Midterm Elections 2014 - Voting Guide

At least every other year, I have an excuse for an easy blog entry - my voting guide for the elections.  And given that I live in California with its messy system of propositions (in the pretext of direct democracy), there are usually a bunch of issues to comment on and not just political offices.  Thankfully, there aren't too many props this time around, although some of that relief has been washed away by the relentless attack ads between the two contestants of one of the few house seats that is competitive and happens be from San Diego (the 52nd).

As usual, I will dwell less on the political offices (where I typically recommend a straight Democratic party line vote) and more on the props.  Here goes:

• Prop 1: The $7.12 Billion Water Bond: California's current drought is reaching historic proportions and makes this gigantic bond measure possible. Most experts agree that it is a tiny fraction of what is required to fix the state's broken water distribution system, but it is a start.  The prop seems to be drawn up rather strictly, leaving limited room for redirecting the bond money as our politicians are often wont to do. Vote YES. 

• Prop 2: The Rainy Day Fund: This is yet another attempt to smooth the ebbs and flows of California's revenues which tend to swing rather wildly with the economic cycle. Most such attempts have failed in the past, but this one seems a bit more specific and tightly worded. Vote YES. 

• Prop 45: Insurance Rate Regulation: This prop was supposed to be on the ballot in 2012, which would have been before the ACA became law, but its supporters did not collect enough signatures in time.  It gives additional powers to the state insurance commissioner to reject insurance rate hikes, but a lot of this is moot in the post-ACA world. Vote NO.

• Prop 46: This is a prop that tries so hard to please that it combines three almost-separate measures into one prop.  That is clearly a recipe for a mess and Prop 46 does not disappoint.  It raises the limit for the pain and suffering portion of a medical malpractice claim from $250,000 to $1.1 Million, requires doctors to check the state registry before prescribing narcotics to first-time patients, and introduces random drug testing for doctors.  It would be hard to argue with any of these measures on their own (the new limit is simply catching up to inflation over the 39 years since the current limit was established), but the prop seems to be cobbled together with no real thought about practical implementation issues.  The 'No' side is arrayed with every health care special interest and has raised vast amounts of money ($57 million vs $8 million on the yes side).  This would normally be sufficient reason for me to reflexively come out in favor of the prop.  However, in this case I am not sure that a bad provision is better than no provision at all.  Vote NO.

• Prop 47: This prop reduces the penalties for some small scale criminal acts including possession of certain drugs for personal use. The smallness of the scale is set (somewhat arbitrarily) at $950, but in my opinion this prop continues the welcome swing back from the extreme approaches to policing that reached its apogee in the Three-Strikes law. Vote YES.

• Prop 48: I am really torn on this one.  The prop is a vote on allowing an Native American tribe to establish a casino on non-reservation land.  This particular tribe has land in remote and environmentally sensitive areas and turns out that somebody had thought through what to do in such situations and this tribe has followed all of the required steps.  Then, why the ambivalence? Well, I am not convinced that casinos are the best way to help Native American tribes and allowing one to come up on non-reservation land seems a slippery slope. However, the flip argument is that this would be just unfair to the tribes that have land in remote or sensitive areas.  And wouldn't it just be churlish to turn away somebody who has followed all the rules simply because we didn't like the premise to begin with? I am going to recommend a YES vote, but I can easily see why somebody would want to vote No. 

And now for some of the political offices:

• Scott Peters (D) vs Carl DeMaio(R) for the 52nd Congressional District: I am (somewhat) proud to note that I had gone against my liberal leanings and recommended Carl DeMaio over the Democrat Bob Filner when both were running for SD Mayor.  Filner of course went on to win only to be forced out of office in disgrace shortly thereafter.  However, Mr.DeMaio's tactics and personal character are of a dubious level at best and I would hate to give John Boehner any more of a majority than he already has. Vote for Scott Peters.

• Superintendent of Public Instruction: This is not really a race that garners much interest, but given the mess that California's public education system is in, I think it is an important race. Both candidates are Democrats, so the partisan element is not there.  The incumbent (Tom Torlakson) is a one-time teacher and would seem ideally suited to the role.  The challenger (Marshall Tuck) is the younger, more-of-an-outsider candidate and I think that is at least some of what we need.  Vote for Marshall Tuck.

• For all other offices, vote democratic.  Or, if you are so inclined, do some more digging!

Customer Service - Bangalore Edition

This little incident didn't happen to me, but I thought it was worth recording as an example of everything customer service is NOT about.

My sister and family had stopped at a Sweets stall after lunch because my niece wanted to try something.  She selected a sweet and asked for 1 piece, to be consumed there and was quoted Rs.40. She got it and after finishing it, felt like eating one more and asked for the same.  The guy goes, that will be another Rs.40 (no big mystery there).  After handing it over, he adds:

"You know, if you were going to get two pieces, you should have just asked for 100 grams. That would have been 2 pieces and would only have cost Rs. 60 (Rs.600 for 1kg)."

Sounds great, let's just make it an order for 100g.

"Oh no," goes the guy, "You didn't order it that way. Since you asked for 1 piece at a time, you have to pay the same way."

No amount of argument was going to budge the dude and they had to pay the piece-rate. I suppose they should be glad that he told them about the "better deal" for the next time around!

Customer Service - France Edition

Expecting a certain lack of friendliness or even rudeness from the French in general and Parisians in particular seems to be the conventional wisdom. In our two visits there, our experience has been quite to the contrary - we have found most folks happy to help and gloss over the fact that we speak no French. As with any large city, a visitor to Paris is constantly reminded to be mindful of pickpockets and when we were there last week, I was in a constant state of vigilance, going through crowds, in and out of the metro, and so on.  On this occasion though, we were sitting at one of the tables outside a restaurant that are so common across Paris and having some pizza.  I had my phone on the table.  A couple of women walked by rapidly, conversing in French.  After they had passed us, one of them abruptly turned around and walked back and asked me in an unsmiling voice, "Anglais?" I was a bit puzzled by her demeanor, but understood that she was asking if I spoke English. I said yes, and in accented English, but in the same stern voice she said, "Don't leave your phone on the table" and without waiting for any answer turned back and resumed her walk.  Malini and the boys had not quite caught the exchange and I had to explain that despite the seeming rudeness, she was actually being helpful and warning me against thieves who would swipe the phone from the table.

But helpful is not the term I would use for the Avis agent at the Saint Pierre de Corps train station in the Loire valley.  First he spoke no English and had no interest in meeting me half way with some combo of broken English and French (I am quite certain he gets a lot of American and British tourists coming through - the Chateaus in the area were fairly crawling with them).  Thankfully this was a small issue since our hostess had graciously agreed to come in and help with translations. I had a printout showing our estimated total at just under $300.  That included almost $100 in taxes and another $100 for the one-way rental.  The guy does a lot of typing, asks if I would be ok with an automatic (most locals prefer manual transmissions), and so on and finally produces a stack of papers and asks me to sign at the bottom. I get a shock - the amount listed is 478 Euros, which is approximately $650 - more that twice my printed quote.  When I ask about it, he does a bunch more typing and then says it is because he added insurance, even though I had explicitly told him that I did not want it.  The hostess explains this again and after some unhappy murmuring, he tears up the sheets and does more typing and then produces another invoice, this time for 425 Euros. I protest that this is still too high. He now says something about our contract having been changed (we couldn't pick up the car the previous day as scheduled due to a train strike, but we had called ahead and informed them about it).  He did some more typing and then produced yet another one showing 378 Euros. Now his reasoning changed.  He said this is what happens when you book from the US. They quote the price there, but once you are in France you have to pay the local rate.  This didn't make any sense to me since my reservation clearly showed me picking up the car at that location. He then pointed to the phrase "estimated charges" on my printout and claimed that that was proof of what he was saying. I tried to explain that that was likely due to the exchange rate fluctuations and in any case, it hardly makes sense that we would be off by almost $200 (378 Euros is just over $500 in USD).  He was having none of it and I just had to throw in the towel and accept the car.  Then he said that I should only return the car on Monday morning rather than the Sunday night when we reached Paris.  This presented another problem since we would have to look for overnight parking in the heart of Paris, but really I had no choice but to agree.

Fast forward three days later and we actually end up returning the car Sunday night - turns out there is no issue with the early return and in fact, we end up getting some 50 Euros back for the early return.  Realizing that the agent in Paris is somewhat more helpful, I ask again about the difference between the quote I had gotten and the one I actually paid for.  After much checking he said, "Its because of the liability waiver." Turns out that my friendly agent in the Loire valley had tacked on some liability insurance anyway and now there was no way to take it off.  However, even that didn't explain the entire difference. The agent in Paris was trying, but eventually he gave up with, "I have never seen a contract like yours. I don't know what the other agent did, your best option is to call Avis customer service." Not sure if that will do me much good, but I imagine the experience is likely to be a bit better as long at the person answering the phone is not my friend in Saint Pierre de Corps. 

Driving in Paris

We were in a B&B in Normandy, along the North-West coast of France.  At breakfast we met a group of three friends from the Philippines (but living in England) who were also in a rental car like us, but were planning to return the car locally and take the train into Paris. We were planning to drive into Paris, return the car and then head to our B&B in Paris. One of the friends goes, "I have heard that even if you have full coverage, insurance companies don't cover any accidents that happen around the Arc de Triomphe circle." This won't be news for those familiar with Paris, but this circle or 'roundabout' where 12 avenues meet is infamous for its dangerous traffic, gaining the nickname "Place de la Traffic," although it is known more formally as, "Place Charles de Gaulle." I groaned inwardly since I had declined said full coverage, but felt it was moot since I had no intentions of driving anywhere in Paris, let alone around the Arc de Triomphe.

After spending a lot of unscheduled time visiting D-Day beaches and sights and being stuck in the traffic jams caused by Parisians returning from visiting the coast on a fine weekend, it was almost 9pm by the time we were entering Paris. From the reservation we knew that the rental place closed at 10pm, so we debated whether to head straight for Avis or gas up first. Just then I saw a sign that showed gas at the next exit (we were in Paris, but on a sort of ring road) and decided on the spur of the moment to take it. As soon as we came off the exit ramp and turned onto the street, I realized with the rapid onset of panic that of all the possible streets and boulevards in Paris I could have been on, I was driving on the cobblestones of the famous Champs Elysees, heading straight towards the Arc de Triomphe.  And not a single gas station in sight. Thankfully it was Sunday evening and the traffic was not too bad.  Even so, I really didn't want to drive around that circle, especially mindful of my lack of insurance. Not to mention the little detail that we had no clue what road we should be taking.

Then I  noticed another sign to the right with a "P" and recalling that this was next to the gas symbol that I had seen off the Freeway, I quickly took that turn and it turned out to be a narrow path that was a sharp incline going underground. Soon it was clear that I had entered an underground parking garage and if I went into the garage proper, we would have to figure out the exit. Luckily I saw another car going up a ramp to our left and I was able to cut across some lanes and take that same exit out onto some side street. We punched the Avis address back into the GPS and after a series of turns, we were back on, yes, you guessed it, the Champs Elysees, heading in exactly the same direction as before. This time there was no choice but to keep going and I plunged into the circle sticking to the outside lane even though we had to take the 6th exit. Very quickly it was obvious that drivers here were a different breed compared to those we had experienced in the Loire valley and Normandy. No politely waiting and yielding to cars already in the circle. People here actually speed up as they entered the circle and seemed intent on cutting you off.  Thankfully, we survived without incident (no doubt helped by the light Sunday night traffic) and actually managed to take the correct exit on our first attempt.

We made it to the Avis office (gave up on the gas), but there was no obvious place to return that car. Malini went in and after a long discussion was told that the return place was elsewhere and that we had better fill gas before we returned since they not only charged you more than double for the gas, but also put on a fine if you made them fill up.  The best part? He didn't have an actual address or street name for either the gas station or the rental place - just a little sketch on a piece of paper. At this point we decided that it was better to drop our bags off before returning the car, notwithstanding all the warnings from our host about the difficulty of navigating to his place by car, given all the one-ways and such.  The driving was stressful, but we eventually made it there and after some frenzied unloading (we were unsure how long we could remain parked on the street), we had deposited our luggage in apartment that was to be our home for the next four days. By now it was past 10pm and the light was starting to fade.  And we were quite famished, having decided to wait till we got to Paris to have dinner.  I told our host that we needed to return the car and he said, that is no problem, it is very close by.  Then I said that I needed to fill gas first and he went, "Oh, that is a problem." Then he gave some rather complex directions of how to get to a gas station and then double back to the rental return that was at the Gare du Nord (train station).

We went down to the car and mulled what to do.  The GPS ('Here" maps on the Nokia Lumia) had been excellent, but was useless without an address to punch in. And even when you had an address, we had already discovered how stressful driving in Paris was - there were turns all over the place and multiple roads that led from an intersection.  "Take the next right turn" was not that simple to follow when the first road on the right might not actually be the correct one - it could well be a one-way street that is entering the intersection.  Malini was tense since she had to navigate. I was equally tense (but tried not to show it) since I had to drive.

Eventually we had to move and I decided I would try to follow our host's verbal directions.  However, it was obvious within a few minutes that we were not where he said we should be. After driving around aimlessly for a bit, we decided to head back to the Avis place and retrace our steps from there. At least we knew the address to that and we had the 'sketch' from there.  Punched that address in and started following a rapid series of lefts and rights. Again the Sunday evening traffic came to the rescue - I was clearly violating a number of rules.  I was expecting to recognize the street the Avis office was on, but something seemed off and all of a sudden, the GPS announced, "You have reached your destination." There wasn't any Avis office in sight and it clearly was not the street we had been on.  I am still not sure what went wrong, but my best guess is that we were on a parallel street that brought us behind the building.  There was no place to stop there and I just made a few random turns and came up on a street that I felt I could stop on.

It was past 10:30pm now.  We didn't know where the gas place was and more importantly we didn't know where the return place was.  Searching for "Gare du Nord Avis" yielded no good results.  Then I decided to forget the gas and just try to find the rental place.  Our host had said it was close to his apartment, so we decided to head there.  As we were driving along,  I noticed a sign that looked like something the Avis guy had put on his sketch. I quickly pulled over and Malini went to check it out. Turned out to be the gas station!  We drove in there and after some struggles, managed to fill up.  An Indian delivery guy was on a motorbike next to us and we asked about the rental return place. He wasn't sure, but gave us some directions.  Feeling better about having gotten the gas and some sort of directions, we pulled back into traffic, but very quickly the panic returned when we realized that we had no clue where we were.  Now it was dark and the street signs were harder to read.  While the light traffic made things easier, it also prevented us from getting clues about legal streets to drive on.  We were stuck again.

Then Google to the rescue: I did a search for "How to return a rental car at Gare du Nord" and came upon a blog entry that showed in great detail how to do the return. The author even gave the street name and said that you should look for the "P" (Parking) sign on your left and then enter the underground garage there. I realized the street was also the same address as the default address for Gare du Nord, so I punched that into the GPS and started following those directions. Malini is calling out the directions and is extremely stressed since it was rather easy to mess up and take the wrong turn.  I keep calling for the next instruction since I want to position myself on the correct lane.  A right turn comes up and we are confused about which road specifically to take and take the wrong one.  The stress level goes up one more notch. Suddenly I notice that the street I am looking for is on my left and I make the turn without waiting to check if I could actually turn that way.  There was another car behind me, so I felt ok about it. That is, until I see the car coming in the opposite direction with its horn blaring and realize that I am going the wrong way on a one-way street. With the other car behind me, there is no turning back and I also notice the "P" sign, but on my right.  I keep going and reach the end of the street and there is no right or left turn allowed and the straight road is another "No Entry" road.

At this point, I had broken so many traffic laws that it didn't seem to matter and I pulled an illegal u-turn.  Now I was heading in the correct direction and entered the parking garage. After descending 6 floors, I came upon the Avis place, but the automatic gate would not open and there was no attendant in sight (it was past 11pm by now). I was afraid to go further since there was no easy way to get back.  Thankfully another car showed up behind me and I went out and asked the driver what to do.  In another lucky break, he spoke English and asked me to feed in the parking ticket I had taken upon entering the parking garage.  Sure enough, the gate opened and I was able to drive up to the Avis return place. Never have I been so relieved to part with a car.

Feeling slightly weak in the legs, the four of us staggered out of Gare du Nord, famished and exhausted, but yet feeling slightly elated. The whole episode felt like something out of a nightmare - so much could have gone wrong, but nothing had. Several times I had cursed myself for not having done what our B&B co-guests had done: returned the car in Normandy and taken the train into Paris. As we left Gare du Nord though, we realized that we had indeed made the right choice - the train strike that had delayed us on the day of arrival was still on-going and there had been no trains into Paris that day.  For all I knew, they were still stuck in Saint Malo and we were in Paris, safely checked into our B&B, and most importantly, sans rental car. As they say, all's well that ends well.

"The Storm of War"

It took me as almost long as the event itself - OK, not quite, but I started it well over a year ago and yesterday, I finally finished it! As is obvious from the photo above, The Storm of War is a single-volume history of the Second World War.  It was published in England in 2009 (where the author, Andrew Roberts, is from) and in the US in 2011. The paperback edition came out last year.

At over 600 pages (of the tall variety, at that), it is not a quick read, but it sure is a fascinating one.  The Second World War doesn't get a lot of coverage in Indian history books (although Indian soldiers participated in significant numbers as part of the British forces, the war itself never entered India) and before reading this book, I only had the most rudimentary awareness of this cataclysmic event. I have considered others books in the past (& even own a couple of them), but I am certainly glad that this is the one I chose to actually read.

Andrew Roberts has the rare ability to synthesize such a vast and complex story into a readable narrative that does not feel superficial or mired in inane detail. He has marshaled an impressive array of sources (the Bibliography alone runs to over 25 pages) and quotes them at just the right moment.  His approach is to break up the war into its various theatres and cover each one for time periods that span a few years at a time.  This implies that he jumps back in time between chapters, but it allows him to keep the focus on one specific aspect of the war in a particular chapter.  In general, this approach works quite well, although it could be a mite confusing if you take too many long breaks.

I obviously learnt a lot from this book, but probably the most astonishing fact for me was amount of lives lost by the Russians.  If America paid for the war (literally) in arms, equipment, and food, then it was Russia that paid the price in blood.  Some of the statistics that surround this are truly startling: 50 million lives were lost in this war. Of this more than 27 million were from Russia.  The Germans were engaged simultaneously on Eastern (Russia) and Western (Britain and USA) fronts. The Western front with the War of Britain and the D-Day landings gets most of the press, but the real bitter, bloody, and often hand-to-hand, battle was fought on the Eastern front. Of every 5 Germans killed on the battlefield, 4 were killed on the Eastern front.

Roberts doesn't just report history - he also provides analysis and insight.  He does this throughout the book, but particularly so in the last chapter ("Conclusion") where he provides his answer to the question, Why did the Allied forces win the war? It is clear that there was nothing inevitable about this victory and the author points out the long series of strategic and tactical blunders on the part of Hitler that likely cost Germany the war.  Germany held the advantage for much of the early going - indeed, the author makes a strong claim for the German soldier to be the "best" soldier in all of the Word War.  Ultimately, the seeds for the downfall of the Nazis were within the same philosophy that brought them to power and triggered the war in the first place.

A book of this scope must necessarily drop some aspects that others might consider very important. There is barely any mention of Mussolini and while the Japanese side of the story gets considerably more play (especially the attack on Pearl Harbor and of course the dropping of the nuclear bombs), the presentation is almost entirely from Hitler's perspective.  As the author readily admits, this is by design and due to the somewhat obvious fact that Hitler was the primary reason for starting the war, the early successes for the Axis, and their eventual defeat.

The combined leadership of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin won the war for the Allies, but while Stalin essentially ruled as a dictator, Roosevelt and Churchill presided over a more fractious set of generals with out-sized egos that constantly squabbled over matters of strategy and tactics. It is interesting that their "committee style" approach eventually triumphed over the "single vision" approach of Germany.

Almost 70 years after the end of the war, it is hard to imagine what it must have been like to live through that tumultuous time, but the accretion of the descriptions of one bloody battle after other, the cruelty of one people against another (& indeed, sometimes on their own - especially in the case of the Russians), and just the massive loss of life and survival in horrendous conditions cannot fail to weigh down the reader and indeed, the lingering sense I had as I finished the book was one of sadness.

Is there justification for the enormous cost (in lives and treasure) of this war? The author posits the theory that Germany needed to lose the war as comprehensively as it did to usher in the peaceful country it has since become and avoid the rise of revanchist forces. This debate was of course the central question of the Bhagvad Gita and it is generally accepted that Krishna's view of "duty first" is the preeminent one - implicitly in the way events transpire in the Mahabharata and more explicitly by a long line of more modern philosophers.  However, as Amartya Sen discusses in The Argumentative Indian, Arjun's questioning of the morality of the cost that such duty entails still deserves consideration - but that is a subject for another day.

One last statistic about the war that reflects on the relative costs borne by the Allies: The US spent $350 billion - more than Britain and the USSR combined, but for every American life lost in the war, Russia lost 92.

The California Propositions

Eleven days from now the suspense will be broken and we will know whether Obama gets a second term or Romney's desperate dive to the center pays off.  The long drawn out Republican primary played out as a farce with one comically unsuitable candidate after another taking the lead over Romney only to be crushed under the weight of their own hopelessness and yielding ground to the next joker. Credible candidates like Huntsman couldn't survive the demands of the Tea Party extremists, but Romney made it through - secure in his puritan personal life (no skeletons there) and ever so willing to take any position that was convenient for the day.

Maybe Romney will govern from the center, but it is a risk that I am not interested in taking. Maybe he will not succeed in repealing the Affordable Care act, but there is one thing he will most certainly get to do: nominate Supreme Court justices, maybe as many as four of them. Citizens United will seem like a very reasonable verdict after that.

Ok, enough with the hand wringing, let me get on with the res. Here are my recommendations for the CA state ballot measures and elections.  I'll start with the props (related ones together):

Prop 30 & 38: Both of these propositions aim to raise taxes in order to fund education. Prop 30 raises taxes on incomes above 250,000 for 7 years and sales tax by 1/4 % for 4 years. Prop 38 raises income taxes on a sliding scale. Gov Brown made a sneaky move - he cut funding to education (part of closing a huge budget deficit) and pushed Prop 30 as a way to close that funding hole. How do you vote against that? Prop 30 may leave a funny taste in the mouth, but 38 seems rather suspicious. For one, it does not have any phase out of the tax increases. And then it proposes to give all the money to just K-12 schooling. It also seems like an underhand way of defeating 30 by confusing voters. I recommend YES on 30 and NO on 38.

Prop 34 & 36: Prop 36 tries to bring some sanity to the three-strikes law by requiring that the third strike has to be a serious felony conviction or a violent crime. There are too many people incarcerated for life for essentially a minor (third) crime. I believe this should come to an end.
Prop 34 does away with capital punishment and I think it is about time. If the moral argument does not sway you, then just consider the fiscal one: With all the built-in safeguards that include automatic appeals all the way to the state supreme court (& sometimes to the US Supreme Court), prisoners sentenced to die stay on death row for well over 20 years.  The cost to the government is very significant since they are required to be housed in individual cells and given special attention. Not to mention all the legal costs. Life imprisonment without the chance of parole (which is what Prop 36 prescribes) is lot cheaper. Since CA enacted the death penalty in 1974, 900 people have been sentenced to die. Of them, only 14 have actually been executed. I recommend YES on 34 and 36.

Prop 31& 32: These not really related, but sort have the same flavor.  Prop 31 is melange of a proposition. It moves some money from the state to the local governments, it puts some restrictions on state legislatures and so on. The big one is that it makes the state budget a 2-year one instead of an annual process. This is supposed to make our legislators plan ahead. It may be well intentioned, but seems too much like a band-aid solution.
Prop 32 has to do with preventing unions from using payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. It attempts to be fair by putting in some similar restrictions on contractors and corporations, but since when did unions and corporations operate on the same level playing field? I am not buying either of these props - I recommend NO on 31 and 32.

Prop 33: This will allow car insurance companies to give you a discount for continuous coverage even if it was with a different carrier. This prop sounds good on paper - it should increase competition and if you are somebody who has always maintained your car insurance then you might be able to shop around for a lower rate. But the people who lose out are the ones who had let their policy lapse - there are some exceptions for military service and losing your job. What gives me real pause is that it is funded almost completely by one insurance company owner and this is the second time he is trying it. The previous attempt was Prop 17 in 2010 and that failed. I recommend NO on 33.

Prop 34: Increases penalties for human trafficking. This prop essentially throws the book at anybody convicted of human trafficking (think pimps). What's to argue with such a law? The problem is that simply raising the criminal penalty is a rather simplistic response to a complex issue. Often it is the well intentioned effort that has really bad consequences. I am truly ambivalent on this prop. I will likely be voting yes, but I am not going to make an actual recommendation.

Prop 37: Require labeling of Genetically Engineered (GE) food. This is another potentially confusing issue. Would such labeling just end up scaring people unnecessarily? Could it end up hurting the average consumer by raising food costs? I am not sure, but messing with nature is often fraught with danger. It also seems rather lopsided that the No on 37 side has raised over 35 million dollars, mostly from the likes of Monsanto and Dow. I say give me the label. I recommend YES on 37.

Prop 39: Out-of-state corporations to pay CA tax on in-state sales. Yes, it will make some companies pay more taxes to CA. A Billion dollars more. But, it is for sales they have had in CA. A loop hole lets them get away with this now. Time to close it, I say. I recommend YES on 39.

Prop 40: This one has to do with redistricting, but there are lots of twists and turns in its story. Without going into too much detail, this prop will essentially retain the results of the work of a civilian commission. The new maps had been opposed by the state Republican party, but they have since abandoned this position. I recommend a YES on 40.

And now for some state-wide offices:

• Dianne Feinstein for US Senate
• Scott Peters for the House seat (52nd distict)

Finally, for San Diego mayor, I recommend Carl Demaio over Bob Filner. This race is ostensibly non-partisan, but even so I struggled with picking Republican Demaio over Democrat Filner. Both of these guys have some rough spots, but Filner does seem more of an old-style politician with a huge sense of entitlement. He did get Gov Brown's endorsement, but I found it telling that during the primary, Brown had sided with the other Democrat (Nathan Fletcher) in the race.  It is not surprising that the outgoing mayor, Jerry Sanders, endorsed Demaio - both are Republicans after all, but it still counts since I think Sanders had done a decent job overall. Finally, the support of (Democrat) Irwin Jacobs for Carl Demaio carries a lot of weight with me. So, there you go - Carl Demaio for mayor and I cannot be accused being strictly party-line!

Say Again?

The following is a verbatim reproduction of an email thread from a company in the SF area. I have changed the names to maintain their privacy.

From: Arun Mahatma @axc.com

>
Date: Thursday, October 18, 2012 11:30 AM
To: Chong Li li@axc.com>, Eng <Engineering@axc.com >
Subject: RE: Arun WFH

Sorry Chong, maybe I was not clear enough due to my cold… but I meant “I am down with Cold” not “Done with Code” :-)

-----Original Appointment-----

From: Chong Li
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2012 10:47 AM
To: Eng
Subject: Arun WFH
When: Thursday, October 18, 2012 12:00 AM to Friday, October 19, 2012 12:00 AM (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada).
Where:

Arun is done with code.  He does not feel well, and he asked me to send this out.