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The San Francisco Bay Clean Water, Pollution Prevention and Habitat Restoration Measure, a proposal by the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority (SFBRA), will be on the June 2016 ballot of nine Bay Area counties. In an earlier article, San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority – Nickel and Diming you to the Poor House, we discussed the proposal’s background and purported objective.  Here we are encouraging voters to consider some general issues that might be of concern.

o  SFBRA and the media characterize this proposed measure as “historic,” because the taxation applies to nine Bay Area Counties.  In our view, this measure is historic because it opens a can of worms. “The Authority proposes to levy a special parcel tax of $12 per year for 20 years on each parcel wholly or partially in the San Francisco Bay Area, subject to two-thirds voter approval, to fund the programs identified in the Measure. Such a levy is anticipated to generate approximately $25,000,000 a year to fund specific clean water, pollution prevention and habitat restoration projects and other purposes, including, without limitation, the possible payment of debt service on bonds issued by or on behalf of the Authority…”  The creation of the Restoration Authority with powers not only to tax and spend but also to incur debt which might affect our next generation sets a significant precedent.  What is to keep other agencies in the growing pool of agencies from acquiring the same power?

o  SFBRA characterizes its Board of Directors as “elected officials.” Although these officials might be elected by the jurisdiction in which they live as Mayor or Dog Catcher, they are appointed to the SFBRA Board.  “(c) Each member shall serve at the pleasure of his or her appointing authority.  (d) A vacancy shall be filled by the Association of Bay Area Governments within 90 days from the date on which the vacancy occurs.”  (AB No. 746, Chapter 226).  Traditionally, the kind of money management these officials are proposing is reserved for elected officials, who voters can recall or not re-elect.  Voters have no power over appointed officials.

o  SFBRA’s ballot measure is being spearheaded by two prominent and financially well-endowed business groups, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the Bay Area Council.  Both groups engage in extensive community-benefit programs; although their cooperation with governments is not limited to doing good.  For example, the following is from their websites sections on objectives and accomplishments:  “Support the state government’s increased focus on international trade and domestic economic development strategy.”  (Bay Area Council)  “Manufacturing Sales & Use Tax Exemption: Persistent advocacy by the Leadership Group has pushed California to adopt a sales and use tax exemption for jobs and equipment purchases for manufacturing, R&D and biotech.” (Silicon Valley Leadership Group).  Voters need to take a good look during elections at who is doing what and why.

o  Regionalism is promoted as an efficient way of “getting things done.”  The price of using this form of governance is the erosion of voter control of what gets done.  Decisions are made by people we don’t know or had the chance to decide whether to vote for.  Entrenched regionalism represents an abdication of duties by our elected representatives.  Funding regionalism by approving measures such as the Clean Water, Pollution Prevention and Habitat Restoration Measure represents an abdication of power by voters.

Legislation being approved by the current San Francisco Board of Supervisors should prompt property owners to ask themselves, “Who owns this building anyway?!”  Owners of residential rental property would need to add a couple more question marks and exclamation points to that question.

District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim’s latest salvo, Eviction Protections 2.0 (Ordinance 171-5) was approved by the Board of Supervisors on September 29, 2015.  This amendment to San Francisco’s Administrative Code aims to “1) prohibit, with certain exceptions, rent increases based on the addition of occupants even where a pre-existing rental agreement or lease permits such an increase; 2) prevent evictions based on the addition of occupants if the landlord has unreasonably refused the tenant’s written request, including a refusal based on the amount of occupants allowed by the rental agreement or lease; 3) require landlords, after certain vacancies, to set the new base rent for the next five years as the lawful rent in effect at the time of the vacancy.”  

By way of emphasis, we repeat, “…even where a pre-existing rental agreement or lease permits such an increase.”  Clearly, government’s traditional role of enforcing contracts freely entered between willing parties has disappeared into the rabbit hole of collectivism.

San Francisco embodies the soul of progressive politics and attracts new denizens comfortable with shared ownership.  Residents of all political stripes seem to have accepted that The City suffers from a housing shortage that simply grew like Topsy and cannot be remedied by the natural price mechanism.  Therefore, the economic concept of private property implied in the United States Constitution has given way to property as the divine right of Kings – the Board of Supervisors doles out to you certain property rights it chooses to dole out. 

Here is a good interpretation of the economic concept of private property vs. the notion of government doling out property rights.  

“The economic concept of private property refers to the rights owners have to the exclusive use and disposal of a physical object. Property is not a table, a chair, or an acre of land. It is the bundle of rights which the owner is entitled to employ those objects. The alternative (collectivist) view is that private property consists merely of a legal deed to an object with the use and disposal of the object subject to the whims and mercies of the state. Under this latter view, the state retains ownership and may at any time regulate or even repossess the property it temporarily cedes to individuals.

The Founding Fathers upheld the economic view of property. They believed that private property ownership, as defined under common law, pre-existed government. The state and federal governments were the mere contractual agents of the people, not sovereign lords over them. All rights, not specifically delegated to the government, remained with the people–including the common-law provisions of private property…

Prior to the rise of the English Whigs, the ‘divine right of kings’ had held that all rights, liberties, and properties actually belonged to the king. The king merely permitted his subjects to use their possessions. The king, however, might regulate the use or even seize these possessions outright at his whim. The people had no claims or rights which could be exercised against the sovereign. Their possessions were at the mercy of the government.” 

http://fee.org/freeman/private-property-and-government-under-the-constitution/

Libertarian Party of San Francisco Chair Aubrey Freedman attended the Rent Board public hearing of November 10, 2015.  His testimony before the Board echoed that of many of the property owners in the room.  He would simply remove his property from the rental market if the forced addition of roommates ever came up in his case.

Written by Starchild

Public awareness of routine police violence, a serious problem in many parts of the world, has perhaps never been higher. The problem is not new of course, but thanks to the widespread use of video recording devices it has become much more visible.

In the United States, the deaths at police hands of victims like Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and many others have become national news and led to uprisings and clashes in places like Baltimore and Ferguson. Locally, victims like Alex Nieto, Idriss Stelley, Amilcar Perez-Lopez, Kenneth Harding, and others have been shot and killed by members of the SFPD under often dubious circumstances.

This epidemic of police violence isn’t the fault of police officers alone. Officers are expected to enforce too many bad laws. Government programs like the failed “War on Drugs”, asset forfeiture – having your cash or property seized by police, often without ever being charged with a crime, and the burden falling on you to get it back – and statutes criminalizing victimless “crimes” like prostitution, gaming, carrying a weapon for self-defense, unlicensed economic activity (e.g. Eric Garner selling loose cigarettes), or just sitting on the sidewalk, are unjust and should have never been on the books.

Nevertheless, police officers have discretion in whether to issue a citation, make an arrest, or stop someone in the first place. When an officer chooses to take action to enforce an unjust law or obey an unconstitutional order, or uses excessive force in carrying out legitimate objectives, s/he becomes morally responsible for that choice. When Nazis at the Nuremberg trials protested that they were just following orders, this did not absolve them of guilt for the crimes they committed.

Until recently, law enforcers who commit serious crimes have rarely been charged, let alone jailed, for their offenses. In fact, officers involved in suspected wrongful shooting or excessive use of force incidents are often given paid vacations (when you hear the term “administrative leave”, that’s what it means).

To be clear, most of the egregious police shootings and brutality incidents we hear about are committed by a small percentage of officers. Too often though, their colleagues fail to report and speak out against these abuses, or even cover for the bad cops, making themselves complicit and giving the police as a whole a bad reputation.

With growing demands for reform, hopefully this culture is beginning to change. But the public also wants officers to commit fewer abuses in the first place. Toward this end, one reform that’s received much attention is the idea of requiring police officers to wear body cameras to videotape for the record their interactions with members of the public.

In a number of cities, police departments have been ordered to start using such cameras, and a similar effort is underway here in San Francisco. This past summer a working group held several meetings and produced a proposed body camera policy, which has been presented to the Police Commission.

Unfortunately, this draft policy as written has some serious problems. Advocates of civil and human rights have pointed out at subsequent Police Commission hearings in September, October, and November that:

• The policy contains no specified consequences for police officers who fail to turn their cameras on when they are supposed to, or otherwise violate the policy

• The policy would allow officers to legally turn off their cameras during an incident if told to do so by a superior officer – and does not say under what specific conditions a superior can legally give such an order

• The policy would give the SFPD control over access to recorded video footage, instead of requiring it to be turned over to an independent agency like the Police Commission

• The policy contains no public transparency provisions to require recordings of suspected use of excessive force incidents filmed in public places (i.e. not inside private homes without the consent of residents) to be made available to members of the press and the public

The points above are just the tip of the iceberg – there is no space here for a discussion of all the document’s troubling details.

How did this happen? Given the composition and process of the working group, which started with a document prepared by SFPD staff and met with little publicity and few if any non-members present, it is little surprise. Participants included several representatives of the Police Officers Association and other law enforcement groups, but only one member of the public and apparently only one outspoken defender of civil liberties (Rebecca Young of the Public Defender’s Office).

For members of the SFPD to be in the working group at all was a conflict of interest. Persons drafting policy should listen to input from police officers along with everyone else, but for the employees whom a policy is designed to hold accountable to be directly involved in writing its rules themselves is improper and should not be allowed

The police chief, Greg Suhr, is also allowed to sit on the panel with members of the Police Commission during commission meetings, and to remain with commissioners when members of the public are asked to leave the room for a closed session. During one recent meeting, the head of the Police Commission even accidentally addressed the chief as “Commissioner Suhr” before correcting herself.

This kind of cozy arrangement in which the boundaries between the regulators and the regulated are blurred, and police exercising life-and-death powers are effectively allowed to police themselves, is one reason why misuse of force has reached crisis levels – truly independent oversight is lacking.

San Francisco residents need to make sure this pattern does not continue when it comes to the SFPD’s use of body cameras. If it does, then the plan to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to outfit officers with these cameras (not to mention equipment maintenance and record-keeping costs) will be a waste of money which will solve nothing.

The biggest point of controversy concerning the draft policy so far has been its loose rules regarding officers viewing footage captured on their cameras. The police union representatives who’ve spoken at Commission hearings all want officers to be free to look at these recordings prior to writing police reports about incidents that have been filmed. But few if any of the dozens of members of the public who’ve testified, not to mention representatives of civil rights groups present including the Bay Area Civil Liberties Coalition, the Libertarian Party, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union among others who’ve given testimony at the hearings, agree with them.

The draft policy (latest version online at http://sf-police.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=27671 ) would let SFPD members view footage on their cameras, “except when the member is the subject of the investigation” (criminal or internal) in “an officer-involved shooting or in-custody death” that was “captured by the body worn camera”.

So an officer who behaves improperly, and wants to think up a story after the fact that comports with the evidence in order to justify his behavior, can look at the video to aid him in doing so as long as he has not been declared “the subject of the investigation”. And even if he eventually does become “the subject of the investigation”, he can still review the video before he is questioned about the incident, “subject to the discretion of the Chief of Police and/or the lead administrative or criminal investigator on scene.” Again this is the police policing themselves, with no objective standards.

Police union reps insist they just want to ensure that officer reports and testimony are as accurate as possible. They say those who want officers to write their reports before reviewing video footage of an incident are just trying to “play ‘gotcha’”. But if other people involved in an incident – arrestees, victims, and civilian witnesses – are not allowed to watch body camera videos prior to giving statements, then officers must be held to the same standard.

Considering how rarely police officers face serious criminal charges, someone who’s been arrested usually has a lot more to worry about in terms of “gotcha” moments than an officer does. As Commissioner Petra DeJesus and others have noted, an officer can always write a supplemental report if, upon viewing a video, s/he sees that it shows something different than what s/he wrote in an initial report. But having initial reports written based on an officer’s own recollections, not just what video shows, is critical in terms of preserving a record of the officer’s state of mind regarding an incident prior to being influenced by video evidence.

The Police Commission is meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 2, at 5:30pm in City Hall, room 400 and has on its agenda, “Discussion and action to approve the Body Worn Camera Draft Policy” (see http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=4976).

Members of the public are urged to show up and speak out for a strong body camera policy that holds police officers accountable with proper oversight, and ensures transparency while protecting civil liberties! If you can’t be there in person, you can email your concerns to sfpd.commission@sfgov.org.

Starchild is Outreach Director of the Libertarian Party of San Francisco and a past candidate for the Board of Supervisors.

November 9 celebrates the birthday of Hedy Lamarr. By all accounts, the most beautiful woman in the world, as well as one of the smartest. History has it her day job was actress, and her after-hours contribution to science was technology not only capable of scrambling enemy frequencies but also morphing as the precursor of today’s wireless gadgets. If you have not seen Hedy Lamarr’s ground breaking film, Ecstasy, you should – a good example of libertarianism trying to survive in a controlling world. If you work to rid the world of senseless war, as most Libertarians do, but acknowledge that there are adversaries out there, you might be interested in Hedy Lamarr’s frequency hopping as she and co-inventor George Antheil furthered existing concepts in an effort to confound the Nazi’s in WWII.  Happy birthday, Hedy.

http://www.women-inventors.com/Hedy-Lammar.asp

 

Mayor Ed Lee announced the proposed Affordable Housing Bonus Program (AHBP) in September, and he and Supervisor Katy Tang have been doing yeoman’s work communicating to San Francisco residents the reason for and benefits of this program.  Also, the San Francisco Planning Department has done its job in posting all details of the program and of the program’s background on its website. 

We at the Libertarian Party of San Francisco have always encouraged voters to become informed of all major legislative proposals so that come Election Day, they can cast their vote for measures and candidates confident that what and who they are voting for represent their interests.  Therefore, we are providing information we deem important on the proposed Affordable Housing Bonus Program.

Some basic assumptions first:  City leaders have declared housing supply and affordability San Francisco’s number one challenge.  To meet this challenge leaders have developed policies designed to accommodate existing and newly-arrived residents via legislation that provides for government and developer-provided subsidies, as well as substantial increased population density.  The AHBP is another “tool” in the arsenal of such legislation.

Background:  City leaders maintain that the AHBP is necessary because, 1) the California State Density Bonus Law (Gov Code 65915-65918) enacted in 1979 requires “local governments to provide density increases and reduce regulatory barriers to promote supply and affordability,” 2) the State Supreme court in a 2013 decision said cities need to abide by the State Density Bonus Law even if they have their own “inclusionary laws,” and 3) it is the City’s policy to incentivize the production of subsidized middle-income housing, not just the low and moderate income housing included in the State Density Bonus Law.  In other words, the State might attempt to enforce its requirement that cities must offer developers a density option, so to come under compliance, the City has developed the AHBP — which by the City’s choice goes over and above the State requirements.

What’s new in the AHBP:  The City has been operating under the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, developed in 1992, but given explicit rules in 2012 in the voter-approved Housing Trust Fund.  So, a comparison between the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, the State Density Bonus Law, and the proposed Affordable Housing Bonus Program is the best way to see what’s new.  The chart at the bottom of this article provides a comparison.

What are we recommending: This proposal is on its early approval stages. For now, we are recommending a close look at pros and cons — we offer some here — and communication of your views to your District Supervisor.  The pros are 1) this is an optional program that could produce additional housing units over and above what could be produced under the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance alone, 2) middle income households (example, 4-person household earning $142,650) would be included when they are not included in the State plan, 3) subsidies would come from developers not taxpayers, 4) the program might slow down need for additional bonds necessary for tax-payer funded housing subsidies.  The cons are 1) City residents have traditionally opposed increased building heights and density, 2) there is no guarantee that additional density will be accompanied by additional transit and other infrastructure, 3) some might question the reason for including middle income families that could afford housing on their own, 4) although currently identified “underdeveloped” lots (those that could accommodate structures taller than what is there now) are mostly limited to parking lots and gas stations, they could also include residential property, whose residents would be displaced upon demolition of their homes.

Here is a comparison chart:

Thanks to loyal supporters of the Libertarian Party of San Francisco, the LPSF had enough funds in its modest treasury to file four paid ballot arguments which will appear on the November 2015 voters’ pamphlet.  If it were not for our commitment to serve as sometimes a lonely voice standing in opposition to government overreach, the many egregious proposals forever appearing in the voters’ pamphlet would go unchallenged.  That commitment is only possible because of supporters who, not only keep our lights on, but also enable us to make our case in favor small Constitutional governmentS at the local, state and federal levels.

Please check out our soon-to-be-published recommendations for the November elections and our upcoming posts.  We will offer our views on what really makes communities prosper — which is not mountains of government subsidies that shackle initiative and mortgage our future.

 

 

Libertarians are of the opinion that government creates problems for which it then creates solutions, and the solutions always result in more government control and less individual initiative.  Examples abound, but let’s just look at two of Mayor Ed Lee’s recent proposals.

1.  Short terms rentals

Property owners got tired of the yards-long list of rental regulations and ventured into short term rentals, which until recently thrived as agreements between willing participants.  That’s over. 

On July 2, 2015, Mayor Ed Lee announced the creation of the new Office of Short-Term Rental Administration and Enforcement, “funded in the Mayor’s FY 15-17 budget, to create a ‘one-stop’ shop and centralized location to streamline applications for the City’s short-term rental registry and more aggressively coordinate complaints and enforcement of the City’s short-term rental regulations.”

Simple private agreements between willing participants in a business arrangement have morphed into yet another “streamlined” bureaucratic maze.

2.  Support for Small Businesses

On June 15, 2015, Mayor Ed Lee announced $6.7 million over the next two years to “expand services for small businesses and strengthen neighborhood commercial corridors.”  Services will include a long laundry list of “technical assistance, access to capital, business counseling, loans, physical improvements to storefronts, and capacity-building.”

Maybe City taxpayers would better benefit if government just got out of the way and saved $6.7 million.

Cancelling out one objective with another is what government does best!

Thank you to the volunteer team that staffed the annual Libertarian booth at Pride, June 27 and 28, 2015.  We are grateful to Outright Libertarians, other Bay Area Libertarian Party chapters, and Golden Gate Liberty Revolution for continuing their collaboration with the LPSF on San Francisco Pride. Members of the team gave it their all, talking to hundreds of people, giving numerous World’s Smallest Political Quizzes, distributing a pile of liberty literature, and – most importantly – listening to what folks wanted to say.  So what did we hear?

We heard from the many who cannot fathom how a libertarian social order would work.  It won’t, as long as a belief prevails that the best model is one of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  So we ask, “Do you see a similarity between our culture of wealth distribution and that of the former Soviet Union, or that of Greece today?  One is gone, and in the other there is great suffering.”

We heard from some who are beginning to see the drawbacks of big government, mostly thanks to major revelations such as the practices of the NSA, but are finding it difficult to see alternatives to “necessary government benefits.”  Although we try our best to explain that these “benefits” translate into detrimental consequences and that the private sector is the best source of prosperity for everyone, we realize that it is difficult to let go of assistance once obtained.

We heard from the already Libertarians who are glad to see our booth. Our appreciation for their stopping by is limitless.  Some simply dash over to say hello.  Others stay and chat, about their feelings on libertarianism or about what they are doing back home to promote liberty.   Of the latter group, we especially enjoyed our chat with a young woman from Calaveras County, who is determined to convince a handful of liberty-leaning colleagues of “Liberty on the Rocks” to follow up discussing with organized activism.

We always come away from our Pride outreach certain that we made a dent on the statist model.  Whether that dent is very small, as in the case of the folks who pick up pin-back buttons or stickers and are aware of our warmly saying “thank you for stopping by,” or the dent is a little bigger, such as with near converts who after heartfelt talks leave their email address.

San Francisco will celebrate Pride the weekend of June 27 and 28.  Libertarians will join the celebration to help commemorate a day on June 28, 1969, when members of the LGBT community said “Enough is enough.”  Here is a description of that day from the San Francisco Pride website:

 

“In the early hours of the morning of June 28, 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village sparked the Stonewall riots, one of the first well-known instances of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rebellion against government-sponsored oppression of LGBT people.”

 

Libertarians have always stood against government-sponsored oppression of anyone and everyone. 

 

Whatever your political affiliation, whatever your creed or color, we Libertarians ask you to stand for the idea of individual liberty – the kind of liberty that craves space to be without doing harm to anyone.

 

The Libertarian booth at Pride 2015 is once again represented by Outright Libertarians, and it will be located on #PNE5, that’s on the Civic Center Plaza’s north east quadrant across from the Asian Art Museum.

 

We would love it if you stopped by the booth to say hello, and to pick up some of our free literature, buttons and stickers deliberately designed to spread the word of liberty.

 

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June 15, 2015, marks the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, southern England. From this “Great Charter” emerged the concept of a written social contract spelling out freedoms. 

 

Prior to the Magna Carta, kings governed under the principle of force and will, justified by the view that kings were above the law.  Force and will have a way of being financed by heavy taxation, be the currency bushels of wheat, silver coins, or fiat money.  King John of England undertook a perpetual quest to regain possession of Normandy, which contributed to his relentless imposition of taxes and other arbitrary burdens on the kingdom’s barons.  There was no tea party to protest the taxation, but there was armed rebellion that forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. 

 

The concept of liberty that arose out of the Magna Carta is like a genie that cannot be forced back into its bottle, no matter how much it is at times disdained or battered.  At least that is what Libertarians firmly believe.

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