Friday Humor

This is the great left wing conspiracy chart made by Paul Shlichta from americanthinker.com. I was actually hoping that the left will have something of equivalent but seeing that we are currently running the government and the right is in a crisis of leadership, let them be.

Picture from: http://www.americanthinker.com/Shlichta%20%20chart.JPG

Prop 8 - Why we lost!

This is an interesting article regarding how we lost the 'message' during the campaign. It's written by the firm from the 'Yes' team. (http://politicsmagazine.com/magazine-issues/february-2009/passing-prop-8) It's obvious that we had the advantage at the start of the campaign when the California Supreme Court ruled that gays were a protected class and thus able to get marry. The public was with us with the polling in mid-September showing 55%  voters against Prop 8.  By deciding to let voters vote 'Yes'  on the issue is a disadvantage itself as voters are known to vote no on most issues owing to the lack on understanding on the propositions. So how did our campaign got out strategized then?

Well firstly i would say many of us were overconfident. I talked to many people in the Bay Area and i can't even remember anyone saying that we could lose. Maybe this is the cultural difference that exists between NorthCal and SoCal. Though the post-election polls showed that 70% of African American, 56% of Latinos, and 49% of Asians voted Yes on Prop 8, approximately over 2/3rd of minorities in NorthCal voted against Prop 8. Now we have supporters saying that we'll put another proposition on the ballot legalizing gay marriage and we'll win in the next election. They have to realize that the demographics in California is changing. Hispanics are now about 46% of the population and will soon become the majority in the near future. Hispanics are also mostly Catholics and overall more socially conservative. We have to have majority of them supporting our cause to win. More organization to expand our message to Hispanics ought to be done. Else our only choice is to wait till 2020 where hopefully the next generation of young voters will be more socially liberal.

Our camp realized that we were losing when the proponents of Prop 8 started bringing children and education as their forefront issue. This was where our message got lost. Our team was slow to response. Besides that, many of our volunteers were out of state working in Obama's team. The gay community were busy preparing their marriages due to fear that Prop 8 would win. Well they got that right. The enourmous turn out of the AA community didn't help our cause. It's sad to see that the AA community see being gay as an optional activity and not as a civil right issue. Even the NAACP was not willing to take a stand till after the election. Of course many blamed our organizers for screwing up the campaign but that's the placing the blame elsewhere. There is no such thing as a campaign without error. I'm sure if we had won the other side will be blaming the Mormon church for being involved!

There is one lesson to be learnt from this defeat and that is civil rights is never granted. You'll get it only when you fight for it.

Shovel-Ready - Stimulas Edition

The states will have to receive half of the $120 bil meant for repairing roads, bridges and such within 120 days. In this article posted in Popular Mechanics (http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4302578.html), only projects which are able to start construction within 90 days of selection are eligible for funding. This means long term projects that will bring much more benefit to both the economy and the environment of the state such as trains and subways are out of considerations. Robert Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley described it best by saying, “If you want to patch some potholes in the road, this is a good program. But if you’re hoping for anything long-term with this approach, throw away all hope. It can’t happen.” This means that projects that are mostly left that qualified for the funding are the unappealing ones such as those which had been shelved after being fully designed and engineered but become outmoded or irrelevant, or projects with limited scope and ambition.

Let us now examined how infrastructure projects are planned and approved in California. A proposal of the project along with its budget had to be sent to the Department of Finance, the Department of General Services and the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Then there will be hearings before being included into the governor’s budget and then the state legislature will hold budget hearings, and both houses sent the approved bill to the Governor to sign. The project will also have to first meet the approval of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Normally during the design process, there will be lots of redo and rewrites by the civil engineer to ensure that all the requirements are met and those will take many months and possibly years. Of course there are several state agencies that have leeway to lengthy process such as the UCs and CSUs, prison facilities, and the Department of Water Resources.

Rebuilding infrastructure itself is a very important task as the outcome of the projects can dictate the fate of the cities involve as you don’t get to rebuild once things are completed. Long term planning and careful studies have to be done. As for stimulus itself, certainly hiring more engineers and professionals to do the job while encouraging the future generation to get more involve in this field of work is more rewarding than pothole filling and rushed projects. For the past 8 years, the world had been upgrading their infrastructure with their profits. We were left behind. With the current economy crashing down, it presents to use the opportunity to plan and to develop 21^st century infrastructure.

I want my Magnev - Stimulus Edition

With President Obama signing into law his first stimulus package, a sum of $120 billion dollars are directed towards this nation’s infrastructure. One might think that $120 billion is a lot of money but it’s actually very minimal as the states had asked for approximately $3.4 trillion dollars to upgrade our infrastructures. California passed Prop 1a last November, which allow the construction of a high speed railway from San Francisco all the way south to Los Angeles and that project alone will require $45 bil to complete. All these projects are needed just so that we can be on par with the facilities provided by Europe and Asia as of current. Imagine the actual amount of money needed if we actually want to compete with those two places. Infrastructure spending is important because it will attract investors. Currently, you will not only find cheaper labor in Europe and Asia, but better transportation system and such in those places as well. No wonder our manufacturing jobs are being outsourced to those countries.

According to this article in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/politics/14stimintro.ready.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1), $8.4 billion is being appropriated for high-speed rail. I have no idea what $8.4 bil can do after being divided to the whole of this country other than study groups being formed to study long term infrastructure projects. Sen Reid wants to build a ‘magnetic’ train which travels from LA to Las Vegas in 2 hours. I’m sure the study group for that can now be formed. Maybe in 20 years time we can finally ride that train.

The rest of the $111.6 bil will be used to upgrade current infrastructures such as modernizing the electric grid, water projects, military housing and facilities, making federal buildings more energy efficient, repairing public housing, expanding broadband access and the biggest chuck of $29 billion be use to upgrade and repair road and bridges. In my next post, I shall discuss how the conditions and efficiency of how these money are to be spent.