Libertarian Party of San Francisco |

Vote Tuesday November 8, 2022!

Submitted by Starchild on 8 November 2022 - 9:50am

LPSF Ballot Recommendations – Nov. 8, 2022 Election

BALLOT MEASURES

PROP. A (Retiree COLA Adjustment) – NO

Proposition A is about taking more money from the public to give to former and current government employees. Naturally the whole local political establishment is in favor of it. The San Francisco Chronicle, which also supports it, says that 70% of those who would benefit from cost-of-living adjustments (former city employees who retired before 1996) are getting pensions of less than $50,000 a year (https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Endorsement-Prop-A-retire-17444963.php). But pensions are not full-time working salaries, nor should they be; they do not include Social Security or other income that retirees often have. Especially when employees retire early, as was presumably the case for many of those who would benefit from Prop. A, since they are still alive and drawing pay over 26 years later, it is unreasonable to expect taxpayers to pay them as much every year for the rest of their lives as they made when they were actually working as public servants. More troublingly, the measure would remove current caps on pay and benefits for persons hired as executive directors after January 1, 2023. Controller Ben Rosenfield estimates that if Prop. A passes, it will cost taxpayers approximately $8 million annually for the next ten years. We find it hard to believe that many former city government employees are as hard up financially as many of the people living in San Francisco (including the homeless, unemployed, other seniors on fixed incomes, etc.) who are taxed to pay for “our” bloated local bureaucracy. But if some former city government employees are truly suffering in poverty, we think it would be more appropriate to pass legislation increasing their share at the expense of some of the overpaid individuals who are or were holding top city jobs, such as former police chief Heather Fong who took home a $264,000 a year pension after she retired in 2009.

PROP. B (Public Works Reconfiguring) – YES

It feels good to say “We told you so.” In 2020, following a high-profile corruption scandal involving Department of Public Works head (and former boyfriend of mayor London Breed) Mohammed Nuru taking bribes, voters were presented with (and passed) another Proposition B. It was a charter amendment that took control of street cleaning and maintenance away from the DPW (as if only that agency, and not the whole culture of city government, was the problem) and turning it over to a newly created Department of Sanitation and Streets. The LPSF opposed the 2020 legislation as an unnecessary addition of yet another city department, and now, just two years later, the powers that be have also belatedly realized that it was a half-baked plan. This year’s measure – also on the ballot as Proposition B, and supported by three of the same supervisors who gave us the ill-advised 2020 proposition of the same letter! – will eliminate the newly-created department and transfer its duties back to DPW. Needless to say, we’re happy at the prospect that (for once!) a new branch of the bureaucracy may go away relatively quickly. “Simply hiring more bureaucrats accomplishes nothing but wasting money and ultimately requiring higher taxes,” write supervisors Peskin, Preston, Ronen, along with four new co-sponsors. Truer words are rarely spoken at City Hall! Now if only they would remember that sentence and take it to heart...

PROP. C (Homeless Oversight Commission) – NO

Proposition C sounds good in theory – more oversight and auditing of city government spending on programs and services supposedly helping the homeless. This spending, spread out across the Department of Homelessness and Supporting Housing, the Department of Public Health, the Department of Public Works, and various other government bodies, clearly needs oversight. According to the mayor herself, we (meaning they, the people who run San Francisco’s municipal government) are spending $1 billion a year to address homelessness. But what are officials like the Mayor and Board of Supervisors there for if not to exercise this kind of due diligence? The Controller should already be auditing city government spending, and the politicians cutting waste and redundancy accordingly. None of this requires creating yet another redundant body, the Homelessness Oversight Commission, as this measure would do. Prop. C would also, according to the ballot statement by Controller Ben Rosenfield, increase government spending by around $350,000 a year in salaries and operating costs. Ironically, this proposition is nevertheless supported by the entire Board of Supervisors – including the same seven who correctly observed (in support of Prop. B) that “Simply hiring more bureaucrats accomplishes nothing but wasting money and ultimately requiring higher taxes.”

PROP. D (Affordable Housing) – YES

As is often the case with ballot measures, Proposition D is one of a pair of competing proposals on the same topic that voters are being asked to decide on this election. In this case, Prop. D is the real reform measure. It would, at least to some minor extent, ease regulations and make it easier to build housing in San Francisco. It has the support of YIMBY and pro-building groups like the Housing Action Coalition and GrowSF, and was put on the ballot by citizen initiative. Opponents write in one of their ballot arguments that Prop. D will make it “more difficult for residents to be a part of the decision-making process on how their communities change and grow”, which is code for saying that NIMBY neighbors will have less ability to throw monkeywrenches into projects by delaying them with endless public hearings and study requirements. That’s a good thing!

PROP. E (Poison Pill Anti-Housing Measure) – NO

Proposition E was put on the ballot by seven members of the Board of Supervisors in an effort to stop Prop. D. (Whichever of the two measures receives fewer votes would have no legal effect, even if it passes.) As opponents argue, Prop. E “allows the Board to continue to kill housing by holding up projects they don’t like,” and “is filled with poison pill provisions that will prevent new housing construction.” Allowing more infill housing to be built in urban areas like San Francisco isn’t important just for addressing homelessness and upholding property rights, but also for the environment. As the Greenbelt Alliance and Urban Environmentalist groups write in opposing Prop. E, “Recent studies have shown that stopping new housing in cities like San Francisco is one of the most environmentally destructive things a city like ours can do”, because it pushes more people out to the suburbs, leading to more open space paved over and people having to drive longer commutes.

PROP. F (Library Preservation Fund) – NO

Who doesn’t like a good library? Libraries are among the favorite government handouts of people who dislike many other forms of government welfare. But there is no reason they should be operated at taxpayer expense, as one libertarian library fan explains here – https://steemit.com/libertarian/@amthomasiv/a-libertarians-view-on-publi.... The first ones in America weren’t. Perhaps the earliest public library was started by a private group that included Ben Franklin. Later, business leader Andrew Carnegie, once the richest man in the world, donated a good part of his fortune to establishing hundreds of libraries across the country. At a time when books were scarce and many more people lacked the money to buy them, libraries filled a vital gap. Today, virtually everyone has a world of learning at their fingertips in the form of the Internet, and government libraries have expanded their role from repositories of books to become more like community centers where you can take classes, use computers, borrow music and movies, and more. People tend to think of librarians as the good guys, and certainly some are, but that’s not always so. The San Francisco public library has repeatedly attempted to get authorization to spy on the library-using public by putting RFID chips in their books and other materials (see https://sfrichmondreview.com/2018/06/01/commentary-peter-warfield/). So what’s this all got to do with Prop. F? Simply that it is a measure which would freeze in millions of dollars of local library funding, at the involuntary expense of taxpayers, for the next quarter century. So if this isn’t a time to discuss and think about the fundamental nature of public libraries in San Francisco, when is? Right now, local government-owned libraries are coercively funded to the tune of about $83 million annually from property taxes (paid by renters in the form of higher rents as well as by property owners), plus a “baseline” payment from City Hall of about $113 million a year, for a total yearly budget of around $196 million, according to the controller’s statement on Prop. F, which would basically continue similar payments, subject to adjustments, for the next 25 years. Dividing that $196 million figure by the number of SF residents (around 842,754 at the start of 2022, according to the Census Bureau), we arrive at a total cost of $232.57 per person per year. Did you receive $232 worth of benefit from government libraries over the past year? Are there perhaps other things toward which you might put $232 to better use in the coming year, some of them even educational? Housing, health care, travel, college courses, a faster Internet connection? We don’t want to decide for you, we just believe as Libertarians that it should be your choice. In the absence of government libraries, the voluntary sector would likely provide similar services for those wishing to pay for them directly. Meanwhile, everyone else would have more resources to allocate to other cherished priorities. Please think twice before voting to lock the next generation into a coercive arrangement of paying for services they may not want, need, or use.

PROP. G (SFUSD Grants) – NO

For anyone worried that without government funding of local libraries (Prop. F) we’d all be as dumb and uncultured as bricks, there would still be the San Francisco Unified School District, which gets around five times as much stolen tax money. According to the budget information on the SFUSD’s website (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W0OkykyISk9wYf6o5lCKf6VypYaALumy/view), the district had a budget last year of $1,170,608,638, of which (according to the controller’s statement on Prop. G) around $101 million came from the city government. (Prop. G would augment this amount by an additional $11 million to $60 million a year from the city government.) With these funds, the SFUSD is tasked with educating approximately 50,000 students (enrollment last October stood at 50,566 according to the info at https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/facts-about-sfusd-glance). Like City College (see comments on Prop. O), the city government’s badly mismanaged K-12 schools have been shedding students, resulting in the recall of three school board members by fed-up voters earlier this year. Anyway, let’s do the same basic exercise we did with the SF Public Library system. Dividing the SFUSD’s $1.17 billion annual budget by 50,566 students gives us a dollar amount of $23,150 per student per year. Now imagine that for every school-age child or teen in your household, you had over $23,000 a year to spend on their education. You could just about afford to send them to one of the city’s best independent (“private”) schools, among which tuition averages $25,034 a year, according to PrivateSchoolReview.com (https://www.privateschoolreview.com/california/san-francisco), even without the help of any scholarships or financial assistance with tuition, which are often available. Independent schools in San Francisco already educate over half as many San Francisco students (26,437 according to the website) as the city’s government schools, and a growing number of families choose this option. And that’s not even counting those who choose to homeschool their scholars. Given that independently schooled and homeschooled kids routinely outperform government-schooled kids on measures of academic achievement (see e.g. ), wouldn’t it make more sense to take the extra $11 million to $60 million a year that Prop. G would lavish on the deficit-ridden SFUSD, and instead give it directly to families to allocate as they choose?

PROP. H (Even Year Elections) – NO

Proposition H would require the San Francisco city government to hold elections only in even-numbered years. Seven members of the Board of Supervisors put this measure on the ballot not for any inherent need for it – four members opposed the unnecessary legislation – but because they expect it to benefit them politically. Presidential elections, which are always held in even-numbered years, typically draw higher turnout, including by many people who otherwise pay relatively little attention to politics. Some politicians think that they and the measures they support are more likely to win voter approval when there are more low-information voters going to the polls. This effect could be compounded by the fact that local issues and campaigns would tend to get drowned out in the media and public consciousness by the amount of coverage and attention devoted to national politics in the days and months leading up to an election. In shifting elections to even-numbered years, Prop. H would also extend the time in office of various incumbents by a year beyond the terms to which they were elected. We hope voters reject this cynical and self-serving bid by the local political establishment.

PROP. I (JFK Drive & Great Highway) – YES

Disputes over how public streets are used isn’t a top libertarian issue. Unlike government regulations on the use of private property, there is no direct aggression involved in voters deciding how to use the commons. Local government will continue to monopolize San Francisco streets no matter how residents vote on propositions I and J, the two competing measures over when, if ever, to allow automobile traffic on the Great Highway by Ocean Beach, and John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park. Whether one prefers the convenience of being able to get from point A to point B more rapidly and the aesthetic pleasures of a scenic drive, or the safety enhancement and aesthetic pleasures of pedestrian malls free of motor vehicles, is a subjective matter. Yet there is a disturbing pattern of local officials trying to impose more and more restrictions on and impediments to driving in the city that echoes many other areas of public policy in which government attempts to control our lives by imposing controls on activities that don’t involve aggression. In general, we would rather see people share the commons in a manner determined by community norms rather than State decrees, with individuals who cause accidents held responsible for them, than the system of preemptive laws, fines, and punishments that exists now. Given that the traffic lanes in question are surrounded by more attractive options for pedestrians and cyclists – the beach, the park, and bicycle lanes – and would appear to get little foot traffic on weekdays, taking away the means for people to directly access these areas via autos seems unnecessary.

PROP. J (JFK Drive) – NO

Proposition J would make permanent the Board of Supervisors’ closure of portions of John F. Kennedy Drive and certain other connector streets in Golden Gate Park. Aside from the reasons mentioned in our reasons for supporting its opposing measure Prop. I, one of the things we don’t like about Prop. J is that it doesn’t uniformly ban motor vehicle traffic. While it would close JFK Drive and certain “other street segments” to private vehicles, various government motor vehicles would be exempted. That doesn’t sound like equal protection under the law. Another dubious point is that it would create additional one-way streets. One-way streets are confusing to many drivers (in some cases leading to citations that gouge family and individual budgets), often cause unnecessary extra emissions as motorists seeking to go counter to the allowed direction of traffic have to drive further to avoid them, and contribute to speeding.

PROP. K, a bungled attempt to tax Amazon.com, was removed from the ballot after a judge allowed backers to pull the measure when they discovered it might not do what they wanted it to do (see https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-activists-wanted-to-tax-Amazo...).

PROP. L (Transportation Sales Tax) – NO

All coercive taxation is theft and a form of slavery, but not every type of tax operates in the same way. Some taxes are more readily avoidable, because they apply to only certain types of actions or property and don’t affect most people, whereas others are essentially impossible to avoid if you want to lead anything like a normal or typical existence in society. Those in power, at one time and another, have levied taxes on almost every aspect of human existence. Given their range of options, it must seem somewhat strange to anyone who believes that the Democratic Party represents the interests of the financially poorer members of society, that Democrats keep proposing sales taxes. It’s well understood that sales taxes are a form of taxation which falls hardest on the poor. It’s not a taking that affects only the wealthy, only people who engage in certain clearly optional activities, or only people who own certain categories of assets – everybody buys stuff. Yet once again the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors – all Dems – unanimously voted to fund their transportation priorities by making everyone pay more whenever they buy products ranging from clothing to phone chargers to over-the-counter medication.

PROP. M (Residential Vacancy Tax) – NO

Proposition M would open a new front in local government’s war on economic freedom by imposing, for the first time in San Francisco, a tax on vacant residential units. Proponents naturally justify the measure by citing the “housing crisis” – ignoring that the shortage of affordable places to live was caused by anti-housing policies. Adding yet another tax will of course serve as a further disincentive to creating more residential housing in the city. Because it will be difficult and somewhat subjective to tell when a unit is “vacant”, Prop. M is an invitation to selective enforcement and the kind of corruption that inevitably comes with it. As opponents note, it will also turn neighbors into snitches monitoring each other’s whereabouts. They also point out that “any condo owner in a building with 3+ units will be subject to punitive fines should your home have to be unoccupied for 183+ days a year for any reason – if you are hospitalized, traveling for work, staying with your partner, or caring for family members”. As with Prop. J’s exemption of government vehicles from the proposed ban of motor vehicles on certain streets, Prop. M contains a blatant double standard. The legal text of the measure explicitly states that, “The City, the State of California, and any county, municipal corporation, district, or other political subdivision of the State shall be exempt from the Empty Homes Tax, except where any constitutional or statutory immunity from taxation is waived or is not applicable.” It’s likely that no one even knows how much government-owned property that could be used for housing exists in San Francisco. The 2012-2013 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury cited a Budget and Legislative Analyst’s report which found that “The City lacks centralized oversight and controls over its properties.” This notwithstanding the Surplus City Property Ordinance of 2002, which requires that “all departments and agencies provide an inventory of properties under their jurisdiction to the Director of Property and the City Administrator and identify properties they declare surplus or underutilized.” The Civil Grand Jury’s report (online at https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2012_2013/Optimizing_Use_of_Publicly-Owned_Real_Estate_5-29-13-3.pdf) stated that “the citizens of San Francisco deserve more transparency with respect to publicly-owned real estate,” and we agree. City Hall should audit its own empty property before trying to police and tax that belonging to other people.

PROP. N (Golden Gate Parking to Rec & Park) – NO

Proposition N would have the Recreation and Park Commisson (which overseas the Recreation and Parks Department including Golden Gate Park generally) take over management of the parking garage under the park’s Music Concourse from the non-profit group that currently runs it (the privately-constructed garage was built on public land without the use of taxpayer funds). Reading between the lines of Prop. N, it appears that the goal of backers is to enable the city government to raise overall parking rates in the garage while extending special discounts to members of politically favored groups including seniors, the disabled, and people from “low income households” and “equity priority neighborhoods”. It was put on the ballot by mayor London Breed, who appoints members of the Recreation and Parks Commission that would gain control of the garage under the measure. Most crucially bad, Prop. N would allow taxpayer money to be spent on the facility, which it apparently cannot be under current rules.

PROP. O (City College Parcel Tax) – NO

Possibly the least excusable measure on this year’s local ballot, Proposition O would (according to city Controller Ben Rosenfield) “increase the cost of government by approximately $6 million on a one-time basis and $3 million on an ongoing, annual basis.” All this to bail out an institution, City College of San Francisco, which has been poorly run and shedding students, from its own financial mismanagement. As opponents (including even progressive Supervisor Aaron Peskin!) note, “In the past 20 years, we’ve approved nearly $1.3 billion in bonds for the school’s facilities and allocated money from the City’s General Fund to make City College classes tuition free. In the past eight years, City College has had NINE chancellors, a never-ending series of budget nightmares, and came very close to losing its accreditation. This is the third parcel tax proposed for City College in the past 10 years. The one we’re currently paying doesn’t expire until 2032!” The two Community College Board candidates that the LPSF is supporting, Jill Yee and Marie Hurabiell, wrote an excellent op-ed piece opposing Prop. O that goes into more detail. You can check it out at https://www.marinatimes.com/vote-no-on-measure-o.

CANDIDATES

The Libertarian Party of California’s bylaws prohibit the LPSF from formally endorsing non-Libertarian candidates, but at the local level we have traditionally recommended votes for some non-Libertarians when there is no Libertarian candidate in a race and one or more of the contenders seem significantly better (or worse) than their rivals. Even this is controversial however, and this year we found only three candidates we deemed worthy of a recommendation.

Community College Board – Jill Yee and Marie Hurabiell

In our comments on Prop. O, the City College parcel tax, we mentioned the terrific op-ed piece that these two candidates wrote against the measure, and believe they are good choices for those who want to limit the damage that City College does to San Franciscans’ pocketbooks. Jill Yee came and spoke at our October meeting, and she impressed us as a voice for fiscal responsibility who also happens to have a very long City College resumé and is on paper perhaps the most conventionally qualified candidate for the office. After attending CCSF as a student whose immigrant parents believed in the importance of education, she later returned to teach as a professor at the school for 25 years, as well as chairing its Behavioral Sciences Department. Hurabiell, who Yee endorses, pulls no punches in her candidate statement, accusing “unqualified” incumbents of having “rubber-stamped years of malfunction” and “bowing to insider interests”. Her background includes work in voluntary sector educational institutions.

District Attorney – John Hamasaki

One of four candidates seeking the office of DA, John Hamasaki is a criminal defense attorney who has a history of standing up for police accountability as a member of the Police Commission. Brooke Jenkins, the incumbent district attorney appointed by mayor London Breed after the former DA supported by the LPSF, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in June has been terrible on the issue of holding the government’s armed law enforcers accountable. Breed was initially suppportive of police reform in the wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020, but since then has essentially caved in the face of pressures coming from the opposite direction, and her choice for DA reflects this unfortunate shift. Jenkins wasted no time in undoing many of the criminal justice reforms the DA’s office had been building, firing all the attorneys in the office who had worked on cases involving the prosecution of misbehaving police officers, and ramping up the “War on Drugs” again by making a point of touting efforts to prosecute drug sales. Yet for all her “tough on crime” posturing, and the end of a presumed though unacknowledged “work stoppage” by members of the SFPD during Boudin’s tenure who were unhappy with his reform agenda, crime, the former DA noted in October that the SFPD reported higher rates of both violent crime and property crime over the same period the previous year (see https://twitter.com/chesaboudin/status/1577317131858808832). The U.S. has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, and just locking up more people at taxpayer expense – reportedly $ per prisoner per year in California – as much as some loud voices in the community seem to be clamoring for this, is clearly not the answer, especially in the case of victimless “crimes” which should not be illegal to begin with. The SF district attorney’s office under Boudin was moving toward more of a restorative justice approach focused on making victims whole, which is more in line with the restitution approach advocated in the Libertarian Party’s platform (https://www.lp.org/platform). Hamasaki has worked with crime victims and was himself a victim of violence, and if elected is expected to continue the work of building alternatives to incarceration.

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In the Board of Education contest, while we did not explicitly take a position on any of the candidates, the LPSF did support the successful February 2022 recall of three prior school board members including Gabriela Lopez, who is now seeking to win back a seat on the board.

In several previous races the LPSF has recommended voting for John Dennis, a Ron Paul supporter who is running again this year as a Republican against congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. However he seems to have become more conventionally conservative and moved away from libertarianism on issues like immigration and policing, and there were no calls to support him this cycle. (This is certainly not intending to say anything positive about Pelosi, a statist politician who has refused to debate her opponents since she was first elected to Congress way back in the 1980s!)

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Vote Tuesday June 7, 2022!

Submitted by Starchild on 6 June 2022 - 5:44pm

LPSF Ballot Measure Recommendations

Prop. A (public transit bond) – NO

Anyone familiar with libertarian thinking know we dislike bond measures, and this year’s Prop. A is no exception. They are a form of tax increase, despite politicians’ efforts to disguise this reality by engaging in a fiscal shell game that keeps property taxes at a permanently inflated level rather than allowing them to decrease when previous bond borrowing is paid off. And due to the costs of interest and servicing the bonds, they are an extremely inefficient way to spend, with each dollar borrowed costing as much as twice as much. As former judge and supervisor Quentin Kopp writes, “the sponsor (MTA) ignores the controller’s statement that interest on the 30-year bond will approximate $600 million. That is borne by homeowners who usually pay double the voter-approved debt, thanks to compounding interest.” Renters will also pay, in the form of pass-throughs raising their rent. And as Kopp also notes, a 2008 court decision effectively removed responsibility for the money to be spent as advertised. Even if it were, if just throwing more money at Muni were capable of fixing the chronic problems with the local government transit monopoly, they would have been fixed long ago.

Prop. B (Building Inspection Commission reform) – NO POSITION

This measure purportedly reacting to corruption scandals at the Building Inspection Commission fails to address the fundamental problem, which is that government has too much discretionary power to block or allow development. While reducing the professional qualifications necessary to serve on the commission could marginally diversify the body and reduce its domination by industry insiders, the legal language of the measure is opaque, and it doesn’t appear to do anything significant.

Prop. C (make recall elections harder) – NO

Despite our opposition to Prop. H (see below), recall elections are in general an important tool in the voters’ toolbox for holding politicians accountable. They are another form of term limits, essentially allowing voters to demand an early election. The successful recall of school board members in February would not have occurred if the narrow time window mandated by Prop. C had been in effect.

Prop. D (create new Victim/Witness Rights Office) – NO

Politicians love to come up with new programs and agencies. It gives the appearance that they are doing something new and concrete to bring about positive change. Certainly doing more to protect victim and witness rights sounds good in theory. But why can’t existing agencies like the SFPD and the district attorney’s office that provide victim and witness services simply reform their practices and coordinate their operations to be more helpful to victims and witnesses of crime without expanding the bureaucracy by creating an Office of Victim and Witness Rights as yet another government department? The official Voter Information Pamphlet argument against the measure points out that the planned new office is tasked with producing “an annual survey, an evaluation plan, and a consolidation plan” without “directly improving victim and witness rights” – in other words “a lot of bureaucracy, without a lot of new services.”

Prop. E (further restrict behested payments) – YES

The term “behested payments” may be new to you (it was to some of us), but it refers to an old form of corruption: Politicians and government officials raising – some would say extorting – donations from lobbyists, permit “expediters” or interest groups fearful of saying no lest the money or favors that they rely upon government to provide will be withdrawn if they don’t pony up. Giving directly to government officials at the behest (request) of those officials is mostly prohibited already, but this measure would further make it illegal for members of the Board of Supervisors to seek money from contractors whose contracts they had voted to approve – i.e. closing an obvious loophole that invites corruption. The YIMBY group Grow SF complains that Prop. E “would make it impossible for the city to work with philanthropic organizations” (a frank admission that local government works with these groups in the first place only so that politicos can extort money from them?) While their “impossible” language is an exaggeration, given that philanthropic groups do more good acting on their own than entering into “public private partnerships” with government that often reek of cronyism, making such collaboration more difficult sounds to us like a reason to support Proposition E.

Prop. F (weak garbage collection reform) – NO

Recology (nee Sunset Scavenger) is backing this “reform”, which tells you most of what you need to know about how much of a reform it really is. In the wake of revelations about the company having overcharged San Francisco ratepayers to the tune of almost $95 million, and its employees having been involved with bribing corrupt former Department of Public Works head Mohammed Nuru, both of which Recology admits, it is a measure of the longstanding trash and recycling monopoly’s clout that it is not employees were bribing the corrupt head of the Department of Public Works, Mohammed Nuru (now facing charges).

Prop. G (paid sick leave for air quality) – NO

This one is a business- and job-killer. Employees whose jobs are classified as substantially outdoors would get a new legal privilege to take up to two weeks of paid sick leave a year on days when a government agency says that local air quality is poor. As the economy has struggled to cope with and recover from government Covid lockdowns and restrictions, the public has gained a new appreciation for the complexity and fragility of supply chains, and what the result can be if, say, one baby formula plant unexpectedly shuts down. A mandate like that of Prop. G would throw additional monkey wrenches into those supply chains.

Prop. H (DA Chesa Boudin recall) – NO

While recalls of politicians are more often than not deserved, this case is an exception. The Libertarian Party of San Francisco urges voters to oppose Proposition H, the ballot measure in the Tuesday, June 7 election that would recall SF district attorney Chesa Boudin.

Boudin was narrowly elected (with LPSF support) in 2019 over the candidate appointed by the mayor and backed by the police union. A progressive prosecutor, he is by no means perfect from a pro-freedom perspective. He has, for instance, sought to sue manufacturers of so-called “ghost guns” for crimes committed with those guns, which is as silly as suing manufacturers of ballpoint pens over letters written with those pens.

Nevertheless, he is the only SF district attorney in living memory, if ever, to take criminal justice reform seriously by holding police officers accountable for their misconduct as other individuals would be, pushing to end the discriminatory use of cash bail that often results in defendants who don’t pose a risk to the community sitting behind bars pending trial simply because they cannot afford release; de-prioritizing the prosecution of victimless so-called “crimes” involving things like drugs and prostitution; and seeking to reduce the expensive and failed warehousing of criminals in a system of mass incarceration, in favor of a more victim-centered “restorative justice” approach.

This understanding and approach have made him a committed enemy not only of the SF Police Officers Association – the local monopoly SFPD union that rarely sees a meaningful reform it likes or an abusive cop whose actions it isn’t willing to defend – but of the “law and order” crowd generally. Those who still favor the traditional “lock ‘em up” mentality, including many career prosecutors who undermined the DA’s office by quitting after Boudin’s election rather than embrace a reform agenda, can’t stand that SF’s top prosector has disrupted the office’s previously cozy relationship with the police and adopted a more appropriately neutral stance.

Government police did not even exist in the United States until the 19th century. They were not part of the vision of the constitutional founders, who generally feared standing armies and would have been horrified by many of the laws under which people are routinely incarcerated in this country today. Well-informed Libertarians and fellow freedom lovers understand that law enforcers and prosecutors are the enforcement arm of Big Government. Without the threat of violence and kidnapping, all the other immoral and unconstitutional State regulations and controls on the lives of people who are harming no one would be moot. In an environment with so many unjust and unconstitutional statutes on the books, calls for more police, more prisons, and harsher sentences are profoundly at odds with the libertarian belief in limiting government power and upholding individual rights.

While we empathize with San Franciscans upset about lack of respect for property rights in this city, this is a longstanding problem that has far more to do with anti-business and anti-development policies enacted by establishment Democrats than it does with anything the DA’s office has done. Going after homeless people for “quality of life” infractions has further proven ineffective and burdensome to taxpayers. And as Joe Eskenazi has reported in Mission Local, the SFPD’s clearance rate in making arrests for reported crimes has dropped to its lowest level in decades, making the question of whether police are “engaging in a wildcat strike or simply underperforming” a “difference without a distinction". Indeed SF police have gone so far in trying to undermine Boudin that in a recent successful sting by his office that busted an auto theft rin, his office had to reach out to the Feds for logistical support normally provided by the SFPD. We would be unlikely to support someone with Boudin’s views for mayor or supervisor, but as district attorney he is about the best that San Francisco is realistically going to get, given current political realities.

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Vote Libertarian This Election!

The Mini-Panic Over SF Shoplifting

Submitted by Starchild on 14 October 2021 - 9:13pm

Screen shot from a notorious video of a shoplifting incident at an SF Walgreens outlet taken June 14, 2021.

Since Chesa Boudin was narrowly elected (with the LPSF's support!) as San Francisco district attorney in November 2019 over the mayor's interim DA appointee Suzy Loftus, who was heavily backed by the San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) and other law enforcement interests, there have been plenty of folks unhappy with that outcome.

As in many locales, police in San Francisco had long enjoyed an improperly cozy relationship with prosecutors. Even Boudin's relatively liberal elected predecessor (and former police chief) George Gascon, never really seen as reliably in the SFPOA's corner during his time overseeing the SFPD, failed as DA to prosecute a single police officer for an unjustified shooting or any other abuse. This was despite occurrences like the gangland-style execution of Mario Woods by multiple SFPD officers in 2015.

Chesa Boudin has been a breath of fresh air in an office that badly needed reform. A former deputy public defender in the office built by the much-missed Jeff Adachi, he ran on a platform that emphasized issues like opposing mass incarceration, focusing on real (not victimless) crimes, ending cash bail, and holding police accountable. He has been as good as his word on this, enhancing civil liberties and saving taxpayer money via efforts such as getting the SF jail population reduced by around 25% by letting elderly inmates and those with medical conditions, charged with misdemeanors out early, requiring prosecutors to review all available evidence before charging any cases involving allegations of resisting, obstructing or assaulting police officers (charges often trumped up when police don't have any real cause to arrest someone, or want to make their life more difficult), and working with Supervisor Matt Haney to try to stop police officers with records of abuse from being hired, according to Wikipedia. The people who don't like him are upset with him in no small part because he is doing what he said he would do.

In seeking to remove Boudin via an upcoming recall election however, opponents have latched onto one issue in particular as an easier "sell" to San Francisco voters who might not be so enthused about a return to criminal justice "business as usual" – shoplifting. In this they were given a major media assist. While most of the mainstream media may lean to the left on many issues, when it comes to local petty crime their statism often has a more right-wing "tough-on-crime" flavor. ABC7 TV reporter Lyanne Melendez exemplified this when she pushed the shoplifting issue to the front burner on June 14 by tweeting a video of a brazen shoplifting incident at a Walgreens store in Hayes Valley. Without providing any evidence or context to support blaming the district attorney, she editorialized her tweet with the words "#NoConsequences @ChesaBoudin". According to Twitter, that video has now been viewed 6.2 million times.

Watching it raises some obvious questions, like "Why doesn't the store security guard make more than a half-hearted grab at the thief's bag as he rides his bicycle directly past him in a narrow store aisle toward the store exit, when almost anyone in that position making a serious effort could have easily blocked the getaway?"

The incident almost gives the impression of having been staged. If the security guard was afraid for his own safety (isn't being exposed to potential physical confrontations part of his job?), why wasn't he on the phone to 911, or calling for more backup from other store personnel, instead of just standing there watching as the thief swept items from store shelves into a large trash bag? Was this incident really about local criminal justice authorities falling down on the job, or was it about store management having some kind of "don't interfere" policy designed to avoid bad publicity or potential liability?

A Tech-Gate story about the incident reports that the man – subsequently taken into custody – had previously robbed the same store on four consecutive days earlier in the month, but that Walgreens declined to prosecute.

A district attorney can't prosecute anyone unless they are first identified, which generally means apprehending them. Some commenters have also tried to blame the perceived increase in shoplifting – more on that later – on the Black Lives Matter or police abuse reform movement which saw a major surge after the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020, arguing that cops are more afraid to make arrests now, lest they be accused of police brutality.

But unless police happen to be on the scene and catch a shoplifter in the act, it is usually store personnel who apprehend shoplifters, so this doesn't really offer a good excuse for what do appear to be low arrest rates in SF for this type of crime:

"...state and local crime clearance reports show the problem is not San Franciscans’ failure to report shoplifting to police, but the SFPD’s low rate (4.9 percent) of making arrests in reported thefts compared to police elsewhere in the state (10.5 percent)."

– From cjcj org/news/13165

Being arrested is a traumatic experience, typically costing arrestees time and money and affecting their records regardless of what happens afterward, so more SFPD arrests of shoplifters would presumably have some impact.

Nevertheless, despite the shocking Melendez video and some high-profile incidents of organized shoplifting, the rates for this crime in San Francisco are in fact still much lower than they were back in the 1980s, and have fallen further since 2019:

"The data shows police-reported shoplifting incidents that are from
pre-pandemic dates. Also looking even further back then pre-pandemic,
the data shows that shoplifting rates have been falling more or less
steadily since the 1980s.

According to the SF Chronicle, 710 shoplifting incidents were
reported in the city from January to April of 2021 in comparison to 933
shoplifting periods from the same period in 2019, an actual decrease."

– From davisvanguard org/2021/07/are-shoplifting-rates-in-san-francisco-rising-data-says-nope/

Some of the people who believe, despite the evidence, that shoplifting is way up in San Francisco, also like to blame state Proposition 47, the criminal justice reform measure that helped address the epidemic of mass incarceration by releasing some non-violent offenders from overcrowded jails.

But contrary to the myth that the law now lets people caught stealing goods worth less than $950 get off scot free, California statutes actually classify it as a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to six months in jail, in addition to potential civil liability to the store owner for:

• the retail value of the merchandise, if the property is not recovered in sellable condition
• damages of at least $50 but not more than $500, and
• costs of bringing the action.

– From criminaldefenselawyer com/resources/criminal-defense/crime-penalties/petty-theft-california-penalties-defense

While it's true that prosecution rates for shoplifting are down since the start of Covid not long after district attorney Boudin was elected, it's a bit of a stretch to hold him mainly responsible, as a July 9 San Francisco Examiner article shows:

The numbers show the prosecution rate for shoplifting cases involving
a misdemeanor petty theft charge for a loss of $950 or less fell under
Boudin, from 70 percent under former District Attorney George Gascon in
2019 to 44 percent in 2020 and 50 percent as of mid-June 2021.

Prosecutors filed charges in 116 of 266 cases presented by police
involving petty theft in 2020, compared to 450 of 647 cases in 2019,
according to the data provided by the District Attorney’s Office.

On the other hand, the prosecution rate for certain organized retail
theft cases remained between 81 and 84 percent under both Gascon and
Boudin between 2019 and 2021.

The office charged 35 of the 43 organized retail theft cases presented in 2020,
compared to 21 of the 25 cases in 2019...

Boudin said the decline in prosecution rates for shoplifting cases is
a reflection of the “difficult choices” his office had to make during
the pandemic, when the Hall of Justice closed most of its courtrooms and
city officials decided to largely empty the jails, in part to prevent
an outbreak.

“We made an intentional decision to prioritize crimes involving
violence, injury to human beings and use of weapons,” Boudin said.

– From SFExaminer com/news/data-shows-chesa-boudin-prosecutes-fewer-shoplifters-than-predecessor/

So if you're inclined to blame Chesa Boudin, which of the following alternative courses of action do you think he should have taken?

• Prioritizing the prosecution of petty theft over crimes involving violence?
• Trying to force the courts to reopen their courtrooms to enable more prosecutions, and the sheriffs to refill the jails, risking Covid outbreaks?
• Violating the Constitution by somehow prosecuting people without due process?

Meanwhile, while shoplifting in San Francisco has decreased in recent decades, homelessness is way, way up. Which must be a bit of a head-scratcher if you think homeless people are disproportionately the ones to blame for such petty crime.

More to the point though, what should concern us more as a society?

• Petty theft, whether organized or by individuals, from retail establishments of property worth less than $950 per offense?; or

• Organized State robbery in the form of taxes, often many thousands of dollars a year per victim, that leave people with fewer resources to help themselves and their families and exacerbate poverty?

In humanitarian terms, which is the greater problem that we should be more concerned over?

While it's frustrating to see blatant, repeated shoplifting from stores occurring in the community, which ultimately means higher prices for everyone, libertarians should resist the agenda – often pushed by conservatives – of just inflicting harsher punishments on the residents committing these thefts. Asking government to put more people behind bars for longer terms tends to be far costlier to the public. Not to mention a far greater threat to freedom.

We should not let this largely manufactured panic over shoplifting cause us to vote out a district attorney who is pursuing real, valuable reforms.

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Screen shot from a notorious video of a shoplifting incident at an SF Walgreens outlet taken June 14, 2021.

A vaccine mandate hides an ID mandate

Submitted by Starchild on 12 October 2021 - 3:33am

Not everything is as it seems in the San Francisco Public Health Department's vaccine mandate.

[NOTE: The author will be the guest speaker at November's LPSF meeting!]

By Edward Hasbrouck

(Reprinted from PapersPlease.org)

As we have long feared, and as has already happened in other countries, COVID-19 vaccination requirements are being used to impose unrelated ID requirements.

There’s a difference between “unvaccinated” and “undocumented” — a difference that’s gotten lost in some recent regulations and orders imposing “vaccination mandates”.

Case in point: the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

An order from the SFDPH purports to require people entering indoor businesses or other indoor venues including anywhere food or beverages are served, gyms, and other “large indoor events” to show “proof” of having been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

But proof of vaccination is not what the order actually mandates. Its only real mandate is a an ID mandate, and in practice its effects would be felt primarily by undocumented people (including vaccinated but undocumented people) who don’t have or don’t choose to show ID, not by unvaccinated people.

Regardless of whether you’ve been vaccinated or whether you think other people should be vaccinated, the ID mandate hidden in this order, like similar ID mandates lurking in other “vaccination” regulations and directives, is a step backward for civil liberties. It is vulnerable to, and deserving of, Constitutional challenge.

Here’s what the SFDPH order would actually require:

The SFDPH order defines several acceptable forms of “proof” of vaccination including, among others, a paper vaccination card printed in blank by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and filled in by hand at a vaccination site, a photocopy of such a card, an image of such a card displayed on a smartphone, a QR code displayed on a smartphone, or “a written self-attestation of vaccination signed… under penalty of perjury.”

None of these, with the possible exception of a declaration under penalty of perjury, provides more than the flimsiest evidence that someone (not necessary the person presenting the card or paper copy or showing the image or QR code) was vaccinated. None of them provides “proof”.

Anyone could write anything on a blank CDC card, photocopy such a card, copy an image or QR code, create a QR code, borrow a smartphone on which an image or QR code is already stored, or edit such an image to fill in the blanks or change the name or other information.

The most secure of these forms of evidence, at least in terms of the risk taken by someone using it to support a false claim to have been vaccinated, would appear to be a self-certification under penalty of perjury. It’s not clear what law would be violated by changing the name in an image of a vaccination card. And whatever might be said — in seriousness or in jest — about the possible penalties for misuse of Photoshop, the penalties for perjury are probably quite a bit more serious than those for altering an image of a vaccination card.

But while the SFDPH order defines a self-certification as “proof” of having been vaccinated, Appendix B to the order defines a variety of venues and events for which a self-certification of having been vaccinated will not be accepted, but other trivially produced forms of evidence of having been vaccinated will be accepted.

There are other inexplicable quirks in which forms of evidence of vaccination are and aren’t acceptable under the SFDPH order.

The most “official” and widely-recognized record of vaccination is the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (“yellow book”), a longstanding global standard adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) pursuant to international treaties. These can be used to record vaccinations against COVID-19, and in some countries including Germany they are the primary vaccination records being issued to individuals. In the US, WHO-standard blank “yellow books” are issued by the CDC and distributed to health care providers and the public by the US Government Printing Office.

The SFDPH doesn’t include the CDC “yellow book” in its list of acceptable forms of “proof” of having been vaccinated (although international health regulations require its acceptance), but does include any “similar documentation issued by another foreign governmental jurisdiction.” So a WHO-standard yellow book from any other country is acceptable, but not one from the US CDC. Is this deliberate? If so, why?

But that’s not all, and that’s not the worst feature of the SFDPH order.

For the venues and events defined in Appendix B to the order, “Covered Businesses are required to cross-check proof of Full Vaccination for each patron against a photo identification.”

What does this mean? Members of the public and businesses charged with enforcing the order are left to guess. Despite detailed (albeit, as discussed above, arbitrary and unexplained) definitions and specifications of acceptable evidence of vaccination, the SFDPH order contains no definition at all of “photo identification”.

Responsibility for enforcing this order is assigned to businesses (i.e. to their frontline staff) and operators of venues and events, none of whom have any particular expertise or qualifications to assess claims or evidence of vaccination or identity. There’s no reason to expect such a system to be any more effective at controlling who is actually allowed to enter venues subject to the SFDPH order than the existing and widely flouted rules purporting to require evidence of age to purchase alcohol, tobacco, or other items.

Whatever is meant by the mandate to “cross-check proof of Full Vaccination… against a photo identification,” it is likely to imply a requirement to remove face masks, which (as at TSA checkpopints and other places where masks must be removed for ID checks) poses a clear health risk.

As is typical of government orders requiring individuals to show ID to private businesses, the SFDPH order places no restrictions on the ability of those businesses to scan ID credentials (which they are likely to start doing just to be able to show that they have complied with the order to make all workers and patrons show ID) and to retain, use, or monetize the databases of personal ID data they have thus compiled. There are no requirements for securing this sensitive personal data or disclosing how it has been used or with whom it has been shared.

Do you want every restaurant, bar, club, gym, or theater you have attended to have a copy of your passport number in an insecure jury-rigged database? Or to be able to make a little extra money off each customer by selling this information to a commercial data aggregator — without telling you they have done so?

The SFDPH order also applies to events open to the public and held at indoor public forums operated by government agenccies, to which entry is a right. If someone reserves a room at the library or rents the Civic Auditorium for a political meeting, should the government, as operator of the venue, be allowed to require that attendees identify themselves, and keep a record of who attended? We think not.

While the SFDPH order allows, or at least originally allowed, self-certification of vaccination in some circumstances, it doesn’t explicitly allow self-certification of identity. In the absence of any definition or qualification of “a photo identification”, it’s at least arguable that the requirements of the SFDPH order could be satisfied by showing a self-certified photo ID, such as a photo with your name or signature written on the back. We’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has tried to gain entry to a covered venue or event with such self-certified photo ID. If you are turned away, what recourse do you have, if any?

It’s particularly irrational and unfair that the SFDPH is requiring evidence of vaccination to be “cross-check[ed] … against … photo identification”, when no identification at all has been, or is being required by the SFDPH to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.

As the City and County of SF says, “You can get a free COVID-19 vaccination regardless of your immigration status” and without ID. That’s as it should be. Undocumented people are at just as much risk of infection themselves, and pose just as much of a risk of infection to others, as people who have and choose to show ID.

The effect of the ID mandate is that undocumented people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 by the SFDPH at its vaccination sites are prohibited by the SFDPH, purportedly on the basis of their vaccination status, from patronizing or working in restaurants or other covered venues. There is no rational relationship between the ID provisions of the order and any health purpose.

Vaccinated but undocumented people are barred from working in, patronizing, or attending events at restaurants and many other indoor venues in SF. Unvaccinated people with acceptable ID can get into those same venues by copying and/or making trivial changes to a vaccination card or image.

The burden of the SFDPH order will fall primarily on vaccinated people who are undocumented or who don’t choose to show ID, not on unvaccinated people.

A variety of people don’t have ID — especially in a dense city like San Francisco with many transportation options that don’t require a drivers license — or don’t choose to show ID. Many of them are vaccinated against COVID-19.

Having been vaccinated isn’t proof of not being infected or not being infectious. A significant percentage of current COVID-19 cases in San Francisco, as throughout the U.S., are among people who have been vaccinated. But neither is having or showing ID proof of not being infected or not being infectious. Government-issued ID is not a magic talisman against COVID-19 and does nothing to enhance the effectiveness of any vaccine. There is no reason to conflate ID with vaccination, and good reasons to keep them separate.

Because the SFDPH order applies to workers as well as patrons in any of the venues to which it applies, it constitutes (or purports to constitute) an additional bar prohibiting undocumented people — even if they are vaccinated — from working in restaurants or other covered venues. Was this really what was intended? Or it is just another example of the inevitability of unintended collateral damage whenever ID requirements are imposed?

Supporters of universal ID requirements have long been quick to seize any opportunity to embed ID requirements in short-term rules that can then be made permanent. COVID-19 vaccination requirements, no matter how well intended, are being used as the latest such pretext. Officials genuinely concerned with public health should resist any attempt to hide ID requirements or ID-linked surveillance in vaccination rules.

This is just one case study of the “health” orders in San Francisco. How widespread are vaccination rules that are Trojan horses for ID rules? What do they say? Have they been challenged?

We’re interested in hearing about other “vaccination mandates” hiding ID requirements (please share links in the comments) and in hearing from any attorneys interested in working on challenges to this new flavor of back-door ID mandate.

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Not everything is as it seems in the San Francisco Public Health Department's vaccine mandate.

Go ahead and engage in vote-buying, just don't be hypocrites

Submitted by Starchild on 5 May 2021 - 2:07am

I heard the same thing about the controversial new Georgia voting law (the "Election Integrity Act of 2021") that most of you probably have – that it criminalizes giving water to people waiting in line to vote. That part is what many in the media seem to want to focus on. Taken out of context, it definitely sounds like the GOP carrying vote suppression to an utterly petty level.

Then I read what that part of the legislation, which applies within 150 feet of a polling place or within 25 feet of any voter at a polling place, actually says:

"No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector."

You remember Brad Raffensperger? The Republican secretary of state in Georgia who defended the integrity of the election results that showed Biden winning the poll in that state and resisted pressure from the president when Trump phoned him and asked him to "find" over 11,000 votes? Well, Raffensperger promised last year that the state would crack down on "line warming," or handing gifts to people waiting in line to vote as a way to "inappropriately influence voters in the crucial final moments before they cast their ballots."

So yeah, Republicans trying to suppress the vote, and Republicans trying to stop shenanigans by their opponents – the two go hand in hand, one providing cover for the other. But the deeper truth is that both sides are trying to rig the system in their favor as best they can. Certain voters in certain areas are generally presumed (with lots of evidence) to be likely Democrat voters. The Republican Party is trying to reduce voter turnout in these areas by making it more difficult to vote, while the Democratic Party is trying to increase voter turnout in these same areas by, among other things, bribing voters. The media mostly understands the first half of this dynamic, and reports it as such, but ignores or misses the flip side of the coin. Free water and snacks may not seem like much of an incentive to vote, but if someone's on the fence, a little detail like that can make a difference. And in a tight race, every bit of turnout matters.

Again, both halves of the establishment are trying to rig the game in their favor, they just have different ways of trying to cheat. And don't think for a minute that this is just about whether people waiting to vote can be given water. That's just media spin. The real question is whether anything of value can be used to lure people to the polls. If gifts of bottled water are allowed, it won't stop there; the envelope will be pushed. Democratic operatives will supply as many inducements to vote in areas and among populations where the vote tends to swing their way as they legally (and sometimes maybe illegally) can – snacks, sandwiches, whole chickens, tote bags, gift certificates, etc., so that more of "their" people will make it to the polls.

Don't get me wrong though – I oppose this Georgia law. Attempting to influence voters should not be criminalized, regardless of whether the lobbying occurs right before they vote or at some other time. Ditto for vote-buying. Your vote belongs to you, and true ownership isn't only about the right of use, it's also the right to transfer the thing in question to another person or group of your choosing. If you can't sell your vote, in a sense it's not really yours.

Politicians and election commentators seldom acknowledge this, but – especially for someone trying to make ends meet – getting the equivalent of $5 (about the price of a bottled water and a snack) or $20 or $50 or whatever from somebody hoping you'll vote the way they want you to, may have more of a direct, positive impact on your life than any votes you as one individual cast in the voting booth.

For some people, a decision to sell their vote (or to receive something of value, however slight, from someone seeking to influence how they cast it) might be not only rational, but a more honest reflection of their values and priorities than any selection available to them on the ballot, and thus a more legitimate expression of democracy.

Only let's call it what it is, and not pretend this latest hullabaloo is motivated by a sudden humanitarian concern for grandma's physical nourishment while waiting in line to vote, from people who never showed any similar interest in her well-being when she was waiting in line at the DMV, or sitting around at court after being called for jury duty.

Attempted vote-buying is nothing new. The reason many people vote for the politicians they do in the first place is because the pols promise free stuff. If they're allowed to get votes by promising "free" health care, "free" education, "free" border walls, "free" Covid relief checks, etc., after they're elected, why shouldn't they be allowed to get votes by handing out freebies before the vote, and using their own resources to pay for them, instead of stolen tax money? That way voters have a chance to get something concrete, in advance, that is at least a bit more ethically sourced, and they don't have to just rely on politicians' promises. It would be an effective way of transferring money from the rich (big money donors) to the poor (low-income and minority voters) without coercion and without government taking the lion's share before the money gets to those for whom it's purportedly intended.

If you're recoiling in horror from the idea of buying and selling votes, you can rest easy. It's about as likely to become law any time soon, as the Biden administration is to be fiscally responsible. Please direct your outrage toward the practices already in place now that tilt the political field in favor of the well-heeled. Like shutting less deep-pocketed alternative party candidates out of debates, not allowing voters to register with their parties in many states, and charging outrageous filing fees just to get on the ballot or have a candidate statement. When I ran for State Assembly last year, no statement appeared by my name in the voter information pamphlet, because they wanted to charge me $1572.00 to print one. But of course voters reading the pamphlet weren't informed of that reason; all they saw was a blank space, giving the impression that I just didn't care enough to write anything. Just one of the dirty little tactics of the 2-party duopoly cartel.

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