Whoulda Thunk It?

Apparently I'm living in the right place. In Oregon, you as the voter get direct say in a whole bunch of things. Usually, there are tons'n'tons of ballot measures for your voting pleasure - last year, I recall my friend getting not one but TWO thick voter info pamphlets in the mail. This is why we have medical marijuana. This is why we are the only state to have legal euthanasia. This is why Oregon still has no sales tax. This is why every Oregon voter votes by mail - yep, we voted on that, too.

So, honestly, I was kind of bummed that for my first time out as an Oregon voter (I'm still not sure that my absentee ballot in '99 ever got there on time), I only had two measly measures on which to vote. Granted, they were pretty fun ones, but still.

Measure 49 harkened back to a measure a few years ago that I missed out on, Measure 37. Something to do with land use & property values, yadda yadda yadda, Measure 37 seems to have been intended for individual property owners who wanted to build one or two houses on their land, but due to loopholes ended up becoming the go-to measure for massive claims by developers & timber companies to build crap on estuaries & other bad-guy stuff. Measure 49 is supposed to close those loopholes & get back to what 37 was meant to accomplish.

Honestly, I read the measure. It was like reading Foucault through oatmeal goggles. Meaning I didn't follow a lot of it. I read all of the arguments for & against. But my decision to vote "yes" came down to three things:

• Development is bad news for animals. Hey, I saw Pom Poko. Those poor tanukis! (This also takes me into my idea that "ownership" (i.e., "it's MY property") is one of the sillier conceits we as humans have devised - though of course, one day I do intend to "own" my own house.)
  
• I don't believe in development for people either. We've built enough crap. Let's live with it & not add to it.
• I have passed through the rolling, subdivision-choked hills of Northern Virginia on more than one occasion & endured the traffic-clogged two-lane "country" roads created thereby. Nuff said.
  

Measure 50 was misleadingly labeled the "Healthy Kids" measure. Basically, this measure would have increased the cigarette tax by 85 cents per pack, using the additional revenue to supply medical insurance for those scads of kids who don't have it. Which on the surface sounds really great. Shit, I smoke, & I would've considered it. Except:

• It would have amended the state Constitution. For a tax? Um, no. That's just wrong. I would have voted "no" based solely on that, frankly. I think I'm secretly Libertarian libertarian anyway.
  
• The money was guaranteed to have been used for kids & other medically underserved Oregonians through 2011. So...where's it going after that?
• Oregon already has some program for uninsured kids. That hardly anyone's bothering to use. Why don't they fix that first?*
• Even the writers of the ballot admitted this was a "short-term solution". Which takes us back to...amending the Constitution for something that isn't really going to fix anything, & is only valid for four years?*
  

So, yeah, the majority of Oregon voters came down on my side. 'Cause I'm fucking right. I'm kind of surprised that Measure 50 didn't pass, actually. It had a huge smiley face & voter-friendly pat on the back to obscure that whole fucking-with-the-constitution thing. Props to my fellow citizens for paying attention.

* Yeah, I'm always the person who's like, "Back it up with facts, bitch" but I'm way too lazy today to do that here. This is just based on stuff I heard on NPR & read in The Oregonian.