Endorsements

Propositions

30: Y

31: N

32: N

33: N

34: Y

35: N

36: Y

37: Y

38: N

39: Y

40: Y

Santa Barbara Unified School District:

Ed Heron
Gayle Eidelson

Pedro Paz

 Santa Barbara Community College District TA #4*

Brian Fay

* SBCC board is now elected by districts so you may have a different choice on your ballot. 

Measure A2012: Y

Measere G2012: Y*
*Goleta Voters will have this on their ballots

Santa Barbara Unified School District

You can vote for Three:
Ed Heron
Gayle Eidelson
Pedro Paz

Any or all of the above are good choices.  The forth guy on the ballot is a right wing crank so don't vote for him.

Prop 32: No

Prop 32 will prevent unions and corporations from using payroll deductions to raise money for political activities.  Proponents tell us that this will keep special interest money out of politics...sounds fair...except it will actually only keep UNION money out and not impact corporate political spending at all.  Unions are the only organizations with enough political clout to present any countervailing force to corporate money in politics.  Ending payroll deductions would end union’s primary political fundraising tool and leave corporations free to pour money into politics with their only meaningful opposition silenced.

SBCC Trustee Area 4: Brain Fay! IMPORTANT!

The SBCC Trustees are elected by district.  The only district in contention is Area 4 which includes San Maros Road, Mountain Communities, No-leta (between Santa Barbara and Goleta) and Winchester Canyon, Ranch Embarkadero areas. If you have a selection on your ballot for Area 4 SBCC Trustee it is VERY IMPORTANT!!! that you vote for Brian Fay. He is an excellent well-rounded candidate who  attended SBCC and is eager to serve.
  
According to my source who regularly attends Trustee meetings, the other guy on the ballot is missing meetings being held by the Trustees to get new candidates up to speed and is not bothering to do the homework to be prepared for these meetings. He has said he is only running because he is upset that the community was not better informed that there were trustee positions open, even though this information was easily available if you were following board meetings or looking on the web site. I am concerned this guy is not bothering to really understand the issues facing SBCC and is more interested in complaining that getting to work.

I have a son at SBCC and I want the Board of Trustees to all be working in good faith to keep the college running smoothly.  I don't mind a diversity of opinions on the board as long as everyone is committed to working hard and attempting to understand and solve the problems that come up.

Vote for Brian Fay!  Please encourage your neighbors to do the same.  Most voters will not be informed on this issue and the result could come down to a few votes so spread the word!

Prop 36: Yes

A “Yes” on this proposition modifies the “Three Strikes” law which imposes a mandatory 25 years to life sentence on criminals convicted of three felony offenses. Prop 36 changes the law to require that the “third strike” be a serious or violent felony.  This would not apply if either of the first two strikes were for certain nasty crimes such as rape, murder or child molestation.

For several years I worked with a woman who’s brother then in his 20’s was serving a 25-life sentence under “three strikes”.  His first two offenses were for assault, which is obviously serious and violent, however they were barroom brawls, not attacks against women or random people on the street. They also were not serious enough to result in long prison terms because this man was still young when he was convicted of his third strike for drug possession.  I question whether tax money is well spent keeping this person and others like him in prison into his 50’s and beyond.

California prisons are so severely over-crowded that the courts are ordering prisoner releases.  Unless we want to pony up even more billions to build and run even more prisons we need to make some changes. We need to use our prisons wisely to keep dangerous people off the streets and not fill them up with non-violent offenders due to inflexible sentencing formulas. 

As I have pointed out before, legislators cannot back off on punishment laws, no matter how expensive or in-effective, without facing certain death in the sound-bite wars.  However, prosecutors and police with well considered requests for law enforcement tools can usually get  them from the legislature if they ask.  As long as a politician can claim to be "tough on crime" it doesn't seem to matter if they are"dumb and expensive on crime."  So if we are ever going to get the ever expanding, clogged and bloated prison system in California under control it will have to be done through the initiative process.

The LA Times is urging a “Yes” vote in a well written op-ed.

Prop 35: N – No to New Human Trafficking Penalties? Yep.

I recommend a “No” vote on this initiative which will increase penalties for Human Trafficking. Does this mean I am FOR Human Trafficking? A reasonable question since liberals like me are constantly striving to make our streets safer for deranged sociopaths, but, no I actually am AGAINST Human Trafficking (!) but still do not support this Proposition.

This is another brain baby of those Legislature-of-one, rich guys who may actually mean well.  In this case it’s Chris Kelly, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer.  (I will pause here to allow you contemplate what Facebook’s CPO may actually be up to).

As I mentioned previously, I generally like to leave legislating in the hands of the legislature unless there is good reason not to. I do not see increasing penalties for human trafficking to be the kind politically unpopular cause that cannot get past of the hurdles of the normal legislative process.  If law enforcement and prosecutors need new laws to better deal with this scourge, I think they could probably get them if they asked. Conversely judges, juries and law enforcement could use the laws already on the books.

In addition to increasing penalties and expanding the definition of human trafficking for labor and sexual exploitation, this initiative expands the scope of the sex-offender registry.  This is problematic for me because I feel like the sex-offender registry already casts a web so wide that it is counter-productive to it’s goal of keeping track of predators.

Unfortunately the only argument against this initiative in the voter guide comes from “The Erotic Service Providers Legal Project,” hardly a group to rally your average voter. However,  Advocacy groups for trafficking victims have expressed opposition to this proposition and many newspapers including the LA Times are urging a “No” vote as well.

I believe this issue us best addressed in the Legislature with time for testimony and discussion to make sure the law will do what it intends.

Ann’s Voter Guide 2012: Summary

For those of you with absentee ballots who wisely plan to vote however the brilliant mind of Ann Wisehart recommends and just want to get it over with:

Propositions

30: Y

31: N

32: N

33: N

34: Y

35: N

36: Y

37: Y

38: N

39: Y

40: Y

Santa Barbara Unified School District:

Ed Heron
Gayle Eidelson

Pedro Paz

 Santa Barbara Community College District TA #4*

Brian Fay

* SBCC board is now elected by districts so you may have a different choice on your ballot. 

Measure A2012: Y

Measere G2012: Y*
*Goleta Voters will have this on their ballots

Prop 37: Yes – Label Those GMOs!

Under most circumstances, if Monsanto is for it…I’m agin’ it.  That is certainly the case with the initiative to require labeling of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in California.  The campaign in support of Prop 37 is called “Californians Right to Know” and that pretty much sums it up.  We have a right to know if food we buy is Genetically Engineered (GE).

Who is spending $35 million to try to convince you that you shouldn’t know if your food contains GMOs? Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Conagra, Bayer Crop Science,  Coke, Pepsi, Kellogs, Sara Lee, General Mills… You get the idea.  Expect lots of slick mailers implying that GE foods will be banned (false) it will cost taxpayers millions (Legislative Analyst says $1 million AT MOST for regulatory costs) and it will increase food prices by billions.  This last claim is based on an assumption that once GE food is labeled consumers won’t want it.  The argument is, “We don’t want to tell you what’s in our products because then you won’t want to buy them.”

The health effects of GE food is unknown.  My guess is that they are minor in a diet already full of processed food.  Let’s face it, if you are drinking Coke and eating Frosted Flakes, the fact that they are made with GE corn is probably the least of your health worries. And a GE apple may well be a better individual health choice than a bag of organic potato chips.   Consumers of junk food, will probably soon just stop noticing the “Genetically Engineered” on the package.  The consumer demand that may change as a result of the labeling will be on foods that are marketed as “natural” or “healthy choice.”  Consumers who are putting effort into trying to buy healthier food deserve accurate information.  And if the result is a decrease in demand for GE food then that is the free market at work.

More than individual health, the real cost of GMO agriculture is in the context of the environment and the food system as a whole.  Despite claims of using GE to solve world hunger with super nutritious, drought tolerant crops, the most widespread GE crops are Round-up ready corn and soybeans that will survive being doused with herbicides and crops that have GE systemic pesticides. The widespread use of these crops rapidly create super-weeds and super-bugs that demand ever stronger and more thickly applied herbicides and pesticides. This arms race leaves growers of non-GE crops struggling with out of control weeds and pests.  For example, Bt, is a bacteria that can be used as a pesticide in certified organic food but which was used rarely so there was little pressure for bugs to develop resistance.  In a few short years, Bt impregnated GE crops have caused such widespread resistance that Bt is now largely ineffective for organic growers.

Genetic material from GE crops contaminate wild plants with unknown long-term consequences. It also contaminates neighboring non-GE crops. Monsanto has responded to this by suing the farmers with the GMO contaminated crops for patent infringement!   Monsanto’s goal is a world where no one can grow crops without the latest Monsanto seeds and the chemicals they are designed to work with.  If California demands GMO labeling, Monsanto and their allies are right in fearing that the rest of the country will soon follow.  If labeling causes consumer rejection of GE food it will create at least a small obstacle to the GE and chemical companies’ goal of total domination of our food supply.