June Vote - Prop 28 and Prop 29 (Nice: how much, tax, live)

[SportyandMisty]

I'm all for raising cig taxes, but IMHO the funds should go to the general fund rather than being earmarked for yet more spending.

[Bulldogdad]

No
and
No

[Charles]

Originally Posted by BlackShoe

No and No.

If I paid you $1 to vote yes and yes, would you accept my offer?

[nullgeo]

I'll counter your offer with a suggestion that you "donate" $2 to my action committee for each vote cast ... Im sure we can settle on $1.51 each.

That's just good old plain politics at work. Love it or leave it.

[NewToCA]

News story about advocates for the cigarette tax now attacking the doctor in the "anti" ad:

But now Dr. La Donna Porter is coming under fire from tobacco-control groups and other doctors who are convinced the tobacco doctor is in it for the money and is being paid by tobacco companies. Public records show that she's struggling to save her home from foreclosure and lift herself financially from two personal bankruptcies.

Doctor in tobacco ads faced bankruptcies; house now being foreclosed - San Jose Mercury News

[BlackShoe]

Originally Posted by Charles

If I paid you $1 to vote yes and yes, would you accept my offer?

How many places did you say you were willing to move the decimal point?

[EclecticEars]

Prop 28 - Voting no. The effort is being led by the executive secretary-treasurer of the L.A. County AFL-CIO. Aside from reading the specs of the prop, that's really all I need to know. I thought it was a really great idea on the surface...until I scratched the surface.

Prop 29 - Voting no. I'm typically a "lower the taxes, lessen the regulations" conservative/libertarian, but cigarettes are, like alcohol and gasoline (technically), items not of necessity but rather of a means to help us live how we choose to live. If the funds were going to improve and maintain the highway system or keep the UCs/CSUs a world-class system AND strict measures were going to be implemented to enforce the "flow" of funding in so doing, I'd probably vote for it. But I shudder to think about what the legislators in Sacramento consider "cancer research."

[EclecticEars]

Originally Posted by BlackShoe

How many places did you say you were willing to move the decimal point?

...and in which direction?!

[BlackShoe]

Originally Posted by EclecticEars

...and in which direction?!

Right, my vote likely will not be worth two cents, the voters will probably pass both measures.

[EclecticEars]

Originally Posted by BlackShoe

Right, my vote likely will not be worth two cents, the voters will probably pass both measures.

It's all about "feeling good," "not hurting anybody's feelings."

I gotta go on a jag for a moment...

I don't hate Democrats as political liberals, which Democrats now are and Republicans used to be, have actually brought us some great social advances in the 20th century, i.e.: weekends, ban on child labor, unionization of blue-collar industries, the Civil Rights Act. But we took the bad, also: affirmative action and Roe v. Wade (yes, I'm a pro-baby guy).

At any rate, forty years of legislative control by one party has resulted in initiatives like the proposal to ban psychotherapy or whatever it is to "cure the gay." Do I agree with the practice? Hell no. But who am I to criticize someone's willingness to undergo that and a therapist's willingness to provide that service? I'd also like to see legalization and regulation of drugs all the way across the board (I'm not a drug user and I know that would be a federal initiative), assisted death by individual consent, and to be permitted to smoke and drink on the beach in the parks, but I guess I'm asking for too much.