Yes, thanks Nick, you beat me to it! Glad we got two out of four, that's not bad.
I was also interested to see Richie Greenberg opposing the cannabis and online tax. Perhaps he would be open to having the LPSF sign on to his rebuttal argument? I think we should send him our ballot argument regardless, in case he wants to incorporate some of Aubrey's arguments. His email address is <info@richiegreenberg.org>.
Anybody else familiar with John Bozeman or "BOMA San Francisco"? I am not.
Regarding paid arguments, I would likewise prioritize an argument against Prop. D over one against Prop. C, mostly for positioning reasons (more left-friendly to argue against cannabis taxes than against business taxes to supposedly help the homeless), but they're both clearly bad and we have plenty of funds in our bank account with no other plans to spend them, so as usual my perspective is why not do both?
BOMA stands for Building Owners and Managers Association. There is a national organization and different subsidiaries for various cities. Since I don't do real estate in SF I don't know John BozemanFrançoise
Francoise Fielding, Esq, 820 Stanyan St. #5, San Francisco, CA 94117, 415-386-8643
Hi All. I'm reasonably pleased with today's results, though I didn't find
out until I got home and checked the Department of Elections website and
saw us listed there. Usually they email me sometime during the afternoon
after the lottery what we won, and I heard nothing this afternoon, so I
assumed the lottery gods did not look upon us with favor this time. Two is
decent--I have no complaints!
I favor paid arguments on both C and D, but there's no reason they have to
cost us $600 each ($200 + $2/word). We managed to pay for 2 arguments in
the June election, and it cost us exactly $900. I think it's not
unreasonable to budget around $1,000 per election for a political party, so
if we can keep the word count down on our paid arguments to 175 words or
less, I think we shouldn't go much over $1,000. I'm not exactly known for
being pithy, but at the price of $2 for each additional word, even I can be
pithy! I would say the writers of the rebuttals and paid arguments should
be the same writers who wrote the original arguments submitted today, since
each person is already pretty familiar with the topic at hand. The job is
easier for the paid arguments--just hack away at each unnecessary word
unless you feel it's worth the extra $2!
The Department of Elections did not send me the proponents' arguments for A
and E. I will request them first thing in the morning and forward them
tomorrow to the Activist List and Jawj. Starchild, I clicked on your link
but could not find the actual proponent arguments. Are you sure the actual
arguments are there?
By the way, I believe I heard John Bozeman speak at the SF Apartment
Association event earlier this year when I was invited to speak against
Prop F. He was in synch with the apartment folks and was well received, as
we would expect--solidly opposed to F (city-funded tenant representation).
As an interesting aside, Chris Bowman was down at the Department of
Elections today, and we gabbed with him for a while about Prop B. He and
the GOP are opposed to it, the main reason being that all this privacy
business is good when it comes to "the people" but not so good when it
applies to government. He felt that it would be a lot harder to find out
about government and those who wheel and deal with the bureaucrats if B
passes. Definitely food for thought, so perhaps we can rethink our stance
(since we didn't finalize on B) if that Richard Knee presents the case
against B at our next meeting.
Yes, let's try to avoid the last-minute commotion on Monday morning. This
will be my final trek to the Department of Elections and it would be
refreshing if it were to be stress-free😱!
I'm kind of interested in hearing from someone on the "pro" side of Prop. B too, so will put out a request to see if I can find anybody to come and present on that.
Aubrey, I copied you on my correspondence with the Elections Dept., did you receive it? Greg Slocum sent me the proponents' argument for Prop. A only, and I responded asking whether he sent you the one for Prop. E. Am copying again below.
Aubrey will get my smiley-faced comment "we're not the government, so we can't require anybody to redo it from scratch" – Greg kind of gave us a hard time this morning about submitting a paper with too many admittedly not as clear as they could have been edit markups on it this morning, and required us to write the whole 300 words out again by hand.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
P.S. – Aubrey, I noticed you also somehow got listed as an individual on the argument against E, which is totally fine by me. Personally I think adding individual names is generally a good thing if there's room. The more name recognition each of us have as individuals (the real-world equivalent of web "hits"?), essentially the bigger soap boxes we have from which to spread the libertarian message.
Hi Starchild. Too many emails today--sorry, I missed your attachment of
the A proponent's argument. It reads as pretty pitiful to me--you should
be able to make mince meat out of it!
No, Greg never sent anything to me today--I'll get the E proponent argument
in the morning.
Yes, I was surprised to see my name listed with the LPSF as the official
opponent. I never put my name in the argument, except when we work with
other groups and their individual names are listed, so it would be too
strange not to have my name listed. I did not list it on any of the
arguments today, except in the cover sheet, which is standard procedure for
the coversheets. They have a lot of new folks at the DOE, and I suspect
someone just goofed again. I'm comfortable with these ballot measures just
going under the name of the LPSF (less paperwork to fill out too).
