Ballot Initiatives

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Moliere
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Moliere »

Mr. Fed wrote:The most well-known and controversial is Prop 8, a proposed constitutional amendment to make marriage between a man and a woman only, thus overturning the California Supreme Court's recent ruling.

It's a bitterly fought battle. The no vote was leading strongly for a while, but now it's close, in part because of a flood of money funding effective yes-vote advertisements.
Have you seen the exit polls? Its too bad that one minority group doesn't see the irony of stomping on the civil rights of another minority group.

White: 49% Yes and 51% No
Black: 70% Yes and 30% No
Latino: 53% Yes and 47% No

More of the same in Florida where everyone wanted to ban gay marriage, especially minorities.
White: 60% Yes and 40% No
Black: 71% Yes and 29% No
Latino: 64% Yes and 36% No
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Kraken »

Californians at least deserve congratulations on approving a shiny newhigh-speed rail system. It's an investment that will pay huge dividends over the long haul -- such as up to 160,000 construction-related jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs, for starters. That's going to be $10 billion well spent.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Dan_Theman »

Ironrod wrote:Californians at least deserve congratulations on approving a shiny newhigh-speed rail system. It's an investment that will pay huge dividends over the long haul -- such as up to 160,000 construction-related jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs, for starters. That's going to be $10 billion well spent.
I'll give them credit where credit is due - it's no Springfield Monorail, but if progress can be made down one avenue ...
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Moliere
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Moliere »

Ironrod wrote:Californians at least deserve congratulations on approving a shiny newhigh-speed rail system. It's an investment that will pay huge dividends over the long haul -- such as up to 160,000 construction-related jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs, for starters. That's going to be $10 billion well spent.
or not
As megaprojects—the California high-speed rail is projected to cost $33 to $37 billion—high-speed rail plans pose serious risks for taxpayers. Costs of recent rail projects in Denver and Seattle are running 60 to 100 percent above projections. Once construction begins, politicians will feel obligated to throw good taxpayers' money after bad. Once projects are completed , most plans call for them to be turned over to private companies that will keep any operational profits,while taxpayers will remain vulnerable if the trains lose money.
"Rider's Two Iron Laws of Public Works Projects":
1. Government will always overestimate the benefit.
2. Government will always underestimate the cost.

and more on trying to predict the future...
Yes, they claim that it will create 450,000 new jobs and will require 300 thousand man-years to construct. The fact is, there is no way of predicting this. Half a million jobs will be created in the next fifty years — or not — based on large, macro-economic forces, the nature of the global and national economy, the well-being of California’s industrial and agricultural capacity and similar basic sea-changes.
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Mr Bubbles
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Mr Bubbles »

Ironrod wrote:Californians at least deserve congratulations on approving a shiny newhigh-speed rail system. It's an investment that will pay huge dividends over the long haul -- such as up to 160,000 construction-related jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs, for starters. That's going to be $10 billion well spent.
I know some European countries are much smaller and therefore easier to link, but I absolutely love traveling via trains. I was reluctant to vote for this because it is a major investment, but I'm pretty excited about it.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Isgrimnur »

I would love to see a high-speed rail installed in Texas to link all the major cities in Texas. Not going to happen. Best we have anywhere near something like this is the Trans-Texas Corridor to get all of those that are hurricane-bait out of the way.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Kraken »

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of trains. I have been ever since my parents took our family cross-country on the California Zephyr in 1964. I'll never forget sitting up in the air-conditioned dome car, drinking hot chocolate and watching the desert streak past. I wanted nothing more than to become a porter on that train (to my mother's dismay).

Whatever its merits as a public works project, and regardless of whether or not it can turn an operating profit, Californians will eventually enjoy fast, safe, efficient, and (above-all) comfortable travel between the state's major cities. I'd love to see intercity rail become a national priority. I know that it won't; we've put all of our eggs into highways and airports.

I congratulate California on bucking that trend. Maybe it will eventually spark a renaissance in intercity rail.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Scuzz »

tjg_marantz wrote:Okay I have a question. I our election, we had 1 question, who the fuck was gonna win. We had 4 or 5 options and that was it.

All these propositions you guys are voting on... euh, how can I put this? Shouldn't the guys that were elected be making these decisions??? I mean, essentially, you elect people to make these decisions no? *headscratch*

Also, is that PDF ballot representative of all ballots? Fill the arrow type? And these are the ballots people have trouble filling out? If so, in what sense? Can't draw a straight line or...?

Help a frenchie out.
I don't know if the proposition concept started in California, but I think it did. It was little used until Californians passed what was known as Prop 13, which limited property taxes and began a nationwide move to limit property taxes. The proposition concept was written into the California constitution in the 1930's, I think, but was little used until then.

Now, it is the way special interest groups attack each other. It has become the tool for environmental groups to raise money for projects thru state bonds, it is how moral items (gay marriage, right to parental notification etc) are argued.

In my opinion it has become a way for the state government to avoid things. Let people pass a proposition if they want it. This years Rail bond is an example of that. And people are really stupid. California has passed so many bond issues that we really should have the cleanest water in the world by now.

But what about the cost. I believe I heard that maybe as much as 8-10% of the state budget now covers indebtness caused thru bond issues voted on in propositions. Things are changing slowly, many were voted down this year. Many people (like me) vote no on anything that involves money.

The system has gone from a tool to a monster.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by naednek »

Ironrod wrote:It's no secret that I'm a big fan of trains. I have been ever since my parents took our family cross-country on the California Zephyr in 1964. I'll never forget sitting up in the air-conditioned dome car, drinking hot chocolate and watching the desert streak past. I wanted nothing more than to become a porter on that train (to my mother's dismay).

Whatever its merits as a public works project, and regardless of whether or not it can turn an operating profit, Californians will eventually enjoy fast, safe, efficient, and (above-all) comfortable travel between the state's major cities. I'd love to see intercity rail become a national priority. I know that it won't; we've put all of our eggs into highways and airports.

I congratulate California on bucking that trend. Maybe it will eventually spark a renaissance in intercity rail.

That prop should have never passed, we are in a huge budget crisis see here http://www.sacbee.com/749/story/1376350.html" target="_blank. And now we pass this bullshit of a measure where it's not a necessity and only services a few counties in the state. We just signed a blank check for them to use.

So now, I lose 1 day of pay each month, and 2 holidays, and other crap.
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Scuzz
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

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People are asking when the first train will run...how about 20 years from now as that proposition is just about the planning stages. No lines will even be built from that money.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

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Moved to the new thread...
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Isgrimnur »

Listening to the Rockies feed, the opponents of Colorado 112 are spending big bucks to advertise.
Colorado Rising is leading the campaign in support of this initiative. Colorado Rising argued, "Currently, fracking operations are allowed to take place just 500 feet from a home and 1,000 feet from a school building (and right by school playgrounds). The industry has shown blatant disregard for public health and safety, and the current state regulatory body – the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) – has not provided responsible protective regulatory oversight to prevent inappropriate siting of toxic fracking operations adjacent to homes, schools and water sources."[5]

Protect Colorado is leading the campaign in opposition to the measure. Protect Colorado argued that the measure would "devastate our economy, wipe out thousands of jobs, and endanger our environment. [It] would threaten private property rights and could even cost Colorado residents hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits."[6] Karen Crummy, a spokeswoman of Protect Colorado, said, "This initiative is economically devastating to the state of Colorado. Not only would it cost thousands of jobs, but it would cost billions in actual economic impact."[3]
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by The Meal »

There's a SHITLOAD of money on both sides of CO-112. MHS and I moved to Weld County (where Gasland was filmed) last summer (CO 4th CD). It's radically anti-112 out here, and it pains me.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Defiant »

One of Florida's ballot measure, Amendment 4, is a pretty big deal if it passes (it needs 60% to pass), as it would restore voting rights to about 1.5 million.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Kraken »

Question 1 in MA would mandate minimum nurse:patient ratios that are currently flexibly determined by hospitals and nurse-managers.

Most people quickly fell in line with their tribal affiliation. The nurses union supports Q1 and hospitals oppose it, so Yes signs are springing up on liberal lawns and No signs signify Trumpsters. Based on tribal influence, it ought to pass.

I need more information. Hospitals say that the measure would cost $1.1B in the first year and $900M every year thereafter...and hiring enough nurses to meet the requirements won't be easy; there's already a shortage. The nurses peg the cost at $47M. There's rather a large gap between $47M and $1.1B, so I need better cost information. For the past couple of years medical cost inflation has been tame, but this would bend that curve back upward; MA already has the highest medical costs in the US, so that's an especially bad thing. A third-party group is due to release a study this week or next clarifying the cost. The nurses denounced the study in advance, making me suspect that they are the ones with the flaky number.

Harder to quantify is the effect on patient outcomes. A high price tag might be justified if patients get better faster or die less often. I need some evidence that that would be true. While it might be true that more nurses = healthier patients, that doesn't follow automatically. Some anecdotes aside, I don't see clear evidence that nurses are stretched too thin.

The other initiatives are more clear-cut. Q2 establishes a commission to advocate a constitutional amendment that overthrows Citizens United -- a worthy objective, but I wonder if it just creates some high-paid, long-term windmill-tilting jobs. Q3 would reimpose discrimination on transgender individuals; this one is worded misleadingly, so that a Yes vote maintains the current anti-discrimination law (last I heard, Yes was ahead with 72%, with only Trumpsters opposed).
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by GreenGoo »

I can't speak to your situation Kraken, but hospitals everywhere (the UK, the US, Canada at a minimum) are trying to do more with less, because healthcare is expensive and everyone wants to stretch their dollars.

That means nurses have heavier workloads than they have ever had in the past, while support staff such as porters and housekeeping have also been cut. This means that not only do nurses have to do more, they have to do more outside of their job description (which wouldn't be much of a problem except that they are already being pushed hard re: job description work). Imagine non-IT office workers who have to troubleshoot and fix their own computers, as a comparison.

I'm not a fan of forcing hard ratios on the hospitals. Some patients require HEAVY care and some patients require minimum. And that's even when they are on the same ward with technically the same issues. Being flexible regarding workload (i.e. patients, and the extent of their care) is an important tool for managing limited resources efficiently.

That said, hospitals are absolutely pushing nurses to the breaking point, and that is causing major morale issues and quality of care issues. Nurses are in high demand right now, and are projected to be continue to be so for years to come. That means there aren't enough nurses to go around already. edit: Oops, missed the fact that you said this already.

It sucks. If hospitals could focus on quality of care and maximizing efficiency around that, things would be good. But management just has numbers to work with. x patients, y nurses, z dollars, and you lose sight of the wide variety of actual work nurses are doing.

I'm glad I don't have to make that vote. It's a tough one. And that's with my wife being a nurse in a large hospital.
Last edited by GreenGoo on Tue Oct 02, 2018 12:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

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For Q1, I'm not really convinced that it's a practical law. Where are the hospitals going to find all those nurses? What happens if a bunch of hospitals can't find nurses due to lack of qualified applicants? Do they start hiring people from out of state (good luck with that)? Hire less-qualified people ("Butterfingers Bill", "Snap-needle Sam" and "Confuse-Metric-And-Imperial Clancy")? Close down because of the rather hefty fines?

I'll wait for that third-party study, if you spot it and put up a link, that'd be awesome. Any cost increases are eventually going to get passed on to the "consumers" (via increased insurance... whatever the hell the monthly cost is called). Seems like the initiative was written without thinking it through. I bet we'll see some legislative action to water it down if it passes.

On the plus side, a buddy of mine is finishing nursing school, so this ought to be great for him if it passes.

Q2, it seems nice in principle, but it's completely pointless, so I'm going to vote no. Why do I think it's pointless? Such a constitutional amendment won't stand a chance without a supermajority of states being democrat-controlled at the legislative, and probably executive, level. It's a waste of time, and whoever is on this commission would have better things to do.

Q3, I'm ok with voting yes.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by GreenGoo »

Lawbeef is involved in the management side of a hospital, although I don't recall the specifics. I'd like to hear his opinion.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by hitbyambulance »

in WA state:
Initiative 940 Requires specific trainings for law enforcement and changes the standards for use of deadly force
Initiative 1631 Establishes a carbon fee and funds environmental programs
Initiative 1634 Prohibits local governments from enacting taxes on groceries
Initiative 1639 Implements changes to gun ownership and purchase requirements
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Kraken »

Boston is a special case when discussing healthcare. We have the highest costs and (not coincidentally) some of the best hospitals in the world -- Mass General, Dana Farber, Brigham & Womens, Tufts, Beth Israel -- you might have heard of these. There are dozens more that don't have star power. It's a huge sector of our economy, and that makes it correspondingly political. Hospitals are major players, and we also have about a million nurses with a really powerful union. So it's high-stakes and complicated. AFAIK neither side has a clear upper hand yet.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

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Defiant wrote: Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:56 pm One of Florida's ballot measure, Amendment 4, is a pretty big deal if it passes (it needs 60% to pass), as it would restore voting rights to about 1.5 million.
That's a big deal. I'll be voting yes on that one for sure. There are so many amendments I haven't really had a chance to dive into all of them. I've been waiting on my sample ballot to show up, which should be soon. Early voting starts here on the 22nd.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

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NickAragua wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2018 12:26 am For Q1, I'm not really convinced that it's a practical law. Where are the hospitals going to find all those nurses? What happens if a bunch of hospitals can't find nurses due to lack of qualified applicants? Do they start hiring people from out of state (good luck with that)? Hire less-qualified people ("Butterfingers Bill", "Snap-needle Sam" and "Confuse-Metric-And-Imperial Clancy")? Close down because of the rather hefty fines?

I'll wait for that third-party study, if you spot it and put up a link, that'd be awesome. Any cost increases are eventually going to get passed on to the "consumers" (via increased insurance... whatever the hell the monthly cost is called). Seems like the initiative was written without thinking it through. I bet we'll see some legislative action to water it down if it passes.

On the plus side, a buddy of mine is finishing nursing school, so this ought to be great for him if it passes.

Q2, it seems nice in principle, but it's completely pointless, so I'm going to vote no. Why do I think it's pointless? Such a constitutional amendment won't stand a chance without a supermajority of states being democrat-controlled at the legislative, and probably executive, level. It's a waste of time, and whoever is on this commission would have better things to do.

Q3, I'm ok with voting yes.
Yeah, I'm not sure what to make of question 1. It's funny, because almost all the ads I'm seeing on it are about whether nurses favor the initiative or not. "Nurses support Question 1!" "No they don't, they hate it!" "They do too!" "They do not!". Great, but like, I'd like to see something about whether it's a good idea, not just about how popular it is or isn't among nurses.

Anyway, I could go either way, but I'm inclined to vote no. I'm suspicious of a hard government-imposed cap, and I'm *really* suspicious of doing it via initiative. This sort of thing seems like it would be much better done in the legislature, where more detailed studies could be done on what the idea ratio is, how to minimize trade-offs, etc.

2 - who gives a shit. I'll probably vote yes, but not sure who thought it was a good use of their time to get the signatures for this.

3 - Definitely yes. It's basically "do transgender people deserve civil rights protections?" Shouldn't be a tough call in Massachusetts in 2018.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by Kraken »

NickAragua wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2018 12:26 am I'll wait for that third-party study, if you spot it and put up a link, that'd be awesome.
Ask and ye shall receive.

Reader's Digest Condensed version: It would cost hospitals $900M to hire roughly 3,000 new nurses, and the competition would boost their salaries by up to 6%. "The commission report found that Question 1 could result in potential savings because additional nurses could help reduce the length of stay for hospital patients and reduce adverse events. But those potential savings — about $34 million to $47 million annually — would be far outweighed by the costs of hiring new nurses, the report said."

As much as I'd rather side with unions than with management, this looks like a clear No to me.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by stessier »

My mother is a nurse in MA, so I know the need they are trying to address. I don't think the cost should be a deal breaker. I would need more information on where the number of patients/nurse came from though. There is definitely an impact on care when a nurse has too many.
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Re: Ballot Initiatives

Post by $iljanus »

Kraken wrote: Thu Oct 04, 2018 11:10 am
NickAragua wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2018 12:26 am I'll wait for that third-party study, if you spot it and put up a link, that'd be awesome.
Ask and ye shall receive.

Reader's Digest Condensed version: It would cost hospitals $900M to hire roughly 3,000 new nurses, and the competition would boost their salaries by up to 6%. "The commission report found that Question 1 could result in potential savings because additional nurses could help reduce the length of stay for hospital patients and reduce adverse events. But those potential savings — about $34 million to $47 million annually — would be far outweighed by the costs of hiring new nurses, the report said."

As much as I'd rather side with unions than with management, this looks like a clear No to me.
So in my search for more information regarding Question 1 before Election Day I came across a good article from WGBH. The part I’m quoting has to do with a study of one state that has mandated nurse to patient ratios, California.
7) Do any other states do this?

One other state: California.

Similar legislation on nurse staffing passed in California in 1999, and it was implemented in 2004. Joanne Spetz, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, has been studying the results ever since.

“Overall, there is evidence of what I would describe as better nurse outcomes — more satisfaction, better pay, less burnout, lower injury rates,” she said.

When looking a number of measures of patient outcomes, not much changed. “Maybe hiring more RNs, but laying off your aides, meant that you had an improvement in one area and then you had something get worse in another area,” says Spetz. “When you look at patient outcomes, it’s a wash.”

And the threatened program closures and emergency room wait times?

Spetz says that those things did not materialize in California. Anecdotally, she says there may have been problems in the first few weeks, but hospitals moved people around and things worked out okay.

However, there are a few key differences between the Massachusetts ballot measure and the California legislation.

First, the Massachusetts ballot measure requires hospitals to meet the nurse-patient ratios without changing other hospital staffing levels. In California, that was one key way hospitals made the finances work, but it may explain why patient outcomes did not seem to improve.

Second, if Massachusetts voters approve this initiative, it goes into effect much more quickly than the California law, which gave hospitals years to scale up.

Third, Massachusetts ratios would be set for the foreseeable future. In California, there is a way to adjust the ratios as technology and other things change.

Spetz won’t say what she’d recommend. Instead, she said, “It’s not a clear-cut policy decision and, if it were, you wouldn’t have a ballot proposition. It would have been done already.”
From the story, a rapid mandate to comply coupled with some inflexibility built into the law makes me think we could do better regarding the writing of this law.

Article is from July so perhaps some things have changed?

Seven Questions About The 2018 Nurse Staffing Ballot Question In Massachusetts
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