Yep. I knew about this because I spent maybe 2 hours on a weekend filling out my ballot and Googling shit as I went.
It's really not that hard and we'd be living in what we'd currently consider a utopia if everyone dedicated a couple hours A YEAR to responsibly filling out their ballot.
I voted against this as it's stupid. Goes a billionaire's non profit and puts California 8 Billion in debt for like the next decade
This ballot initiative was so stupid. Voters should not be deciding funding for medical research. It should be governed by a non partisan comittee of scientists. Sending medical research funding through voters risks subjecting those sick with diseases both to a particularly perverse form of popularity contest and also to moral judgement about their illness. If voters had decided funding during the AIDS epidemic antiviral drug research would not have been funded.
This is why I vote no on crap like this.
That's pretty good, how can I do that for my own hobby?
Architected by a billionaire inventor to funnel billions into his own pockets. This is the exact kind of neoliberal corruption and collusion with capital that needs to be destroyed and criminally prosecuted, to prevent fascism and safeguard the future from psychopathic and sociopathic control.
The corruption didn't start with fascism. The corruption gave fascism an attack vector to seize control of the political class and spread like the parasitic mental illness it is.
This is the exact kind of neoliberal corruption and collusion with capital that needs to be destroyed and criminally prosecuted, to prevent fascism and safeguard the future from psychopathic and sociopathic control.
It's the kind of neoliberal corruption that gets plowed right back into the campaign war chests of rank and file Democrat Party campaign coffers.
I'm sure how it ends when it wins elections with 57% of the vote. You'd need a court to get involved and stop it, at a minimum. Good luck with that.
Surely the market will regulate this.
The DSA voter guide called this out
Please give guide
Hell yeah, I vote using cal dsa and my county's dsa guide
For those too lazy to click:
Prop 38 borrows $8.4 billion for immunology/immunotherapy research—and directs half the proceeds to one qualifying UC-affiliated research institute run by a billionaire, with the rest distributed through grants.
Public investment in biomedical research is obviously good and something we strongly support. But Prop 38 is not constructed primarily to best facilitate this research. The eligibility language appears effectively tailored to the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy; billionaire Gary Michelson is its co-founder/board chair and the chief financial force behind the initiative. FPPC data show roughly $36M in top support contributions dominated by Michelson/Michelson Center and Meyer Luskin.
This proposition is pretty naked self-dealing by wealthy individuals. By phrasing it as promoting medical research, something no one opposes, Michelson hopes to smuggle in a popular mandate to deliver state funds to his own institution. Voters should not constitutionally commit billions in public debt through an initiative constructed around a particular private institution. Instead, we should democratically fund actual public institutions that are accountable for their work. California must expand publicly governed research, make discoveries broadly available, and fund it through progressive taxation. We recommend a No vote.
I'm not American or Californian. Do people vote on all 50 of these all at once? And they're expected to understand what they're voting for beyond just reading the title?
The numbering is weird, there aren't actually 50 Propositions because you need a certain number of signatures to get something onto the ballots. Only like 10 Propositions actually make it onto the ballot each year.
Everyone is eligible to receive a mailer that contains the full wording of the proposition, a couple of pages summary with complete "for" and "against" arguments (and rebuttals), as well as a ~2 paragraph summary from a coalition of folks representing the "for" and "against" campaigns.
On top of that, outside groups like DSA provide "Voter guides" like the above, that you can independently research.
The ballot itself just has a title. You are not required to read anything to vote, but I'd wager most folks just read the official "for" and "against" blurbs and form an opinion.
ETA: You can see the official voter guides here, just scroll to the PDFs and choose your preferred language.
To be honest and blunt, the quick reference opposition arguments were quite weak, which is likely what carried this proposition over the line.
Got a link for said guide? Por favor
First of all, it doesn’t go the “three people”, it goes to a non-profit immunology research lab. Im sure they will expand their lab and researchers with the additional funding.
Secondly, It doesn’t prevent others from setting up their own labs now that the funding is available. Lots of universities in the state will do just that.
More research into immunization and immunotherapy? A win for public health.
It goes to a billionaire's non profit, pretty sus already
How dare you read the source and form your own opinion!
Shun the nonbeliever!
I voted no on this because I don’t like that part of it either, but since it’s nonprofit and UC-affiliated I’m hoping it won’t be that bad. I’m definitely more upset about 40.
"You voted? Cringe"
-All the pre-election bots
Voting is gay. I say, while adding the gayest accents to my kitchen this evening after casting my ballot last week.
KEEP VOTING GAY
I'm gonna need at least one example of a gay kitchen accent, for science.
Our spice rack is pretty good. It looks a bit like this, but deeper, with rounded seatbelts for every container. (I don't post any pictures of mine on the internet as I piss many people off, forgive me)
Only 62% of votes are counted so far. Don't trust anything claiming results in California for another week or two for any proposition
Yet another reason why California's ballot initiative system is a bad idea.
They say the bond spending would pay for itself, since Prop. 38 ensures that 10% of the revenue generated from research would go back to the state’s coffers. And cures funded with Prop. 38 money must be cheaper when sold to California residents — 20% less than the average national price.
Source. If that was actually a good investment then the private sector would have provided the funds...
In the words of a blogger I like,
The great thing about California is that it’s not just a state where a few big special interests can money-pump the public. Anyone, no matter how small or humble, if they try hard and believe in themselves, can become a special interest that money-pumps the public.
Californians seem to overwhelmingly vote however the billionaires tell them to vote. It is heartbreaking.
They had people fully panicked that the “Billionaire Tax” would get rewritten by the state legislature to apply to everyone, despite (me pointing out to relatives) the part of the law that says they can’t do that.
That endorsement from the Michael J Fox Foundation carried a lot of weight, it seems.
Here's an article about this.
Robert Kaplan is a senior scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine and co-chair of the No on Prop 38 campaign.
One of the key arguments of the No on Prop 38 campaign cites a CalMatters investigative report, which found that the highly specific criteria leave only one institution qualified to receive funding: the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, associated with UCLA and founded by Michelson.
"When I first heard of Proposition 38, I was excited about it because it provides more money for biomedical research, which I think is necessary," Kaplan said.
Kaplan says there needs to be open competition between institutions and questions the limiting of funding to a single discipline, immunotherapy, when there is a wider array of biomedical research.
He is also concerned that the anticipated 10% of revenue generated by discoveries funded through the measure to repay the General Fund could take decades, given the uncertainty in the amounts and timing.
Link to the CalMatters story.
My wife works in a related field and was very excited about this measure until I pointed out this guy spent $100M+ to get his institute paid $4.2B. She changed her note to no.
Will be very sad, but not surprised, if this passes. A lot of people lack reading comprehension and critical thinking skills.
I misread this as someone wrote a piece of legislation that was so good, the voting public paid him $4.2 billion as an outsourced legislator.
I must be naive.
I thought the same thing. I figured, hey, if this guy can write a piece so good that it can't be assailed by legalists I guess he deserves a cut of funding for services rendered.
For such a misanthrope, I sure am terminally optimistic. Must be some kind of undiagnosed brain damage.
At least they didn't accidentally tax the billionaires. /s
Edit: maybe results are not in enough to say this yet just was going off news agency claimed results
Its so fucking stupid. They said no to the billionare tax: then they said no to the first honey pot to remove it; then they said fucking yes to the second honey pot: banning of all new taxes on assets just because people only read ‘it protects your 401k’.
How do people ever think ‘blanket removing the consideration of thing for all time’ is a reasonable move. There wasn’t even an anticipated tax on peoples 401ks thats the whole point of tax advantaged accounts. Just stupid.
Why don’t we also ban the legislature from putting rocket boosters on the earth and crashing it into the sun? Theres nothing preventing this smh crashing out on this ngl
I should put a few measures on the ballot.
I can't tell if California has this mastermind ballot writer that makes these things impossible to know which way to vote yes or no on, Or California has the lowest adult literacy rate?
The measures I'm hearing about are really fucking bonkers. Maybe I should ask the state of California if I can have 10 million dollars to research if video games make me violent.
The ballot very clearly says 'half goes here, half goes there'.
The people I discussed this with stated that we should vote yes (I voted no) because cancer and immunology research has been gutted at the federal level, and at the very least this is something. I also tried to point out that (if my memory serves) a singular university qualifies for the other half, but that didn't seem to register.
These are all people who are well educated and certainly don't have issues with literacy. Classic case of bleeding hearts bleeding all over the place.
It's not a California thing. I live on the other coast and I swear to god every ballot measure I read is worded in the most ambiguous or vague way possible. By that I mean the way it's written on the ballot, not on the full text of the measure.
It's purposeful (which I'm sure you already know). There's a fella whose name I can't recall right now that is responsible for an incredibly large amount of these ballot measures (I want to say in the realm of 700-900? Or maybe ~150-200, not sure, but still a lot of them) and has a success rate of something like 95% with them. My state's bullshit was so contorted that I made sure to read the positions of several advocacy groups to figure out which ones I was going to vote yes/no on.
Further proof that people can't fucking read.
Apparently, that number is highest in California Source. I wouldn't expect that in California.
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