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Looking at the Somerville ballot
The City of Somerville Web page has a top-level link to sample ballots. This is useful, largely because I don't seem to have gotten any information in the mail about what the candidates and issues are, and because the ballot has the full text of the initiatives.
Question 1: Wine in grocery stores. This question irks me for the oh-so-visible lack of objectivity in the advertising: of course grocery stores like it and liquor stores hate it. It seems to only be wine, though, and taking away a silly "you can only sell foo here" regulation isn't going to destroy society. I plan to vote yes.
Question 2: Multi-party candidates. "Limiting people to running only in just one party is so limiting; they should be able to run in as many parties as they want." Uh...okay...but having each name/party pair show up as a separate line on the ballot means that some people get more ballot space than others, and that can't be good for election fairness. I plan to vote no.
Question 3: Unionized child-care workers. There's got to be more politics hiding behind this one than are immediately visible. Even if state-hired child-care workers do unionize, they can't strike, and whatever the state agrees to still has to go through Process. This doesn't sound like it's actually adding anything to the system; my inclination is to vote no.
Question 4: Iraq. Does Somerville ask our Congresscritter to ask the President to send the troops home, now? My take is that we're uselessly dithering around there, getting lots of people killed and spending horrendous amounts of money, and it's not actually clear to me that the country would be in worse shape if we just vanished. So I'll vote yes.
Question 5: Right of Return (Palestinian). I don't get the anti-Israel people; more to the point, why does the US care? Some form as questions 4 and 6. The Wikipedia article is informative, and sounds to me like the right-of-return folks are trying to invent special cases to spite (Jewish) Israel. I vote no.
Question 6: Divestment (Massachusetts, Israel). Every indication I've seen is that this is ridiculously impractical to implement. "An S&P 500 index fund is a sensible basic investment, right?" "Ooh, some of those companies sell military equipment to any paying buyer, including Israel, can't do that." See also "trying to invent special cases to spite Israel". I vote no.
(On 4, 5, and 6, I tend to think the US military is best used defending US home soil from attackers; and given our lack of continuous near-nuclear border spats with Canada and Mexico, we have too much military for our own good. I also think the US shouldn't be meddling in other countries' internal politics or picking sides in foreign civil wars. If NATO or the UN thinks the world/the West is in grave danger, we should support them, but the US recently has been saying "we're too good to play with the other kiddies" even if they're on our side.)
Question 1: Wine in grocery stores. This question irks me for the oh-so-visible lack of objectivity in the advertising: of course grocery stores like it and liquor stores hate it. It seems to only be wine, though, and taking away a silly "you can only sell foo here" regulation isn't going to destroy society. I plan to vote yes.
Question 2: Multi-party candidates. "Limiting people to running only in just one party is so limiting; they should be able to run in as many parties as they want." Uh...okay...but having each name/party pair show up as a separate line on the ballot means that some people get more ballot space than others, and that can't be good for election fairness. I plan to vote no.
Question 3: Unionized child-care workers. There's got to be more politics hiding behind this one than are immediately visible. Even if state-hired child-care workers do unionize, they can't strike, and whatever the state agrees to still has to go through Process. This doesn't sound like it's actually adding anything to the system; my inclination is to vote no.
Question 4: Iraq. Does Somerville ask our Congresscritter to ask the President to send the troops home, now? My take is that we're uselessly dithering around there, getting lots of people killed and spending horrendous amounts of money, and it's not actually clear to me that the country would be in worse shape if we just vanished. So I'll vote yes.
Question 5: Right of Return (Palestinian). I don't get the anti-Israel people; more to the point, why does the US care? Some form as questions 4 and 6. The Wikipedia article is informative, and sounds to me like the right-of-return folks are trying to invent special cases to spite (Jewish) Israel. I vote no.
Question 6: Divestment (Massachusetts, Israel). Every indication I've seen is that this is ridiculously impractical to implement. "An S&P 500 index fund is a sensible basic investment, right?" "Ooh, some of those companies sell military equipment to any paying buyer, including Israel, can't do that." See also "trying to invent special cases to spite Israel". I vote no.
(On 4, 5, and 6, I tend to think the US military is best used defending US home soil from attackers; and given our lack of continuous near-nuclear border spats with Canada and Mexico, we have too much military for our own good. I also think the US shouldn't be meddling in other countries' internal politics or picking sides in foreign civil wars. If NATO or the UN thinks the world/the West is in grave danger, we should support them, but the US recently has been saying "we're too good to play with the other kiddies" even if they're on our side.)