Thanks Suckers: Proposition 36 Is a Republican Ruse

Photo by Steve Harrris on Unsplash

There is little doubt among pollsters and election analysts that California Proposition 36 will pass this year with a solid majority approval. Prop 36, in case you don’t remember, is set to repeal certain criminal justice reforms (Prop 47) approved by voters a decade ago. 

It turns out that Gov. Newsom has been right all along when he claimed Proposition 36 was really a stalking horse for the state’s otherwise irrelevant Republican Party. The hefty budget in support of locking up more people (which is what Prop 36 actually does) has been funded by corporations like Walmart, Target, and Home Depot, along with law enforcement organizations. 

The Los Angeles Times reports the Committee for Safer Communities has funneled one million dollars to the State GOP in the last month.

• “The donation not only indicates the confidence that Proposition 36 proponents have about the measure passing in the Nov. 5 election, but it also shows a partisan allegiance that appears to defy the efforts to portray the campaign as bipartisan.”

Being bipartisan was never the intent of Prop 36 backers; it was window dressing. 

Via Politico:

• There’s a political calculus behind why Democrats and Republicans are so focused on a California ballot measure to change criminal penalties: it could have bigger impacts down ballot.

• Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders are using hardball tactics to pressure retailers and district attorneys to withdraw their November initiative to erase parts of Proposition 47, a decade-old law that reduced penalties for some drug and property crimes. On the surface, it’s largely been a fight about the policy merits of tough-on-crime laws.

• But political strategists and lawmakers in both parties say it’s also about swaying the outcome of other elections on the ballot. They argue the emotionally-charged nature of the fight could have a dramatic spillover effect that extends from California to Washington — potentially shaping the outcome of a handful of close House races, and therefore control of Congress.

A big part of the campaign for the measure’s adoption has been the seemingly bipartisan sheen applied in support for Prop 36 by Democratic Mayors from around the state backing a guise for what is actually a Republican- led effort to return California to the draconian, tough- on-crime policies of the past.

I get it. It’s the fear of future law enforcement oriented PACS playing rough come re-election time. Grow a backbone, Mayors.

The measure comes after a years long-effort by large retail corporations and the law enforcement industrial complex to induce news coverage of shoplifting crimes. Always present was the absurd notion that a $950 line between misdemeanor and felony theft charges was incentivizing what was being portrayed as just short of looting.

The truth is that Prop 47’s relationship with an increasing crime rate can’t be proven. The Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy cites multiple studies saying no relationship between reforms and crime rates exists.

Twenty nine states have a felony threshold for Shoplifting/Larceny of over $1,000. Arrests in California for shoplifting were down 17% from 2014 (the year Prop 47 was passed) levels. 

Misinformation and disinformation efforts have persuaded the public that Prop 36 will solve a problem that may or may not exist. Images alleged to be signs in retail stores telling would-be shoplifters that theft of up to $950 was tolerated spread on the internet to the point where USA Today ran a story about the fake news effort.

Retail locations closing in urban areas were attributed by media stenographers as losses due to theft, when evidence pointing to other causes was readily available. Other retailers installed vinyl cabinets supposedly to stop theft only to find that the only statistic coming out of it was a reduction in sales. (Why wait for a clerk to unlock a barrier to buy vitamin D when ordering via Amazon is less hassle?) 

Target in Mission Valley, for instance, still has some merchandise locked up, but a recent walk-thru found many cabinets unlocked and others removed entirely. (I’ll bet that closing the self-checkout lanes actually reduced inventory shrinkage.)

Retail outlets like Walgreen (which announced 1200 store closings yesterday) aren’t as profitable as they used to be, and it’s an industry-wide problem, not just in drug stores, but in apparel, sporting goods, and convenience stores.

Data provider CoreSight says there has been a 24% increase in store closures over last year as the retail industry adjusts to a shift in consumer shopping to online outlets, inflation and bankruptcies.

Proposition 36 came into being as a ballot item after years of resentment by law enforcement and related agencies. They were angered that the public supported something other than throwing more people in jail (reforms included passing the savings to drug rehab). One of the arguments (seriously!) being proffered in support of this year’s measure has been that police are simply refusing to arrest shoplifters.

I do think it’s possible that police departments nationwide have been on a slowdown of sorts in the years since criminal justice reforms and accountability have become part of the public discourse. Maybe it’s not about how many people get arrested, but there are symptoms of a general malaise. 

Certainly, the tar brush of “defunding the police” has been and continues to be used by reactionaries in electoral contests, even though the overall footprint and funding of police remains roughly unchanged. 

Things haven’t been the same in the City of San Diego since Mayor Todd Gloria only partially succeeded in requiring SDPD to mask up during the pandemic. The County didn’t even try for masks on officers, but the stonewalling of citizen oversight and accountability for jail deaths are symptoms of a manufactured divide between law enforcement and ordinary citizens.

Rather than confront the ‘us vs them’ mentality plaguing our government’s policing agencies, we’ve been persuaded to give them a sop that won’t stop crime, will take money away from drug rehab programs, and bring back the “good old days” of the War on Drugs.   

We’re being played.

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Wednesday News to Peruse

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Heather Cox Richardson, Reporting on the discombobulated appearances of candidate Donald trump at Letters From An American -October 15, 2024

• Trump’s issues make it likely that a second Trump presidency would really mean a J.D. Vance presidency, even if Trump nominally remains in office. 

• Currently an Ohio senator, J.D. Vance is just 39, and if voters put Trump into the White House, Vance will be one of the most inexperienced vice presidents in our history. He has held an elected office for just 18 months, winning the office thanks to the backing of entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who first employed Vance, then invested in his venture capital firm, and then contributed an unprecedented $15 million to his Senate campaign. 

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Getting out the vote is crucial—and the GOP is blowing it by Kos at Daily Kos:

• “Mr. Trump’s team is largely operating under the assumption that Republicans who voted for Trump in previous elections will once again back him in large numbers,” reported the Times. “His campaign is focusing on a smaller number of infrequent voters who his team believes will back Mr. Trump if energized to vote. The campaign says it has “hundreds of paid staff” and over 300 offices across the battleground states.”

• First of all, assuming past supporters will turn out is perhaps the dumbest political assumption anyone can make. Remember Trump raised $88 million less this past September than in September 2020. There is objectively less intensity around Trump’s supporter base today than four years ago. They should be working hard to shore up any flagging support, instead of just taking them for granted. 

• For context, Harris claims over 2,500 paid staff over 353 offices, exponentially more than Trump’s claims of “hundreds.”

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Of course we can tax billionaires (15 Oct 2024) by Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic:

• Taxing the ultra-rich isn't like the secret of embalming Pharaohs – it's not a lost art from a fallen civilization. The US top rate of tax in 1944 was 97%. The postwar top rate from 1945-63 was 94%, and it was 70% from 1965-80. This was the period of the largest expansion of the US economy in the nation's history. These are the "good old days" Republicans say they want to return to.

• The super-rich keep getting richer. In France, the 500 richest families were worth a combined €200b in 2010. Today, it's €1.2 trillion. No wonder a global wealth tax is at the top of the agenda for next month's G20 Summit in Rio.

• Here in the US – where money can easily move across state lines and where multiple states are racing each other to the bottom to be the best onshore/offshore tax- and financial secrecy haven – state-level millionaire taxes are kicking ass.