I’ll add it to the list. I legit have a list of places to do it. It’s pretty much places near where friends live in the US, but one day, it’ll be everywhere.
I’ve decided “no” on the con-con question as well. I also don’t fully buy into many of the fears around it; in particular, I’ve been barraged with concerns about losing pensions, but I find that unlikely as pensions have been set up as legal contracts between the state and unions since the 30’s - so failing to honor those existing contracts could be tricky.
The possible risks for minorities and the disenfranchised gave me some pause. Ultimately, though, it was the lack of any clear coherent platform that made me lean “no.” What I have seen is a confluence of parallel pie-in-the-sky hopes from several groups that don’t really talk to each other.
If those groups haven’t managed to come together to work on amendments in the past 20 years, I highly doubt they’ll be able to come together in a way that accomplishes anything meaningful in under 2.
There’s also a strong chance that a convention will be filled with political outsiders. Great way to bypass all that corruption, right?
So tell me how well “draining the swamp” is working at the federal level right now.
Outsiders don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Corruption in the legislature is a problem for sure, but you don’t fix that by having 300 yahoos write new rules. It’ll take years and years for the problems to shake out, and many people can suffer in the meantime.
So to me, the likely scenario is that a convention would turn up a random assortment of ridiculous proposals that wouldn’t pass a popular vote, while costing the state a pile of money it could put to literally any other productive end.
Let’s talk about the non-concon proposals:
-out the door, I was opposed to #2, because I’m pro-union and pro-pension and you shouldn’t screw with retirement funds. HOWEVER, the proposal targets elected officials and policy-makers, and is an attempt to deal with corruption in the legislature (an effort I approve). Removing the pension would possibly unfairly penalize families of criminals, but I think that the overall amount of harm that will do will be outweighed by the potential for uprooting some festering corruption. I lean “yes.”
-#3 sounds bad from an environmentalist standpoint until you actually read it. This would allow communities near protected lands the ability to do some necessary development. Growing up in the ADK, I know that a lot of development on protected land is incredibly expensive, and as a result those poverty-stricken communities are under-developed. Wells, telco, and sewer infrastructure are all incredibly useful quality-of-life developments that could really help these communities out. In exchange, you protect acreage somewhere else. Seems fair to me. That’s a pretty solid “yes” in my mind.
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Same. The fact that it’s limited in scope specifically to corruption convictions related to their office, I’m OK with it where I wouldn’t be in many other contexts. I’m going yes here probably.
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Yep, if you read the actual propositions, they’re very specific. Yes on 2 and 3, absolutely. I only got to read them (fucking finally) this afternoon, but they’re clearly written to address “whoops, we didn’t think of that” problems with the existing frameworks. Patching something when you find out it’s buggy is a good thing.
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Convention looks like a definite no already. #2 looks like a definite yes. Give NYers a chance to vote to punish corrupt people, and they will all agree.
Question 3 seems to be having some trouble. As predicted, some well meaning environmentalist city folk voted no because they didn’t properly educate themselves and just read the title and not the text. There’s still a good chance, though. Enough people voted yes that once the upstate votes come in (who almost definitely voted yes) they will win out. They just need to win by 1 vote.
Also, TIL that the Mayor of Rochester’s name is Lovely Warren. That’s way up there on the list of best mayor names of all time.
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She seems pretty legit.
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Looks like yes on 3 is pulling ahead. We good. Gimme that bike path through the woods!
My partner works for her, and Warren’s been pretty good after some missteps near the start.