In the wake of Mountain View’s ban on Facebook serving free food in their new office resurfacing, the bureaucrats in San Francisco City Hall decided they couldn’t be outdone. Supervisors Ahsha Safai and Aaron Peskin are planning to introduce their own proposal for The City to ban industrial kitchens in office buildings for all future developments.
Senator Wiener is at it again. Teamed up with Assemblymember Phil Ting, they have introduced SB 221, which would ban the sale of all guns or ammunition at the Cow Palace beginning in 2020. The Cow Palace is state-owned and located in Daly City on the cusp of San Francisco and San Mateo counties, and local officials have tried for years to shut down the guns shows held there. This is the umpteenth attempt to pass such legislation, and previous attempts were vetoed by both governors Schwarzenegger and Brown, though with every school shooting that occurs, there’s been a greater push for “common sense” gun control.
A $5,600 bill from the government for having an illegal chicken coop in the backyard? A $31,000 fine for doing a minor expansion to your home without a permit? A $4,200 bill for a Halloween decoration stretched across a road? Sound too incredible to be true? Think again. In the world of government enforcement of “public nuisance” ordinances, nothing is impossible. The cases cited above all occurred in California in the inland empire cities of Indio and Coachella.
Not too many people have heard of political writer and agitator Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912), so I was surprised and delighted when a performer at a "secret garden" party I attended here in San Francisco earlier this month announced that she was going to perform a song written by the 19th century individualist anarchist.
Left-anarchist singer-songwriter Erica, who goes by Unwoman after the banished women in Canadian sci-fi writer Margaret Atwood's dystopian "A Handmaid's Tale", proceeded to give a beautiful musical rendition of VdC's haunting poem "Written In Red" on the electric cello, a performance somewhat similar to which you can view here:
We've really accomplished a lot in the first half of this year! Thank you everyone who continues to put in the time and energy to fight for liberty in San Francisco! It's an uphill battle, and sometimes it doesn't feel so rewarding, but it's important work that wouldn't happen without our amazing activists and volunteers.
So, take a few minutes to reflect on the first half of this year and ask yourself: how can we make the rest of the year even better??
With the Nimby’s and Yimby’s battling each other over land use rules in tackling The City’s and California’s housing problems, we wonder why so little is being said about another major cause of the high prices—urban growth boundaries (UGB). UGB’s have been around for decades all along the west coast, so it should be no surprise that the highest cost of housing in the nation tends to be in California, Oregon, and Washington state. Boulder, Colorado has a UGB and not coincidentally very high housing costs too.
Last weekend the LPSF hosted a booth at the San Francisco Pride 2018 Fair. We’ve become a regular exhibitor (not literally!) at the fair for many years, and liberty-leaning folks always love to see us there each year with our brochures, posters, buttons, World’s Smallest Political Quiz, Spinning Wheel of Crazy San Francisco Laws, and other tricks of the outreach trade. This year folks may have noticed that we were there under our own Libertarian Party of San Francisco banner, rather than Outright Libertarians, which we had used for the last 14 years. The general public probably didn’t even notice the subtle difference because to the average person, once you’ve seen one Libertarian, you’ve seen them all.
Join the Libertarian Party of San Francisco for our 5th annual panel discussion. We will be discussing the pros and cons of school choice.
Click here to reserve your tickets on Eventbrite
This event has already passed. Join us next year for another great panel discussion!
Date and Time
Thu, June 21, 2018
5:30 PM – 8:30 PM PDT
San Francisco, 2028 – Under legislation passed by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, all city residents who don’t already have a SuperHealthySF chip implant will be required to obtain one by January 1.
After that date, persons not showing up on a Department of Public Health scan will lose various privileges, such as the ability to connect to the Internet via the civic network, the ability to use virtual reality programs and other services provided by the library, and the ability to enter parks and other facilities that require chip recognition for entry.
Visitors will be able to get temporary chips by applying and paying a fee at one of the DPH checkpoints at SFO, on the bridges, at the Convention & Visitors Bureau, or along the city’s southern border.
Do you ever wonder why The Golden State is no longer golden? Just one look at a state initiative that is circulating for signatures for the November election might give you a clue. The desire to “do something” quickly to fix a serious problem might make sense at first thought, but not considering the long-term effects of more government laws can (and usually does) lead to worse problems. It’s what Frederick Bastiat, the French classical liberal economist, referred to as the “seen” and the “unseen.” In this case it’s the repeal of the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, or as more commonly referred to as Costa-Hawkins, passed in the state legislature in 1995. A spokesman for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which supports the repeal, noted, “People are excited.