Some more interesting comments on the ballot.

elissali's post is flocked. Can you summarize?

Sorry, I'd missed that it was locked...

Let's see, she cited Cal-Access as a source of info on campaign spending. (Personally, I've used CalVoter for similar info in the past.) She was interested in California Choices, which I think has some worthwhile content, but is somewhat narrow in how they push some of their ideas about the budget. (In their little tool that walks through ideas about the budget, they totally ignore some revenue options, and don't really consider secondary impacts of either spending or cuts, like how mental health services probably reduce costs from crime.) She also pointed to CAVotes, a project of the LWV.

On Prop 24, in the comments, the discussion was basically that one of the tax changes is pretty unobjectionable -- it harmonizes CA's treatment of a company's net losses in one year with the federal tax codes: you choose between a carry-back of up to two years (reducing income over the past two years, collecting a refund on taxes paid on the relevant amount of income), or a carry-forward which you can apply to reduce income during any of the next 20 years (possibly with some structural requirements; I haven't taken the corporate tax class yet). This is fine, although initiating a policy of allowing carry-backs now is pretty tough on our budget. As one commenter put it, "[T]he change from 10-year carryforward to a 2-year carryback 20-year carryforward on [Net Operating Losses] just brings California into alignment with the federal tax code, which I don't have a problem with. The whole idea of carryforward rules is to reward companies down the line for risking the initial heavy losses from starting up or rapidly expanding a business. Carrybacks are helpful for established companies weathering the recession now that they're losing money, but it's a refund of previously paid taxes which isn't very good for California's budget."

The other two changes are inherently objectionable. One allows companies to choose, from year to year, whether to pay taxes based on the actual amount of payroll in the state, or based on the percentage of sales they make in the state. Quoting same commenter: "If a company has a such large physical and/or payroll presence in California that they would benefit by ignoring it and dividing their taxable income by state on a strictly-sales level, well, their physical presence is paid for in property taxes, and employees by California income and payroll taxes, so dividing taxable income based on where that income was generated makes sense to me. But I don't like being able to switch back and forth between methods for year-to-year maximum benefit, that doesn't seem right since both methods have pros and cons to a business and as the tax code stands they only ever have to take the pros."

The last one allows a company to, more or less arbitrarily, move income around amongst constituent subsidiaries, or even across corporate boundaries into joint-venture partners, to maximize the matching of income with potential deductions. File this under the department of "the scandal is what's legal". We've got a lot of stupid tax loopholes (which we should close anyhow), and corporate tax lawyers want yet more opportunities to use them.

In any case, I disagree with the idea that 24 falls under the "we should do it via the legislature" reason to reject a proposition. It was a dirty bargain demanded by a minority; these tax changes would never have passed muster with a majority if not for the 2/3 rule.

Sorry about the locked part - I tend to keep my journal friends-only (though I think I've met bostorus at a pizza and politics party? Is the Malawi resident in ERG?), so I appreciate the auros-summary. :)

and bostorus, thanks for the thoughtful comments, I think you brought up some points I hadn't thought of on several of the propositions. (particularly the redistricting commission) Thanks for your work on it!

Oh, and what I liked mostly about the California Choices site was that it had what felt like a more factual summary (as did most of the LWV summaries I thought) than any of the pro or con arguments in the voter guide or the pro/con websites. And maybe more importantly, they had a lot of other content, like links to other sites and links to all the youtube ads for both sides. So if you wanted to see how the propaganda was going, it was all in one place and on both sides. I'm not sure exactly which tool auros is talking about, so I clearly didn't explore the site thoroughly enough.

The Cal-Access site was actually pretty hard to use, but it was the actual secretary of state site.

Anyway, thanks again guys!

I'm the Malawi resident in question, and yes, I am a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group at UCB. It's quite probable that you met bostorus and me at one of Auros' Pizza and Politics parties. Since you seem to have met me, I can only assume that I have met you, too, but I don't recognize your screen name. In any case... hello!

Hello!

Actually, I've only managed to go to one of Auros' pizza and politics parties, and I think I met bostorus, but you were in Malawi at the time, so no, I don't think we've actually met in person. :) But hopefully sometime! I'm a PhD student in ESPM, that's why I remembered the ERG connection. :)

Thanks for the political posts, and pointers to other political posts. I don't get to vote (not a US citizen), so I mostly ignore politics, but I'd been feeling very ignorant. This at least helps me identify the players and the current issues.