I received the
rest of the voter information booklets. There are two other
Propositions --
55 and 56 -- on the ballot. Prop 55 is a $12.3 billion bond measure
mostly
for new school buildings. I remember this being on the ballot an
election
or two ago and I guess it failed. And if it fails again it'll
automatically
go on the ballot in the November election. Therefore there's no reason
to vote Yes.
Proposition 56 changes the budget laws. It reduces the number of votes
needed to pass a state tex from 2/3rds to 55% If the state budget isn't
passed by June (same deadline as now) then legislators and the governor
do not get paid and forfeit their pay until the budget is passed. It
also mandates a reserve if there is excess state income.
The argument against is that it gives the state government a blank
check to raise taxes and they have a list of worst-case tax hike
scenarios. Proponents argue that it means a minority can't hold up the
state budget by blocking new taxes. They also point out that all but
three states need only a simple majority to pass their budgets.
Having read both arguments I think that voting Yes on Prop 56 makes
more sense.
Also up are various local taxes and bond measures, all of which I will
vote Yes for. May or may not be the greatest idea but in bad fiscal
times I'm willing to be taxed more. This is in direct contradiction to
my Republican philosophy that the way out of a recession and a budget
deficit is to reduce taxes and promote the economy. But that's more for
businesses.
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Damn. Forgot
to bring my headphones to work. It's amazing how annoying
the soft sounds of people walking about and working on their computers
are. Even my own typing bothers me. I guess I'm way too used to
listening
to music in the background, even if I'm not paying any attention to it.
I should have a set of extra headphones stored here just for this kind
of emergency.
Ran another two DCH adventures last Saturday. I've been doing a pretty
good clip. For DunDraCon I'll probably run Friday night, Saturday
afternoon, maybe twice on Sunday and maybe Monday mid-morning. Plus
maybe another game or two for one or two people. That means I need a
couple of multi-hero adventures ready and a couple of single-hero
adventures. Plus a couple of Star Wars adventures for the Vegan
campaign.
Ambrosia Software released Snapz Pro X 2, their screen and movie
capture
utility. Now they claim it can even capture the output of a DVD movie,
on machines that use Quartz Extreme, like mine does. They couldn't
before
(except for nVidia cards) because the video never hit the CPU, but with
Quartz Extreme even DVD video hits the CPU and so can be captured. Neat
trick and something I've looked for: an easy way to capture video clips
from DVDs.
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