Vote, damn you, vote now!
OK, so for all you Californians, I wanted to articulate that you really, really need to go vote today if you haven't already. We have a really terrible initiative on the ballot today -- Prop. 98 -- and it would be very, very bad for it to pass.

The initiative is being sold as a way to prevent government from pulling Kelo v. New London-style shenanigans, seizing people's homes in order to facilitate private development projects. However, that sort of thing doesn't happen very often, and Prop. 98 goes well beyond that. (Prop. 99 prohibits the taking of owner-occupied property for private use; it's a much narrower response to the Kelo problem.)

Prop. 98 will prohibit rent control. Not just wacky San Francisco and Berkeley rent control, but also mild prevent-massive-housing-volatility rent control like Oakland has. (A lot of people don't realize Oakland has rent control. It doesn't really come up unless you're a landlord.)

Prop. 98 prohibits any regulation of property that is intended to confer economic benefits on private persons if the regulation comes at the property owner's expense. The Legislative Analyst is cautious about what this means, but you can take it to the bank that people will go to court to argue that this means no regulation of condo conversions, no affordable-housing ordinances, pretty much no regulations of real estate that might get in developers' way. It would not surprise me if developers used this proposition to argue that Prop. 98 makes zoning unconstitutional. (Note that this is a constitutional amendment we're messing with here.)

In and of itself, all this might not be problematic to people of certain political persuasions. However, my Grand Unified Theory of Political Meddling comes into play here. The legislative analysis of Prop. 98 suggests that if it passes, governments could pursue affordable housing goals by pursuing their own development projects, or by providing subsidies and incentives for private developers. The problem with this is that, because of Prop. 13, no California government entities have any money. One reason that some California municipalities have stupid development policies and ludicrous ordinances is that citizens demand certain results, and cities can't afford to pursue those goals except by passing ordinances that in many cases get at the real objective only obliquely. If we take away the ability to regulate property, it's not going to stop city and state entities from meddling; it will just encourage them to meddle in increasingly untargeted and potentially destructive ways.

So go vote no on 98 right now! It is a terrible, deceptive, profoundly destructive proposition, and it will wreck our state. I am deadly serious about this. (Voting yes on 99 is less crucial; I would encourage it, though, because I don't really feel like defending Kelo as a matter of policy, and I think if 99 gets more votes than 98 it supersedes it.)