Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Load up the truck!


Two years ago Californians fired Governor Gray Davis, only nine months into his second term and hired Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was all about fixing a broken system. Voters demanded reform.

Yesterday the voters of California said, "just kidding".

Californians defeated all eight propositions at voting booths yesterday. Arnold's "top props", Propositions 74-77 would have taken steps to reform state politics and California's sad schools.

Under Prop 74, school teachers would become tenured at 5 years instead of 2. Why should they get tenure at all?

Prop 75 would have made labor unions get employees' permission before making political contributions with their union dues. Doesn't that make sense?

Prop 76 would have placed reasonable, responsible limits on state budget growth. Oh no, not responsible spending!

Prop 77, endorsed by all the major newspapers in the state, would have stopped politicians from drawing their own election districts and made redistricting the responsibility of a panel of non-partisan judges. There's no reasonable explanation that this one failed.

They all seemed pretty sensible but they all went down in flames.

We'll be loading up the truck and heading back to Kansas but first, I want to see what life in California is like under our third actor-governor, Warren Beatty.

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