URGENT: LPSF Ballot Measure recommendations (DRAFT)

Sorry for the delay getting this written up! Please look it over and let me know if any proposed changes in the blurbs on each measure ASAP, so we can get it up on the website before the election tomorrow.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

LPSF Ballot Measure Recommendations
June 7, 2022 election

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 (Commentary: Quentin L. Kopp – Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon), “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 (see e.g. https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport). And as Joe Eskenazi has reported in Mission Local (see The case for recalling DA Chesa Boudin: There isn't one. But that hardly matters. http://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/), 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.
The LPSF also opposes Proposition C, another measure on the June 7 ballot, which aims to increase the difficulty of mounting recall campaigns like this and the February measure we supported that successfully recalled three leftist San Francisco school board members.

#

2 Likes

P.S. – The language on Proposition H is longer than the others because there was an inquiry from Fox News about our stance on the recall and a longer write-up seemed desirable.

Spending on Prop. H, especially from those backing the recall, has reportedly been greater than on all the other measures combined, and the polling shows a tight race with the campaign coming down to the wire – if you can help volunteer to drop No on H literature today or get out the vote or sign-wave tomorrow, please let me know!

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

···

On Jun 6, 2022, at 6:28 AM, Starchild sfdreamer@earthlink.net wrote:

 Sorry for the delay getting this written up! Please look it over and let me know if any proposed changes in the blurbs on each measure ASAP, so we can get it up on the website before the election tomorrow.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

LPSF Ballot Measure Recommendations
June 7, 2022 election

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 (Commentary: Quentin L. Kopp – Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon https://sfrichmondreview.com/2022/05/02/commentary-quentin-l-kopp-16/), “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 (see e.g. https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport). And as Joe Eskenazi has reported in Mission Local (see The case for recalling DA Chesa Boudin: There isn't one. But that hardly matters. http://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/), 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.
The LPSF also opposes Proposition C, another measure on the June 7 ballot, which aims to increase the difficulty of mounting recall campaigns like this and the February measure we supported that successfully recalled three leftist San Francisco school board members.

#

If one buys into the fraudulent rigged ( against Libertarians & most humans ) scam called US “s/elections,” the first task for Libertarians & anyone numerate is to #FollowTheMoney: Who exactly profits from the recalls? ( rarely is it voters ) Who conducts all these inane inbred, albeit expensive if You have ever done one properly, polls? ANSWER: “Big Corporations.” ( When was the last time a local poll included & clarified in layman’s terms Libertarian Solutions as OPTIONS ? ). Stop squandering taxdollars on recall, & just let the elections stand; using the money saved, in taxpayers pockets, is often enough to mount a logical clear winning campaign against an incumbent. Recall s/elections are knee-jerk reactions for. triggered innumerate & often illiterate voters.

Saturday 4 Jun 2022 @SanFranciscoLP:
[R]ecall elections are a #RACKET for the cottage industry of inbred folks basking in workers’ taxpayers’ consumers’ property owners’ fleeced earnings & savings for more circus stunts. “[@sfbos voted] to front the US$3.25 MILLIONS for upcoming [ 2022 ] recall election of 3 @SFUnified board members”

h/t @sfexaminer

Do you have any concrete input on the language, Marty? Can you volunteer today or tomorrow?

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

···

On Jun 6, 2022, at 8:12 AM, iMRMosLV! via LPSF Forum noreply@forum.lpsf.org wrote:

FRNP https://forum.lpsf.org/u/frnp
June 6
If one buys into the fraudulent rigged ( against Libertarians & most humans ) scam called US “s/elections,” the first task for Libertarians & anyone numerate is to #FollowTheMoney: Who exactly profits from the recalls? ( rarely is it voters ) Who conducts all these inane inbred, albeit expensive if You have ever done one properly, polls? ANSWER: “Big Corporations.” ( When was the last time a local poll included & clarified in layman’s terms Libertarian Solutions as OPTIONS ? ). Stop squandering taxdollars on recall, & just let the elections stand; using the money saved, in taxpayers pockets, is often enough to mount a logical clear winning campaign against an incumbent. Recall s/elections are knee-jerk reactions for. triggered innumerate & often illiterate voters.

Saturday 4 Jun 2022 @SanFranciscoLP https://twitter.com/SanFranciscoLP:
[R]ecall elections are a #RACKET https://twitter.com/hashtag/RACKET?src=hashtag_click for the cottage industry of inbred folks basking in workers’ taxpayers’ consumers’ property owners’ fleeced earnings & savings for more circus stunts. “[@sfbos https://twitter.com/sfbos voted] to front the US$3.25 MILLIONS for upcoming [ 2022 ] recall election of 3 @SFUnified https://twitter.com/SFUnified board members”

h/t @sfexaminer

https://forum.lpsf.org/uploads/default/original/2X/e/ef2a930ac0f687fa70b694a62c3c8c41ddffe012.jpeg

Visit Topic https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/3 or reply to this email to respond.

Previous Replies

Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
P.S. – The language on Proposition H is longer than the others because there was an inquiry from Fox News about our stance on the recall and a longer write-up seemed desirable.

Spending on Prop. H, especially from those backing the recall, has reportedly been greater than on all the other measures combined, and the polling shows a tight race with the campaign coming down to the wire – if you can help volunteer to drop No on H literature today or get out the vote or sign-wave tomorrow, please let me know!

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

··· (click for more details) https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/2
Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
Sorry for the delay getting this written up! Please look it over and let me know if any proposed changes in the blurbs on each measure ASAP, so we can get it up on the website before the election tomorrow.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

LPSF Ballot Measure Recommendations
June 7, 2022 election

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 (Commentary: Quentin L. Kopp – Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon https://sfrichmondreview.com/2022/05/02/commentary-quentin-l-kopp-16/), “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 (see e.g. https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport). And as Joe Eskenazi has reported in Mission Local (see The case for recalling DA Chesa Boudin: There isn’t one. But that hardly matters. https://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/ http://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/ http://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/), 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.
The LPSF also opposes Proposition C, another measure on the June 7 ballot, which aims to increase the difficulty of mounting recall campaigns like this and the February measure we supported that successfully recalled three leftist San Francisco school board members.

https://forum.lpsf.org/#h-1#

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Excellent, Starchild! Thank you for your hard work on this!

There are myriad if not infinite opportunities to expand greater Liberty among the grass roots, “voting” is NOT one of them. So, NO, I will not be trekking all the way into the city (40 miles) to engage delusional folks still obsessed with this farce, as @Prince sang at the top of His lungs a decade ago, just “a bunch of blind people playing #TICTACTOE.”

Thanks, Jeff! Given the election is tomorrow and I’ve seen no further suggestions on wording (except from Marty on how we shouldn’t support recalls at all, i.e. disagreeing with our stance on Prop. C, and basically asserting that voting is a waste of time, which I think are probably non-starters with the rest of us), I’ve gone ahead and posted the recommendations to our website.

However I can’t seem to get the whole article to appear on the front page before the break with the graphic smaller and on the side. Do you think you can fix these problems (and let me know what you did, for future reference, when you get a chance)? Time is short obviously, so if you can get to it soon this evening that would be awesome!

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

···

On Jun 6, 2022, at 8:38 AM, jeff via LPSF Forum noreply@forum.lpsf.org wrote:

jeff https://forum.lpsf.org/u/jeff
June 6
Excellent, Starchild! Thank you for your hard work on this!

Visit Topic https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/5 or reply to this email to respond.

Previous Replies

Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
Do you have any concrete input on the language, Marty? Can you volunteer today or tomorrow?

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

··· (click for more details) https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/4
FRNP https://forum.lpsf.org/u/frnp
June 6
If one buys into the fraudulent rigged ( against Libertarians & most humans ) scam called US “s/elections,” the first task for Libertarians & anyone numerate is to #FollowTheMoney: Who exactly profits from the recalls? ( rarely is it voters ) Who conducts all these inane inbred, albeit expensive if You have ever done one properly, polls? ANSWER: “Big Corporations.” ( When was the last time a local poll included & clarified in layman’s terms Libertarian Solutions as OPTIONS ? ). Stop squandering taxdollars on recall, & just let the elections stand; using the money saved, in taxpayers pockets, is often enough to mount a logical clear winning campaign against an incumbent. Recall s/elections are knee-jerk reactions for. triggered innumerate & often illiterate voters.

Saturday 4 Jun 2022 @SanFranciscoLP https://twitter.com/SanFranciscoLP:
[R]ecall elections are a #RACKET https://twitter.com/hashtag/RACKET?src=hashtag_click for the cottage industry of inbred folks basking in workers’ taxpayers’ consumers’ property owners’ fleeced earnings & savings for more circus stunts. “[@sfbos https://twitter.com/sfbos voted] to front the US$3.25 MILLIONS for upcoming [ 2022 ] recall election of 3 @SFUnified https://twitter.com/SFUnified board members”

h/t @sfexaminer

https://forum.lpsf.org/uploads/default/original/2X/e/ef2a930ac0f687fa70b694a62c3c8c41ddffe012.jpeg

Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
P.S. – The language on Proposition H is longer than the others because there was an inquiry from Fox News about our stance on the recall and a longer write-up seemed desirable.

Spending on Prop. H, especially from those backing the recall, has reportedly been greater than on all the other measures combined, and the polling shows a tight race with the campaign coming down to the wire – if you can help volunteer to drop No on H literature today or get out the vote or sign-wave tomorrow, please let me know!

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

··· (click for more details) https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/2
Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
Sorry for the delay getting this written up! Please look it over and let me know if any proposed changes in the blurbs on each measure ASAP, so we can get it up on the website before the election tomorrow.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

LPSF Ballot Measure Recommendations
June 7, 2022 election

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 (Commentary: Quentin L. Kopp – Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon https://sfrichmondreview.com/2022/05/02/commentary-quentin-l-kopp-16/), “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 (see e.g. https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport). And as Joe Eskenazi has reported in Mission Local (see The case for recalling DA Chesa Boudin: There isn’t one. But that hardly matters. https://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/ http://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/ http://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/), 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.
The LPSF also opposes Proposition C, another measure on the June 7 ballot, which aims to increase the difficulty of mounting recall campaigns like this and the February measure we supported that successfully recalled three leftist San Francisco school board members.

https://forum.lpsf.org/#h-1#

Visit Topic https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/5 or reply to this email to respond.

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Hi Starchild,

I made your recommended changes. It would be easiest to show with a
demo, so let’s video chat sometime.

Live free,
Jeff

···

On 6 Jun 2022, at 20:58, Starchild via LPSF Forum wrote:

Thanks, Jeff! Given the election is tomorrow and I’ve seen no
further suggestions on wording (except from Marty on how we
shouldn’t support recalls at all, i.e. disagreeing with our stance
on Prop. C, and basically asserting that voting is a waste of time,
which I think are probably non-starters with the rest of us), I’ve
gone ahead and posted the recommendations to our website.

However I can’t seem to get the whole article to appear on the front
page before the break with the graphic smaller and on the side. Do you
think you can fix these problems (and let me know what you did, for
future reference, when you get a chance)? Time is short obviously, so
if you can get to it soon this evening that would be awesome!

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

···

On Jun 6, 2022, at 8:38 AM, jeff via LPSF Forum >> noreply@forum.lpsf.org wrote:

jeff https://forum.lpsf.org/u/jeff
June 6
Excellent, Starchild! Thank you for your hard work on this!

Visit Topic
https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/5
or reply to this email to respond.

Previous Replies

Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
Do you have any concrete input on the language, Marty? Can you
volunteer today or tomorrow?

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

··· (click for more details)
https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/4
FRNP https://forum.lpsf.org/u/frnp
June 6
If one buys into the fraudulent rigged ( against Libertarians & most
humans ) scam called US “s/elections,” the first task for
Libertarians & anyone numerate is to #FollowTheMoney: Who exactly
profits from the recalls? ( rarely is it voters ) Who conducts all
these inane inbred, albeit expensive if You have ever done one
properly, polls? ANSWER: “Big Corporations.” ( When was the last
time a local poll included & clarified in layman’s terms
Libertarian Solutions as OPTIONS ? ). Stop squandering taxdollars on
recall, & just let the elections stand; using the money saved, in
taxpayers pockets, is often enough to mount a logical clear winning
campaign against an incumbent. Recall s/elections are knee-jerk
reactions for. triggered innumerate & often illiterate voters.

Saturday 4 Jun 2022 @SanFranciscoLP
https://twitter.com/SanFranciscoLP :
[R]ecall elections are a #RACKET
https://twitter.com/hashtag/RACKET?src=hashtag_click for the
cottage industry of inbred folks basking in workers’ taxpayers’
consumers’ property
owners’ fleeced earnings & savings for more circus stunts.
“[@sfbos https://twitter.com/sfbos voted] to front the US$3.25
MILLIONS for upcoming [ 2022 ] recall election of 3 @SFUnified
https://twitter.com/SFUnified board members”

h/t @sfexaminer

https://forum.lpsf.org/uploads/default/original/2X/e/ef2a930ac0f687fa70b694a62c3c8c41ddffe012.jpeg

Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
P.S. – The language on Proposition H is longer than the others
because there was an inquiry from Fox News about our stance on the
recall and a longer write-up seemed desirable.

Spending on Prop. H, especially from those backing the recall, has
reportedly been greater than on all the other measures combined, and
the polling shows a tight race with the campaign coming down to the
wire – if you can help volunteer to drop No on H literature today
or get out the vote or sign-wave tomorrow, please let me know!

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

··· (click for more details)
https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/2
Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
Sorry for the delay getting this written up! Please look it over and
let me know if any proposed changes in the blurbs on each measure
ASAP, so we can get it up on the website before the election
tomorrow.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

LPSF Ballot Measure Recommendations
June 7, 2022 election

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 (Commentary:
Quentin L. Kopp – Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon
https://sfrichmondreview.com/2022/05/02/commentary-quentin-l-kopp-16/
), “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 (see e.g. https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport
https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport
https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport
https://tinyurl.com/2016-SFBudgetAnalystReport ). And as Joe
Eskenazi has reported in Mission Local (see The case for recalling DA
Chesa
Boudin: There isn’t one. But that hardly matters.
https://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/
http://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/
http://missionlocal.org/2022/05/the-case-for-recalling-da-chesa-boudin-there-isnt-one-it-hardly-matters/
), 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.
The LPSF also opposes Proposition C, another measure on the June 7
ballot, which aims to increase the difficulty of mounting recall
campaigns like this and the February measure we supported that
successfully recalled three leftist San Francisco school board
members.

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Thanks Jeff, looks much better! However I think something you did revoked my editing privileges for the article (see attached screenshot):

I wanted to take out the <!–break—> text after the Proposition E blurb. That was where I was first trying to get the article to break and continue at the “read more” link. Although in the case of our ballot recommendations I think it’s okay to have the “article” appear on the main page in its entirety, but it looks like every article does that now, whereas I think for most of them we would want a “read more” link after a few paragraphs.

Let me know when you’d like to do a video chat.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

···

On Jun 6, 2022, at 10:06 PM, jeff via LPSF Forum noreply@forum.lpsf.org wrote:

jeff https://forum.lpsf.org/u/jeff
June 7
Hi Starchild,

I made your recommended changes. It would be easiest to show with a
demo, so let’s video chat sometime.

Live free,
Jeff

······ (click for more details) https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/8
Visit Topic https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/8 or reply to this email to respond.

In Reply To

Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
Sorry for the delay getting this written up! Please look it over and let me know if any proposed changes in the blurbs on each measure ASAP, so we can get it up on the website before the election tomorrow. Love & Liberty, ((( starchild ))) LPSF Ballot Measure Recommendations June 7, 2022 electio…
Previous Replies

Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 7
Thanks, Jeff! Given the election is tomorrow and I’ve seen no further suggestions on wording (except from Marty on how we shouldn’t support recalls at all, i.e. disagreeing with our stance on Prop. C, and basically asserting that voting is a waste of time, which I think are probably non-starters with the rest of us), I’ve gone ahead and posted the recommendations to our website.

However I can’t seem to get the whole article to appear on the front page before the break with the graphic smaller and on the side. Do you think you can fix these problems (and let me know what you did, for future reference, when you get a chance)? Time is short obviously, so if you can get to it soon this evening that would be awesome!

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

··· (click for more details) https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/7
FRNP https://forum.lpsf.org/u/frnp
June 6
Starchild:
Prop. C ( “make recall elections harder … if not impossible to save workers taxpayers consumers property owners business owners a bundle on these scams ) – YES

https://forum.lpsf.org/uploads/default/original/2X/b/b8537944d6de96fbe7ff09223805c7bea34b5fca.jpeg

There are myriad if not infinite opportunities to expand greater Liberty among the grass roots, “voting” is NOT one of them. So, NO, I will not be trekking all the way into the city (40 miles) to engage delusional folks still obsessed with this farce, as @Prince sang at the top of His lungs a decade ago, just “a bunch of blind people playing #TICTACTOE.”

https://forum.lpsf.org/uploads/default/original/2X/9/912d88a7a52209960bbbc2210a882dfd4f65b612.jpeg

https://forum.lpsf.org/uploads/default/original/2X/0/0a9ef65ddc298eb2eda603d2abd3fc055771927e.jpeg

https://forum.lpsf.org/uploads/default/original/2X/d/d6b11b676b3acc72e64c6fbdd44e98e125998e9d.jpeg

https://forum.lpsf.org/uploads/default/original/2X/6/6f9ed2c84a0ea7c58f941daa69e6d5ac35505845.jpeg

jeff https://forum.lpsf.org/u/jeff
June 6
Excellent, Starchild! Thank you for your hard work on this!

Starchild https://forum.lpsf.org/u/starchild
June 6
Do you have any concrete input on the language, Marty? Can you volunteer today or tomorrow?

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

··· (click for more details) https://forum.lpsf.org/t/urgent-lpsf-ballot-measure-recommendations-draft/21668/4
FRNP https://forum.lpsf.org/u/frnp
June 6
If one buys into the fraudulent rigged ( against Libertarians & most humans ) scam called US “s/elections,” the first task for Libertarians & anyone numerate is to #FollowTheMoney: Who exactly profits from the recalls? ( rarely is it voters ) Who conducts all these inane inbred, albeit expensive if You have ever done one properly, polls? ANSWER: “Big Corporations.” ( When was the last time a local poll included & clarified in layman’s terms Libertarian Solutions as OPTIONS ? ). Stop squandering taxdollars on recall, & just let the elections stand; using the money saved, in taxpayers pockets, is often enough to mount a logical clear winning campaign against an incumbent. Recall s/elections are knee-jerk reactions for. triggered innumerate & often illiterate voters.

Saturday 4 Jun 2022 @SanFranciscoLP https://twitter.com/SanFranciscoLP:
[R]ecall elections are a #RACKET https://twitter.com/hashtag/RACKET?src=hashtag_click for the cottage industry of inbred folks basking in workers’ taxpayers’ consumers’ property owners’ fleeced earnings & savings for more circus stunts. “[@sfbos https://twitter.com/sfbos voted] to front the US$3.25 MILLIONS for upcoming [ 2022 ] recall election of 3 @SFUnified https://twitter.com/SFUnified board members”

h/t @sfexaminer

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