June 2010 Endorsements

Email with endorsements for the June 8, 2010 California and San Francisco primary elections

In what is becoming a tradition, a few of us went through the various San Francisco and California ballot initiatives last night so that the rest of you don't have to. The participants were Jeff Hamilton (aka Evil), Brendan Bolles (Big Guy, Mr. B), Eric Anderson (OE), David Hornung (SM), and Katie Hornung (Katie). This time we found the issues to be pretty straight forward and there was very little dissent (Measure D had a little). Read below for commentary.

Summary:

California
13: Yes
14: No
15: Yes
16: NO!
17: No

San Francisco
Yes on everything A-G


13: Seismic retrofits will not increase property taxes: Yes

If you have a house and add that home theater and slip-n-slide bowling alley you've always wanted, the house will be reassessed and your property taxes will increase. But this will also happen if you make it more earthquake safe, so some people are hesitant to go forward with such work. This measure takes away this disincentive and has our extremely competent (ahem) legislature determining exactly what falls within the bounds of a seismic retrofit. Sounds good.


14: Opener Open Primary: No

This one is actually a little tricky - it lets everyone in California vote for every candidate in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, and then the top two vote getters will be on the final ballot in November. Sounds pretty good so far. In theory you could have a November election between two popular Democrats or maybe two popular Republicans if the other side didn't bring it. Or maybe there could be some sort of hybrid cyborg candidate with a lot of support on each side who otherwise would get lost in the (Tea) party. So this election reform might allow for those theoretical possibilities, which sounds good.

But on the downside, one thing it would surely do is further marginalize third parties, which would basically cease to appear on the November ballot. We didn't like that (particularly Big Guy who is registered Green).

Another theoretical scenario: you could also end up in a situation where the Democrats had five strong candidates and the Republicans had only two, but under this system the two Republicans might be the ones that wound up the top two vote getters, punishing the Dems for having a strong field. This system would really strengthen the ability of the two parties to choose their candidate for you by scaring you about throwing the election if you didn't obey.

There are plenty of good ways to reform elections so that the people's views are better reflected (ranked-choice voting, for one). We don't think this is a good one.


15: California Fair Elections Act: Yes

At the federal level, a candidate with enough support can choose to not take any more private campaign money and instead get a set amount from the government. This measure would make the option available for California state elections. We don't like all the money in politics, and public financing could possibly help a lesser known candidate that deserves to be heard. So yeah, we like it.


16: PG&E wants to eat your children: NO!

Oh, PG&E, you rapscallions. They call this measure the "Taxpayers Right to Vote", because it gives us the right to need a 66% majority to pass any future public power legislation. Well, why not make it 99% - imagine the glorious freedom!

Sort of reminds you of Bush's "Healthy Forest Initiative" that would protect forests from fires...by cutting them down.

PG&E has been successful before with such tomfoolery, like last time San Francisco talked about getting public power and they ran an expensive campaign convincing the populace it would give government a "Blank Check." Using our utility bill money, no less. And it worked! Pretty please, California, don't fall for this.



17: Auto Insurance rule change: No

This bill would let an auto insurer look at your insurance history to see if there had been any gaps (like, say, if you didn't own a car for a while) and jack up the price if you did. No thanks. FYI, this devilish scheme is being hatched by Mercury Insurance - hope you aren't using them.



A: School Earthquake and Fire retrofit: Yes

This proposes increasing property takes by a whopping $32.20 per year to pay to upgrade some schools. That sounds pretty cheap and we're all renters anyway so guess what, we like it.

As an aside, there's a great argument against from Dr. Terence Faulkner, JD who says SF students can't find India on the map so they shouldn't get earthquake retrofits. Ummm...



B: New emergency response center: Yes

Apparently our current emergency command center is in the bottom of a building not considered earthquake safe (the Hall of Justice). It's going to be expensive though: $412 million. The only argument against it that we were presented comes from Chris Daly (we're not a fan) who'd rather the whole building get fixed, not just move this one thing out. Prop B also retrofits other emergency infrastructure and it seems everyone's for it. But given how expensive it will be, we're surprised that only Chris Daly is against.



C: Film Commission change: Yes

The Film Commission works to bring movies to our city, which brings in some money, as well as publicity that brings in tourists and their precious, precious money. Currently, all 11 members are appointed by the mayor. With this measure, 5 of them would be appointed by the board of supervisors. We like power to be distributed, so sign us up.

First interesting tidbit: apparently the SF Chronicle has a crush on Gavin Newsom, because they side with the mayor's office on every issue, including this one.

Second interesting tidbit: crazy lawyer Terence Faulkner makes his second appearance here, arguing, "Should the influence of the Board of Supervisors increase on the Film Commission, it is likely that the business interests of the City and County will be neglected in favor of more lunches, dinners and cocktail parties. Free meals and cocktail parties are major City Hall perks."  Oh, Terence.



D: City Pension changes: Yes (mostly)

The first thing this Proposition changes is a little controversial - it forces city employees to pay their own money into their pension instead of the city. So basically it's a pay cut. But most of us think SF city employees are overpaid, so giving them a pay cut is fine by us. David wasn't so sure he liked pensions being monkeyed with, himself being a government employee.

The other thing this changes is how pension payouts are calculated, closing a widely-known loophole used by city employees right before retirement.  Cool beans.

Surprisingly, even though this seems to effect a lot of unionized city employees, none of them could be bothered to submit an argument against it in the voter guide.



E: Security budget transparency: Yes

Gavin Newsom feels very insecure. So he demands a security force be around him at all times. He even had them travel to his wedding in Montana (they drove his hi-tech city-supplied SUV while he rode with another officer in a private jet) and then they followed them to his Honeymoon in Hawaii. Mayoral security sounds like a great job, right? They also followed him all during his campaign for governor, and San Francisco paid the bill.

Well all that sounds pretty expensive, but the neither the mayor nor the cops will tell us how much. Prop E will force them to tell us, that's it.

We're not sure the Mayor of this town needs too much security anyway. We noted that the one Mayor who had an incident (Moscone) was actually shot by a member of the board of supervisors and Newsom's entourage wouldn't have mattered. And BTW, the Secret Service discloses its presidential protection budget.



F: Renter's hardship: Yes

This Prop would give a way for a tenant to prevent their rent from going up temporarily when they lost their job or got a 20% pay cut. On one hand, renters in this town hardly need more protection, but then again the tenant will have to apply for this exemption and a judge will evaluate if they are really suffering based on their assets, bank account, etc., so we think it will only be helping people who actually need it.



G: Transbay Terminal: Yes

California already voted to build a high-speed train between SF and LA, to be completed approximately 3 lifetimes from now. The plans were originally to have it end at the existing Transbay Terminal, but some people want to build another station for it. This Prop re-affirms that the Transbay Terminal will be used, which makes the most sense to us.

It sort of kills us that the guy writing the voter guide opinion in favor is Chris Daly, but we agree with this measure anyway.

Another entertaining argument against accompanied this Prop. Eve Del Castello is against it because the decrepit Transbay Terminal is a "landmark", high speed rail is "unsafe", and I-5 is "fun". Haha, good one, Eve.

2008 Endorsements

Email with endorsements for the November 4, 2008 California state and San Francisco city election

Myself, OE, Evil, and Chudi sat down for a few hours and examined the various ballot initiatives in SF and the state.  In case anyone is interested, here's what we came up with (with further discussion below).

We took into account what was written in the voter guides, endorsements by the Chronicle and Guardian, and then decided for ourselves.  If someone couldn't decide either way, they sometimes went with a coin toss.

Our designation for each was weather we were "fur it" or "agin it".  Decisions were unanimous (at least within a coin toss) unless otherwise specified.


State Propositions

1A: Fur (3-1)
2: split (2-2)
3: Agin
4: Agin
5: Fur
6: Agin
7: Agin
8: Agin
9: Agin
10: Agin
11: Fur
12: Agin (3-1)


SF City Propositions

A: Fur
B: Agin (3-1)
C: Fur
D: Fur
E: Fur
F: Agin
G: Fur
H: Fur
I: Fur
J: Fur
K: Fur
L: Agin
M: Agin
N: Fur
O: split (w/ coin toss)
P: Agin
Q: Fur


Prop 1A: High-speed rail bond

This bill is going to be very expensive.  The bond is for $9 billion, but we know the cost of these projects can't be predicted and they tend to go way over budget.  Expense and questioning the usefulness of taking a train to LA only to need to rent a car to get anything done down there we reasons cited against it.  Ultimately though, OE, Chudi, and Big Guy decided we wanted the country to have a rail infrastructure and were willing to spend what it takes to put it there (or at least take the first step).


Prop 2: Animal protections

As meat eaters, we were each personally divided on this one.  For certain animals (you know, the cute ones we have as pets), we already provide protections against cruelty. Saying that a farm animal should have enough room to at least stretch their limbs out doesn't seem to be asking for much.  But then it would raise food costs and we're still planning to slaughter them anyway.  We thought maybe we would work personally to uphold this standard for the food we buy if not have the state mandate it.  (FYI, Ira Glass visited a chicken farm, decided that chickens were as unique/conscious/whatever as dogs and cats, and then became a vegetarian.  Something to think about.)


Prop 4: Parental notification for abortion

We acknowledge that teens should be in contact with their parents before getting an abortion and believe clinics do everything they can to encourage these kids to do so. They are not cheering for the kids to get a secret abortion.  It is interesting to note, also, that nearly any other medical procedure you'd get does required parental consent for under-age kids.  But then we thought that requiring the consent would lead to late-term/illegal abortions or babies being left in dumpsters.  We'd rather have them get it done right away before (in our opinion) the moral, legal, and practical consequences get sticky.


Prop 6: Prison spending

We decided this was yet another "tough on crime" bill that seeks to further increase the prison population.  We want less people in prison, especially for nonviolent crimes (we're in favor of Prop 5 for this reason).


Prop 7: Renewable energy

While sounding good on the surface, we decided this bill was mainly a corporate grab, especially by some rich dude in Arizona who has a lot of natural gas.  Heck, it's a renewable energy bill that even the Green Party is against.  What does that tell you?


Prop 9: Victims present at parole hearings

If you want a hearing to be an objective look at the law, the last person you'd want there is a member of the victim's family.  We want rational thinking people to decide if a criminal has repaid his debt to society.


Prop 10: Alternative fuel vehicles

(see Prop 7)


Prop 11: Redistricting commission

We love this bill.  Gerrymandering is one of the key ways members of Congress prevent there from being a real contest in an election.  Some of those districts are ridiculous. Big Guy likes that it will help third parties.


Prob B: Affordable housing fund

We were torn on this one.  We would love for teachers, nurses, and other underpaid people to have a place to live in SF.  But we weren't sure this would actually give them that. In general, we're not a big fan of public housing in this city, it seems to put the residents into a lower class, divide them from the rest of us.  At the same time, we like helping people out.


Prop F: Mayoral election in even numbered years

The last election was boring, pretty much a coronation for Newsom.  But the one before it was very interesting and it would have been a shame to lose it in the noise of state/federal elections.  Having the election on odd numbered years costs more, but gives more attention to our local government race.  It's worth the price.


Prop H: Clean energy act

When we started getting a ton of no-on-H mail, we knew there was a big corporation trying to knock it down.  Indeed, PG&E is funding the opposition, with the support of corporate-friendly politicians like Newsom.  Prop H calls for evaluating other ways of getting power, including possibly creating our own municipal utility district.  900 cities in the US have done this, and the ones we know about all seem pretty happy with it.  I don't know of anyone thinking it was a mistake and wanting to go back to PG&E.  The Prop H opponents say it's a "blank check" because the SF board of supervisors would be able to get bonds without voter approval.  But the board can ALREADY do this for many other city tasks, such as the Public Utility Commission, which provides us with our water.  So naturally, if electricity becomes a public utility, it will get the same treatment.  And at least the board is accountable to the people for money it spends, while PG&E isn't.

Not to mention, one of the main goals in Prop H is to get SF using renewable energy faster than anyone else.  PG&E is going to miss the state-mandated goals because they have no real consequences if people can't jump ship.

Unfortunately, while we are all for Prop H, we think that the millions of dollars PG&E is spending (money from our own electric bills) will probably win out.  Thanks to the propaganda, we ourselves were largely against Prop H until we looked at it carefully.


Prop J: Historic Preservation Commission

Currently the Mayor appoints a group of people to handle this.  This would give the Board of Supervisors ability to approve/deny potential members.  Sounds good to us.  Plus, the opponents couldn't even be bothered to write a paragraph on why they oppose it in the voter guide.


Prop K: Decriminalize sex work

Yeah, we don't think prostitution should be a crime.  Because we're crazy left-wing pinko commies I guess.


Prom M: Protect tenants against harassment

Renters in SF already have it pretty good in terms of legal protection.  This Prop doesn't seem to outlaw anything that isn't already outlawed.  In theory, us renters should be in favor of this, but we didn't think it was necessary.


Prop P: Transportation Authority Changes

Newsom is always putting his buddies in charge of Muni, paying them a lot, and then steering the money however he likes.  He's trying to do it again.  Amazingly, even the pro-Newsom supervisors are against this one.  Try to find someone fur it.  Not us.


Prop R: Rename Sewage Plane for Dubya

We think this is a funny idea and we have always been pro-humor.  We don't think the employees will take offense to it.


Prop U: Defund the Iraq war

Nancy Pelosi isn't too concerned with the opinion of her constituency.  San Francisco is totally against the war, but she has pushed forward every war appropriations bill since she became Speaker.  So much for "No more blank check."  If she doesn't hear us, maybe she'll hear this.


Prop V: Bring back JROTC

We're certainly not pro-military.  Then again, we know that there is some need for it. But that doesn't matter here, because hardly any of the kids who do this go on to the military.  Teachers and parents say it's a great after school program.  Who are we to disagree?