For those who don't know...Plan C is an organization originally founded to fight restrictions preventing the conversion of multi-unit buildings into condos. Note they are also No on A...but wrong about everything else. Still, they have enough clout to really market their positions so we might want to broadcast that they're on our side for this one.
Aubrey was asking for comments about other races around town...see Plan C is endorsing David Lee for Supervisor who is running against Eric Mar in District 1 (my neighborhood).
As you may know Eric Mar has been leading the charge to ban toys with Happy Meals at McDonalds as well as banning stores from giving free bags.
David Lee has quite a campaign going and is enjoying the support of all the big shot mainstream politicians like Diane Feinstein, Mayor Lee and Gavin Newsom who are doing everything possible to knock out Mar.
Mar is and always has been an ass since his days on the School Board. And interestingly, the subject of his robocall program here in the district is exclusively to brag about how he voted to dethrone Mirkarimi as sheriff. David Lee seeks to be an establishment politician who will do what he is told. Both are full of it.
Sherman d'Silva is also running... http://www.dsilva2012.com/Richmond_District_Plan.html It seems he wants to focus on the stuff that City Hall is supposed to be doing...and he doesn't seem too politically ambitious. I'll probably vote for him and leave the rest blank as they nauseate me.
Thanks, Mike. I was wondering about that third candidate and suspecting he might be the one worth recommending in District 1 (sadly, the better candidates are most often the ones that are underfunded and under-publicized). It sounds like Mar is getting desperate if he is making a big deal of his (wrong) vote against Mirkarimi. I think he's pretty solidly progressive (in both the good ways and the bad ways), so bragging about that must really stick in his craw. Sad that he's willing to sell out his principles to seek reelection.
Hi Starchild, Mike, and All! At yesterday's meeting, as expected, we had a heck of a time coming up with any qualified recommendations for candidates running for office during this election. The pickings are indeed slim, and it seemed like we were almost grasping at straws to find anyone of merit to say anything positive about them. As always, we ran out of time and Starchild agreed to try and come up with a list of a few candidates and say something meaningful about why they might warrant an honorable mention by us. (Definitely not an endorsement or even a recommendation, just a positive mention by us.)
On the same subject of this election where our website is becoming a one-stop shopping for voters who visit, I think we should include the state measures also. There are 11 measures, they're just as important as the local measures, and unfortunately the LPCA has only decided on two of them. My idea is to list our recommendations with about 2-3 sentences of explanation as to the why. (The two already decided by the LPCA we would mention as the official recommendations of the LPCA.) Several of the propositions are fairly easy to decide in Libertarian terms, while a few are a little harder to decide on, so if we can't come to a consensus on the harder ones, we might just say NO RECOMMENDATION. Unless anyone has any major objections, I will plow through them this week and post my recommendation with a comment for each and see if we can come to an agreement (or majority vote) on each one. I don't mind at all if anyone changes the wording on my
explanations. I'd like to have this all wrapped by next week-end, since early voting has already started. Here's what I came up with for Prop 30 (increase of the sales tax and personal income tax for the wealthy): Vote NO. California is already the sixth highest taxed state in the nation. By taxing everyone with a 1/4 percent sales tax increase and raising the personal income tax rates on the wealthy, California will encourage more taxpayers and businesses to leave the state at a time when more jobs and production are needed. Rather the state should balance its budget by enacting pension reform and reducing bureaucracy. Please advise your thoughts.
I do not believe we need to say anything positive about anybody. Let's face it
people, none of these people are very good from a Libertarian perspective. They
are all bad. BUT some of these people ARE going to be elected. And some of them
are badder than others. ALL we should try to do is to identify those who, based
on the limited information available to us, are the least bad. We need not
endorse anybody. We need not give any specific reason for our choices other than
that this is our intuitive judgement.
You guys are approaching this all from the wrong direction. Don't ask yourself
who do you support, but rather who do you think will do the least amount of
damage. If the Libertarian party keeps up this puristic dogmatic approach, we
are never going to have any impact.
Good points. That generally is how I look at it -- it's a matter of harm reduction. But I think it's okay to say some positive things about a candidate by way of explaining why he/she is better (or less bad) than the others running, don't you?
Generally I agree with you, but ...... the problem with giving reasons is that
people start nitpicking. If candidate A has five negatives and candidate B has
three and we mention that we relatively favor B, then the purists start
squawking "but he/she has THREE NEGATIVES!!!! How can we possibly be for B?"
Besides our support, if we want to call it that, is mostly a matter of
intuition. Nobody knows how a candidate will act once he/she get elected.
Sometimes they get drunk with sense of power of spending someone else's money.