In 1990 Californians voted for a term limit law which limited the Assembly to six years and the Senate for 8 year. An argument has been made that the limits placed on these elected officials is breeding inexperience in our states government. The term limits on our elected officials is too short for anyone to seriously get a handle on the complexities of running the state of California.

93 is written so it appears the amount of time a person serves in the state legislature is reduced from 14 years to 12 and it would allow all the 12 years to be served entirely in the State Assembly, State Senate or a combination of both.

At first when I read this proposition my instinct was to vote yes. I agree experience is needed to run the state and we should give our elected officials the time needed to be proficient managers.  Because there are time limits on state legislatures, most of them spend their time focusing on their next political job and not on the state. By allowing them to stay in office longer (as long as we vote them to stay in) we give our elected officials time to learn the business.

Proponents of 93 make the case that lobbyists and other special interest groups have the upper hand with our government because the churn rate is so high and our government is filled with Freshman and Sophomores who lack the long term experience needed to run the state.

With that said why am I against 93? I have two issues with it.

The state is running a 14 billion deficit. As far as I am concerned the folks running things are not doing their jobs well enough.  The way this proposition was written it craftily grandfathers a select few of our current legislators who are due to end their terms the end of this year to hold their seats for another 4 – 6 years.

From all I’ve read this bill is being pushed by special interest groups who want these officials to stay in office longer; specifically, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate President Perata.

I think these guys need to go.

Secondly, the original proposition which Californians voted in 1990 on terms limits still should hold for anyone who was elected into power before prop 93 takes over.  We voted thinking there were term limits and if those limits should change, let them change when those official have fulfilled their duties.

This prop smells funky to me. If it was really for the cause of experience and the state, no one should be grandfathered in.

Proposition 92 is designed to lower student fee’s in community colleges across California. Additionally it limits future fee increases practically locking in low student tuition rates. The proposition also guarantees that the community college system would become independent from state politics and be self governed.

When I first read about this proposition I thought it sounded really good. My thoughts were that lowering fees would allow more students to attend college and increase their education. More students would mean more college educated workers in the work force making it better for society as a whole.

After careful review it appears this proposition may actually hurt the state more than benefit it. Although prop 92 says they will not hurt K-12 funding or raise taxes I cannot see where they will get the money to fund this. Our state is already running at a deficit and the only way to fund such a plan would be to raise taxes of pull from the funds of other critical programs.

One of the main reasons I am voting down this prop is from reading the stats which I found from the arguments in favor. The average student is 28 years old and they will see their income jump from $25,600 to $47,571 three years after earning their degree. That’s a nice raise in income and quite an incentive for students to pay their way.

In various places around the web I’ve read that the students fees may represent no more than 5 percent of the real cost for students. Living expenses, books and transportation are the real costs for students.

Unless I see a real plan demonstrating where the monies will come to support this proposition, I am shooting it down.

Proposition 91 was created to prevent the state from spending gas tax revenues on endeavors not related to transportation.

This would appear to be a good thing to vote yes on if it were not for the fact that this measure had already been voted on in Nov 2006 under Prop 1A.

77% of the voters have already approved this measure. I plan to vote no or just leave it blank.

A scam artist auctions off a phone on eBay but sends the winner only “photos” of it. But that’s not all, this dumb bitch then goes on Judge Judy, a show with 10 million viewers claiming that the auction clearly stipulated the auction was for the images of the phone, not the phone itself.

She should have been tasered!

Wow… just wow!

Burger King Whopper Freakout

If you have 7 minutes to spare you should watch this. I think Burger King takes capturing customer testimonials to the next level. Instead of asking what people thought of their product after ordering it, they captured their reactions when they were told that could not have it.

We have some new pictures in. Abigail is now 10 weeks old and as you can see she is sporting her “Adorable” attire.  You can find some more pictures of Abigail and family here.

I am a bit behind the times when it comes to using Google Maps, approximately 6 months or so. While at the Kelsey SES Local Conference the Director of Google Maps demonstrated a very cool feature.

You can type in an address and it will zoom you right into that location and you can look around 360 as if you’re standing there, right in the middle of the street. This is not a satellite view! The last time I played with this type of stuff was using satellite view and all you could see were roof tops of homes and buildings. This is a much different experience and is very sweet!

I chose to stand on the corner of Marine Dr, San Francisco to look at the Golden Gate Bridge.

1. Go to maps.google.com and type in an address. On the top right of the map notice an icon called “Street View”
2. Certain areas on the map should turn blue and a little orange person appears.
3. Move the orange person into any part of the blue area.