This is another thing I struggle with regarding these props. The ban on gambling is, ISTM, bad policy. That this bad policy has had the side effect of greatly aiding the Native American reservations, since they got to be the only ones in the state ignoring that bad policy, is true; but it doesn’t make the ban good policy overall.
Generally I am all for seeing the state or federal government do more for Indian Nations to make up for the truly disgusting way this country has treated them. But does it really make sense to say “this is a bad policy overall, but it helps Native Americans as a side effect so we should keep it in place”? I say, no. That’s ridiculous.
Why is it the state’s job to make sure gambling doesn’t happen? I’d rather the state leaves adults to make their own decisions while ensuring proper regulation (to prevent abuse) and taxation (to raise revenue that can be put towards any number of projects that will improve society).
Well since nobody else has, I guess I’ll put in a plug for 28:
I have no children. I hated the one art class I was forced to take - lacking all talent, I can’t even produce a particularly convincing stick man. I mildly dreaded the one music class I was again forced to take, as I couldn’t stay in pitch if you held a gun to my head and I’m nowhere near coordinated enough to play an instrument convincingly.
But I’m all for Prop 28 and I really, really don’t care that it is an inflexible legislative mandate that may cause budget-planning woes years down the line when recession looms. Because the counter - that local school districts need to pony up and figure out how to include funding for the arts on a school by school basis - simply doesn’t work. It ensures that only wealthy district will have arts instruction, as the arts (usually followed by library services) are always the first thing to get cut and non-wealthy districts are always short of discretionary cash.
I can’t in anyway create art or music. But I do love art and music. I have zero issues paying more tax to nurture the next generation of artists in some little podunk school district that otherwise wouldn’t be able or willing to afford it.
Arts should be every bit as much a priority as STEM education. But it’s not, so government needs to lend a helping hand.
26 puts sports betting in casinos, 27 allows it on-line, which is even worse.
Allowing online betting is what I’m really opposed to. The sports betting horse is already out of the stable, I don’t mind California and some of the tribes cashing in.
Gambling is legal in the current tribal casinos. We’re just talking about sports betting here.
A colleague and I once went to visit his thesis advisor - and the husband of a professor in my group - who was one of the world’s leading experts on combinatorics. We bought some lottery tickets. So gambling is more than just the odds.
PS - we won.
There are two other clauses in 26- one allows more games, like craps. Not so bad. The other allows the tribal casinos to sue California poker rooms (which have been around for a long time) out of existence. That is why 26 is a bad prop, that little stealth clause.
I see your points, and 28 ain’t so bad. But the state budget has issues, so I will let out elected officials make budget decisions.
What a load of tripe. There is as much art in a mathematical proof as there is in, well, art. STEM is not simply about solving practical problems.
In case it is not clear, I am not opposed to art. I’m opposed to the belief that there is no beauty in science, or math; that without “art” we would have a gray, dead, worthless civilization.
But not here. Without art we would have a gray, dead, worthless civilization would pretty much exactly sum up my opinion. But of course there are no societies without art - we’re not Vulcans. Reduce funding for the arts and you’re still going to see some art created, one way or another.
But I’d prefer to subsidize art to a greater degree than it currently is. Further cultural enrichment trumps leaner budgets and should be afforded a higher societal priority than I believe it currently receives.
I don’t see how your two statements do not conflict. I can appreciate a flower or a forest or the stars in the same way that I appreciate art, but an artist is not required. A “Vulcan” (assuming you mean a creature unable to comprehend anything beyond pure logic) could not do this.
Easily half the beauty that I experience daily is, one way or another, not produced explicitly as art. Would reducing the beauty in civilization by half make it worthless? I don’t see how.
Again, I do not oppose funding for the arts. More beauty is better. But there is nevertheless tremendous beauty even without artists creating it.
Without getting into an interdisciplinary pissing match, let me just say that art is one (though not the only) valid way of adding beauty and worth to life, and so I support funding for it. And I also support funding for pure mathematics and theoretical science and for other things that also add beauty and worth to life.
I wish I could figure out what to do with Prop 30. OTOH, I’m all for encouraging measures that (I hope) will slow the climate crisis. OTOH, there is a lot of murky stuff going on w.r.t. the true motivation behind this proposition. Per the Sacramento Bee (https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article266880391.html – may be paywalled, but you are allowed a certain number of free views) Newsom may have come out against this because a lot of his major contributors are against it.
Lyft (per the article) has poured a WHOPPING $45 million into the Prop 30 campaign. Holy Cow! Couldn’t they just have bought a fleet of e-vehicles for this amount and then patted themselves on the back for their environmental committment?
Prop 1: easy YES. Prop 26: NO. I’m fine with extending the tribes’ monopoly on casinos, but the horse racing is too much. Prop 27: NO. I barely watch commercial television, but the online betting advertisements have completely annoyed me. Yeah, that’s a petty reason, but the tribes’ ads don’t bother me. Prop 28: YES. Education is the key infrastructure to bettering our state. Whether this gets funded by cuts in other areas or by higher taxes, it’s fine by me. Prop 29: NO. This feels too much like how abortion clinics have been regulated out of existence. I don’t think that’s the end goal here, but the means feels wrong. Prop 30: YES. Money for electric vehicles and infrastructure, more taxes on the rich. That’s a win-win. Prop 31: YES. The legislature passed this law and tobacco corporations delayed it with this proposition. Screw 'em.
Every few years, you get something that keeps appearing on the ballot. In the late 1980s, it was taking the power to draw the Congressional districts away from the legislature; later, it was requiring that a minor getting an abortion first get parental or judicial approval, which, IIRC, is required for a minor to have any other non-emergency medical procedure. This could by why, about 10 years ago, the law was changed so that petition-based ballot measures can appear only in November elections in even-numbered years.