{"id":183826,"date":"2012-11-07T19:53:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T00:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/11\/07\/more-election-updates\/"},"modified":"2012-11-07T19:53:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T00:53:00","slug":"more-election-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/11\/07\/more-election-updates\/","title":{"rendered":"More Election Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Allen West, crazy man and war criminal (literally), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/news\/politics\/national\/allen-west-challenger-declares-victory-more-bad-news-for-mack-family\/1260467\">gone<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/Ehlav.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"175\" \/>Democrat Jon Tester, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greatfallstribune.com\/article\/20121107\/NEWS01\/311070015\/Tester-win-brings-tight-two-year-race-end\">reelected<\/a> from Montana, (!) in a victory for retro hair styles.<\/p>\n<p>More interesting were the initiative elections.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s start with Maryland, where gambling expansion and gay marriage passed.<\/p>\n<p>On the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2012\/11\/07\/us-usa-campaign-gaymarriage-idUSBRE8A60MG20121107\">gay marriage front<\/a>, Maine and Washington also passed gay marriage, and in Minnesota, voters defeated an anti gay marriage constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n<p>In California, things <a href=\"http:\/\/vote.sos.ca.gov\/\">actually turned out better than I expected<\/a>, with Democrats getting a super-majority in both houses of the legislature, meaning that they can raise taxes, and on initiatives, Jerry Brown&#8217;s tax increase passed, as did a moderation of their three strikes law, closing corporate tax loopholes, enhanced penalties for human trafficking, and non-partisan redistricting.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s kind of remarkable for California, nothing really stupid passed, though I am bumming a bit over the fact that death penalty repeal failed (by only 5%), and the ratf%$#s at Monsanto managed to kill the genetically modified foods labeling law.<\/p>\n<p>Most importantly, California decisively defeated the labor union muzzling initiative(aka &#8220;paycheck prediction&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>Not a bad evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Allen West, crazy man and war criminal (literally), gone. Democrat Jon Tester, reelected from Montana, (!) in a victory for retro hair styles. More interesting were the initiative elections. Let&#8217;s start with Maryland, where gambling expansion and gay marriage passed. On the gay marriage front, Maine and Washington also passed gay marriage, and in Minnesota, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,998,1000,1020,1030],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-congress","category-elections","category-legislation","category-lgbtq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}