Nightglow Window

Aftermath

Too bad Karl Rove's math skills are so lousy. Tuesday must have been quite a shock to him. But here in California, the king state of the almighty proposition, the results were mixed in my book.

Thumbs Up
Voters seemed happy to spend money on transportation improvements, with both prop 1A and 1B passing by wide margins.

I'm also glad that 1C passed, which provides shelters for battered women and their children, clean and safe housing for low-income senior citizens, and the like.

Sex offender reform, and the disaster/flood bond also passed. Good stuff.

The real victory, however, was the passage of Prop 84, the clean water act.

California beaches saw a 30% increase in beach closures and health advisories – from 3,985 days in 2004 to 5,175 days in 2005.

It's never been entirely safe to surf after a big rain because of the toxic runoff, but the situation in recent years has gotten completely out of control. More than 1.5 million Southern California beachgoers get sick each year simply swimming in the local ocean. Ear infections and respiratory infections shouldn't be part and parcel of a winter surf.

Prop. 84 provides $540 million to help preserve our ocean and major bays. It provides $90 million for coastal water quality/clean beaches, $135 million to the State Coastal Conservancy and $90 million for storm water cleanup.

This one was huge.

Thumbs Down
Not everything was a winner, however, and that's too bad. Prop 86 would have imposed a $2.60 tax on every pack of cigarettes. It was narrowly defeated. Bummer. Think about it. Ultimately, who cares where the extra tax money went? Just the price increase alone would have reduced smoking.

Prop 87 was soundly defeated. This would have established $4 billion program with goal to reduce petroleum consumption by 25%, with research and production incentives for alternative energy, alternative energy vehicles, energy efficient technologies, and for education and training. Clearly not enough people saw An Inconvenient Truth.

Nero fiddled.

Well, like the old commercials said, "you can pay me now or pay me latter." I wonder what the true cost of our inaction will be?