You know the drill

Usually I say ...

Vote early. Vote often. Vote no.

... both for whimsy and because here in California we have the initiative process which has screwed up the state. So as a rule, I vote no on all initiatives on principle.

I shoulda blogged this before, but I've been feeling crummy all week and draining the archives. In case you're checking in for your morning Miniver fix before heading to the polls, a few quick endorsements.

Vote Democratic for US Congress this year, whoever your candidates are; if you read my blog, I don't think I have to tell you why. If you don't like a candidate, fix it in the primaries next time. This time, we've got to win in both houses and get as big a margin as possible to stop the bleeding and get some accountability for the executive branch.

If you're in California, vote Yes on Propositions 87 and 88.

Prop 87 is the tax on oil. Yeah, it's gonna nose up gas prices. That's the point. If we want to save the economy from the effects of peak oil, and we want to save the human species from the effects of greenhouse gasses, then this is exactly the kind of stuff that we wanna do. Al Gore says vote for it, which frankly is enough for me.

Prop 88 is an effort to fix the damage done to California schools by Prop 13, which straightjacketed the collection of property tax. It basically creates a new property tax system at the state level to be allocated to schools. See if you can spot the point in this quote from an anti-88 website.

There are no guarantees that property tax money collected in your community will be dedicated to your local schools.

Get it?

It's a Robin Hood tax, that redistributes some property tax money from rich districts to poor districts. The schools in Beverly Hills are the ones that don't benefit from 88, the schools in Compton are the ones that do.

Call me crazy, but I'm in favour of that.

I'm also voting for Prop 89, the clean campaign funding thing. I'm about a million times more radical than the authors of this legislation when it comes to philosophy about how campaign finance reform should work. I have my doubts about the wisdom of how this legislation has been designed. I'm voting for it anyway. I don't want the story to be People Talk About Campaign Finance Reform But They Reject It At The Polls, you know?

Besides, this is exactly the kind of legislation you could never get through the state legislature, which is why the original Progressives gave us the damned initiative process in the first place.

That ain't exactly an endorsement, but I am saying I'm gonna vote for it. Do what thou wilt.