Thursday, May 21, 2009

California election fiasco

The California budget ballot propositions lost big this week, and I am wondering how anyone could have expected them to pass. No one even made a serious attempt to explain them to the public.

Prop. 1A was a big tax increase, but the official ballot summary said nothing about that. Instead it talks about a rainy day fund and increased revenues.

No argument against Prop. 1B was given. How is that possible? 2.4 million people voted against Prop. 1B, and that was 63% of the Calif. voters. Obviously the Secretary of State did not look very hard for an opposition argument.

Prop. 1C was a crazy plan to borrow against future state lottery taxes.

Prop. 1D and 1E were to cut the funding of some overfunded state programs. They needed ballot propositions because the programs were passed with ballot propositions.

Governor Schwarzenegger says that we will have severe cutbacks if the propositions fail, as they did. Rush Limbaugh says that California will just ask President Obama for a bailout. All California needs to do is to cut back spending to what it was a couple of years ago.

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