California Propositions – November 2012

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Tomorrow is voting day, so here’s a recap of my recommendations on California’s 11 ballot initiatives. The original post, which contains a bit more detail, is here.

  1. Temporary tax hike to benefit schools: YES. State general fund spending has been cut significantly over the past few years, and in real per-capita terms is substantially lower than it was a decade ago. There’s just no more room to squeeze, and Prop 30 is a pretty good compromise measure that provides the extra funding we need.

  2. Miscellaneous budget and local government reform: NO. This is a hodgepodge of good ideas and bad ideas that doesn’t pass a high enough bar to deserve support.

  3. Paycheck protection: NO. This isn’t a nonpartisan reform that affects both unions and corporations. It’s a zombie initiative—the third of its kind in the past 14 years—that devastates the political power of unions without affecting corporations at all. It’s a scam.

  4. Auto insurance: NO. This initiative is good for Mercury Insurance, whose CEO is bankrolling it, but not for the rest of us.

  5. Replace the death penalty with life in prison without possibility of parole: YES. The death penalty simply doesn’t work in California. It’s time to face up to this and get rid of it.

  6. Human Trafficking: NO. These kinds of laws should be written by legislatures, not carved into stone forever by ballot initiatives.

  7. Three strikes: YES. Prop. 36 modifies our three-strikes law so that 25-to-life sentences are imposed only if the third strike is a serious one. This is just common sense.

  8. GM food labeling: NO. The current scientific consensus doesn’t support the notion that GM foods are hazardous to human health. Aside from that, Prop 37 places requirements on supermarkets that are overly burdensome, and also has the usual initiative problem that its rules are written in stone. But this is an evolving subject, and when the science changes the law should be able to change with it. It’s an issue that should be left for the legislature. For a different view, check out Tom Philpott’s rebuttal here.

  9. Temporary tax hike to benefit schools: NO. Prop. 38 competes with Prop. 30 as a tax measure to benefit public schools. Prop 30 is a better bet.

  10. Tax treatment for multistate businesses: YES. This initiative fixes a dumb tax deal passed several years ago. It produces better incentives for businesses and raises a bit more money too.

  11. Redistricting: YES. This is a referendum, not an initiative. A Yes vote will uphold the state Senate redistricting plan approved by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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