NickelBack

When California speaks, the rest of America usually listens, and voters here are poised once again to approve measures likely to reverberate in other states and Congress.

Long seen as the 800-pound gorilla of direct democracy, California was the first state or among the first to use citizen initiatives to cap property-tax increases, limit state legislators' terms, legalize medical marijuana and ban smoking in bars. Those pioneering votes inspired many imitators.

On Tuesday, Californians will decide two more: whether to commit $6 billion to stem cell research and to require companies to offer health insurance to their workers and pay most of the premiums.

If both measures pass, they could tilt the dynamics of two of the USA's most contentious issues, experts say. The insurance measure would buoy advocates of health-care restructuring stymied by well- financed foes and congressional inaction. Backers of stem-cell research see the California measure as a way to get around the Bush administration's ban on spending federal dollars for nearly all stem-cell research.

"California has always been the litmus test for organizations wishing to set a national trend," says M. Dane Waters, chairman of the Initiative and Referendum Institute, a non-profit research group at the University of Southern California. "If these measures pass, I think you'll definitely see clones" by the 2006 election cycle.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...smayswaynation

ajcardfan

The health insurance initiative is the bigger bombshell of the two IMO.

__________________
We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.

T.H. Huxley

NickelBack

Perhaps, but the Stem Cell issue will get the head-lines.

Especially since the Governor broke ranks with The White House.

WizardOfAz

Wow....we could see these issues pop up all over the place if they "fly" in California.

The insurance question could be very costly.