Word: votes
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...once I got to Los Angeles, I learned that the East Coast version of democracy is weak. In L.A. we vote all the time, on everything. We've already voted twice since everybody else last voted in November. Thanks to the endless ballot-initiative system, in the four years that I've been here, I've voted on all kinds of stuff I have absolutely no understanding of: high-speed rail lines (yes!), port security (sure!), children's-hospital bonds (of course!) and how chickens should be housed (humanely and not by me!). I have considered running for the state...
...turns out that letting me vote on stuff is a bad idea, for much the same reason that giving me a credit card was a bad idea: I love stuff and hate paying for it. And it turns out there are a lot of people just like me. On May 19, California voters knocked down all five of the budget-cutting and tax-raising propositions designed to save the state budget from being $21 billion short. We already had the worst credit rating of any state. Which means that if states were people, California would be Ed McMahon...
...believe every problem has a simple solution, and that solution is usually to do nothing. So I'm fully supporting Vote No on Everything, an organization started by Los Angeles doctor Reed Levine. You can tell this is a serious effort because the website sells T shirts. Levine realized the initiative system was faulty right after he voted for a $10 billion high-speed train and then wondered if $10 billion was a bargain or a rip-off for a high-speed train. His plan appeals to me, since if we vote against everything, our elected officials will be forced...
...choose to thump national politicians over distinctly domestic issues. As the results of Thursday's Europe-wide poll trickled in late Sunday, nowhere was that more evident than Britain. Rounding off an abysmal week for Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister's Labour Party slumped to third in the Euro vote with just 15.7% of the vote, far behind the opposition Conservatives and trumped even by the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), a fringe group whose singular focus is to get Britain to quit the E.U. altogether. Worse still, the far-right British National Party (BNP) picked up two seats...
...party's rout - Labour's share of the votes fell 7 percentage points, at a cost of five seats in Europe's Parliament - was far more dramatic than any of its rivals' gains. In securing its 13 seats in the European Parliament, for instance, UKIP increased its slice of the vote by just half a point. The Tories, with close to twice the share of votes as Labour's, saw its support climb by only 1 point. Even the BNP, whose two northern English seats included one for Nick Griffin, the party's pugnacious leader, grew its share of polling...