San Francisco 2008

Ron Paul

Endorsed Vote: No

What We Like - He's the only Republican candidate opposed to the war and the "PATRIOT" Act. He opposes the death penalty on the federal level, but supports it at the state level. He calls for less corporate interference in federal government. Supports the decriminalization of drugs. Opposes a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Bush's despicable record has left some of us so scarred that we don't know if we should trust the federal government anymore, and we're wondering if we should shift more power to the state and local levels. Whether or not we agree with him, Ron Paul has made us think about what the balance of power should be between federal, state, and local governments.

What We Don't Like - He calls himself a hardcore libertarian, but he’s anti-choice and opposes federal protections of gay rights. You can't have it both ways, pal. He believes in "free market" solutions for health care & the environment. We think government controls are needed to ensure a "fair market." He has a sketchy racist past. He would withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations, NATO, the WTO, and the International Criminal Court. He’d eliminate the Departments of Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, FEMA, the IRS, and the Federal Reserve. He'd make participation in Social Security optional. He's skeptical of climate change and opposes public financing.

There are issues where we agree that the states should have more autonomy from the federal government. But on issues like the environment, worker's rights, and health care, we simply don't trust Republican state leadership to take care of their people. Ron Paul raises important issues, but we fundamentally disagree with his solutions. His massive tax cuts would leave the federal government with no way to provide vital services, and Paul offers no guarantees that state and local governments will fill the void. Rich states might be okay. Poor states? Sorry Louisiana and Mississippi. He may be articulate and passionate and angry, but electing this libertarian would devastate the already deteriorating social safety net that protects our most vulnerable citizens!
Corporate Ties - Opposes corporate welfare and influence over government. But he would eviscerate environmental, labor, and consumer regulations of corporations.
Grassroot Ties - Excites young folk who never before felt inspired by a politician. Accepts no corporate donations. Gets 49% of his funds from small donations.

Endorsed Vote: No

Prop B would create an incentive program to retain experienced San Francisco police officers in a department with a chronic, unresolved staffing shortfall. The Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP) would let cops who are eligible for retirement to start drawing their pension while still working for 1-3 years. The pension money goes into a bank account, and the cops gets it when he or she retires. The program will cost about $800K to administer the first year, and $500K a year after that. Prop B also lowers the threshold for the Board of Supervisors to modify city employee pensions from 9 to 6 votes.
What We Like
• The City can't train and recruit new cops fast enough.
• The police say it's "cost neutral" because we'd have to pay the cops' pensions anyway if they just retired. And we'd have to pay for overtime if we were short cops.
• Crime and violence are out of control in our City, and we need all the cops we can get.
What We Don't Like
• There's better ways to use this money to make San Francisco safer.
• We need to recruit young people with roots in the community to become cops. Our city is facing a crisis of crime and violence. Criminals are literally getting away with murder. The DA won't prosecute cases without eye witnesses, and people won't cooperate with the cops because they don't trust them. Instead of shelling out money for this stop-gap fix, we need new ideas.
• Retirement-eligible police who would keep working anyway can use the DROP for free money.
• The Cops spent $200K gathering signature to put this on the ballot so they wouldn't have to negotiate the details with the Board of Supervisors.
• Police could cash in on the DROP for 3 years, retire, and then hope to get reinstated or get hired on by another police department.
• The police say they'll be 900 officers short in four years, but that's an exaggeration. Cops are eligible to retire after working 25 years and being 50 years old. But most won't retire when they're making great salaries and earning lots of overtime. The minimum staffing number of 1,971 officers is kind of arbitrary. Dianne Feinstein and the SFPD came up with it back in 1979.
• It also applies to lieutenants and captains (for up to 1 year) who are higher paid and unlikely to be pounding the pavement.
• Prop B would make it easier for other groups to modify their pensions through the Board of Supervisors.
Supporters
The Police Officers Association, the SF Republican Assembly, the Chamber of Commerce. Mayor Newsom, D.A. Kamala Harris, and Supervisors Peskin, Alioto-Pier, Dufty, McGoldrick, Mirkarimi, Chu, and Sandoval.
Opponents
SPUR, Chris Daly.
Our Take
This was the only proposition where we had a bit of a split in our vote. Some of us think keeping old cops around is important enough to drop this money on them. But the majority of our members think there are better ways we could use this money to make San Francisco safer. We want to focus on the root causes of violence. We'd put this money into things like after-school programs, job programs, probation services, substance abuse programs. We'd also like to see programs that give incentives to SFUSD graduates to go into the police academy. Nothing is going to change until we have police that the people can trust.

Endorsed Vote: No

What We Like
• It's pretty morbid to have an old rotting jail sitting on such a gorgeous piece of land.
• Tearing down Alcatraz prison could be a cool symbol for rejecting our state's failed prison system.
• The organizers are working with Native American groups. Native Americans consider Alcatraz sacred land and occupied the island from 1969-1971 and demanded that it be used as a cultural and educational center.
What We Don't Like
• Prop C offers no details about how to make this happen or what the peace center would be like.
• Demolishing the prison would be historically, environmentally, and politically tricky. The buildings on Alcatraz are historical landmarks and the island includes sensitive bird habitats.
• Alcatraz is controlled by the federal government, and the City has no authority over it.
• San Francisco is a tourist town, and for better or worse, Alcatraz is our #1 tourist attraction.
Our Take
Some of us support the intention of Prop C, but we can't get behind this half-ass attempt at legislation. There's no details about how to accomplish this massive transformation, they barely campaigning for this thing, and they've done little community outreach. It's a bummer that they didn't put more meat on these bones, and then we could have a substantive conversation about what to do with Alcatraz.

Endorsed Vote: No

Even the folks who put this one on the ballot are asking you to vote no. Prop 91 would restricted the use of transportation funds (the gas tax). But that already happened with Prop 1A last year. One less to think about.

Endorsed Vote: No

This batch of four propositions would allow the four wealthiest California Indian tribes to add 17,000 slot machines in exchange for giving the state a bigger taste of the action.
What We Like
• Proponents say it would give the state $9 billion dollars, but that's between now and 2030. It will actually be about $150 to $375 million a year.
• The tribes will give a little more money to the 71 California tribes that don't have casinos.
• The U.S. has a long ugly history of screwing over Native Americans. We shouldn't butt into their sovereign land.
Supporters
The big rich tribes. A smattering of police and fire groups. Arnold.
What We Don't Like
• The percent of revenues the tribes would give the state is less than what other states are getting in recent deals.
• The deals have weak labor and environmental standards. They're exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act? What?
• Local communities have virtually no input on these expansions.
• There's little independent oversight over these deals.
• This isn't free money for California. It would come from about $50 billion in gambling losses, which disproportionately come from the poor and elderly.
• The tribes got this deal by intimidating politicians. They told Arnold they'd campaign against him if he didn't sign the deal. And they told Fabian Nunez they would campaign against Prop 93 if he didn't support it.
Opponents
California AFL-CIO, Unite HERE, California Professional Firefighters, California Federation of Teachers, Carol Migden, Mark Leno, Fiona Ma, Leland Yee, Phil Ting
Our Take
These are crappy deals that were rammed through Sacramento only because these tribes have the big money to blackmail politicians. And even if they were good deals, a lot of us would oppose them anyway. Slot machines are gambling crack. They're designed using cutting edge psychology to hook people. They trick you into thinking that you "almost" hit the jackpot and give you just enough of a little payoff to keep you pumping money into them. Slot machines are isolating. When you gamble on table games, you're interacting with people who see you lose money. That can create a "peer pressure" to keep you from losing the mortgage. With slot machines it's just you and that money-sucking machine.