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cb1000rider wrote:So only property owners can vote? Didn't we try that one once before.. :-)

I get what you're saying though... However, even if you rent, property taxes will have a direct impact on your out of pocket....

Yes, and it worked well, for awhile.

And yes, but most people are too ignorant to tie the two together, and many think they're not affected, just the owner is. And among that crowd, if they vote to raise property taxes, and the owner raises rents, they whine that it's unfair. In any case, there are no property owners, we're all renters. The so called owner just pays his rent directly to the government.

rotor wrote:"And I am completely against universal suffrage. Intelligence is one issue, but even more fundamental is the principal that you don't get a say in that in which you have no stake. If you don't own property you shouldn't get to vote to raise or lower property taxes (actually though, there shouldn't be any property taxes, since effectively, they mean that you can't really own property, you can only rent it from the government). If you're on welfare and a net tax consumer you shouldn't get to vote, period. It's ridiculous that people who are not contributing taxes can vote to make those who are contribute more. Some people advocate tests for voting, but I don't think intelligence would be particularly relevant or tests necessary if we only allowed legitimate stakeholders to vote."

So if we use this logic I guess we should give Michael Bloomberg a ton of votes because of his wealth and maybe give you one vote and see what the outcome is. Even the person on welfare pays sales tax on the items they buy so the population in general does pay tax. The most intelligent people probably vote liberal so I wouldn't put too much into IQ testing. I do agree about reforming the drug laws. On the other hand, if Obama had been arrested for his cocaine indiscretions as a youngster we would have not been dealing with Obamacare today. Just the luck of the draw. Many of your arguments have validity though. I asked my stupid brother why he continues to live in California and he replied "The weather!". At least if they steal a weapon now, it will have to have a California certifed magazine or whatever else that ridiculous state requires.

Perhaps I should of said "net tax consumer." But seriously, people on welfare pay sales tax? Oh, you mean part of their tax payer provided funds are reduced by the amount of the sales tax? The Bloomberg reference is a straw man argument....I never said votes should be proportional to wealth. I said you don't get to vote if you don't have skin in the game. And btw, I think billionaires so skew the system that their political participation should be limited. I'm not sure what the best way would be but I'd be comfortable with imposing a limit on assets....say $100 million. There may be other methods too, like a 100% or even 200% tax on political contributions over a certain amount. I didn't advocate IQ testing, and though an issues test might be another method, I prefer some kind of skin in the game test.

cb1000rider wrote:VM, I don't think that there are very many people who want to put guns in the hands of criminals. You go on to spin it a bit, indicating that progressives consider citizens criminals, so that means that progressives want people to have guns... You know I agree with a lot of your ideals, but a lot of this just comes off as so polarizing that it's unbelievable and the logic is tough to follow. I hear your frustration loud and clear.

People, especially conservatives, want to come off as "tough on crime". And that's fine. But we're already locking up way too many people and you and I are paying out of our pockets to keep them locked up. Sorry, but if they want to make choices that might hurt THEM and no one else, that's fine with me. Lock those up that are a danger to other people, but our drug policy is ridiculous, ineffective, and outrageously expensive... I'm just saying no thanks to that.

Our founding fathers perhaps didn't trust the population to vote. I don't know that I do either. We've got people that vote straight ticket, which is fine, except when you've got some people riding that party that really aren't what the political party is. I suppose it's more effective than not voting at all. It takes a lot of time to study the ballot that you're going to cast and you can't just make up your mind based on party affiliation at the polling booth. And I know several people here in Travis county that voted "no" for "Prop 1" because they thought it was related to light rail, even though they don't live in Austin and that wasn't even on the ballot!

Well, many conservatives don't want to hear it, due I think to normalcy bias, but this country is now a police state. We've got one third the population of communist China and more people in prison than they do. Something like 50% of the prison population is there for drug offenses, which is absurd. To me, when the government can put you in a cage for ingesting a substance it doesn't like you don't live in a free country. It's none of the governments business if I want to smoke marijuana (and I don't, btw) unless as a result I injure another person. The Founders didn't create a government that told you what you could ingest. Every single marijuana initiative on the ballot this election either passed or got a majority vote but not enough to pass (Florida). What I want to be tough on is violent crime, not nonsense crimes like putting old ladies in jail because their grass is too high, or arresting school children because they defaced their desks.

One of the problems is that now, the "drug war" is a huge multi-billion dollar industry. We also have a huge prison industrial complex. On top of that, we've got a corrupt government whose intelligence agencies, like the CIA, profit from illegal drugs and use the money for covert off-budget operations. All that is going to make unwinding the drug war very difficult.

And I am completely against universal suffrage. Intelligence is one issue, but even more fundamental is the principal that you don't get a say in that in which you have no stake. If you don't own property you shouldn't get to vote to raise or lower property taxes (actually though, there shouldn't be any property taxes, since effectively, they mean that you can't really own property, you can only rent it from the government). If you're on welfare and a net tax consumer you shouldn't get to vote, period. It's ridiculous that people who are not contributing taxes can vote to make those who are contribute more. Some people advocate tests for voting, but I don't think intelligence would be particularly relevant or tests necessary if we only allowed legitimate stakeholders to vote.

And no, I don't think there are very many that want to put guns in the hands of criminals, but they do exist. Otherwise it's hard to explain why a football player who knocks a woman unconscious is not charged at all, while a working mom who makes a mistake has the entire weight of the system come down on her....or why gang bangers get a slap on the wrist for having a gun in DC but a productive citizen finds himself being prosecuted for possessing an empty shotgun shell. Not many people would like to execute 25 million people who disagree with them either, but that's exactly what the mentors of Barrack Obama wanted to do. I think it comes down to the fact that most people are not sociopaths or psychopaths, but they do exist, and there are a disproportionate number of them running large organizations like corporations and government.

cb1000rider wrote:We've got an entire political movement that wants to put guns in the hands of criminals? Come on....

I read through some of the details based on the indication above that theft of firearms is now downgraded. That's probably true in some cases where firearms are just another form of property.

At the risk of sounding like a California Liberal (VM: Progressive) - or worse - what I like about Prop 47:
It strikes at the War on Drugs. No, I don't think we should legalize everything, but putting people in prison for non-violent drug offenses is a losing proposition... It costs too much money, it doesn't solve the problem, and it creates a situation where the "criminal" can't very easily become a productive member of society again because they are now a felon, which further pushes them into a downward spiral.

I know.. "criminal" "their choice"...

However, too many people make those mistakes and I don't want to be on the hook for paying to keep them in prison... In prison, they're fed on my dime, don't have to contribute to society, and still have access to drugs. Way to many people in prison for making the wrong choices which in many cases don't cause any harm to society.

It would have been nice to see exceptions in Prop 47 - like retaining a felony for firearm theft, but viewed as a whole, it's a strike at a policy that is both ineffective and expensive.

What do you mean by an entire political movement? If you mean leadership and rank and file, then the answer is no. The rank and file are for the most part clueless about the real goals of the leadership. You think the bulk of those who hated the Czars and embraced Soviet Communism had any idea where the leadership was really headed? Progressives only acquire power by subterfuge and lies....and the current administration is a perfect representation of this. The inside leadership considers their followers to be useful idiots, and you can see this in the way the Democrats, and Moochelle were addressing Black audiences in the run up to the election.

Obviously, it was the people at large that voted for this, and I doubt they really knew what they were voting for, outside the lies of its proponents. Just like in Washington, most people no doubt thought they were voting for one thing, due to the lies and subterfuge of the proponents, and are about to discover they voted for something entirely different. But if you're saying that reducing the penalties for gun theft, especially in a state like Cali, is not intended to facilitate gun possession by criminals, then what other purpose does it serve? I've never heard of a case where making something easier to do resulted in fewer people doing it.

SQLGeek wrote:By passing Prop 47, Californians reduced several felonies down to cite and release misdemeanors. Among them, petty theft under $950 and this specifically includes theft of a firearm.

Anything else I could possibly have to say about this would get this thread deleted and me banned from the forum. Unbelievable.

It makes perfect sense if you understand the true motives of the anti gun crowd. They WANT criminals to have guns, and the government, just not ordinary citizens. And of course, they don't consider themselves ordinary citizens. Not sure what percentage of the voting pool was actually Commiefornians though, versus undocumented democrat voters. Also, you need to remember that progressives consider criminals victims of society, and productive citizens criminals. So naturally, they don't want to punish victims of society, just us oppressors.