the ol' absentee ballot. So I took a look through the recommendations from several trusted sources and, for the most part, averaged 'em out.

They are:
Santa Barbara Independent
Los Angeles Times
League of Women Voters
Democratic Party of Santa Barbara
Click any of those links for details on their recommendations.

STATE MEASURES:

Prop 1A: High Speed Rail
Independent: Yes
LA Times: Yes
LWV: Yes
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: Yes

Prop 2: Farm Animal Cruelty
Independent: Yes
LA Times: No
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: Yes. LA Times says agriculture will move out of CA to avoid it, but that doesn't seem likely. Plus, it's just the right thing to do.

Prop 3: Childrens Hospital Bond
Independent: Yes
LA Times: Yes
LWV: Yes
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: Yes

Prop 4: Parental notification before abortion
Independent: No
LA Times: No
LWV: No
SB Dems: No
Average Man: No

Prop 5: Nonviolent Drug Offenses.
Independent: Yes
LA Times: No
LWV: Yes
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: Yes. Has its faults, but a step in the right direction towards treating drug use as a medical rather than criminal issue.

Prop 6: Mandatory Prison Sentencing
Independent: No
LA Times: No
LWV: No
SB Dems: No
Average Man: No. Costs billions, puts more people in jail. Enough, already.

Prop 7: Renewable Energy
Independent: Yes
LA Times: No
LWV: No
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: A tricky one. I'm 100% behind the idea, but not sure how well this will actually work. Figuring it might fail, voted yes to show support.

Prop 8: Prohibit Same-Sex Marriage
Independent: No
LA Times: No
LWV: No
SB Dems: No
Average Man: Absolutely NO. WTF is wrong with people that care who marries who? This looks like a cruel (and obscenely well-funded) attempt to get conservatives to the polls when they know their boy McCain doesn't stand a chance in CA.

Prop 9: Victims Rights
Independent: No
LA Times: No
LWV: No
SB Dems: No
Average Man: No. Not that I really understand the details, but it would apparently would give families of crime victims more say in the justice system. Revenge does not equal justice. Let the laws do the job.

Prop 10: Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Independent: No
LA Times: No
LWV: No
SB Dems: Neutral
Average Man: No. This one's definitely a scam. It's largely funded by oilman T. Boone Pickens, who wants cars to run on natural gas, which he apparently has a ton of. Let him pay for his own pipelines and fueling stations.

Prop 11: Redistricting Reform
Independent: Yes
LA Times: Yes
LWV: Yes
SB Dems: No
Average Man: Yes. Makes redistricting non-partisan. Makes sense that the party opposes it, but it's the fair way to handle it.

Prop 12: Bond to Help Vets Purchase Homes
Independent: Yes
LA Times: Yes
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: Yes. Times calls it "the best deal on the ballot" since the money is paid back. And regardless, it's the least we can do.

LOCAL MEASURES:

Measure A: Road Repair & Safety
Independent: Yes
LWV: Yes
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: Yes. Another no-brainer.

Measure G: Utility Fees
Independent: Yes
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: Yes. Continues an existing tax on phone bills that goes towards roads, police and firefighters.

Measures H & I: Property Tax for Schools
Independent: Yes
LWV: Yes
SB Dems: Yes
Average Man: Yes. 50 bucks a year to our struggling public schools? You got it.

There you go! Hope it helps.

SB NEEDS SOME TOUGH LOVE

I am generally proud to be a Californian and very proud to live in the great city of Santa Barbara. But the last few weeks I have felt anything but proud. Because, you see, I am witness to potentially one of the biggest blunders that we may ever make as a community. As The New York times recently reported ..

Santa Barbara County became a symbol of the national environmental movement’s passionate opposition to offshore oil drilling when an oil spill devastated its coastline in 1969. On Tuesday, it became a symbol of the changing national mood as its board of supervisors ... voted 3 to 2 on Tuesday to end the county’s opposition to offshore drilling ... Three weeks ago, the Public Policy Institute of California released a poll showing that 51 percent of Californians now approve of offshore drilling, a 10-point increase in a single year ...

This devastating bit of news got thinking about how our fear of terrorism has allowed us the sit back and watch our civil liberties slowly disappear. And now, it seems, our fear of high gas prices may result in me having to watch those ugly oil rigs reappear. You've probably heard this stuff a hundred times by now, but let me lay out once again why offshore drilling will do nothing to help gas prices:

- A decade for results: Even Bush himself is telling us that it may take more than a decade before we see any benefit from offshore drilling. Let me say that again: 10 YEARS!

- It's a land grab: More than half of the oil leases given to the oil companies have not been developed. So, why do they need our coasts? Let me say that again: OIL COMPANIES CAN DRILL ALL THEY WANT RIGHT NOW!

- The oil goes on the open market: Do you really believe that the oil off our coast will go right from the water into your gas tank? No, it will be sold on the open market. Let me say that again: YOUR OIL WILL GO TO CHINA!

- It will have almost no impact on gas prices: By some estimates, opening up offshore areas to oil exploration might cut the price of gas by 3 to 4 cents. Let me say that again: FOUR CENTS!

So, Santa Barbara, let me ask you ... Why are you willing to muck up MY COAST in MY COMMUNITY for absolutely no benefit to you and your family? Is your eagerness to do something about high gas prices blinding you to the cause of doing something right? If you really think this is a good deal, I have a bridge in San Francisco that I'm dying to sell you. And to Supervisor Brooks Firestone, who cast the deciding vote here, this oil discussion reminds me that your family's beer gives me gas.

Should Santa Barbarans be angry about high gas prices? Your damn right you should be! You should be angry that big oil has spent billions to prevent you from driving fuel efficient cars. You should be angry that automobile companies have not spent the last three decades working towards cars that run on alternative fuels. You should be angry that our world is heating up at an exponential rate. But most of all, you should be angry that the mind-bogglingly incompetent Bush administration has so easily convinced you that offshore drilling will help at the pump.

Yes, this is a sad time for me. And you can bet that ten years from now -- when gas prices are still high -- I'm going to stand by my ocean front property on upper State Street and yell over the sea of oil rigs that, "I TOLD YOU SO!"

THE GOOD AND BAD OF ETHANOL

If you read this blog at all, you know that I spend way too much time thinking about global warming and what we can do to slow it down (much less stop it all together). As you can imagine, the subject of ethanol is frequently raised in these kinds of discussions, and there are no lack of opinions on this (bio) matter. If you didn't know, Santa Barbara County is actually considering the development of an ethanol plant in the Santa Maria area. A recent article from KCOY on the topic got me wondering if this is really a good idea. Here's what I think ...

PLUSES

Initially, I LOVED ethanol. There are many great ideas floating around out there for more fuel efficient vehicles, but in my humble opinion, it doesn't make sense to focus on things that are 10 to 20 years down the line. Hydrogen, for example, is a solid idea that can't be realized any time soon. I've always felt this way, and I was happy to hear on Tim Russert's CNBC show yesterday that Lee Iacocca agrees with me. Global warming needs big solutions that we can implement quickly, and it just seemed to me that ethanol was perfect:

- Firstly, it doesn't require a significant change to our infrastructure: many cars are already built to use E85, and those that aren't can be altered without much cost.

- Second, there are a number of E85 filling stations around the nation, so this isn't something we have to construct from scratch.

- Finally, we can boost the farming economy. This isn't my area of expertise, but don't we pay farmers not to grow things? Wouldn't this be a great way to get back all those small farms that have been forced out by big conglomerates? I was definitely liking the possibilities.

MINUSES

Now that I've sung the praises of ethanol, I have to come "clean" and admit that my mind is slowly being changed. Where I once saw a cure all, I now see a boatload of side effects:

1) Additional Pollution - It's been pointed out to me that the equipment we use to farm (like tractors for example) are very dirty. So, more farming obviously means more greenhouse gasses. Plus, there's clearly pollution produced by the ethanol conversion process itself. And if that's not bad enough, according to the KCOY article, existing "railroad tracks would be used to transport huge quantities of Midwestern corn that would be fermented to produce ethanol..." That can't be good for the cause. The Average Man wants to clean up the environment, but he wants solutions that work.

2) Corn - It's generally accepted that corn is not the most efficient way to produce ethanol: switch grass and sugar beets are better (just ask Brazil). Yet, the corn lobby has stepped in to make sure that corn is the primary source for ethanol in the US. This brings with it many negative issues. One such problem is the fact that using more corn for ethanol could mean less corn for food. That in turn, could mean that corn prices would go up. This could have a very bad snowball effect, because corn is a staple in much more of our food than you might think, and it is the primary way many farmers feed their livestock.

3) Land - There was a recent New York Times Editorial that pointed out another bad potential result from ethanol production: an increase in farming means an increase in land use. There are many areas of federally protected land that should remain that way. But the need for more ethanol could encourage politicians to open up that land for farming.

4) Not Enough - The general thinking is that, even if we were seriously committed to ethanol, we could only produce about 20% of our national energy needs this way.


Okay, so back to the original question ... Is an ethanol plant a good idea for Santa Barbara County? On the whole, I would give it a weak thumbs up. As Al Gore has stated, there is no silver bullet for this thing. Rather, there are many small fixes, and I think ethanol is one of them. Despite all the cons I've listed above, my gut feeling is that we need to urgently address the sheer volume of greenhouse gas producing vehicles on the road. This is more important than any other climate change issue, and adding ethanol into the mix -- as it were -- is a plus.