It occurred to me shortly after the midterm elections that I hadn't noticed anything like Eminem's Mosh (and with alternate ending in the run up to the election. I wondered why - was it just decided not to work? Or was it too hard to find something to grab hold of for a Congressional election.

I've now decided that, no, it *was* done - but, yes, both of those explanations are true, at least this time around:

I recalled, shortly after, Exhibit A, Neil Young's Let's Impeach the President.

Glancing through my referrer logs, it appears the search engines really love my posts on Prop 4 and Prop 5. I seem to be, in fact, the #1 hit on MSN search for 'michigan proposal 5'. Google puts me at 9th for 'michigan proposal 5', which is high enough for that single search phrase to net me more referrals in 2 weeks than any other site has provided in the past 2 months, except for YpsiDixit, MarkMaynard.com, ArborUpdate, and the time that MacSurfer.com picked up one of my posts.

My daily average hits to date for November are at 4x the level for the previous year, with Nov. 6 and 7 spiking up to 7x and 9x the previous year's daily average, respectively.

Like Proposal 4, this year's Proposal 5 is a crowd pleaser. I expect it will pass handily. Like Proposal 4, however, it will be passing without my support. My objection to this proposal is exactly opposite that I have to 4; Proposal 5 is entirely too small for the problem it means to address.

"But Murph," you say, "How can a proposal that requires half a billion in additional State funding to K-16 education immediately, and annual increases of at least inflation, to be 'small'? This is huge!"

Not for the problem it's addressing.

In general, I'm skeptical of Constitutional amendments. Ballot proposals in general are suspect - why vote yes on this particular solution? Is it the best solution, or just the first one that well-intentioned supporters put together without considering the consequences? Beyond even that, I tend to see the Constitution, whether of Michigan or the United States, as something that's supposed to change only very slowly. Why is the Constitution the proper place to make this change, and not the legislature? Or the judiciary, if the problem meant to be fixed is a matter of bad law? Any Constitutional amendment put before me, therefore, has a high burden of proof to meet before I even consider the content.