Has anyone noticed that the 1911 Progressive Era additions to the California constitution, namely the provisions allowing initiatives and referendums, have run this state into the ground? Yes, it’s taken nearly a hundred years, but we now live in a nearly failed state that is so tied in knots by the votes of the people that we can’t raise taxes only lower them, can’t balance a budget only find more ways to borrow from our future, and with Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision upholding Proposition 8, can’t protect fundamental rights like equality under the law only rubber stamp the tyranny of a 2 percent majority.

Proposition 13 passed by the voters in 1978, the mother of all knots binding the Legislature, makes it nearly impossible to increase taxes for any reason and caused a dramatic reduction in state and local revenues. The result was an underfunded education system, underfunded transportation system, and the need for more initiatives such as Prop. 98 passed in 1988 to protect funding for schools from legislators caught between Prop. 13 and an ever growing demand for state services.

What makes California “ungovernable” is how easy it is to qualify for the ballot. Just collect signatures equal to 5 or 8 percent of the total number of votes in the last election for Governor, add money equivalent to the cost of just 5 to 8 San Francisco homes, and in a matter of months (dare I say 5 to 8 months) you too can change California law or even its constitution. Just don’t ask the majority of the people to pay for anything, they don’t like that.

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Published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association is a research letter from the San Francisco Department of Public Health that documents a more than 30% increase in the number of HIV positive patients identified after removing the bureaucratic hurdle of requiring written consent for HIV tests from patients. This evidence should help an effort by California’s leading HIV treatment, prevention, and advocacy organizations to remove the term “informed consent” from state law a proposed in AB 682 by Assemblymember Patty Berg (D-Eureka).

Editor's Note: This is the first installment of CMR's Ask the Expert. See here for more information. On Monday, a new expert will be available for questions. 

As one who's also been in the struggle, here in CA, to achieve equality in marriage for lesbian & gay persons, what would you suggest is the best  approach to change Gov. Schwarzenegger’s current thinking and sign a marriage equality bill?

Personally, I believe Mr. Schwarzenegger already thinks that lesbian and gay couples should have the right to marry, that our insurance coverage and pensions and taxes and death benefits should be equal, and that our families and children should have the full protection and support of the law. Certainly First Lady Maria Shriver and other key advisers such as Susan Kennedy and Daniel Zingale know in the very core of their being that marriage equality is a basic human right that should be respected on a global scale.  

The Governor’s veto of Assemblyman Mark Leno’s marriage equality bill in 2005 was based on the politics that work for Schwarzenegger and not on a strongly held religious conviction or deep-seated bigotry.

Editor's Note: This is the first installment of CMR's Ask the Expert. See here for more information. On Monday, a new expert will be available for questions. 

Any thoughts on what can we do about Schwarzenegger's "I say, pave it" auto-centric transit robbing transportation plans? Can we invite him to come ride the J Church and see if taking a billion dollars away from transit is really that hot of an idea, or something? What are the pressure points?

 
The problem with the Governor is that being from LA he doesn’t understand that transit isn’t just for poor people who don’t vote. Getting Mr. Schwarzenegger to ride an inbound J Church train at 8:30 am on a weekday with hundreds of other white collar workers would no doubt be eye-opening for him. Rush hour commutes on most Bay Area transit systems is a standing room only proposition; and in some cases like the K, L, or M trains at San Francisco’s Castro Station, commuters are left no choice but to elbow their way onto a packed train or be left standing on the platform at 9 am late for work.

Don’t miss CBS News editorial writer Dick Meyer’s piece asserting that Newt Gingrich, and the U.S. House Republican leaders that came after him, are “a bunch of weirdos.” Before the fall of 2006, I think we all had become numb to the mountain of hypocrisy upon which the Republicans’ indignant tone is built.

I would add to Meyer’s points the hypocrisy of Fox News whose network led the charge to a lower cultural discourse with the 1987 hit “Married with Children.” The network has continued to be the cutting edge of cultural crassness by bringing it to TV news as well.

Fox News commentators speak with the same indignant tone as Gingrich and company, but they make it ruder and more in your face. Implied is the moralistic prudishness that often accompanies flag waving of Republican ilk, but at Fox that flag is planted firmly between the ample breasts of Peggy Bundy.

 

The Sunday San Francisco Chronicle reports that Congresswoman Mary Bono’s bill (H.R. 6143), which would reauthorize the Ryan White CARE Act that funds most federal HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, is unlikely to be taken up by the lame duck Republican Congress. That’s good news for California and for Mary Bono’s constituents.

At the end of their legislative update dated September 30 , the Office of Governor Schwarzenegger reports that in 2006 there were 262 bills vetoed. However, after a careful counting of all vetoes reported on the website as of October 1, there are only 164 vetoes reported for 2006. That means 98 vetoes are missing and only known to the outside world if the bill’s author has successfully publicized the veto.

Everyone’s heard the jokes about sex in prison. Most of them turn on straight men’s aversion to sex with other men. However, studies show that somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of prisoners have sex while incarcerated. When you consider California’s 151,000 men in prison, that adds up to a lot of sex behind bars. Now consider something no one should be joking about, our prisons are HIV infection factories where a ban on condoms has made our nation’s correctional system a driving force behind the rapid rise in HIV/AIDS infections in minority communities.