Endorsementfest (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Thursday, 2 November 2006

Endorsementfest

Here’s how I plan to vote Tuesday… feel free to try to change my mind.

U.S. Senator: Claire McCaskill (D). Frankly, I despise both major party candidates with a passion, and every campaign ad makes me despise both of them more. Both Talent and McCaskill are lightweights, but that’s fine for a state that has a storied history of sending lightweights to Congress. This is simply a vote for divided government—no more, no less.
U.S. House: whatever Libertarian is on the ballot; I can’t even remember if I’m in District 2 or District 3, but my vote has been gerrymandered out of meaningfulness either way.
Stem cell initiative (Amendment 2): for. As far as I can tell, the only substantive effect is to prevent the state legislature from banning stem cell research if it so chose; unlike California’s initiative, it creates no funding for research in and of itself. Plus the opponents just sound like idiots—I get about the same visceral reaction to people who use the term “cloner” as those who use the word “abortionist,” which is basically “run for the hills before this creep can corner me.”
Tobacco tax increase (Amendment 3): against. It’s a tax increase, and a regressive one at that. Not to mention it’s an intergenerational transfer: the old people who were dumb enough to smoke 17 packs of Marlboros a day get their health care paid for by kids who smoke a pack a week. Besides, wasn’t all that tobacco settlement money supposed to pay for this crap in the first place? No thanks.
Judicial pay amendment (Amendment 7): for.
Minimum wage increase (Proposition B): against; the Earned Income Tax Credit works better and actually helps poor people, unlike minimum wage increases (the effects which primarily accrue to union members well above the poverty line whose wages are often tied to multiples of the minimum wage). The Economist explains why.

5 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

1. Alfie Sumrall wrote @ Thu, 2 Nov 2006, 4:01 pm CST:

I’m surprised the new voting machines didn’t blow up when I cast my ballot. Mine may be the only one that looks like this:

Senate: Corker —Conservative R—As the potential pivotal voter and as as much as I like Ford as a person, I cannot let myself potentially be responsible for the Democrats taking control of the Senate
House: Cohen—Ultra-liberal D (canceling out a vote for Jake Ford; I hate doing that that, but we both know a white Republican can’t and won’t win in that district)
Governor: Bredesen—Conservative D and a damn fine governor as far as I can tell
Letting cities decide if people over 65 have to pay property tax: For—It’s puts taxation power at the local level. Mississippi has done this a while and no one seems to be at harm.
Amendment to define marriage as man and woman: Against—I just really don’t care. I don’t believe letting gays and lesbians marry will result in society crumbling; if anything, continued divorces and single mothers trying to raise children will do a lot more harm.

2. Xrlq wrote @ Thu, 2 Nov 2006, 5:58 pm CST:

Split government is overrated. Any vote for a Democrat for Senate is a vote to replace Justice Stevens with a Souter clone.

My votes: no on marriage amendment, yes on cleaning up unconstitutional verbiage, yes on allowing local tax relief, Allen for Senate, Cantor for Congress.

3. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Thu, 2 Nov 2006, 6:06 pm CST:

Xrlq: Maybe, but the prospect of a Souter clone doesn’t bug me too much. Perhaps I’m just still annoyed by Scalia’s position in Raich.

4. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Thu, 2 Nov 2006, 6:35 pm CST:

I forgot about the amendment on taxing property held by non-profit veterans’ organizations. My heuristic says I like veterans and should vote for it, but then again I’m not big on distorting the tax code.

5. Xrlq wrote @ Fri, 3 Nov 2006, 1:38 pm CST:

I’m as annoyed by Justice Scalia’s position in Raich as the next guy, but I can’t for the life of me say why I should be any less annoyed by the position taken by Justices Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer in that same case. The only reason I can think of is that those five are so consistently wrong on everything that no one pays attention to their wrongness anymore.

Put differently, two of the three judicial conservatives did the right thing in Raich, while only one out of two moderates and zero out of four liberals did. When one of those four liberals goes, I’d rather have a Senate in place that will confirm the guy who has the 2:1 odds of getting the next Raich right (assuming, of course, that the vacancy occurs while we still have a President in office who would appoint such a judge in the first place).

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