Author: Kyle Dickerson

CA Election 2010 - Proposition 23

October 30, 2010 2:25 pm

I need to get moving on finishing up these posts. 4 more propositions to do, and then I still need to actually look at candidates.

Prop 23 is an attempt to indefinitely postpone implementing the air pollution control law enacted in 2006. The idea is that companies won't need to worry about changing their environmental impact until unemployment drops below 5.5% for at least 4 straight quarters.

At face value it might seem like a reasonable position if you believe that allowing companies to pollute is an effective way to create jobs. However, the secret exposed by the state-provided analysis is that since 1970 there has only been ~30 quarters of unemployment below 5.5% which occurred during 3 separate time periods separated by several years each (cumulatively, ~18% of the quarters since 1970).

Since 1970, the record low of unemployment looks to have been about 5% according to the graph. So this proposition basically says, "We'll promise to stop polluting the next time things are going absolutely perfect—as good as the peak of the dot-com bubble, and as good as the peak of the housing bubble." I don't really see that as an acceptable compromise.

Had they put forth the idea of postponing until unemployment dropped below the average of the last 40 years (which appears to be around 7.5-8.0%) maybe we'd have something to talk about. But this just looks like big companies trying to make an end run around the law.

It seems like every time there are new regulations on an industry companies within that industry cry about how it's going to destroy them. Yet, every time, they seem to find a new way to make record profits within 5 years. I'm not buying the idea that these air pollution control laws are going to destroy any industries. I'm quite confident they'll find ways of abiding by the new regulations and still be profitable. Not only keeping the companies wealthy, but also providing cleaner air for everyone.

I plan to vote against proposition 23.

We throw big parties and write bills for them, but we swear it's not lobbying

October 29, 2010 8:35 am

NPR has an exclusive article about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and how it shapes legislation across the nation. ALEC is a membership organization. Legislators pay $50 per year, corporations pay upwards of $20,000 per year (totaling ~$6 billion a year). They hold all-expenses-paid conferences where corporations and legislators get together and "discuss" laws. While ALEC is paying for the conferences you can see from the membership fee distribution that it's really corporations footing the bill.

Part 1 talks about how the text of the AZ immigration law was essentially identical to a bill written during an ALEC conference in association with private prison industry representatives.

Part 2 goes more in-depth about ALEC itself.

You may be thinking, okay it's a lobbying group, nothing particularly unusual about that. But that's exactly the catch. ALEC and its members are incredibly careful to make sure you don't call it a lobbying group. Because lobbyists have all sorts of regulations they have to follow.

Here are some priceless quotes:

From Part 1:

[Michael] Hough works for ALEC, but he's also running for state delegate in Maryland, and if elected says he plans to support a similar bill to Arizona's law.

Asked if the private companies usually get to write model bills for the legislators, Hough said, "Yeah, that's the way it's set up. It's a public-private partnership. We believe both sides, businesses and lawmakers should be at the same table, together."

From Part 2:

Is it lobbying when private corporations pay money to sit in a room with state lawmakers to draft legislation that they then introduce back home? [Michael] Bowman, a former lobbyist, says, "No, because we're not advocating any positions. We don't tell members to take these bills. We just expose best practices. All we're really doing is developing policies that are in model bill form."

So, one representative from ALEC, Hough, says it's normal for corporations to write the bills. But another ALEC rep, Bowman, says they don't advocate any particular position. The corporations just present their viewpoints in the form of bills that could be passed.

These corporations, out of the goodness of their hearts, are willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to get together with legislators just to have neutral discussions of policy. Surely they wouldn't dare push for a particular position or law that might benefit their company.

ALEC holds conferences which include baseball games, golf tournaments, parties, and entertainment for children. None of which has to be reported by the legislators as corporate gifts. And indeed, not a single participating legislator in Arizona reported any of these as corporate gifts, they reported receiving benefits in excess of $500 from ALEC.

Why not? Well, they're not being paid for by corporations, they're being paid for by ALEC. And, ALEC isn't really paying for it, the legislators are being charged, but they all, conveniently, receive so-called "scholarships" to cover their costs.

The whole thing stinks.

"It's not lobbying, it's education!" is the claim from ALEC. Well guess what. In computer science we have educational conferences too. Who pays for them? All the people that want to attend and learn. We pay for our own lodging, food, transportation, and registration fees. And if Microsoft were to come along and say "we're holding a conference, all expenses paid, here's your plane ticket, see you next week" I could only assume that what I was about to attend was an advertising platform for Microsoft.

CA Election 2010 - Proposition 22

October 28, 2010 3:26 pm

This one is described as "Prohibits the State from borrowing or taking funds used for transportation, redevelopment, or local government projects and services."

I will admit, I'm not really sure what the point of this proposition is. Based on my reading it seems that normally the State takes the luxury of borrowing funds collected by local governments during the part of the year when State revenue is low. But those funds have to be paid back.

So, as far as I can tell it's mainly a case of people who feel that the State is meddling in local affairs and don't like it. Of course, it seems like if this passes then suddenly the State needs to find another source of money or cut more services and this makes the existing budget less flexible.

The printed arguments, for and against, are both sensationalist drivel. So it's hard to get an idea of what's really behind this proposition.

At the moment I'm leaning towards "no."

Glenn Beck thinks I celebrate destruction

8:49 am

Jess and I both read a web comic entitled Dinosaur Comics. 5 years ago there was a segment where the main character discusses his idea for a book. The premise would be a world where a simple blood test would provide a very brief explanation (1-5 words) of how you would die. So everyone spends their life knowing-ish how they're going to die.

Over the intervening years the writer, Ryan North, accepted short stories based around this idea. With a group of other cartoonists and authors they selected the best stories and created an anthology of tales from this universe. They entitled it Machine of Death and are selling it on Amazon independently (because no publisher would get on board).

The book was released on October 13, but everyone involved requested that people hold off buying until the 26th so they could spread the word. The goal was to push the book to #1 on Amazon during that day. Not for any real reason, just to see if they could do it. A fairly small group of people with no advertising and no publisher, using only word-of-mouth to promote the book, wanted to see if they could get a #1 bestseller on Amazon—even if only for 1 day.

Well, apparently Glenn Beck happened to be launching his new book on the 26th. His book ended up ranked #3 as sales were dominated by Machine of Death (#1) and a book by Keith Richards. According to Ryan North, "He told his listeners that he'd worked on his book for over a year, and that his books always debut at #1, and that we (along with Keith) were part of a left-wing 'culture of death' that 'celebrates the things that have destroyed us' and that everyone should support life by buying his book."

My copy of the book is set to arrive today, so I haven't read it yet. But based on my understanding I don't really see how it represents a "culture of death" or "celebrates the things that have destroyed us." I bought it because I like some of the authors who are involved, it sounded like an interesting premise for some science fiction writing, Amazon lowered the price to under $10, and I wanted to support Ryan North who has provided enjoyable entertainment with his web comic which has cost me nothing.

But apparently science fiction writing doesn't sit well with Beck, or at least not when it condemns his own work to a 3rd place debut. Therefore purchasers of the book must be part of some left-wing degenerate culture. Of course, if you look up the actual transcript from that portion of Beck's show it's obvious he's struggling to form any coherent thought on the matter. He's apparently just so flabbergasted that some people feel that a science fiction anthology would be more worth their time than another one of his books. I dunno, maybe his entire show is just random babbling making this segment no different.

CA Election 2010 - Proposition 21

October 27, 2010 11:41 am

The description of Proposition 21 reads: "Establishes $18 annual vehicle license surcharge to help fund state parks and wildlife programs. Grants surcharged vehicles free admission to all state parks."

I'm still partially undecided on this, but I'm leaning towards "No".

I support funding the state parks and keeping them open for us to enjoy. However, I'm not convinced this is the best way of doing that. This proposition imposes an additional vehicle registration fee (the current fees are already pretty high, I think I had to pay over $240 this year for my registration). The new fee would be put into a fund which can only be spent on state parks and wildlife programs.

Of course, the state parks are currently funded from other tax sources. So this dedicated funding would allow the state government to pull the original funding and use it for other things. This part is okay in idea. We have budget problems and this would help offset the deficit. However, it creates an inflexible chunk of the budget. Which would mean that next time the budget needs to shrink you couldn't cut any funding from the parks/wildlife programs. Which, of course, is the goal of people who care about those programs and nothing else. This is a problem, in my opinion, when it means that other programs get cut which are more important than parks/wildlife. When you keep the parks open at the expense of homeless shelters I think your priorities are off base.

An issue I've heard raised is that it spreads the cost out over the entire population including the people who won't ever go to the parks anyway (due to lack of interest, distance, time, etc.). This does seem like a noble argument, but is inherently meaningless. The parks are a public good and subject to the tragedy of the commons. If they don't get funded by the overall population then they have to raise entrance fees. If they try to subsist entirely on entrance fees then only the wealthy will be able to afford to use the parks and the purpose of the parks is defeated. State and national parks will always need to be financed from tax dollars in order to provide them to the public at large. So I don't consider this perceived unfairness to be a valid argument against the fee.

My main issue is that it creates that inflexible distribution of tax dollars. Why not propose an $18 vehicle registration surcharge to simply "help offset the budget deficit"? I believe the reason why that wasn't done is because no one would vote for it since it just looks like a tax increase (which it is as is this wording). Since it's just a tax increase, which is occasionally necessary, I think it should be treated as such. As it is, it's a tax increase that can't be used flexibly.