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.
[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.
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:
We migrated our Yahoo! Group to a self-hosted Discourse! Almost 40,000 posts were imported, and user accounts were created for the group's existing subscribers.
The forum and your preferences can be accessed at https://forum.lpsf.org or via mobile apps.
--> If you have an account, you can also reply to a post or start a new topic by emailing [email protected] or [email protected] .
Discourse is heavily customizable, so if it's not working the way you want, login and change your settings, or let me know.
Proposition A – NO. This $960 million bond measure (the estimated cost to taxpayers of borrowing $487.5 million after all the interest and costs are paid) promises everything but the kitchen sink. Prop. A would supposedly fund "investments" (the Voter Information Pamphlet's biased language) in "supportive housing facilities", shelters, parks, recreation facilities, facilities for "persons experiencing mental health challenges", streets, etc. All things that could be paid for out of the city government's $13.7 billion regular budget (a budget larger than those of many states and even most countries!).
Longtime freedom-oriented observers of politics in the City by the Bay won’t be greatly surprised that exactly none of the local measures on the March 3 ballot are worth supporting. The Libertarian Party of San Francisco recommends voting NO on all five. Here’s some brief thoughts on why:
Proposition A – $845 million City College “Job Training, Repair and Earthquake Safety” bond
According to a faculty union representing teachers at City College, spending on administration has grown to comprise 10% of the school’s personnel costs, up from 7% just five years ago.
Politicians and bureaucrats certainly give people plenty of good reasons to hate them, but from time to time you have to sympathize with them, because in their power-addiction, serving as cogs in the leviathan they have created, they victimize themselves too.
Just because they are oppressing us from the top of the pyramid doesn't mean that most of the individuals running government necessarily have a good quality of life. I don't think most people would actually enjoy doing their jobs. They may have power, but the daily grind of exercising it, cranking out the sausage on a day-to-day basis, can't be very enjoyable for most of them. They're like junkies who keep chasing after that power fix even though it's destroying their lives.
| A | B | C | D | E | F |
| NO | - | YES | NO | NO | NO |
Candidates
District Attorney: Chesa Boudin, endorsed on October 12 by the LPSF
The most criminal justice reform oriented candidate for district attorney, and the only one who has a background of trying to keep people out of jail rather than trying to lock them up, Chesa Boudin wants to end money bail, mass incarceration, the "War on Drugs", and the criminalization of sex work. Find out more about Chesa at https://www.chesaboudin.com/.
Measures
NO on A - Affordable Housing Bond
Issues $600M in bonds (repaid by property taxes) to fund "affordable housing" programs which don't work. This will end up costing taxpayers $1.5B and puts more power in the hands of government without solving the underlying cause of high housing costs in San Francisco-- artificially short supply.
In July 2019, Gail Gilman became the Political Director of the Proposition A "Affordable Housing" Bond campaign. For the prior seventeen years she was the executive director of the Community Housing Partnership (CHP). Before that, she worked for Bridge Housing. Both stand to be the chief contract awardees of Proposition A bond proceeds. Gail Gilman is also a San Francisco Port Commissioner responsible for dishing out contracts from the 2018 Port Seawall Bond.
Here are a few insights I've found in my time as a libertarian (pro-freedom) activist which I consider valuable and thought I'd share in the hope that others may find them useful...
• If you find yourself debating or arguing with someone (in person, online, or wherever) whose stance in the conversation is more pro-freedom on the particular topic or issue being discussed than yours, change the topic or leave the conversation. If you want to debate that issue, go find another conversation in which the person or people you're debating are less pro-freedom on it than you are. In this way, you can ensure that your advocacy is on the side of freedom, not against it.