Today, I decided that I was going to clean out this box of crap:

That box has a bunch of receipts, unpaid bills, paid bills, magazine clippings, paperwork, coupons, wedding invitations, uncashed checks, blank checks, stamps, W-2 forms, business cards, seed packets, post-it notes, index cards, pens, folders, switch plates and other stuff in it. I decided that, as best I could, each item would be touched once, and dealt with as best I could. Some items I wouldn't be able to deal with immediately (say, a Cheesecake Factory coupon, or a car title), but, for the most part, I would be able to handle each piece of paper.

The bills, they were the easiest items to deal with. I wrote checks for the ones I needed to write. I signed the paperwork that needed to be signed (scanning a copy for myself). I put what needed to be put into the mail. I piled up the business paperwork into one pile to talk to Katie about soon. The box is less full, but not empty.

Yet.

This is going to take more than just today, I think.

One of the items near the top of the box was a magazine page I had pulled out of the magazine. I do that with articles of some import, and with pages that have something interesting on them, something that I should remember or take action on. This particular page had this suggestion on it:

The suggestion was to sign up and use mint.com to track where purchases were going. mint.com also categorizes purchases into groups, to offer suggestions on where to cut expenses to save money.

Now, I'm not particularly excited about giving login information for financial sites to third party sites. However, I've heard enough good news about mint.com that I thought I'd have a go. Created a mint.com account, logged in, went to import my data.

Failure.

Tried again.

Failure.

Tried again.

Failure.

Went over to my banking site to see if the three failed attempts would have locked me out of my account, too. It didn't, and the username and password information I was typing into mint.com was accurate.

Okay, I give up. Maybe it's a scam. Time to change the password on my accounts.

Sigh.

Still have the rest of that crap to go through, too.

"You know, they do this in the movies, but I don't know if it's correct. Only the president is supposed to get a 21 gun salute."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The vice president gets a 19 gun salute, and so on down the line."

"Are you jealous? Do you want a 21 gun salute?"

"Me?"

"Yeah? Maybe a 22 gun salute? How about 23?"

"Nah, I want a random cacophony."

"Okay, I'll arrange that."

So, there are two propositions on this mid-year ballot that happens on June 3rd. The first, Proposition 98, is summarized as

Bars state and local governments from taking or damaging private property for private uses. Prohibits rent control and similar measures. Eliminates deference to government in property rights cases. Changes condemnation rules.

This particular proposition is typical of the political way many laws are written: offer something good, tag along something bad, and inflate the bad issue so that people forget about the good.

The good part of this one is the "bars state and local governments from taking or damaging private property for private uses." The particular case this addresses is the continuing seizure of private, typically residential, property to build private, typically commercial, enterprises. East Palo Alto is a prime example of this type of behaviour with the properties around 101 and University. Other examples include parts of Los Angeles where run down, condemned buildings on Hollywood Blvd, or Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena, are seized from the owners because they "look bad" or aren't being revitalized enough to sufficiently satisfy neighbors who are gentrifying the neighborhood.

No one wants his property taken by the government without just compensation. Emotional compensation is, of course, much harder to quantify, and where the difficulty lies in this issue. Few would argue that a blight should be removed for the benefit of the whole, but no one wants that his blight (it's not so bad!) taken.

Now, this issue is paired with the removal of the government's right to introduce and maintain rent control, a policy that enabled local areas to keep lower skilled, lower paid people who can take the bottom jobs most people don't want. If you have a job that pays $8/hour, you can't afford those $1900/month apartments for your family. You can't, you just can't without cramming too many people into too small of a place (which we did experience when we lived in the hood, above a single bedroom apartment which housed 8 taxi cab drivers).

People who prefer rent control removed are those who own the properties and want to charge more rent. The purpose of owning a building certainly isn't to lose money by providing housing to unknown persons, and rent control does limit the cash flow for a building, and hence the ability and willingness of the owner to make improvements.

Being a property owner myself, I can say that I'm in the minority when I rent out my place to cover my expenses and not gouge my tenants for every penny I can get. I benefit I receive is that my tenant is more likely (and, thus far has been) to take care of the place. My costs are still covered, I don't have to spent lots of time and money dealing with the tiny, annoying things wrong with the place. If the sink is clogged, the tenant is willing to deal with it himself, as he knows if I have to, his rent is going up.

Most people in this area who benefit from the rent control in the City are in favor of rent control, and in limiting government seizure reach. So, which way do you vote on this one? Yes, then you remove rent control. No, then you think it's okay for the government is fine in seizing private property.

I hate laws written this way, especially those with very specific riders on them, of which this isn't one of them, but many federal laws are.

I think Proposition 100 should be one that states all laws must be focused. Better words, but general idea.

Proposition 99 is summarized as

Bars use of eminent domain to acquire an owner-occupied residence for conveyance to a private person or business entity. Creates exceptions for public works, public health and safety, and crime prevention.

Wow, does this sound good? Can't seize your house, the one you're living in. Great!

Except that the government can still seize your rental properties.

Or your house for "crime prevention."

Crime prevention. That's very, very vague.

We're seizing your house because we think you might be doing something illegal. With the laws today, as complicated as they are, it doesn't matter who you are, there's most likely something in your house that's illegal, intentional or not. By seizing your house, we're preventing you from doing that illegal thing. It's an allowed exception, don't you know.

Basically, this proposition is worthless. It doesn't change anything, allowing the government to still take your house by eminent domain, and give it to someone else to build a half-way house, or a retirement house, or HEY! a shopping mall. Yes, a shopping mall is considered a public use project promoting downtown redevelopment.

What's the point of these propositions again?

Having spent most of last week reading and (thankfully) completing a, uh, not so well written book, I switched to reading The Last Light of the Sun, by Guy Gavriel Kay.

If you had asked me a decade ago who my favorite author was, I might have told you Heinlein, a decade before that it was Ayn Rand, even though I've been reading Kay's works for those two decades. However, I do have to say that, aside from Atlas Shrugged, I haven't reread (more than once) any of Rand's works, and only a very few of Heinlein's books, either. Kay's books, however, I keep rereading, and more than just once. I don't know if Last Light will join the must reread pile, as the Fionavar Tapestry series (of three books) has, but it might.

Right after The Lions of Al-Rassan.

I really like Kay's style of writing. I don't know that I'm necessarily drawn to his recent genre of choice, which is fantasy style historical fiction (with the names changed!), but his style of writing makes up for the indifference I have to the settings.

In Kay's earlier books, he was much more subtle in his writing. Instead of spelling out the reasons behind every character's action, he would narrate the action, and leave the motivations up to the reader to figure out. I remember walking away from some of his earlier books, puzzled about what the heck just happened, and why, only to figure out later when subsequent actions revealed prior motivations.

I thought that Last Light was the last book Kay had written, but I was mistaken. I usually purchase his books when they are first published, but wait until I'm sure I have all of the ones in a series before starting to read them. I hate waiting a decade for authors to finish works (thinking Martin and Jordan right now).

Yeah, so maybe I'll head off to read Kay's last book. Maybe I'll try for the fourth time to finish Catch 22. Now wouldn't that be an accomplishment.