McClintock on the Propositions – General Election 2024

Proposition 2 – We Have to Bankrupt our Children to Save Them: NO.  This is a $10 billion bond measure ($17.5 billion with interest – or $1,300 per household) to pay for public schools and colleges.  Despite spending record amounts on education, enrollment in California has plunged since 2014 while student achievement has crashed.  You can’t fill a broken bucket by pouring more water in it.  Tragically, only four state legislators had the courage to oppose Prop 2: Assemblyman Bill Essayli and Senators Brian Dahle, Brian Jones and Kelly Seyarto.  Hopefully, taxpayers will join them.

Proposition 3 – Anything Goes Marriage: NO.  At first blush – if anyone still blushes – this merely removes an obsolete provision in California’s constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman.  But that was already invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court.  This measure steps into uncharted territory, declaring marriage to be a fundamental constitutional right with no definition or limitation.  What does that mean, exactly?  In California?  Nobody seems to know, but it may bring back blushing.

Proposition 4 – Water Water Everywhere But Not a Drop to Drink: NO.  Here’s another $10 billion bond measure purportedly for water and “climate activities.”   The last water bond is being used to tear down existing dams rather than build new ones, and this measure promises more of the same.  Since 2000, voters have approved six water bond measures totaling $27 billion, all promising to enhance California’s water supply, yet the last major water project was the New Melones Dam in 1979.  Californians are now being told they must conserve water even during a flood year.  The most serious drought California faces is common sense.

Proposition 5 — Making Housing More Affordable by Raising its Cost: NO.   Local bond measures that drive up your property taxes require a 2/3 vote to pass.  This proposition lowers the threshold to 55 percent to pay for “affordable” housing.  So your housing costs will rise in order to provide for affordable housing.  Brilliant.  And remember, the state can’t account for $24 billion spent on homelessness over the last five years.   We used to have affordable housing at EVERY income level when builders were free to meet demand, and it didn’t cost taxpayers a dime.

Proposition 6 – Take the Next 15 Years to Life Off: NO.  This measure would forbid requiring prisoners to work.  They call it “involuntary servitude.”  Earth to woke idiots: there’s nothing voluntary about serving a prison sentence!  States like Texas require their prisoners to work to offset the costs of incarceration.  Much of the food consumed in Texas prisons is grown on prison farms.  This not only reduces the burden on taxpayers and conditions prisoners to a regular work schedule, it also means that after a day of work, prisoners are too tired to cause trouble.  This measure forbids any work requirement in California.  But the question may soon be moot: at the rate Newsom is releasing prisoners, it won’t be long before there aren’t any.

Proposition 32 – Minimum Wage and Maximum Unemployment: NO.  This leftist brain freeze raises California’s minimum wage to $18 an hour, making anyone whose labor is worth less than that permanently unemployable.  Newsom’s disastrous $20 an hour minimum wage for fast food outlets has resulted in the layoffs of tens of thousands of employees, reducing their minimum wage to precisely $0.  Those who remain have seen their hours cut back as employers try to stay in business, and consumers have discovered they’re paying the difference as higher prices.

Proposition 33 – Not Quite as Effective as Bombing a City: NO.  It just keeps getting crazier.  Prop. 33 would expand rent control in California to homes built after 1995.  We’ve tried price controls since Hammurabi, and they always produce shortages of whatever’s price is being controlled.  The immediate effect will be to see fewer houses being rented and declining maintenance on those that are.  As economist Assar Lindbeck observed, “Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing.”

Proposition 34 – Leftists are Not Our Teachers: NO.  A leftist activist named Michael Weinstein runs a sprawling network that generates millions of dollars by arbitraging California’s Medical Rx program and the Federal Drug Discount program, in effect, overcharging for the drugs used in his clinics.  Weinstein then uses these funds to indulge his leftist causes like rent control (see Prop. 33).  The California Apartment Association is trying to shut him down by requiring these ill-gotten gains be spent on health care – but only in this case.  Wouldn’t a more honest approach be to reform the programs so nobody can rip off taxpayers this way for any purpose?  This is an abuse of the initiative process, but I won’t cry for Weinstein if it passes.

Proposition 35 – Paying for Health Care for Illegals: NO.  In 2009, California imposed a tax on many private health plans in order to help pay for Medi-Cal.  Since then, California has expanded Medi-Cal eligibility to provide free health care to illegal aliens.  The good news: this purely socialist tax is due to expire in 2027.   The bad news: Prop. 35 will make the tax permanent, and families with private health plans will continue to pay more for their healthcare.   Only in California!

Proposition 36 – The Diamond in the Dunghill: YES.  In 2014, California voters naively passed Prop. 47, which dramatically reduced penalties for crimes such as shoplifting, burglary, car-jacking and drug possession.  Who would have thought this would produce more shoplifting, burglary, car-jackings and drug possession?  But it did.  Have Californians finally had enough?  We’re about to find out.  Prop. 36 puts teeth back into many of these laws.  We still have to rid ourselves of leftist prosecutors, judges, legislators and one particularly annoying and foolish governor, but this is a start.