Silly pedant, everyone knows “ethnic” is code for “not white”. I suspect you know that though and are just being intentionally obtuse in order to call him out on his use of this (admittedly bullshit) term.
No it should not be a simple majority for a tax increase. It should still be a supermajority, just a three-fifths or 60% vote.
If you think that property taxes on homes should be around $50,000 a year, then prop 13 is bad.
This. I’m totally on board.
Jarvis & Prop 13 are some of the worst things to happen to this state. Of course the root of the problem is with the initiative process. We need to dump that ASAP.
Oh get real. Even for hyperbole, that’s being ridiculous.
Proposition 13 wasn’t about high rates of taxation. Proposition 13 was about the effect of rising property values on people with incomes that weren’t rising to match. It was an early reaction to the beginning of the real estate bubble that continues in California to this day, even in the face of the current economic woes. People who had owned homes for 20 years were being forced to sell because they happened to live in neighborhoods that were becoming pricey, and their assessed valuation was going up accordingly, and, thus, their taxes as well. Very little of what drove that proposition was increases in rates, which, as with property taxes in most places, hung in the neighborhood of 1% to 2% of assessed valuation each year.
For $50,000 in property taxes on a $500,000 home (a damned expensive home, even in California, though in the Bay Area, possibly the median value!), you’d have to have a tax rate of 10%. So I call B.S. on your post.
In Ohio, I lived in a house that was worth (roughly) $300,000, and paid just under $4000 a year in taxes. Ohio is a fairly conservative state when it comes to property taxes; all tax levies must be renewed every 5 years or so, which allows the populace to kill taxes they think don’t give them value for their money. Yet those taxes are about $1000 a year higher than the same property in California. No wonder California’s schools are becoming the worst in the nation.
Actually, the initiative process is the only way California manages to get much of anything important done, sadly.
For example, remember Proposition 103? It was one of three propositions that were up for vote at the same time in 1988. There was a public perception that automobile insurance rates in California were out of control. In some counties (notably in the LA area), annual insurance bills were getting to be well over $1000. This was without regard to a driver’s driving record. For a couple years, the issue fomented, but the Legislature and the Governor (Dukmejian, IIRC) couldn’t come to agreement on what to do. Between the lobbying power of the insurance companies and the philosophical differences of the Democrats controlling the Legislature and the Republican sitting in the corner office, it was stalemate.
So the people took the matter into their own hands. Proposition 103 was put up for vote, which rolled back rates, established certain limits on how rates are set, and accomplished a number of other, minor reforms. The insurance companies got scared that the proposition might pass, so they offered up a competing proposition which, if it also passed, would have eviscerated Proposition 103’s effects. There was a third proposition up for consideration as well, the reason for which escapes my memory. After a hugely expensive campaign, which co-incided with that year’s presidential campaign, Proposition 103 won the day.
Ballot initiatives are the brainchild of the Progressive Party back in the early 1900s. They were a method of making sure that a two-party system doesn’t get stagnant, with the voice of the people left unheard when big business (or other “evil” faction) manages to gain the control of enough of a state’s legislators. They have become the answer to California’s constant legislative gridlock. Sadly, they also allow potentially bad law to be enshrined in the state’s constitution. Witness Proposition 13, Proposition 4, etc., the basis for the state’s continual budgetary woes.
This is not correct. When I lived in Toledo, for example, the whole East side was “ethnic,” which included the Poles, the Hungarians, and other non-English, non-Germanic ethnicities.
According to whom? I guarantee you I am not the only one who has seen the term used to specifically mean “non-white”. (this guy, for example)
So, you and some other guy… ethnic is NOT code for non-white.
Compelling argument you have there, but I am going to go ahead and stand by my perception that there are at least a significant number of people who use it that way. I’m not saying it’s a “good” or “correct” usage of the term, just that it is a common usage.
That was my point (as Rigamarole clearly got)—it’s commonly used to mean “non-white,” “other,” “different,” and who knows what-all else, and thus isn’t really useful in a debate.
Ok, here is the American Heritage definition:
- Of or relating to a sizable group of people sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.
- Being a member of a particular ethnic group, especially belonging to a national group by heritage or culture but residing outside its national boundaries: ethnic Hungarians living in northern Serbia.
- Of, relating to, or distinctive of members of such a group: ethnic restaurants; ethnic art.
- Relating to a people not Christian or Jewish; heathen.
- pertaining to or characteristic of a people, esp. a group (ethnic group) sharing a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.
- referring to the origin, classification, characteristics, etc., of such groups.
- being a member of an ethnic group, esp. of a group that is a minority within a larger society: ethnic Chinese in San Francisco.
- of, pertaining to, or characteristic of members of such a group.
- belonging to or deriving from the cultural, racial, religious, or linguistic traditions of a people or country: ethnic dances.
- Obsolete. pagan; heathen.
–noun 7. a member of an ethnic group.
freedictionary.com
1.
a. Of or relating to a sizable group of people sharing a common and distinctive racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage.
b. Being a member of a particular ethnic group, especially belonging to a national group by heritage or culture but residing outside its national boundaries: ethnic Hungarians living in northern Serbia.
c. Of, relating to, or distinctive of members of such a group: ethnic restaurants; ethnic art.
2. Relating to a people not Christian or Jewish; heathen.
n.
A member of a particular ethnic group, especially one who maintains the language or customs of the group.
merriam webster
Function: adjective
1 : of or relating to groups of people with common traits and customs and a sense of shared identity <ethnic minorities>
2 : of or relating to ethnics <ethnic neighborhoods>
- eth·ni·cal·ly /-ni-k(-)l/ adverb
Oxford online dictionary
• adjective 1 relating to a group of people having a common national or cultural tradition. 2 referring to origin by birth rather than by present nationality: ethnic Albanians. 3 relating to a non-Western cultural tradition: ethnic music.
— DERIVATIVES ethnically adverb ethnicity noun.
— ORIGIN Greek ethnikos ‘heathen’, from ethnos ‘nation’.
Newbury House dictionary
ethnic /nk/ adj. related to group characteristics, such as race, country of origin, religion, or culture: The ethnic makeup of the USA is incredibly varied. -n. [C;U] ethnicity /nsti/
So, you and some other guys who don’t have dictionaries…
Oh, never mind, didn’t read everything, apologies, :smack:
The problem is that the legislators have all their pet projects and other pork barrel stuff that no one wants to cut. So it’s a lot easier to just say “cut 10% of everything” instead of cutting all of worthless-item-A and keep all of needed-item-B.
That’s why I get pissed off when Arnold said (paraphrasing) today that “Californians overwhelmingly rejected our propositions and said they want cuts to schools, law enforcement, etc.” No we don’t. We want the other, extraneous crap cut out; but no one in the government is willing to fight tooth-and-nail to completely excise the other stuff we don’t need in order to keep the schools and law enforcement running at a strong level.
Next time we just need one proposition, one that says “vote everyone out of the Legislature.”
Who would constitutional convention delegates be?
Communist!
We have referenda in Missouri. But I think we tend to tie the funding in as part of the proposition or amendment.
Still gets a pretty cluttered state constitution, though.
Actually, the problem is that it takes more than a majority to make any changes to the budget, which makes any large minority group able to block cuts (or block revenue increases). We need to make it easier for the legislature to make the budget, and also easier to replace them when they screw up.
I forget where I read it, but one plan is to use the jury list to pull delegates from the general population. Or at least to supplement the usual suspects.
I don’t know if it’s cause & effect, or coincidence, but the system started to fall apart around the same time that term limits for state legislators went into effect. This kind of crap never happened when Jesse Unruh and Willie Brown were running things for decades at a time.
I’m definitely against term limits–constituents need to be able to reelect good legislators. What I think needs to be changed is the gerrymandering system for creating districts. Districts should be formed based on population and compactness only, and not other things like party affiliation, race, income, etc. Either that or open primaries where all candidates compete in the primary and the top two advance to the general election. Both methods (singly or together) will prevent a single party from locking up a seat based on appealing to a minority of constituents rather than all of them.