It's a simple enough question, what's wrong with California lately. It seems that this cool state has totally become uncool quickly. A lot of shit has and is going down and well, I think you need to be brought up to speed on exactly what is messing up this once great place turning it from a the west where everyone belonged to somewhere that is nice to visit, but they wouldn't want to live here.
We can't go to far without addressing the flamboyant 900 pound gorilla dressed in drag in the room. Gay marriage. Yesterday the supreme court, like I stated the other day, came out and stated that Prop 8 will be upheld. Which brought out all the wackos out of the woodwork.
Jorge Riley, 31, of Sacramento had to get up earlier to make the drive to San Francisco to hoist his sign reading, " 'Gay' = Pervert."Jorge Riley sounds like a huge faggot. What Jackass Riley and other Pro-Prop 8 douche bags want to preserve is the word "Marriage" and keep it as a protected term.
"I don't know how many times it's going to take for the judges to listen to the will of the people," Riley said.
Except the problems come from the fact that civil unions don't grant the same rights. Apparently, there are well over a thousand rights that heterosexual couples get that homosexual couples don't, such as adoption, joint parental rights, next-of-kin status at hospitals, joint filing of taxes, leave to care for your sick partner, certain types of life insurance, many of the tax credits associated with families, and a bunch of other things.
If you feel that there's no difference between being married in the eyes of the law and just having your common law This (21 page PDF)should be required reading for anyone who believes that it is possible to give someone all the rights and privileges of marriage without calling it marriage. Most of the states that made the leap to marriage equality did so because it was impossible to pull off even after years of trying. Federal recognition would make civil unions less shitty but they will never be equal to marriage.
Mormons first lied about how much they donated to the support of the prop 8 and then yesterday they released this smug comment.
Today’s decision by the California Supreme Court is welcome. The issue the court decided was whether California citizens validly exercised their right to amend their own constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman. The court has overwhelmingly affirmed their action.What a bunch of bastards. It's a slap to the face since Prop 8 was polling consistently for No until the Yes on 8 campaign was launched. It not only told outright lies about the issue (claiming that churches would be forces to recognize gay marriage) but it also had millions more dollars and an infinitely better outreach program. The reason it passed with that slight win was because the religious communities went full tilt in campaigning for it and what do you have now? The Supreme court stripping away the rights of people all for a majority win.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognizes the deeply held feelings on both sides, but strongly affirms its belief that marriage should be between a man and a woman. The bedrock institution of marriage between a man and a woman has profound implications for our society. These implications range from what our children are taught in schools to individual and collective freedom of religious expression and practice.
Accordingly, the Church stands firmly for what it believes is right for the health and well-being of society as a whole. In doing so, it once again affirms that all of us are children of God, and all deserve to be treated with respect. The Church believes that serious discussion of these issues is not helped when extreme elements on both sides of the debate demonize the other.
The problem here is that churches want to operate as private groups, yet want the protections and funding of public institutions. I'm sure it warrants a blog all to itself, but I think that the tax breaks and extra rights for married couples need to just get cut off completely regardless of your orientation. Tax breaks and extra rights for married couples of any orientation should seriously be gone for an equal society.
But that isn't the only thing wrong with California. Not by a long shot. Perhaps a lot of the bigger issues (not saying equality isn't a big issue, by the way) is being overshadowed by these protest. If we actually looked at all the problems that California had and protested, rioted and screamed out to the streets to take down our elected officials, then we'd actually be out just about every day of the week.
It would take a lot to really explain everything that is wrong with this state.
First off we have Prop 13 which requires 2/3 majority to raise taxes in any form, preventing property taxes on property that doesn't change ownership from rising by more than 1% per year. This means that young people buying homes get fucked hard and the rich/old get an amazing deal and don't have to support their portion of the county/city governments. So the state has to bail out local governments repeatedly. All because young people didn't turn out to vote on this shit.
Next up you have the prison system with its incredibly strong guard union and idiotically long 3 strikes sentencing means we're paying soe ridiculously obscene amounts to house a huge number of prisoners and simultaneously triple bunking them in terrible conditions.
It's simple. You take all the money and give it to the cops for "anti-gang" domestic terrorism. Which get a lot of people in jail. Oh wait, now with all those people in jail you have to spend a lot to keep them fed, with power and guarded which adds up. So then you cut money from education and health care to pay for those prisons. Oh wait, shitty school systems and no jobs causes people to commit crime and end up in jail. Now what do we do? We blame welfare and then we privatize prisons.
Then you get into the Republicans. For as much as we claim we're the beacon and progressive trend setter of the nation, we have a lot of fuckin' republicans. We gave the world Reagan and Nixon. The first was responsible for the stupid 2/3 vote shit that has fucked us up. As long as republicans don't allow the democrats to have super majority, they have equal power in crafting the budget. Which is hilarious and means we can never raise taxes. Democrats still have congress so they'll keep rolling out programs expecting the money to come from somwhere that never shows. And of course republicans get just as many new programs and spending because otherwise it wouldn't be FAIR. Apparently bipartisanship means each side gets 50% of the power despite how anyone votes.
Speaking of what Reagan gave us. He sure fucked us with the shitty proposition system which means anyone who is rich enough can pay signature gatherers to put anything on the ballet. Cost for a measure is $1 million and all you need after that is 50%+ of the popular vote to pass anything including CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS THAT CAN ONLY BE OVERTURNED BY 2/3 OF CONGRESS! So we get a bunch more spending on shit we don't need and as abonus our liberal courts get overturned by the writhing masses every time.
The short of it is that there's too many programs to pay for because it's so easy to tack on a program on the ballots and get it passed. Look at Prop 8. While I love high speed trains, who do you think is going to pay for that program? Especially when republicans don't want to raise taxes, democrats don't want to cut programs. So you're stuck with us always going into the red to pay for a lifestyle that is well beyond our means.
So when you're asked who's fault is it that California is shit, you should answer with "Your Mom!" Cause that's who votes for every proposition that sounds like it would benefit someone and honestly believes we can just print more money to pay for it.
As for Arnold. While you can't balance a budget with one-liners, he is doing the best that he can. He's trying his hardest to fix the problems which is kind of cool but his methods apparently involve the state simply not paying public employees or paying them less than minimum wage so soon in addition to not having money we won't have any competent public workers either.
The problem is that California made a shit tons of money in the 90's during the tech boom, squandered it all on tax cuts, tied their entire state's livelihood into real estate and you know how that turned out. Then on ballot initiatives, flawed state politics and had too many people living unsustainable lifestyles.
The worse part is that we can never raise enough money through taxes unless the voters say yes in 2/3rds. Which never happens. So really the fault is the budget is controlled by the voters through various propositions and over time they have guaranteed that California should spend 150% of their tax income. Oh and taxes can never increase.
Oh, and a follow up to last yesterdays blog about the day in court. I got a rather loud pounding on my door today from the DA serving me up a subpoena to be a witness. I was also told that the other douche who held the guy back would be a witness today. So yeah, I follow up his buddy as a witness. Grraaaaaand. Hey, at least it may finally get resolved, right?
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