Most folks know by now I don’t endorse or oppose candidates – no way to predict their behavior once elected, experience shows their promises are empty, unenforceable, virtually worthless. You decide who gets your vote.
Ballot props on the other hand can be evaluated, and since I vote, I can share results of my own evaluations. Arizona has two this year. First: Do NOT vote early, so your vote absolutely counts, as planned.
We should rise up as a nation as one, on one day, and choose our next elected leaders. It makes us a political unit, cohesive — from many, one: E pluribus unum. This is important, it’s the plan; it’s a good plan.
Dissolving the election out over a month or more is practically a plot, wiping out the original inspired plan. Between the BOGUS EARLY DATE and the REAL CONSTITUTIONAL ELECTION DATE:
candidates die or worse,
they are arrested,
they withdraw,
you learn they are lowdown bottom feeding maggots, worse than you dreamed,
WikiLeaks spills dirt,
the media spins,
phony “polls” mislead,
advertising lies,
money promotes, and worse.
Your vote gets wasted, bent, misled, and worst: cast at the wrong time.
Recently hundreds of thousands of people early voted for Canadian-Cuban-American Ted Cruz who was on ballots but no longer running. Wasted votes. Cuban-American Marco Rubio too. They wasted their votes. You know who you are. But it gets worse.
The frenzied breathless live tallies election night only count real votes. Early votes – huh, maybe sometimes somewhere, it was unclear at press time – sit in envelope boxes to get opened and counted later – only if the election is close enough statistically to matter. Is that what you want? What’s Election Day for?
Yeah, I know the arguments. Early voting is so convenient! Voting is not about convenience, it’s about running America.
I don’t want to miss voting! You don’t miss an airplane, don’t miss the vote. I have to tell you this?
I may be out of town and need an absentee ballot! Did I say anything about legit absentees? Sheesh.
But again, the main thing is the spirit of the thing. Rise up with your neighbors and select your leaders on the same day. Don’t spread it out over an arduous month so the election is an afterthought (“47% have voted already in Floridistan! It’s over with only two weeks to go… said the announcer for Rock 99 FM”). I heard CNN say practically that. If the choice is made before Election Day – that virtually is a plot. I thought the commies were dead. (Hint: they are very much alive and active.) Sure, I wish we had better choices than we do. I always do. And I admit to having no solution to that conundrum.
Statewide Arizona Propositions
Prior state elections posed complicated, numerous and confusing ballot propositions, and I was glad to provide plain-English descriptions of the bureaucratic bafflegab we faced.
This year we have two statewide propositions, and the choices are EASY, depending on where you stand on issues, because the propositions are clear.
Arizona statewide Proposition 205
“Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act”
If you like pot and you say damn the torpedoes full speed ahead you’ll vote yes. If you believe marijuana is the scourge of society and the end of our civilization you must vote no. I’m not taking a position publicly, and of course, voting is secret in America, a priceless value the left and the right have virtually forgotten, eh?
Unfortunately for the right, there is no constitutional authority to regulate vegetables, so the feds have no legitimate role here, the states though do under the 10th Amendment, and so the people’s will should control.
For libertarians and theoretically republicans, it’s a nightmare, since it introduces astounding levels of government regulation, taxation, cartels, a new police force, registration and record keeping, taxation and bureaucracy. For recreation.
On the other hand, it does eliminate an entire level of criminalization, for possession of up to one ounce of pot, a holy grail of millions of people who just want to be left alone. The effect on schools, road safety, public funding, addictive problems, employment, entrepreneurship, artistry and other societal functions are hotly disputed.
A YES vote introduces a 14-page complex private/government-run cartel monopoly system for removing marijuana, derivatives and gear from most state criminal penalties, taxing the goods and allowing its private use by most adults in the state. The state government medical-marijuana supply-chain cartel would establish the system. Federal bans and crimes remain but are unenforced by Obamic decree.
A NO vote leaves the current system in place, with the main suppliers being illicit foreign and domestic cartels, and the state government medical-marijuana supply-chain cartel, plus the expensive partners, the U.S. drug agencies with whom the cartels battle non-stop forever. The supply of drugs is unaffected.
If you want the criminality dropped at all costs you’ll vote yes. The Arizona cartel gives you bar codes and ads, the Mexican cartel gives you baggies.
Both systems force astronomically high prices for a simple vegetable product.
Because this is a proposition, any changes or adjustments that may be needed after passage, which are typical, will need supermajority legislative votes (75%), so fixes will be real tough.
Arizona statewide Proposition 206
“The Fair Wages and Healthy Families Act”
This comes down to whether you believe a business owner owns a business or the government owns a business. If you own your own business, then you get to set the wages. Vote NO on government mandated wage levels.
If you believe government has legitimate power to make things “fair,” or to set prices where it believes a market should be set, vote YES to force business owners to pay their employees (prices would rise to $12 per hour in 2020).
A YES vote will require employers of certain private businesses to pay employees a minimum wage that rises in four steps until 2020 to $12 per hour. A NO vote leaves the market as it is now.
The bill also requires 40 hours annual “earned paid sick time” for employees of large employers (24 hours for those of small employers); time accrues at one hour earned for every 30 hours worked, with conditions and other time off benefits.
NOTE: The proposal includes some coercion from the unions. Employees are exempt if they expressly waive the benefits under “collective bargaining agreements.” In other words, you are encouraged to unionize to get excused from the requirements. It’s dirty pool, just thought you should know.
