But today’s Halloween is a wee bit different than the Halloween traditions I enjoyed as a child.

This year, I will not open my front door to the usual hobgoblins, ghosts, witches and pirates; my front porch will be visited instead by adults wearing sports jerseys or no costume, who demand candy… or else.

Old versus new

According to Welsh mythology, Halloween marked the end of the harvest season and beginning of the ‘darker half’ of the year, winter. It was seen as a special time, when the spirits or fairies could more easily come into our world and were particularly active. Offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, were left for the fairies. Places were set at the dinner table or by the fire to welcome them. After this the eating, drinking, and games were played.

Halloween entitlement society

The last five years, Halloween in my neighborhood has become a freak show. No longer is it about little children donning scary and cute costumes and Trick-or-Treating for candy and goodies.

Buses and vans now drop off loads of children, teens and adults. Some wear costumes, many don’t. Young girls wear wildly inappropriate costumes, often with their parents in tow.

My first memory of Halloween was in the late 1960’s. I dressed in a tacky Blue Fairy costume with a creepy plastic mask. To my chagrin, this costume is now sold on eBay as “vintage.

No longer is the candy request “trick-or-treat;” I open the door to angry faces, intimidating and defensive stances, thrusting open pillow cases at me, while their vans and rented buses idle nearby.

The standard “costume” is greasepaint under the eyes and a NFL jersey… or a plain white T-shirt.

Until last year I used to say, “no costume, no candy.” But that only got my sprinkler heads kicked off, crushed pumpkins, and broken potted plants.

Before calls of racism and elitism are leveled at me, here is an example of the attitude:

“Every Halloween some (mostly) suburban olds start firing off letters to the Editor of the local paper frothing about the *wrong kids* Trick-or-Treating on their lawns. They have a big problem with parents from the *wrong side of town* driving their kids to the neighborhood to get in on the better candy. They hate it for the same reason that Republican voters hate *welfare* and *redistribution*: they’re big racists.”

The blog post is titled “Send us your racist Halloween stories!” and is pure race-baiting.

Speed trick-or-treating

I was raised in a very no-frills, working-class neighborhood in Sacramento. Our parents never drove us to another neighborhood to trick-or-treat.

Granted, the neighborhood was relatively safe. I understand parents want their kids to experience Halloween in a safe neighborhood.

But the thug entitlement mentality is making me turn off the porch lights this year. The demands for mountains of candy by adults and teens is strange. The concept of trick-or-treat has turned into homeowners providing a years’ worth of expensive candy for people they do not know. It’s about volume, and how much candy people can collect from perfect strangers. The celebration is gone.

Absurd Halloween bans

It’s the adults who have ruined the holiday.

The other issue swirling around Halloween now are the recent school bans. Unfortunately, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that schools are banning Halloween activities.

School boards all across the country seem to eventually find ways to ban everything near and dear to many Americans. Starting with a ban on common sense, they’ve also banned traditional American holidays, sports, certain books, art, music, theology and religion. Parents have even been banned from schools.

School administrators have sent home notes this year telling parents superheroes, witches, princesses and goblins are not welcome at school on Halloween this year.

Why are schools banning Halloween activities? Equality – because of cultural, financial and social differences, it’s not fair to celebrate Halloween, according to many school administrators and teachers.

Inglewood Elementary School, located in the Philadelphia suburb of Towamencin, announced its cancellation of of All Hallows Eve festivities, citing concerns that the cultural holiday was “filled with religious overtones,” according to PennLive.com in Pennsylvania.

It is not fair to celebrate anything American, according to this logic. Schools seem to work overtime now preventing kids from experiencing anything new or different… as long as it’s an American tradition.

On Halloween, while it is still light out, I will hand out candy to a few of the littlest ghouls, goblins, witches and pirates who come to my door with their parents. And then I will turn off the porch light, bring all of my pumpkins into the house, and go out to dinner — if I can navigate through the gridlock on my neighborhood streets.

By Wayne Lusvardi

The California Taxpayer’s Association spotted a provision in Proposition 31 whose importance no one has noticed until now. It appears to prohibit making any cuts or increases to the state budget of $25 million or more.  In other words, it appears to freeze 99.999 percent of the state budget at its current funding level.

This sounds like the reincarnation of Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that froze property taxes at the 1975 level until properties were re-sold.  But CalTax opposes Prop. 31 because it could be gamed and turned into Frankenstein monster on Nov. 6 — right after Halloween.

The key tax provision of Prop. 31 is Section 4.  In effect it would prohibit the Legislature from passing any bill that reduces or increases taxes by $25 million or more — unless the same bill provides for a tax increase or spending cut from some other program.  CalTax says that the $25 million threshold is so low that it would apply to any meaningful tax reduction or tax incentive.  It also would apply to any tax increase of $25 million or more.

Prop. 31

Under Prop. 31, a revenue reduction would apply to any “tax, fee, penalty reduction, or elimination of any type of incentive, tax exemption or tax deduction,” says CalTax.  But CalTax has the following concerns about Prop. 31:

* Any change to an existing job creating tax incentive would be affected.

* It could be gamed by bad budget estimates that may kill its touted tax limitations.

* Past budget reform proposals have only included budget increases, not revenue reductions.

* Prop. 31 has to be taken as a package of reforms with the bad as well as any good.

* Prop. 31 says it is about greater budget transparency.  But CalTax is concerned that the Department of Finance, state tax agencies, and the Legislative Analyst’s Office would exercise sleight of hand behind the scenes to create an appearance of new tax revenues or budget cuts where none really exist.

A crucial concern is that the $25 million limit on budget increases or decreases can be gamed in several ways.

One way it can be manipulated is by creating many $24.9 million expenditures.  Another way could be by using projected revenues for increasing spending, thus running up more deficits.

Expenditure bills could also be padded.  By inflating the budget of a program or project the governor then could use the veto power granted him under Prop. 31 to create the appearance he cut its budget in half.

The $25 million circuit breaker funding clause in Prop. 31 will only work with a responsible Legislature that does not use budget gimmicks.  Limiting spending is not likely to happen with a tax-and-spend California Legislature, or with the local “Strategic Action Plan Committees” created under Proposition 31.

No Limits on Big Ticket Funding Items

Another big difficulty with Prop. 31 is that it apparently does not put any limits on using bond financing or voter initiatives for state or local programs and projects.  As even the liberal Los Angeles Times wrote:

“But Proposition 31 simply fails to deal with the big-ticket items: bond measures, which add new annual payment obligations, and voter initiatives, which routinely impose new costs without identifying new revenue. Lawmakers thus would have a new incentive to rely ever more often on bonds and the ballot box — to the state’s fiscal detriment.” 

A recent example is the city of Pasadena, which is considering using $3 million in state water bond funds under Proposition 84 to re-landscape a flood control basin, expanding recreation facilities and open space, and installing a public bathroom as well as some upgrades to water works facilities. This is a local parks project funded by statewide taxpayers.

Water treatment

The city of Maywood is also planning on using statewide water bond revenues to finance a new water treatment plant under the guise of cleaning toxins from groundwater.  Statewide taxpayers would end up paying for local public works projects wearing the mask of an environmental project.

Under the mechanism of bonds, the financing of local parks, open space acquisition, public recreation, and local water and sewer projects are being regionalized.  The “user pays” principle is being abrogated and the financing of projects and programs is becoming socialized.

Under Prop. 31, this regionalization of public financing would be expanded. The stated purpose of Prop. 31 in its own wording is:

“To improve results, public agencies need a clear and shared understanding of public purpose. With this measure, the people declare that the purpose of state and local governments is to promote a prosperous economy, a quality environmental and community equity.  These purposes are advanced by achieving at least the following goals: increasing employment, improving education, decreasing poverty, decreasing crime, and improving health.”

In other words, Prop. 31 would be used to transfer funds from a large state or county taxpayer base for local prisons, public schools, and health and welfare programs. What regionalization — or socialization — does is create the image that everything that politicians can promise can be had for nearly free, or for a pittance of taxes.   It would do this by spreading the financing base over a wider tax base than city governments.  But the reality is that taxes would then become out of control.

A major concern about Prop. 31 is its silent “tax sharing” component.  It provides for the creation of regional government committees that would transfer taxes from suburbs to big cities and big-city school districts that are broke.

Prop. 31 is the opposite of Prop. 13.  It is a Frankenstein monster wearing the tax fighter mask of Howard Jarvis or the Jerry Brown mask of a monk.  Prop. 31 is an after-Halloween trick, not a treat.