Biting the Ballot...Questions

We have three intiative petitions to vote on here in the Commonwealth this year, all very much rooted out of the very base desires for money (2 of them) and power (the other one) by special interest groups.

Question 1: Should we be allowed to buy wine at supermarkets?

I'm like, sure, why not, whatever. I guess the guys at the local packies aren't going to be too happy, but I don't seem them going out of business over it. What gets me wanting to stab someone with a fork is the web site that the state supermarket PAC threw up advocating the question like it's about "choice for consumers" and updating "outdated provisions" in our state's liquor laws.

Wow. Thank you, Mass Food Association. Thank you for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to update our state's liquor laws. It's so...selfless of you. Hmmm, what? Your members stand to make millions of dollars over the next 10 years in wine sales? Really? Wow. I can't imagine that something so altruistic as wanting to provide choice for consumers would come with a side benefit that you're not mentioning in your marketing literature.

Question 2: Should we make ballots more confusing by sticking the same candidate in multiple times with a different and invariably weird fringe party designation?

I think you can tell where I come down on this. This particular web site is much better than the Supermarket Sweep folks sponsoring Q1 above, though. Has this great cartoon, which you can click to open the site:





We lived in the Empire State for a little more than three years, so I've seen this system in action. To date, the "Working Families Party" is still just the organization that has the Democratic candidate's name written on the ballot twice and gets the occasional column-inch in the Daily News. My problems with this initiative:

1) People are easily confused and as a rule tend not to make informed decisions anyway. This is just one more avenue to muddle things up without actually accomplishing anything.

2) As I'll expound in a later post, I'm incredibly tired of the two party system and the abject failure of either the GOP or Dems to rise above partisan hackery. I love the idea of a strong 3rd party. But having a bunch of guys named Moe band together to put someone else's party hack on the ballot under their name is just...I dunno...I can't decide between "silly" or "pointless". How about "spintless"?

I really would like me a can of vibrant democracy, though.

Question 3: Should home-based child care providers be able to collectively bargain with the Commonwealth?

Well, I don't have kids, and I don't take care of kids, so this all becomes more of theoretical question. Still, my vote counts just as much as other folks. I've always appreciated the contribution the labor movement has made to society, but...I think of the last 40 years of union activity like I do poetry: for every 1 single sublime, life-affirming poem, there are 300 that make me want to rip my eyeballs out. I was in NYC for 2 transit strikes--pointless. The MTA (the Mass Teachers--not the transit strike people) shutting down the longer school day here? Poorly played. So, when I see these folks wanting to band together, I get a vision of a bunch of families with no place to put their kids because their daycare provider is on strike* for an extra fifty bucks a week. I don't see how it makes the kids any better provided for, since you can't make the providers use any percentage of the gains made through collective bargaining to improve either their facilities or levels of service.

I do see the point. If the Commonwealth has a big say in your personal paycheck, it's good to have an advocacy with some teeth behind it. But it's not like this legislation will do for child care workers what Chavez did for farm workers. In the end, this is a vendor (the providers) to client (the commonwealth) relationship and it looks like the vendors are trying to set the conditions of the deal. Is that the way it's supposed to work?

So, that's it for that. Get out and vote!

*The proposed law does not grant the right to strike, but then again, NY law didn't authorize the last transit strike in NYC either. Roger Toussaint of the Transit Workers Union did 10 days in a bottom bunk at Rikers for that. Point is, just cuz somethin's illegal don't mean someone ain't gonna do it. I'm just sayin.