Instead of spending my Sunday doing spreadsheets and reconciling last month’s bank statement (which I should get to one of these days real soon), I spent some time, between football games, a stock car race and a fairly compelling baseball game (with frequent checks of the Weather Channel), doing a little more research on the upcoming California election ballot. I admit I didn’t get very far, but I decided to start at the top and work my way down.

Naturally, this being California and all, the first item on the ballot is Proposition 73. Its title, “Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Terminating Minor’s Pregnancy,” doesn’t even tell half the story.

For anyone who is pro-choice (and that’s most of us, despite what the anti-civil liberties wingnuts currently running the country would like us to believe), Proposition 73 is an insidious attempt to codify their definition of abortion as murder. It’s wrapped in a measure that deals with parental consent, but even if you believe that the government should get involved in family decisions, a yes vote here is a step toward outlawing all abortions for anyone of any age at any time. Don’t let them tell you it’s not, because that’s what it’s really about.

Why does the governor of California hate teachers? In fact, why has Arnold Schwarzenegger declared war on the teachers in this state? It’s not as if anyone goes into teaching for the money, or because it’s a soft, easy job. Most of the teachers I’ve ever known (even the bad ones) were dedicated to the education and well-being of the students in their charge. And the ones who weren’t didn’t last very long, so I don’t see the need for Proposition 74, which has the title “Public School Teachers. Waiting Period for Permanent Status. Dismissal.”

Proposition 74 would make it harder for new teachers to become permanent employees and easier to fire them. In fact, it makes dismissal of teachers pretty much an arbitrary decision of their supervisors and the school board, without giving the teachers recourse to due process. There’s even the odd chance (shudder!) that politics might play a role in teacher firings.

It’s not hard to fire bad teachers under the current system. We don’t need to write a new law that would demean and diminish the good ones.

Okay, I admit I didn’t get very far today with this project, but there’s still more than two weeks to go until election day. I waste enough time during the week that I shouldn’t have any trouble getting through the rest of the propositions and getting my absentee ballot into the mail in plenty of time. It didn’t take me long to figure these first two out.