For too much of the liberal crowd in this town, I-200 is an easy call. Indeed, to even raise questions about affirmative action is somehow considered, at the very least, uncouth. But the people who brought us I-200 are rightly shining a critical light on a highly flawed and troubling program. Affirmative action in the public sector is disturbing not just because it institutionalizes racial and gender discrimination as an official government policy; it also serves as a convenient fig leaf to cover up the fundamental and persistent inequalities of education and opportunity that set minorities back, long before they are ever applying for jobs or college admissions.
I-200, though, while eliminating a flawed program, would do far more harm than good. It's hard to imagine John Carlson and his I-200 crowd out there after Election Day, seeking new and "fairer" ways to help minorities and women. Instead, we suspect they'll be looking to sue to stop any program that's specifically tailored to help them. Meanwhile, the officially sanctioned preferences for veterans and the disabled—which primarily benefit white males—will remain, untouched by I-200, as will all the many unofficial preferences that serve to keep the powerless in their place. Vote No.
I-688: Minimum Wage
Both sides in this debate over whether to increase the minimum wage to $6.50 an hour by the year 2000, as proposed by I-688, agree that even that rate is too low to be a livable wage. So what's the argument for keeping the minimum at $5.15, the level that currently applies to most jobs? Not much of one.
Opponents of I-688 portray the minimum as a "starting wage" used mainly by people who don't need the money—teenagers and those in families with other earners. But a scouring of statistics and real-life examples shows that the vast majority of minimum-wage earners are making their own way—though that is far from easy to do. One McDonald's worker we talked to couldn't spare $12 so that the granddaughter she is raising could get school pictures.
The minimum wage wasn't always so stingy. If it had kept up with the rate of inflation over the past 30 years, it would now stand at approximately $7.40.
Still, there are questions about the initiative's call for annual automatic increases that would follow the inflation rate. Opponents say business owners could be devastated in hard times. The increases would be gradual, however, rather than the big jump that happens when the minimum is raised after a long lull.
Moreover, to state the obvious: In good times and in hard times, people need to buy food. If it costs them more to get it, they need to earn more. Vote Yes.
I-692: Medical Marijuana
It's so hard to argue that medicinal marijuana is a bad thing that opponents of Initiative 692 don't even try. Nor does the medical establishment. According to The New England Journal of Medicine, "thousands of patients with cancer, AIDS, and other diseases report they have obtained striking relief from devastating symptoms by smoking marijuana."
Opponents of I-692 instead argue—disingenuously, we believe—that the proposal is flawed because it provides no safe or legal means for distribution, as is provided for FDA-controlled prescription drugs. They also object on the grounds that I-692 is the first step in a backdoor effort to legalize marijuana for the general public. (This is a bad thing?) There is, however—contrary to opponents' protestations—no indication that the initiative itself encourages recreational pot smoking. In fact, since California passed a similar initiative in 1996, marijuana use has gone down among teenagers.
Last year, initiative advocates proposed a vague and sweeping initiative that included broad legalization of medicinal drugs, including heroin. We opposed that effort and urged supporters to come back with narrower, more specific provisions for getting marijuana to desperately ill people who will benefit from a joint or two and deserve our compassion. They did just as we asked. How can we complain? Vote yes.
I-694: Partial Birth Abortion
Delving into the details of abortion of all kinds makes plain what a morally complex and harrowing practice it is. Whether you call it a baby or a fetus or even "the products of conception," as one Planned Parenthood doctor put it, there's some kind of being in the womb that is destroyed—usually while it still has a heartbeat.
It is, however, possible to insist that women not be forced to undergo the prolonged and incredibly demanding rigors of pregnancy and birth—not to mention the hard years of labor involved in raising a child—while at the same time considering whether the abortion methods used are the most humane possible. It's also fair to ask whether we have set the right time limits on abortion.
Yet the backers of I-694 and a wave of similar laws around the country aren't looking to promote honest discussion. They give the misleading impression that the abortions they want to ban occur in the third trimester, when a baby is in the process of being "born." In fact, these abortions are usually performed in the second trimester, before viability, and begin like any other abortion at that stage, with a doctor using a forceps to pull the fetus out. Because the next step causes brain death, the method seems no more—and possibly less—gruesome than others.
