California Voters Reject Prop 29

It was close, but by a narrow margin it appears the voters of California thought better about assessing a $735 million per year cigarette tax on Californians to create some new black hole bureaucracy.  Cancer research is a good thing, but with all of California's other problems we didn't need to get in that business, especially since tobacco taxes hit lower income people the hardest.

And in keeping with the union reform theme as carried over from Wisconsin, two California cities voted to limit their pension payouts to public sector unions:

As Wisconsin residents voted on Tuesday not to recall Gov. Scott Walker — who has become an enemy of labor unions nationwide — two California cities dealt blows of their own to organized labor.

In San Diego and San Jose, voters overwhelmingly approved ballot initiatives designed to help balance ailing municipal budgets by cutting retirement benefits for city workers.

Around 70 percent of San Jose voters favored the pension measure, while 66 percent of San Diego residents supported a similar measure.

"This is really important to our taxpayers," Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose, said Tuesday night. "We’ll get control over these skyrocketing retirement costs and be able to provide the services they are paying for."

In other California election news, in 2010 the people foolishly changed our primary system to an open primary and now we're reaping the stupidity.  More than one congressional district race in November will be between two Democrats thanks to the new system.  Other parties need not apply.

The Senate ballot was ridiculous - something like 27 names and only the top two run in November.  Minor parties (like Libertarians) which used to have a spot on the ballot in November won't have one.  In fact, we're lucky we got a Republican on the ballot to run against Dianne Feinstein.  The GOP candidate is almost an unknown, so I'm not giving her much of a chance.

The open primary thing needs to be undone.  It's a bad system.