NOTE TO CALIFORNIA VOTERS: NO

NOTE TO CALIFORNIA VOTERS: NO ON 49 AND 51

Look, I know that getting anywhere near a polling place where you might have to vote for either Davis or Simon is a pretty nauseating prospect. But it’s your civic duty to go and vote against these two propositions. 49 is about after-school programs, and it’s supported by Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Teachers Association. If that isn’t enough to make you vote against it, see this from the League of Women Voters.

Prop. 51 is even more disgusting. It pretends to be about safe transportation. It’s actually a pretty little racket cooked up by a campaign consultant, who solicited a bunch of money from people with financial interests in specific projects and bundled them together as a proposition.

After we finish recalling the crooked governor we’re about to re-elect, how about a nice constitutional convention? I think California’s ship of state needs its barnacles scraped. (Okay, okay, we can keel-haul Davis first.)

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com