Curmudgeon's Guide for Young Conservative Voters (California June 3 Edition) - UPDATED

UPDATE: Latest General Election edition is up here.

[As the primary looms (tomorrow!), I realize that many of you have come here searching for either a Christian or conservative voters guide. You found this instead. My deepest and most sincere apologies. We should probably fire the idiots who came up with the initiatives and/or candidates we have to select from in this election, but we are California Republicans, and we are inherently lazy.]

Uncle Woody isn't sure what to tell you young conservative voters about this coming primary election. It's only a few short weeks away, yet Uncle Woody can't help but feel that this one won't add any value to our process this time around. Uncle Woody thinks we all got so burned out in the February presidential primary that we've nearly forgotten we still had a regular primary election coming up.

"Didn't we just do this?" Uncle Woody can hear you say. Yes, we did, and it garnered us the only Republican candidate who not only won't go out of his way to protect our borders, he very well may help to erase them. But I digress. The point is, you're here because you were looking for a conservative voter guide, and Uncle Woody's is seemingly the only one you could find.

Buena suerte, as we say here in Mexifornia.

Anyway, here's Uncle Woody's curmudgeonly take on the California June 3 Primary. We begin, as always, with the ballot initiatives.

Oddly enough, Uncle Woody was more interested this time around in the initiatives that didn't qualify for inclusion on the ballot. I presume this means they fell short of the required signatures, although a couple of them were "withdrawn." We do NOT have an opportunity to vote for those poor farm animals who are raised primarily so we can eat them later. We also do not get to vote on whether to eliminate "domestic partner benefits." Uncle Woody is pretty sure that Berkeley alone would have registered enough dead voters to make certain that this particular initiative would have dropped like a stone. There was also one that dealt with "coerced sterilization of animals or humans." I had no idea we had a coerced human sterilization problem in California. This may explain Schwarzenegger.

Anyway, only two initiatives qualified in time for this election. Although they share traits in common, they have different purposes and results:

Proposition 98 - Government Acquisition, Regulation of Private Property. Constitutional Amendment.
Proposition 99 - Eminent Domain. Acquisition of Owner-Occupied Residence. Constitutional Amendment.

Uncle Woody smells several rats here. This is obviously in reaction to land-grab headlines of a few years ago that had folks very much up in arms. No problem; Uncle Woody can understand the desire to protect one's property and assets. If Uncle Woody HAD any property or assets, he would definitely want to protect them.

As always, however, one needs to have a far better sense of legal maneuvering to fully understand these initiatives. One bellwether I tend to watch are the Howard Jarvis folks. Jarvis was responsible for Proposition 13 lo these many years ago that limited the state's ability to raise property taxes beyond what Jarvis felt were "reasonable" limits. Whether or not you appreciated Jarvis' stance (Uncle Woody benefitted tremendously from those limitations in his earlier life), he was definitely looking out for taxpayers' interests.

He is, of course, dead.

Still, that doesn't stop other taxpayer protectionists from using his name, and they all have a bunch of legal letters after their names. They all say pretty much the same thing: Proposition 99 is evil, and Proposition 98 is the guy in the white hat riding in to save the day.

Besides all that, Schwarzenegger doesn't like Prop 98 which, by itself, is pretty much all the motivation I need to vote for it. Prop 99 is full of more loopholes than my Grandma's afghan and I wouldn't trust it as far as I could wad it up and throw it.

Proposition 98 = Yes
Proposition 99 = No

There aren't any local ballot initiatives in the part of Orange County where Hacienda Woody is located. This is all to the good as Uncle Woody blew a few fuses trying to muddle through the state ballots.

As for candidates, as always Uncle Woody urges you young conservatives to vote your consciences. Neither of our U. S. Senators is up for re-election this year, so I can't poke fun at California's continuing inability to front a GOP candidate that anyone can take seriously. I suppose there's little chance of getting Mitt Romney to relocate here so he can qualify for one of those seats in a couple of years. Still, hopefully someone will float to the surface that a) is well enough known that folks won't ignore them, and b) will actually be a threat to the Lib Sisters.

In other words, look for pigs to perform activities contrary to established laws of physics before that happens.