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So, Tuesday is election day.
We have two ballot measures, which I didn't know about until I opened the voters' guide today. The first looks pretty innocuous: authorization to exchange 6 acres near route 46 for a different 10 acres, so National Grid can build a high-voltage transmission line. (The way the state constitution protects forest preserves, that requires voter assent.) I'm voting yes unless someone gives me a reason not to by Tuesday morning.
The second is a bad idea, and is enough to get me to go vote on Tuesday even if it weren't a matter of family custom if not honor. I will quote what the voter guide says: "The New York State Constitution currently prohibits the farming out, contracting, giving away or selling of prisoner labor to any person, firm, association, or corporation. The proposed amendment would authorize the Legislature to pass legislation to permit inmates in state and local correctional facilities to perform work for nonprofit corporations. Shall the proposed amendment to the New York State Constitution be approved?" This strikes me as bad policy on a number of levels, including the broad definition of "nonprofit" and that if it passes, I can see someone, a few years down the line, putting in a ballot measure to strike "nonprofit" from that.
There are also a few offices up for election. If you're outside New York state, you may have heard about either the race for mayor of New York City, or the special election for a House seat upstate. For mayor, I think I'm voting for Thompson, but that's mostly voting against Bloomberg; he's gotten a little too sure he's indispensable, and I gather he is now having Joe Lieberman (R-Egotism) making robocalls on his behalf. Thompson has a slim chance, but the other candidates' chances are snowball-in-hell level. On the other hand, I'm probably going to vote for the Socialist Worker candidate for Manhattan borough president, because I am still annoyed at the number of robocalls I got using the incumbent's name and voice during the primary elections. (I don't know who they were for, because I hung up before it got to that point.) The libertarian candidate is running on the platform of "abolish this office," but I'm still not prepared to vote for someone who has taken the Republican endorsement. The Socialist Workers candidate is running on a platform of withdrawing all troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and "elsewhere"; abortion rights; affirmative action, and specifically the prosecution of Dr. George Tiller's assassin. I like his domestic policies, am less sure about his foreign policy, and little or none of it has anything to do with the job he's running for.
I will probably be voting for the Democrat for comptroller (though amused that the "Rent is too damn high" party has a candidate for that as well as for mayor). Public advocate, probably deBlasio, the Democrat (though I am open to persuasion). I like my city council member, Robert Jackson, so I'll be voting for him for reelection
The House seat is open because the incumbent Republican accepted the job of Secretary of the Army (which apparently was entirely unsurprising, once President Obama offered it). At first, places like fivethirtyeight.com were analyzing whether the district having gone for Obama in 2008 meant more than John McHugh having held the seat, and a republican edge in party affiliation [1]. Then the out-of-state wingnuts decided that the Republican candidate wasn't a "real" Republican because she's pro-choice and supports equal marriage (which is on the record because she's currently in the state assembly, which passed a bill on that a few months ago, before the state senate imploded). So, people like Sarah Palin are backing a Conservative Party candidate, the Democrat is still doing well, and it's as well for Assemblywoman Scozzafava that she won't lose her seat in the state legislature if she doesn't go to Washington in January. On some level, the question is how narrow a party they will have; the theocrat "base" in some parts of the country doesn't seem capable of comprehending the sort of small-government conservative who thinks that lower taxes go at least as naturally with reproductive rights as with a strong military. I suspect a small piece of what's going on is also that this is a way Palin saw to get headlines and increase the sales of her book. ETA 4:47 p.m.: Scozzafava has "suspended" her campaign, and the Republican national committee are throwing their support to the Conservative.
[1] Being registered in the Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative, or Working Families [2] party means that if that party has primaries at any given election, you can vote in them. The Democrats have more of them than the other parties.
[2] Those are the parties that got enough votes in the last gubernatorial election to have automatic ballot spots; for anything else—Libertarians, Socialist Workers, Rent Is Too Damn High, Voices in His Head [3], Green—
[3] No, we don't actually have the Edgertonite National Party. We have a person named Adames, who appears to have decided to skip the "getting on the ballot" part of losing mayoral elections and skip straight to putting up badly-laid-out posters asserting that the election has been stolen from him. And, in the last year or two, that the mayor and MCI were conspiring against him.
We have two ballot measures, which I didn't know about until I opened the voters' guide today. The first looks pretty innocuous: authorization to exchange 6 acres near route 46 for a different 10 acres, so National Grid can build a high-voltage transmission line. (The way the state constitution protects forest preserves, that requires voter assent.) I'm voting yes unless someone gives me a reason not to by Tuesday morning.
The second is a bad idea, and is enough to get me to go vote on Tuesday even if it weren't a matter of family custom if not honor. I will quote what the voter guide says: "The New York State Constitution currently prohibits the farming out, contracting, giving away or selling of prisoner labor to any person, firm, association, or corporation. The proposed amendment would authorize the Legislature to pass legislation to permit inmates in state and local correctional facilities to perform work for nonprofit corporations. Shall the proposed amendment to the New York State Constitution be approved?" This strikes me as bad policy on a number of levels, including the broad definition of "nonprofit" and that if it passes, I can see someone, a few years down the line, putting in a ballot measure to strike "nonprofit" from that.
There are also a few offices up for election. If you're outside New York state, you may have heard about either the race for mayor of New York City, or the special election for a House seat upstate. For mayor, I think I'm voting for Thompson, but that's mostly voting against Bloomberg; he's gotten a little too sure he's indispensable, and I gather he is now having Joe Lieberman (R-Egotism) making robocalls on his behalf. Thompson has a slim chance, but the other candidates' chances are snowball-in-hell level. On the other hand, I'm probably going to vote for the Socialist Worker candidate for Manhattan borough president, because I am still annoyed at the number of robocalls I got using the incumbent's name and voice during the primary elections. (I don't know who they were for, because I hung up before it got to that point.) The libertarian candidate is running on the platform of "abolish this office," but I'm still not prepared to vote for someone who has taken the Republican endorsement. The Socialist Workers candidate is running on a platform of withdrawing all troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and "elsewhere"; abortion rights; affirmative action, and specifically the prosecution of Dr. George Tiller's assassin. I like his domestic policies, am less sure about his foreign policy, and little or none of it has anything to do with the job he's running for.
I will probably be voting for the Democrat for comptroller (though amused that the "Rent is too damn high" party has a candidate for that as well as for mayor). Public advocate, probably deBlasio, the Democrat (though I am open to persuasion). I like my city council member, Robert Jackson, so I'll be voting for him for reelection
The House seat is open because the incumbent Republican accepted the job of Secretary of the Army (which apparently was entirely unsurprising, once President Obama offered it). At first, places like fivethirtyeight.com were analyzing whether the district having gone for Obama in 2008 meant more than John McHugh having held the seat, and a republican edge in party affiliation [1]. Then the out-of-state wingnuts decided that the Republican candidate wasn't a "real" Republican because she's pro-choice and supports equal marriage (which is on the record because she's currently in the state assembly, which passed a bill on that a few months ago, before the state senate imploded). So, people like Sarah Palin are backing a Conservative Party candidate, the Democrat is still doing well, and it's as well for Assemblywoman Scozzafava that she won't lose her seat in the state legislature if she doesn't go to Washington in January. On some level, the question is how narrow a party they will have; the theocrat "base" in some parts of the country doesn't seem capable of comprehending the sort of small-government conservative who thinks that lower taxes go at least as naturally with reproductive rights as with a strong military. I suspect a small piece of what's going on is also that this is a way Palin saw to get headlines and increase the sales of her book. ETA 4:47 p.m.: Scozzafava has "suspended" her campaign, and the Republican national committee are throwing their support to the Conservative.
[1] Being registered in the Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative, or Working Families [2] party means that if that party has primaries at any given election, you can vote in them. The Democrats have more of them than the other parties.
[2] Those are the parties that got enough votes in the last gubernatorial election to have automatic ballot spots; for anything else—Libertarians, Socialist Workers, Rent Is Too Damn High, Voices in His Head [3], Green—
[3] No, we don't actually have the Edgertonite National Party. We have a person named Adames, who appears to have decided to skip the "getting on the ballot" part of losing mayoral elections and skip straight to putting up badly-laid-out posters asserting that the election has been stolen from him. And, in the last year or two, that the mayor and MCI were conspiring against him.
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My upcoming Local is only for two school boards, but such offices can be of long-term significance. Unfortunately, it's devilishly difficult to decide between the candidates because some of them may have had Professional (political party PR) help in composing their Statement presentations. (Used to be, some would make a Big Thing of their religious affiliations and activities, so I might (or might not -- "Unitarian/Universalist" would be okay by me) cross them out, but nowadays they seem to be cautious about using any Keywords that I consider suspicious. *sigh* So I can just do my (largely coin-flipping) best.)
And yeah, "non-profit institutions" is Highly Suspect -- especially since it includes most/all religions (even Scientology, technically, I suppose). Not that prisoner/slave labor is likely to be particularly effective.
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I managed to schedule labs and the dilated eye-doctor appointment on Tuesday, so I'll vote first.
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Wow, is that ever a bad idea. Ewww. It's bad enough now, when the prison-industrial complex only has an incentive to put more people in prison because it means more jobs in prison construction and prison guarding. It's never to their advantage to think "If we had more prison labor, we could make even more money with this project."
Specifying "nonprofit corporations" doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. As you know, my other partner used to work for a nonprofit corporation. As a cost-saving measure, they laid off his entire department and outsourced it to a contracting company, which hired about 2/3 of them to do the same (total) work for lower (per person) pay and benefits. That wasn't an outrage to hold up as a great example of corporate evil, presumably because the workers were free to seek work elsewhere. It's just an example of a non-profit corporation exploiting workers for profit-based reasons. There's more to profit than making money to pay dividends to stockholders. Hardly any corporations pay dividends these days. As a driving force for corporate behavior profit can mean making money to operate or expand the business itself.
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