Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I'm starting a short series of blog posts about the ballot propositions on my ballot this year. "Props", as we call them for short, are often thought of as a California thing, though they're part of the process in a number of other states as well. It's worth taking a close look at props each cycle because they can be complex; more complex, say, than choosing whether to vote for Candidate A or Candidate B.

How are propositions complex? I mean, you just vote yes or no, right? For one, there are 3 types of ballot propositions with different rules and different impacts. Two, propositions may be poorly written or purposefully deceptive, among other problems. By the way, you can't let this complexity cause you to throw your hands up in disgust and vow to vote "No" on all of them. Due to the way the different types of props work, some of them will actually block or even reverse an act of the legislature if a majority of the people vote No,

This year there are a whopping 10 statewide ballot props plus several local props in my area. I'll start with the statewide props in numerical order, outlining a few per blog.This will take several days, so it's good I'm starting now! By the way, this isn't just altruistic. This is me doing my own research and me articulating my argument for or against to be confident my reasoning is sound.

Prop 2: Bond for Public School & Community College Facilities: Yes.

For this prop as with all the others the first source of information I'm checking is the California Secretary of State's Voter Information Guide | Propositions. This measure "Authorizes $10 billion in general obligation bonds for repair, upgrade, and construction of facilities at K-12 public schools (including charter schools), community colleges, and career technical education programs, including for improvement of health and safety conditions and classroom upgrades."

Years ago, when I was younger and less sophisticated in my understand of political economics, I looked at measures like this and scoffed, "Why does the state just pay for needed work? It seems like every year there's more bonds, extending payments out 30+ years. Why not just pay today for the stuff we need, today?"

Alas, that's not the reality of how the state's budget works. It would be nice if it were, but it's not. The only choice we have is pay this way, or let our schools continue to fall apart, worse.

I like to invest in our schools. Schools are an investment in our shared future. Schools educate the next generation, who'll help support us and help govern us in the future. Schools are also an investment in our economy. Good schools equal good local economies because people and companies want to locate here.

Another thing younger-me would've scoffed at is the fact that this measure is Put on the Ballot by the Legislature, as the voter information guide notes in bold and italic. "Why didn't the legislature just... y'know... legislate... this instead of sending it to us?" younger-me sneered. And that's why it's important to understand How California Ballot Propositions Work. This bond measure had to be approved by a super-majority of the legislature first, then it also has to be approved by the voters.

You can thank the anti-tax zealots for that process, BTW. And incidentally, those same anti-tax zealots also construct the deliberately false arguments yammering about, "Why didn't the legislature just... y'know... legislate... this instead of sending it to us?" that younger-me fell for years ago.

Prop 3: Constitutional Right to Marriage: Yes.

This proposition reverses 2008's Proposition 8, which defined marriage as only being between a man and a woman. It replaces that state constitutional amendment with a new amendment permitting marriage between any two adults, regardless of race or gender.

"How is this necessary?" critics of the measure ask. "Federal courts ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional in 2013." Yes, but consider what happened in 2022 with the US Supreme Court's Dobbs decision overturning nearly 50 years of jurisprudence under Roe v. Wade. We're just one case away from the far-right supermajority overturning the previous court's ruling and restoring California's ridiculous Prop 8. Our constitutional rights cannot be trusted to the interpretation of reactionary ideologues. We need to protect our liberties by putting them in plain text.

Note that this initiative is also tagged Put on the Ballot by the Legislature. Again, that is not an indication that the legislature is passing the buck. This is a Legislative Constitutional Amendment. It's already gone through the full process of being written and approved by both the Assembly and the state senate, and now it must be approved by a majority of the voters, too.

Edited to add: The list starts at 2 because that's the first prop this year.

Edit 2: Read about Props 4, 5, and 6 in my next blog.

The US Supreme Court has ended race-based affirmative action in universities. I know, unless you've been living in a cave that's not exactly news anymore. The Supremes handed down their somewhat predictably 6-3 decision (with its super-majority of conservative and ultra-conservative justices) just over two weeks ago, on Thursday, June 29. Example coverage: NPR News article, 29 Jun 2023.

Most things I could say about this decision have probably already been said elsewhere— especially because I am late to the party by about two weeks. But one thing I heard in the hours following the decision I've not heard or seen repeated anywhere, so I'll share it here.

A college admissions officer at a highly selective liberal arts university was being interviewed (quote slightly paraphrased):

"We've accepted as an assumption in our national discussion on the issue that college admissions is an objective assessment of a student's educational qualifications, and that anything else is discrimination."

The admissions officer went on to explain that college admissions is, in her view, really about what kind of community the school wishes to build. But it's the statement highlighted above that has stuck with me— because of the absurdity it contains.

How can there be an objective assessment of educational qualifications? It's a myth that there can be such a thing. Numbers like SAT scores, ACT scores, and even AP test scores have been shown for years to have limited correlation— reasonable correlation, just not strong correlation— with academic achievement post-high school. Heck, that was established long enough ago that I read the studies in textbooks published in the 1980s when I was in college in the 1990s. And just about everything else about an admissions decision is less numerical, less standardized than that, and therefore requires way more subjective evaluation.

New Orleans travelog #8
French Quarter - Monday, 23 Apr 2023, 4pm

Today we decided to visit a graveyard in New Orleans since the museums we wanted to visit were closed. [Ed.: This blog is delayed from almost 2 weeks ago.] After some discussion of alternatives we chose the St. Louis Cemetery #1 because it was the oldest— and also nearest. We could walk there from our hotel a block off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.

What's there to do in a cemetery? Learn, actually. Here are Five Things:

1. Graves in New Orleans are all above ground

Throughout most times and places in Western cultures, most of dead are buried underground. Above ground crypts are only for the very wealthy few. In New Orleans the calculus is different, as if you dig a hole even 18 inches deep it fills with water.



Originally inhabitants of New Orleans, founded by the French in 1718, buried their dead in the levees on the banks of the Mississippi River. That failed as soon as there was a natural flood... all of a sudden the coffins of the dead were floating among the living! Then they tried drilling holes in coffins (to allow water in) and sinking them in the river... that didn't work so well, either. St. Louis Cemetery #1, the oldest in the New Orleans (but named St. Louis because that's the name of the cathedral), was founded in 1789 when the region was under Spanish rule.

2. It's HOT inside. A year and a day.

It gets hot inside these brick and stone tombs. It's often 130° (55° C), the tour guide told us. This slowly cremates the remains inside. How slowly? Well, not too slowly. City ordinance dating back centuries is that tomb can be reopened a year and a day after a body is interred— and then it can be reused.

3. High mortality rates

On many of the tombs in New Orleans you'll see several names in the space for one body— sometimes a dozen names. This reflects not just the law allowing reuse of tombs (see above) and the economics of allocating real estate for the dead, but also the high mortality rate of the times.

"Half of all children died before their 5th birthday," our guide asserted. I've been unable to find hard data supporting that— but it's not too far off from widely understood figures. From 1800 to 1870, the child mortality rate was 40%+ globally. That means almost half of all children born alive didn't survive 5 years. Could something(s) particular to New Orleans have led to a higher death rate locally? Sure. The city was rife with poverty, and squalor, and... Yellow Fever.

4. HALF the city died?!

Yellow Fever was a scourge of New Orleans throughout the entire 1800s. It was only tracked officially starting in 1800, and its cause (mosquitos and poor sanitation) wasn't identified until 1900. Epidemics occurred almost annually after 1825. The worst outbreak was in 1853. "In that year alone the city lost half its population!" our guide asserted.

Half the residents died? That's a shocking statement. Again I did some research to check the numbers. Long story short: Various sources indicate the death rate from Yellow Fever topped out at around 5-7% per year. But that's still a lot of people when you think about it. Perhaps what the guide meant was in a 10 year period half of all city residents died. The numbers definitely support that! 💀

5. Racial history. Homer's defiance.

New Orleans had a history of racial integration. Founded as a French colony in 1718, its culture was more welcoming of Black and mixed-raced people than it would become after US statehood (as part of Louisiana) in 1812. During the French period it had a significant population of free people of color. And these non-white people were not just relegated to servant status a la the Jim Crow era that followed the Civil War; they were artisans, business owners, and educated. Even when the Spanish Crown tried tightening racial laws during the brief period of Spanish control in the late 1700s, locals developed ways around it to continue blending multi-racial families.

US statehood in 1812 brought a host of legal changes. All of a sudden the laws controlling Black and mixed-race people were very strict, and they were strictly enforced. Culture, though, tends not to change as quickly. Many of the French- and Spanish-speaking residents of the area— who were actually the majority for a long time— continued with their more "live and let live" ways. Or at least they tried.

There's an interesting bit of American history rooted here. Among the dead buried in this cemetery is a local fellow named Homer. Homer Plessy. A name that all US students learn in history class— or used to learn, before "anti-woke" hysteria became a thing.

In 1892 a group of prominent citizens, including Black, White, and mixed race people, wanted to challenge racial segregation laws. One of its members, Homer Plessy, bought  a train ticket and sat in the whites-only train car. Plessy was born a free man and was only one-eighth Black— but by US law that meant he was Black, and under Louisiana law that meant segregation. He was arrested.

Plessy's punishment may have been as short as a single night in jail (our guide's claim; I've been unable to verify with brief research) but the point wasn't to go to jail or not. The point was to challenge the law. Plessy appealed all the way up to the US Supreme Court. In 1896 the Supremes decided, in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision, to uphold segregation with the doctrine of Separate But Equal. That doctrine became the legal underpinning for the Jim Crow south. It was the law of the land for at least 58 years, until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and other cases in the years following, picked it apart.

Actress Nichelle Nichols passed away this past Saturday, July 30. She was aged 89. She was best known for her role as Lieutenant Uhura in the Star Trek TV series (1966-1969) and several feature films.

In her role as Uhura, Nicols, a black woman, was a trailblazer. Star Trek featured one of the first multi-racial casts on TV. Her kiss with star William Shatner in a 1968 episode is thought to be the first interracial kiss on US television.

No less a luminary than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weighed in on the significance of Nichols portrayal of Uhura. In a story she's told many times, she met King— surprisingly, a Trek fan— and confided in him that she was thinking of leaving the show for a role on Broadway, or even to join him in his marches. King told her to stick with the role of Uhura as she was fighting the same fight as him by playing that character on the screen.

Three White men who chased and murdered 25-year-old Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in south Georgia were sentenced to life in prison today. Two have no chance of parole. The third, a 52-year-old, will be eligible for parole under Georgia law only after serving a minimum of 30 years. Example news coverage: CNN.com article 7 Jan 2022, Yahoo! News article 7 Jan 2022, New York Times article 7 Jan 2022.

Ahmaud Arbery was killed on the afternoon of February 20, 2020. The convicted men spotted Arbery jogging in a residential neighborhood near his home, determined— with zero evidence— that he was a suspect in recent area robberies, and chased him for 5 minutes with their pickup trucks. Once they proceeded to block him in, the three men closed on him, at least one leveling a shotgun at him while another recorded cellphone video. A fight ensued, and the man with the shotgun shot Arbery 3 times at close range.

Swept Under the Rug

This murder was originally swept under the rug. Police arrived at the scene and quickly made a determination that the men who chased Arbery and pointed a gun at him were acting in self defense. Nobody was arrested. Two district attorneys chose not to prosecute. Justice might never have been served... until 73 days later one of the perpetrators posted his cellphone video of the murder on social media, boasting about it. This caused an outrage among members of the community— and across the state and nationwide. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia's Attorney General, and the FBI were called upon to investigate.

As an aside, this is one of the critical ways that racial injustice is perpetrated. Not only are Black people convicted more often when brought to trial than Whites, and not only are they given harsher sentences when convicted, but they are also charged more often in circumstances where police and prosecutors use their discretion not to arrest or prosecute White suspects.

Aside #2: In case it's not obvious, this was a modern day lynching. White men decided a Black man in their neighborhood was a crime suspect. Even though they called 911 to report him, and even though he had committed no actual crime they witnessed, they decided to chase him down and threaten him with guns. When he acted to defend his life, they killed him. Then, of course, the chummy local authorities let them go.

Justice Delayed but not Denied (So Far...)

This is a case where justice may have been delayed but has ultimately not been denied.... so far. The judge who sentenced the men today made the courtroom sit in silence for one minute before reading their sentencing to put "into context" how long they chased Arbery.

Judge Timothy Walmsley told the courtroom on Friday that he was going to "sit quietly for one minute and that one minute represents a fraction of the [5 minutes] that Ahmaud Arbery was running" away. Example news coverage: Yahoo! News article, 7 Jan 2022.

Note how I do add the caution "so far" to justice having been delivered here. That's because the convicted men have avenues of appeal. Though there's no visible mistake in their trial, they are of course able to challenge it from multiple directions, and quite possibly the same racism embedded in the system that shrugged off their actions as "Seems legit" the first time will support them again on appeal. But it's also possible that they'll be convicted of more charges, as federal civil rights cases are pending against them.

A few other positive changes have come out of this case. The first district attorney who passed on charging the men, and who allegedly told the police not even to arrest them, has been charged with one felony count of violating the oath of a public officer. Days after the shooting the police chief was indicted on charges of coverup for unrelated incidents. Voters subsequently voted out the district attorney and elected new county commissioners who replaced the police chief. Finally, the Georgia legislature passed a bill, which was signed by the governor, repealing the law allowing Citizen's Arrest— a holdover law from the Civil War era used as a common pretext for lynchings, which these murderers asserted, falsely, in their defense.