Tomorrow is election day, because we like pretending at the
whole democracy thing still works.
Here in Massachusetts, as usual, there are a bunch of b.s.
ballot questions that need addressing.
There are also people running for elected positions, but that is good and decent
and exactly as it should be. Whatever my feels toward them, that's not what I want to discuss here.
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| "Vote Lincoln! Because Habeas Corpus is overrated, anyway!" |
Ballot
questions, on the other hand, are our misguided experiments with actual
democracy, as though to quietly remind us of why we don’t get to have
democracy. Because we can’t handle the
democracy.
I don’t like ballot questions. I have heard argued on many occasions that ballot
questions are in fact a more true expression of democracy, like the New England
tradition of a town meeting.
Anyone of you ever been to a town meeting? I have.
If that’s democracy, I don’t want no part of it. (Yes, grammar police, it’s a double
negative. I’m using it in its form as an
idiomatic expression.)
(What’s an idiomatic expression? Look it up.)
Town meetings are a train wreck, a shit storm, and a
sharknado, all rolled into one, but with a one old guy harping on about
parliamentary procedure, which no one has any idea about anyway.
Ballot questions aren’t quite that bad. In fact, they seem like such a good
idea. They allow us, the registered
voters, to directly vote on whether or not we support a specific measure, or to
change the current law. It allows us to
let our own voices be heard, without having to rely on the inconvenience of our
elected representatives trying to interpret our opinions.
And that’s where they go wrong.
I don’t WANT to bypass my elected representatives. We live in a Republic, which is a form of
representative democracy. We elect
people, those people debate and vote on our behalf, so we don’t have to. Sure, I can have opinions about how these
representatives should vote, and I can even express those opinions, but at the
end of the day, let them do the voting, because I’ve got shit to do!
The intent of the founders (speaking here of John Adams, who
single-handedly wrote the Massachusetts constitution, and whose ideas heavily
influenced the James Madison and the Constitutional Convention) was for a
bicameral legislature, meaning our laws would be decided by two separate but co-equal camels. (It’s true, I checked Snopes.) Being as no camels were available, people were
elected as representatives in their stead.
He cleverly split the legislature in two to help assure that no one’s
singular opinion of a law or idea would be given disproportional weight, since
both houses of would need to vote upon it, plus present it to the governor.
It can be a painful
process, watching sides snipe at each other over petty partisan ideas, but this
process, ultimately, leads to the best possible laws, as well as ways of
addressing unintended consequences of laws that, in retrospect, turn out to not
be the best.
Ballot questions try to bypass all of this, which usually
means they couldn’t pass the legislative process in the first place (or some
law did pass, but some guy didn’t like it, so he wants to repeal it). It is, ultimately, a waste of time, money,
effort, and the elective process. The
only upside is that, in cases where one question in getting a lot of publicity
(Hello, Question 3!), it might increase voter turnout. The potential downside is that people who
turn out for one question might not understand the issues and consequences of
the other questions on the ballot. The
only thing worse than direct voting is direct, uninformed voting.
But we have 4 questions this year, and, because no one ever
asked me my opinion, I will give it to you.
I don’t actually care if you agree or not. You have, I hope, your own opinions, and
perhaps we all could come together to discuss these opinions in a rational,
civilized, and intelligent matter, calling upon facts and logic to dictate the
outcome. I mean, we won't. But we could.
Question 1: The
Repeal of the Automatic Gas Tax To Inflation Indexing
Against. Against the
repeal, that is.
People are shouting out against the law previously passed
that would cause the gas tax to increase in line with the rate of inflation, in
order to make sure that the actual, inflation-adjusted revenue from the gas tax
stays the same, to allow it to do its job of paying for our vehicular
infrastructure. And they usually do it
by shouting, “No taxation without representation.”
Now, you just pissed me off twice.
“No taxation without representation” has a specific and
important historical meaning from the birth of our country, as one of the
founding ideas of the Revolutionary War.
It came from a time when the English Parliament passed numerous taxes on
the American colonies as a way of paying for the recent war with France (which,
by the way, they don’t call the French and Indian War). The colonists were a little ticked off because
they had no representatives in Parliament to at least argue their side. It wasn’t even an option.
Every single town, every single county, every single person
residing in this state that is of voting age has had the opportunity to vote
for a representative. Did your candidate
lose? That’s not “taxation without
representation,” that’s the fundamental principle behind a Republic, which you
may recognize is the form of government we came up with BECAUSE we had
“taxation without representation.”
So knock it off. The
government, which IS your representative, collects taxes to provide YOU
services. If you don’t like it, vote for
a different representative. If they
lose, tough luck. The majority is still
represented.
As for automatic tax increases tied to inflation? Seems pretty reasonable. Sure, it is true that you could expect the
legislature to review the rate of inflation every year, look at the potential
shortfall between the current tax rate and what will be needed to maintain our
roads and bridges, and adjust the tax rate accordingly, which would mean a
considerable amount of debate, a couple of politicians trying to play politics
with such a vital issue in order to make a name for themselves, and a vote in
both houses plus the signature of the governor.
Because that would be way more efficient. And either the tax increase would pass, which
would be the same outcome as the law already calls for, or it wouldn’t, because
people are stupid, and a bridge would fall down. Seems totally reasonable.
Question 2: Expansion
of Bottle Deposits.
For.
Very, very, very much for.
There’s no real controversy here except the manufactured kind. We already have bottle deposits for such
things as soda bottles and beer bottles. But, for some reason, not water bottles. It's worked well enough, encouraged recycling, encouraged less littering, and how many boy scouts and girl scouts have done bottle drive fundraisers that rely on such deposits? So, just apply it to water bottles.
No brainer. Go,
support it.
But the real issue here is this:
Stop drinking bottled water!
Let me explain, in simplest terms. This is the chemical structure of a plastic
water bottle:
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| Actually called polyethylene terephthalate. |
Plastic bottles are made of polymers, complex strings of
molecules that are designed, through the miracle of chemistry, to last practically FOREVER!
We are taking a substance create by science to persist in
our environment indefinitely and we’re using it to drink water out
of once, then throwing it away. This is
INSANE!
Buy a water bottle (the reusable kind), and fill it with tap
water. You can filter the water, if you
feel you must. This is also way cheaper
than paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $16 per gallon for bottled water,
which is really just someone else’s tap water stuck into a single use plastic
bottle, which, as I said, never really goes away after you’re done using it.
For that reason alone, if you do use bottle water, you
deserve to pay more for it.
(Sidebar: From this moment on, anyone who doesn’t believe in anthropogenic climate change doesn’t get to use plastic. Or cell phones. Or anything else made by science. Agreed?)
Question 3: Repeal of
Casino Gambling.
Against.
Perfect
example of my rant from above. This has
been explored, studied, voted on, and re-voted on so many times, just let the
damn thing be!
Oh, traffic will be a nightmare! Crime will go up! Just look at how awful things are in
Connecticut!
I checked the crime rates in Connecticut over the past fifty
years, and crime has been steadily decreasing since the late eighties and early
nineties, better known as the time when the casinos opened.
Might there be unexpected consequences for the communities
where the casinos are being built?
Maybe. Is gambling the best kind
of industry for economic growth? No, but
it is better than no industry. Will it
employ people and provide tax revenue to the state? Yep, and yep.
Should we repeal this law, which passed both houses of the legislature
and was signed by the governor before it has even actually taken affect (since
not one single resort casino, as specified in the law, has even begun
construction yet)?
No! Let the law do
its job, and let the legislature do their job.
This ballot question, for all the press it’s been getting, is ridiculous.
Question 4: In Which Employers Are Required to Grant Their Employees Sick
Time.
For.
Because, you know, I’m not an asshole.
Am I saying that anyone who votes to allow employers to not
provide sick time to employees because they don’t want to is an asshole?
Yes. Yes, I am.
That said, if you’re going to vote NO on 4, at least do it
because you think the legislature should be the body to debate, decide and pass
this law. Not because you’re an
asshole. Which you probably are.
So, in closing, please vote.
As a corollary, please know what you’re voting on, and why. And if someone disagrees with you, try to
find out what he or she bases his or her decision on, and try to under the
perspective of others. It probably won’t
change your mind, and you won’t change their minds, but what have you got to
lose, besides misinformation and partisan attack ads?
