Tuesday, November 8, 2005

I'm not gonna watch any of the election results because I'm so, so tired of the whole campaigning thing. I voted, I did my civic duty, not like it'll make a difference or anything. The polling place thoroughly annoyed me — there was only one voting booth and I can't understand for the life of me why every single person in there took so damn long. It's not like there's any freaking decision to make: vote for the semi-corrupt Democrat, not the extremely corrupt Republican. Maybe they were trying to parse out Prop 2, which looked something like this:

Since 1996, 4% of the annual revenue from the Corporation Business Tax has been constitutionally dedicated to fund environmental programs. Approval of this constitutional amendment would: (1) expand the authorized uses of those revenues to provide grants for the costs of air pollution control equipment to reduce particulate matter emissions from diesel-powered engines, and funding for other measures to reduce human exposure to those emissions, and (2) change the allocation of funds for the existing authorized uses. The Constitution currently allocates one-half for hazardous discharge cleanup performed by the State, a minimum of one-sixth or a minimum of $5,000,000 for water quality projects, and a minimum of one-third for funding loans or grants for underground storage tank upgrades, replacements, closures and remediations, loans or grants to remediate hazardous substance discharges, and for an underground inspection program. This constitutional amendment would reduce the allocation for hazardous discharge cleanup by the State to 33% for ten years, allocate 17% for that period for grants for air pollution control programs, and would allow up to $1,150,000 per year of that 17% allocation to be used for the State's associated administrative costs. Also, this amendment would allow the use of no more than $1,000,000 per year for State administrative expenses for the underground storage tank program, and would allow an appropriation by the Legislature of up to $10,000,000 from the preceding unexpended balances dedicated and appropriated for the underground storage tank program to provide grants for cost of air pollution control equipment to reduce particulate matter emissions from diesel-powered engines, and funding for other measures to reduce human exposure to those emissions.
What the hell? We've got Americans who can't figure out how to put a pointy thing through a piece of paper, but they're expected to understand this? We can only hope the masses abstain. (Or vote yes on Prop 2, cause the other option is siding with corporate criminals and polluters.)

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