Tag: libertarian

  • No on AB 63 – An Authoritarian State Bill to Re-criminalize People for Loitering

    No on AB 63 – An Authoritarian State Bill to Re-criminalize People for Loitering

    There’s an authoritarian move afoot to re-criminalize “loitering with intent to commit prostitution”, by reimposing Section 653.22 of the California penal code, which was eliminated several years ago in decriminalization legislation sponsored by state senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and signed by governor Gavin Newsom.

    Now another Democrat, Michelle Rodriguez (D-Ontario), has put forward Assembly Bill 63 in an attempt to recriminalize this vague “offense” (how police officers are supposed to read the minds of persons on the street to determine what their “intent” is, has never been truly explained).

    Laws against loitering (like laws against nudity) are arguably among the most absurd, senseless, and offensive laws on the books, because they subject people to arrest, criminal records, and possible incarceration and prosecution for literally doing nothing.
    Sex work rights advocates posted this 20 minute video clip of the State Assembly Public Safety Committee’s hearing on AB 63 today. It’s worth watching, not only to hear what the proponents and opponents of this particular authoritarian bill are saying, but as a glimpse into how the legislative process in Sacramento typically works:
    Each side has a parade of people present to testify, many of them employees of government agencies, most probably there on the taxpayers’ dime. Even many of those not directly employed by government, work for non-profits that are probably receiving taxpayer funding, and again are likely being paid to be there.
    This is not to denigrate the staffers at Public Defenders offices, representatives of the ACLU, workers with sex work rights non-profits, and others who took the time to show up and speak against AB 63. We should appreciate them being there and speaking out against the expansion of government at the expense of civil liberties – if they are being paid in part with your stolen money, such harm reduction efforts are certainly among the least objectionable uses of taxpayer funds.
    Nevertheless, it is telling and notable that of the dozens who testified today, not one appeared to be simply a member of the general public, unconnected to any organization with an institutional interest in the matter. This is sadly typical, and a recurring feature of Big Government statism – few ordinary people have the time, resources, etc., to follow and weigh in on all the endless crap being generated in the governmental chambers of Sacramento, Washington, or even locally here in San Francisco.
    All the more reason why it does help to speak out as an ordinary person against bad bills like AB 63. Fewer people do so in a state of ~39 million residents than you might think. This bill was not passed out of the Public Safety Committee, but is on a 2-year track and will be taken up by the committee again, probably later this year following a committee hearing in Assemblymember Rodriguez’s district.
    Here are the email addresses of some of the staffers for members of the committee. I encourage you to take a minute to write to them (probably most effective to copy and past what you write into a separate email for each recipient, and not list your location unless you happen to live in their district), and let them know you oppose people being criminalized for doing nothing, and OPPOSE AB 63:
    Chair Asm. Nick Schultz
    Asm. Mark Gonzalez
    Asm. Matt Haney*
    Asm. John Harabedian
    Asm. Stephanie Nguyen
    Asm. Dr. LaShae Sharp-Collins
    *Represents District 17, encompassing eastern San Francisco (see https://a17.asmdc.org/district-map)
    If you want some talking points for your letter, or just dare to see a bit of how the sausage gets made, here again is the link to the short video clip from today’s hearing:
    If a phone call is more your style than a written letter, you can call and leave a message for members of the Public Safety Committee urging a NO vote on AB 63 by calling (916) 319-3744.
    Or if you want to go the extra mile for liberty, you can find the contact information (phone and email addresses) for all members of the State Assembly, and look up your representative, here – https://www.assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers.
    Hopefully this anti-libertarian garbage will die in committee, but in case it doesn’t, and just to communicate how the public feels about their resources being wasted on this kind of nonsense fueling mass incarceration and the destruction of civil liberties, it doesn’t hurt to let “your” representative know how you feel about AB 63 even if they aren’t on the committee themselves.
    Love & Liberty,
    ((( starchild )))
    Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco
    (415) 573-7997
  • The Value of Libertarian Activism

    The Value of Libertarian Activism

    If you’ve spent any significant time engaged in libertarian activism, or even if you haven’t, you’ve probably heard people say things like, “Well, I have a life, I don’t have time to play activist”, or “those people are losers without real jobs or responsibilities”, etc. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard non-activists make comments like these in an effort to dismiss activists and their efforts. Living in the SF Bay Area where most people are politically on the left, I most often hear such complaints voiced against left-wing activists (often by right-wingers who are quite statist and not necessarily contributing much of meaning to society themselves), but it sounds much the same when they are voiced by statists against libertarians.

    If you are a freedom activist, those stuck in authoritarian mindsets, or who have a perceived financial or other vested interest in maintaining statist oppression, will naturally tend to resent your efforts. So when they attempt to diminish those efforts, or discourage you, this should come as no surprise, and there’s no reason to let it affect you. Know them for what they are, and let their words be like the wind whistling through a porcupine’s quills.

    Whether you experience your activism as work or play, as a moral duty or a rewarding activity, or as some combination of these things, does not determine the value of what you do. So the value of that activism certainly isn’t determined by the mere words of some resentful critic who doesn’t grok the importance of the struggle for freedom.

    The reality is that except to the extent we are under the compulsion of government or some other external aggressor(s), we each have exactly the same amount of time, 24 hours in each day. Maybe you have health limitations that limit how you use some of this time, but aside from that, it is up to you.

    If someone chooses to spend their time working at a job that does not advance the cause of freedom, so that they can have more money to buy things for themselves and live a comfortable life, or to support a small circle of those who depend on them, that is a valid choice. But it’s not a choice that makes them more noble, worthy, or rational than those who choose to dedicate time and effort to the struggle for freedom. Krishnamurti said that it is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society, and by a similar token, having high social status or the esteem of others in such a society is not necessarily a sign that you are making your best contribution to the world.

    Never forget that to the extent a person works in the formal economy and is taxed by government, they are supporting State aggression. This does not make them a bad person – it is your right to live as you choose, and to engage in voluntary work for compensation, even if you know government will steal a portion of those earnings. For most people, this theft of their resources for evil purposes is involuntary, and to blame them for it is to blame the victims.

    But to the extent they do not rely on the State to support them with resources coercively taken from others, a poor person who generates little income that finds its way into the hands of government agencies (or a well-to-do one who manages to prevent their resources being stolen and avoids patterns of consumption that feed the State), far from being a proper object of disdain or contempt, is worthy of appreciation and respect.

    All else being equal, the life they are living is more, not less, moral than that of someone with a “respectable” job, hobbies, etc., who is indirectly contributing to aggression, even if involuntarily. If a person whose life choices not only leave the State with fewer resources with which to engage in aggression, but leave them with more disposable time, to the extent they choose to devote that time to libertarian activism and making the world a better place for not just themselves but everyone, they are deserving of our highest respect and admiration.

    This activism can of course take many forms, and overlap with many other kinds of effort, work, or life activities, whether they are classified as work, hobbies, or something else, such as raising children to understand and appreciate the value of liberty. The latter in fact may be one of the most important contributions you could possibly make.

    Whatever form(s) your activism may take, and whether it is a primary focus of your life, or something you try to fit in at the edges, to the extent you devote yourself to expanding freedom not just for yourself but for others, and your endeavors make a difference in the world, know that you are engaged in the highest form of community service.

    If being a freedom activist is your calling, or to the extent you choose to make it your calling, know that there is no higher calling in the world. Regardless of the grumbling and attacks from those of little understanding, you could not be spending your time on this planet and in this plain of existence in any more commendable manner.

  • Freedom of Association – Respecting the Right to Refuse Service

    Freedom of Association – Respecting the Right to Refuse Service

    By Derek Varsalona
    America is obsessed with guns – whether owning, carrying and using them, or trying to prevent others from doing so.  Loving them and hating them is part of the national culture, as common (and loathed by some) as sex or cigarettes.  And self defense is a natural human right, which translates into the civil right to keep and bear arms.  Just do not tell that to one local baker. 
    Reem’s California, an Arab bakery and street food establishment with several outlets in California including one at 2910 Mission Street in San Francisco, is refusing to serve customers who have guns on them.
    Yes, the right to keep and bear arms is legally enshrined in the Second Amendment.  But this is a private business. They can set a policy of not allowing guns in their store, just as a business can require that customers wear shoes, belong to a particular sex or gender, or be vaccinated.  If you want to come and eat at Reem’s, or just buy their wares, don’t come armed.
    To her credit, Reem’s proprietor, Palestinian-Syrian chef Reem Assil, doesn’t have a double standard when it comes to civilian guns versus government guns.  Police officers carrying firearms aren’t welcome in her establishment either.  Again this is totally her decision to make, and she’s aware there could be consequences for not serving the men and women in blue in terms of loss of business.
    Libertarians may not appreciate a business choosing to interfere with self defense rights, or with other rights such as the right to free speech, to be nude, to use drugs, etc. But libertarian principles are clear that if an entity isn’t receiving public funds, they shouldn’t have to serve anyone they don’t want to serve.
    According to proprietor Reem Assil, her business doesn’t get a penny in taxpayer subsidies. “While I would appreciate government assistance, I would rather see policies that will lift all of us up,” she told KQED in 2020. “Sometimes, I feel like the advocacy [among restaurateurs] is more narrow-minded on a national level about what it would take to save restaurants.”
    The baker says she decided to take a stand on guns due to the fact that both she and her customers are afraid of what they see as growing political extremism in society. That’s a feeling with which many Libertarians, in some ways caught in the middle between increasingly polarized Democrat and Republican partisans, can relate.   
  • Chase Oliver, Libertarian Party covered in Bay Area Reporter

    Chase Oliver, Libertarian Party covered in Bay Area Reporter

    When I learned that LP presidential contender Chase Oliver had received the green light to be the first alternative party presidential candidate to speak at the famed Political Soapbox event at the Iowa State Fair, I realized that some of the local press might recognize this as a newsworthy story and give some coverage. Especially the local LGBTQ press, given that Chase happens to be gay. 
     
    So I gave some of them a heads-up about it, and one of the outlets, the Bay Area Reporter, has come out with a terrific story that goes well beyond just a short news blurb. Reporter John Ferrannini talked to and quoted not just Chase and myself, but also two of our other Libertarian presidential contenders whose names didn’t even come up in the brief conversation I had with their reporter, Lars Mapstead and Jacob Hornberger. And their online story even includes a video clip of Chase’s full talk at the soapbox event, which I’d been unable to find online!
     
    I think Chase gave a Soapbox speech that did a solid job representing the Libertarian Party and the ideas of freedom for which we stand. Hopefully some of the folks who got a chance to see him there in Iowa, who the political gatekeepers have long denied the opportunity to hear from Libertarian candidates, felt the same. And hopefully more of the media will take a cue from the B.A.R., and give the same level of coverage to Libertarians and other independent parties and candidates that they do to those put forward by the 2-party cartel who are normally showered with attention.
     
    Sometimes they need a little nudge though, or even just the quick tip I provided in this case. Any of us can help make news like this happen by keeping our eyes open for stories involving Libertarians, and stories that are important to the freedom movement, and letting local outlets and media people know about them. They won’t always listen, but sometimes they do. And even when they don’t, they won’t be able to honestly say later that they didn’t know!
     
     
  • Vote Tuesday November 8, 2022!

    Vote Tuesday November 8, 2022!

    LPSF Ballot Recommendations – Nov. 8, 2022 Election

    BALLOT MEASURES

    PROP. A (Retiree COLA Adjustment) – NO

    Proposition A is about taking more money from the public to give to former and current government employees. Naturally the whole local political establishment is in favor of it. The San Francisco Chronicle, which also supports it, says that 70% of those who would benefit from cost-of-living adjustments (former city employees who retired before 1996) are getting pensions of less than $50,000 a year (https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Endorsement-Prop-A-retire-17444963.php). But pensions are not full-time working salaries, nor should they be; they do not include Social Security or other income that retirees often have. Especially when employees retire early, as was presumably the case for many of those who would benefit from Prop. A, since they are still alive and drawing pay over 26 years later, it is unreasonable to expect taxpayers to pay them as much every year for the rest of their lives as they made when they were actually working as public servants. More troublingly, the measure would remove current caps on pay and benefits for persons hired as executive directors after January 1, 2023. Controller Ben Rosenfield estimates that if Prop. A passes, it will cost taxpayers approximately $8 million annually for the next ten years. We find it hard to believe that many former city government employees are as hard up financially as many of the people living in San Francisco (including the homeless, unemployed, other seniors on fixed incomes, etc.) who are taxed to pay for “our” bloated local bureaucracy. But if some former city government employees are truly suffering in poverty, we think it would be more appropriate to pass legislation increasing their share at the expense of some of the overpaid individuals who are or were holding top city jobs, such as former police chief Heather Fong who took home a $264,000 a year pension after she retired in 2009.

     

    PROP. B (Public Works Reconfiguring) – YES

    It feels good to say “We told you so.” In 2020, following a high-profile corruption scandal involving Department of Public Works head (and former boyfriend of mayor London Breed) Mohammed Nuru taking bribes, voters were presented with (and passed) another Proposition B. It was a charter amendment that took control of street cleaning and maintenance away from the DPW (as if only that agency, and not the whole culture of city government, was the problem) and turning it over to a newly created Department of Sanitation and Streets. The LPSF opposed the 2020 legislation as an unnecessary addition of yet another city department, and now, just two years later, the powers that be have also belatedly realized that it was a half-baked plan. This year’s measure – also on the ballot as Proposition B, and supported by three of the same supervisors who gave us the ill-advised 2020 proposition of the same letter! – will eliminate the newly-created department and transfer its duties back to DPW. Needless to say, we’re happy at the prospect that (for once!) a new branch of the bureaucracy may go away relatively quickly. “Simply hiring more bureaucrats accomplishes nothing but wasting money and ultimately requiring higher taxes,” write supervisors Peskin, Preston, Ronen, along with four new co-sponsors. Truer words are rarely spoken at City Hall! Now if only they would remember that sentence and take it to heart…

     

    PROP. C (Homeless Oversight Commission) – NO

    Proposition C sounds good in theory – more oversight and auditing of city government spending on programs and services supposedly helping the homeless. This spending, spread out across the Department of Homelessness and Supporting Housing, the Department of Public Health, the Department of Public Works, and various other government bodies, clearly needs oversight. According to the mayor herself, we (meaning they, the people who run San Francisco’s municipal government) are spending $1 billion a year to address homelessness. But what are officials like the Mayor and Board of Supervisors there for if not to exercise this kind of due diligence? The Controller should already be auditing city government spending, and the politicians cutting waste and redundancy accordingly. None of this requires creating yet another redundant body, the Homelessness Oversight Commission, as this measure would do. Prop. C would also, according to the ballot statement by Controller Ben Rosenfield, increase government spending by around $350,000 a year in salaries and operating costs. Ironically, this proposition is nevertheless supported by the entire Board of Supervisors – including the same seven who correctly observed (in support of Prop. B) that “Simply hiring more bureaucrats accomplishes nothing but wasting money and ultimately requiring higher taxes.”

     

    PROP. D (Affordable Housing) – YES

    As is often the case with ballot measures, Proposition D is one of a pair of competing proposals on the same topic that voters are being asked to decide on this election. In this case, Prop. D is the real reform measure. It would, at least to some minor extent, ease regulations and make it easier to build housing in San Francisco. It has the support of YIMBY and pro-building groups like the Housing Action Coalition and GrowSF, and was put on the ballot by citizen initiative. Opponents write in one of their ballot arguments that Prop. D will make it “more difficult for residents to be a part of the decision-making process on how their communities change and grow”, which is code for saying that NIMBY neighbors will have less ability to throw monkeywrenches into projects by delaying them with endless public hearings and study requirements. That’s a good thing!

     

    PROP. E (Poison Pill Anti-Housing Measure) – NO

    Proposition E was put on the ballot by seven members of the Board of Supervisors in an effort to stop Prop. D. (Whichever of the two measures receives fewer votes would have no legal effect, even if it passes.) As opponents argue, Prop. E “allows the Board to continue to kill housing by holding up projects they don’t like,” and “is filled with poison pill provisions that will prevent new housing construction.” Allowing more infill housing to be built in urban areas like San Francisco isn’t important just for addressing homelessness and upholding property rights, but also for the environment. As the Greenbelt Alliance and Urban Environmentalist groups write in opposing Prop. E, “Recent studies have shown that stopping new housing in cities like San Francisco is one of the most environmentally destructive things a city like ours can do”, because it pushes more people out to the suburbs, leading to more open space paved over and people having to drive longer commutes.

     

    PROP. F (Library Preservation Fund) – NO

    Who doesn’t like a good library? Libraries are among the favorite government handouts of people who dislike many other forms of government welfare. But there is no reason they should be operated at taxpayer expense, as one libertarian library fan explains here – https://steemit.com/libertarian/@amthomasiv/a-libertarians-view-on-public-libraries. The first ones in America weren’t. Perhaps the earliest public library was started by a private group that included Ben Franklin. Later, business leader Andrew Carnegie, once the richest man in the world, donated a good part of his fortune to establishing hundreds of libraries across the country. At a time when books were scarce and many more people lacked the money to buy them, libraries filled a vital gap. Today, virtually everyone has a world of learning at their fingertips in the form of the Internet, and government libraries have expanded their role from repositories of books to become more like community centers where you can take classes, use computers, borrow music and movies, and more. People tend to think of librarians as the good guys, and certainly some are, but that’s not always so. The San Francisco public library has repeatedly attempted to get authorization to spy on the library-using public by putting RFID chips in their books and other materials (see https://sfrichmondreview.com/2018/06/01/commentary-peter-warfield/). So what’s this all got to do with Prop. F? Simply that it is a measure which would freeze in millions of dollars of local library funding, at the involuntary expense of taxpayers, for the next quarter century. So if this isn’t a time to discuss and think about the fundamental nature of public libraries in San Francisco, when is? Right now, local government-owned libraries are coercively funded to the tune of about $83 million annually from property taxes (paid by renters in the form of higher rents as well as by property owners), plus a “baseline” payment from City Hall of about $113 million a year, for a total yearly budget of around $196 million, according to the controller’s statement on Prop. F, which would basically continue similar payments, subject to adjustments, for the next 25 years. Dividing that $196 million figure by the number of SF residents (around 842,754 at the start of 2022, according to the Census Bureau), we arrive at a total cost of $232.57 per person per year. Did you receive $232 worth of benefit from government libraries over the past year? Are there perhaps other things toward which you might put $232 to better use in the coming year, some of them even educational? Housing, health care, travel, college courses, a faster Internet connection? We don’t want to decide for you, we just believe as Libertarians that it should be your choice. In the absence of government libraries, the voluntary sector would likely provide similar services for those wishing to pay for them directly. Meanwhile, everyone else would have more resources to allocate to other cherished priorities. Please think twice before voting to lock the next generation into a coercive arrangement of paying for services they may not want, need, or use.

     

    PROP. G (SFUSD Grants) – NO

    For anyone worried that without government funding of local libraries (Prop. F) we’d all be as dumb and uncultured as bricks, there would still be the San Francisco Unified School District, which gets around five times as much stolen tax money. According to the budget information on the SFUSD’s website (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W0OkykyISk9wYf6o5lCKf6VypYaALumy/view), the district had a budget last year of $1,170,608,638, of which (according to the controller’s statement on Prop. G) around $101 million came from the city government. (Prop. G would augment this amount by an additional $11 million to $60 million a year from the city government.) With these funds, the SFUSD is tasked with educating approximately 50,000 students (enrollment last October stood at 50,566 according to the info at https://www.sfusd.edu/about-sfusd/facts-about-sfusd-glance). Like City College (see comments on Prop. O), the city government’s badly mismanaged K-12 schools have been shedding students, resulting in the recall of three school board members by fed-up voters earlier this year. Anyway, let’s do the same basic exercise we did with the SF Public Library system. Dividing the SFUSD’s $1.17 billion annual budget by 50,566 students gives us a dollar amount of $23,150 per student per year. Now imagine that for every school-age child or teen in your household, you had over $23,000 a year to spend on their education. You could just about afford to send them to one of the city’s best independent (“private”) schools, among which tuition averages $25,034 a year, according to PrivateSchoolReview.com (https://www.privateschoolreview.com/california/san-francisco), even without the help of any scholarships or financial assistance with tuition, which are often available. Independent schools in San Francisco already educate over half as many San Francisco students (26,437 according to the website) as the city’s government schools, and a growing number of families choose this option. And that’s not even counting those who choose to homeschool their scholars. Given that independently schooled and homeschooled kids routinely outperform government-schooled kids on measures of academic achievement (see e.g. ), wouldn’t it make more sense to take the extra $11 million to $60 million a year that Prop. G would lavish on the deficit-ridden SFUSD, and instead give it directly to families to allocate as they choose?

     

    PROP. H (Even Year Elections) – NO

    Proposition H would require the San Francisco city government to hold elections only in even-numbered years. Seven members of the Board of Supervisors put this measure on the ballot not for any inherent need for it – four members opposed the unnecessary legislation – but because they expect it to benefit them politically. Presidential elections, which are always held in even-numbered years, typically draw higher turnout, including by many people who otherwise pay relatively little attention to politics. Some politicians think that they and the measures they support are more likely to win voter approval when there are more low-information voters going to the polls. This effect could be compounded by the fact that local issues and campaigns would tend to get drowned out in the media and public consciousness by the amount of coverage and attention devoted to national politics in the days and months leading up to an election. In shifting elections to even-numbered years, Prop. H would also extend the time in office of various incumbents by a year beyond the terms to which they were elected. We hope voters reject this cynical and self-serving bid by the local political establishment.

     

    PROP. I (JFK Drive & Great Highway) – YES

    Disputes over how public streets are used isn’t a top libertarian issue. Unlike government regulations on the use of private property, there is no direct aggression involved in voters deciding how to use the commons. Local government will continue to monopolize San Francisco streets no matter how residents vote on propositions I and J, the two competing measures over when, if ever, to allow automobile traffic on the Great Highway by Ocean Beach, and John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park. Whether one prefers the convenience of being able to get from point A to point B more rapidly and the aesthetic pleasures of a scenic drive, or the safety enhancement and aesthetic pleasures of pedestrian malls free of motor vehicles, is a subjective matter. Yet there is a disturbing pattern of local officials trying to impose more and more restrictions on and impediments to driving in the city that echoes many other areas of public policy in which government attempts to control our lives by imposing controls on activities that don’t involve aggression. In general, we would rather see people share the commons in a manner determined by community norms rather than State decrees, with individuals who cause accidents held responsible for them, than the system of preemptive laws, fines, and punishments that exists now. Given that the traffic lanes in question are surrounded by more attractive options for pedestrians and cyclists – the beach, the park, and bicycle lanes – and would appear to get little foot traffic on weekdays, taking away the means for people to directly access these areas via autos seems unnecessary.

     

    PROP. J (JFK Drive) – NO

    Proposition J would make permanent the Board of Supervisors’ closure of portions of John F. Kennedy Drive and certain other connector streets in Golden Gate Park. Aside from the reasons mentioned in our reasons for supporting its opposing measure Prop. I, one of the things we don’t like about Prop. J is that it doesn’t uniformly ban motor vehicle traffic. While it would close JFK Drive and certain “other street segments” to private vehicles, various government motor vehicles would be exempted. That doesn’t sound like equal protection under the law. Another dubious point is that it would create additional one-way streets. One-way streets are confusing to many drivers (in some cases leading to citations that gouge family and individual budgets), often cause unnecessary extra emissions as motorists seeking to go counter to the allowed direction of traffic have to drive further to avoid them, and contribute to speeding.

     

    PROP. K, a bungled attempt to tax Amazon.com, was removed from the ballot after a judge allowed backers to pull the measure when they discovered it might not do what they wanted it to do (see https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-activists-wanted-to-tax-Amazon-They-could-17412852.php).

     

    PROP. L (Transportation Sales Tax) – NO

    All coercive taxation is theft and a form of slavery, but not every type of tax operates in the same way. Some taxes are more readily avoidable, because they apply to only certain types of actions or property and don’t affect most people, whereas others are essentially impossible to avoid if you want to lead anything like a normal or typical existence in society. Those in power, at one time and another, have levied taxes on almost every aspect of human existence. Given their range of options, it must seem somewhat strange to anyone who believes that the Democratic Party represents the interests of the financially poorer members of society, that Democrats keep proposing sales taxes. It’s well understood that sales taxes are a form of taxation which falls hardest on the poor. It’s not a taking that affects only the wealthy, only people who engage in certain clearly optional activities, or only people who own certain categories of assets – everybody buys stuff. Yet once again the 11 members of the Board of Supervisors – all Dems – unanimously voted to fund their transportation priorities by making everyone pay more whenever they buy products ranging from clothing to phone chargers to over-the-counter medication.

    <!–break–>

    PROP. M (Residential Vacancy Tax) – NO

    Proposition M would open a new front in local government’s war on economic freedom by imposing, for the first time in San Francisco, a tax on vacant residential units. Proponents naturally justify the measure by citing the “housing crisis” – ignoring that the shortage of affordable places to live was caused by anti-housing policies. Adding yet another tax will of course serve as a further disincentive to creating more residential housing in the city. Because it will be difficult and somewhat subjective to tell when a unit is “vacant”, Prop. M is an invitation to selective enforcement and the kind of corruption that inevitably comes with it. As opponents note, it will also turn neighbors into snitches monitoring each other’s whereabouts. They also point out that “any condo owner in a building with 3+ units will be subject to punitive fines should your home have to be unoccupied for 183+ days a year for any reason – if you are hospitalized, traveling for work, staying with your partner, or caring for family members”. As with Prop. J’s exemption of government vehicles from the proposed ban of motor vehicles on certain streets, Prop. M contains a blatant double standard. The legal text of the measure explicitly states that, “The City, the State of California, and any county, municipal corporation, district, or other political subdivision of the State shall be exempt from the Empty Homes Tax, except where any constitutional or statutory immunity from taxation is waived or is not applicable.” It’s likely that no one even knows how much government-owned property that could be used for housing exists in San Francisco. The 2012-2013 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury cited a Budget and Legislative Analyst’s report which found that “The City lacks centralized oversight and controls over its properties.” This notwithstanding the Surplus City Property Ordinance of 2002, which requires that “all departments and agencies provide an inventory of properties under their jurisdiction to the Director of Property and the City Administrator and identify properties they declare surplus or underutilized.” The Civil Grand Jury’s report (online at https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2012_2013/Optimizing_Use_of_Publicly-Owned_Real_Estate_5-29-13-3.pdf) stated that “the citizens of San Francisco deserve more transparency with respect to publicly-owned real estate,” and we agree. City Hall should audit its own empty property before trying to police and tax that belonging to other people.

     

    PROP. N (Golden Gate Parking to Rec & Park) – NO

    Proposition N would have the Recreation and Park Commisson (which overseas the Recreation and Parks Department including Golden Gate Park generally) take over management of the parking garage under the park’s Music Concourse from the non-profit group that currently runs it (the privately-constructed garage was built on public land without the use of taxpayer funds). Reading between the lines of Prop. N, it appears that the goal of backers is to enable the city government to raise overall parking rates in the garage while extending special discounts to members of politically favored groups including seniors, the disabled, and people from “low income households” and “equity priority neighborhoods”. It was put on the ballot by mayor London Breed, who appoints members of the Recreation and Parks Commission that would gain control of the garage under the measure. Most crucially bad, Prop. N would allow taxpayer money to be spent on the facility, which it apparently cannot be under current rules.

     

    PROP. O (City College Parcel Tax) – NO

    Possibly the least excusable measure on this year’s local ballot, Proposition O would (according to city Controller Ben Rosenfield) “increase the cost of government by approximately $6 million on a one-time basis and $3 million on an ongoing, annual basis.” All this to bail out an institution, City College of San Francisco, which has been poorly run and shedding students, from its own financial mismanagement. As opponents (including even progressive Supervisor Aaron Peskin!) note, “In the past 20 years, we’ve approved nearly $1.3 billion in bonds for the school’s facilities and allocated money from the City’s General Fund to make City College classes tuition free. In the past eight years, City College has had NINE chancellors, a never-ending series of budget nightmares, and came very close to losing its accreditation. This is the third parcel tax proposed for City College in the past 10 years. The one we’re currently paying doesn’t expire until 2032!” The two Community College Board candidates that the LPSF is supporting, Jill Yee and Marie Hurabiell, wrote an excellent op-ed piece opposing Prop. O that goes into more detail. You can check it out at https://www.marinatimes.com/vote-no-on-measure-o.

     

    CANDIDATES

    The Libertarian Party of California’s bylaws prohibit the LPSF from formally endorsing non-Libertarian candidates, but at the local level we have traditionally recommended votes for some non-Libertarians when there is no Libertarian candidate in a race and one or more of the contenders seem significantly better (or worse) than their rivals. Even this is controversial however, and this year we found only three candidates we deemed worthy of a recommendation.

     

    Community College Board – Jill Yee and Marie Hurabiell

    In our comments on Prop. O, the City College parcel tax, we mentioned the terrific op-ed piece that these two candidates wrote against the measure, and believe they are good choices for those who want to limit the damage that City College does to San Franciscans’ pocketbooks. Jill Yee came and spoke at our October meeting, and she impressed us as a voice for fiscal responsibility who also happens to have a very long City College resumé and is on paper perhaps the most conventionally qualified candidate for the office. After attending CCSF as a student whose immigrant parents believed in the importance of education, she later returned to teach as a professor at the school for 25 years, as well as chairing its Behavioral Sciences Department. Hurabiell, who Yee endorses, pulls no punches in her candidate statement, accusing “unqualified” incumbents of having “rubber-stamped years of malfunction” and “bowing to insider interests”. Her background includes work in voluntary sector educational institutions.

     

    District Attorney – John Hamasaki

    One of four candidates seeking the office of DA, John Hamasaki is a criminal defense attorney who has a history of standing up for police accountability as a member of the Police Commission. Brooke Jenkins, the incumbent district attorney appointed by mayor London Breed after the former DA supported by the LPSF, Chesa Boudin, was recalled in June has been terrible on the issue of holding the government’s armed law enforcers accountable. Breed was initially suppportive of police reform in the wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020, but since then has essentially caved in the face of pressures coming from the opposite direction, and her choice for DA reflects this unfortunate shift. Jenkins wasted no time in undoing many of the criminal justice reforms the DA’s office had been building, firing all the attorneys in the office who had worked on cases involving the prosecution of misbehaving police officers, and ramping up the “War on Drugs” again by making a point of touting efforts to prosecute drug sales. Yet for all her “tough on crime” posturing, and the end of a presumed though unacknowledged “work stoppage” by members of the SFPD during Boudin’s tenure who were unhappy with his reform agenda, crime, the former DA noted in October that the SFPD reported higher rates of both violent crime and property crime over the same period the previous year (see https://twitter.com/chesaboudin/status/1577317131858808832). The U.S. has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates, and just locking up more people at taxpayer expense – reportedly $ per prisoner per year in California – as much as some loud voices in the community seem to be clamoring for this, is clearly not the answer, especially in the case of victimless “crimes” which should not be illegal to begin with. The SF district attorney’s office under Boudin was moving toward more of a restorative justice approach focused on making victims whole, which is more in line with the restitution approach advocated in the Libertarian Party’s platform (https://www.lp.org/platform). Hamasaki has worked with crime victims and was himself a victim of violence, and if elected is expected to continue the work of building alternatives to incarceration.

     

    * * *

     

    In the Board of Education contest, while we did not explicitly take a position on any of the candidates, the LPSF did support the successful February 2022 recall of three prior school board members including Gabriela Lopez, who is now seeking to win back a seat on the board.

     

    In several previous races the LPSF has recommended voting for John Dennis, a Ron Paul supporter who is running again this year as a Republican against congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. However he seems to have become more conventionally conservative and moved away from libertarianism on issues like immigration and policing, and there were no calls to support him this cycle. (This is certainly not intending to say anything positive about Pelosi, a statist politician who has refused to debate her opponents since she was first elected to Congress way back in the 1980s!)

     

    * * *

     

     

  • Vote Tuesday June 7, 2022!

    Vote Tuesday June 7, 2022!

    LPSF Ballot Measure Recommendations

    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, “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. And as Joe Eskenazi has reported in Mission Local, 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 Mini-Panic Over SF Shoplifting

    The Mini-Panic Over SF Shoplifting

    Since Chesa Boudin was narrowly elected (with the LPSF’s support!) as San Francisco district attorney in November 2019 over the mayor’s interim DA appointee Suzy Loftus, who was heavily backed by the San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) and other law enforcement interests, there have been plenty of folks unhappy with that outcome.

    As in many locales, police in San Francisco had long enjoyed an improperly cozy relationship with prosecutors. Even Boudin’s relatively liberal elected predecessor (and former police chief) George Gascon, never really seen as reliably in the SFPOA’s corner during his time overseeing the SFPD, failed as DA to prosecute a single police officer for an unjustified shooting or any other abuse. This was despite occurrences like the gangland-style execution of Mario Woods by multiple SFPD officers in 2015.

    Chesa Boudin has been a breath of fresh air in an office that badly needed reform. A former deputy public defender in the office built by the much-missed Jeff Adachi, he ran on a platform that emphasized issues like opposing mass incarceration, focusing on real (not victimless) crimes, ending cash bail, and holding police accountable. He has been as good as his word on this, enhancing civil liberties and saving taxpayer money via efforts such as getting the SF jail population reduced by around 25% by letting elderly inmates and those with medical conditions, charged with misdemeanors out early, requiring prosecutors to review all available evidence before charging any cases involving allegations of resisting, obstructing or assaulting police officers (charges often trumped up when police don’t have any real cause to arrest someone, or want to make their life more difficult), and working with Supervisor Matt Haney to try to stop police officers with records of abuse from being hired, according to Wikipedia. The people who don’t like him are upset with him in no small part because he is doing what he said he would do.

    In seeking to remove Boudin via an upcoming recall election however, opponents have latched onto one issue in particular as an easier “sell” to San Francisco voters who might not be so enthused about a return to criminal justice “business as usual” – shoplifting. In this they were given a major media assist. While most of the mainstream media may lean to the left on many issues, when it comes to local petty crime their statism often has a more right-wing “tough-on-crime” flavor. ABC7 TV reporter Lyanne Melendez exemplified this when she pushed the shoplifting issue to the front burner on June 14 by tweeting a video of a brazen shoplifting incident at a Walgreens store in Hayes Valley. Without providing any evidence or context to support blaming the district attorney, she editorialized her tweet with the words “#NoConsequences @ChesaBoudin”. According to Twitter, that video has now been viewed 6.2 million times.

    Watching it raises some obvious questions, like “Why doesn’t the store security guard make more than a half-hearted grab at the thief’s bag as he rides his bicycle directly past him in a narrow store aisle toward the store exit, when almost anyone in that position making a serious effort could have easily blocked the getaway?”

    The incident almost gives the impression of having been staged. If the security guard was afraid for his own safety (isn’t being exposed to potential physical confrontations part of his job?), why wasn’t he on the phone to 911, or calling for more backup from other store personnel, instead of just standing there watching as the thief swept items from store shelves into a large trash bag? Was this incident really about local criminal justice authorities falling down on the job, or was it about store management having some kind of “don’t interfere” policy designed to avoid bad publicity or potential liability?

    A Tech-Gate story about the incident reports that the man – subsequently taken into custody – had previously robbed the same store on four consecutive days earlier in the month, but that Walgreens declined to prosecute.

    A district attorney can’t prosecute anyone unless they are first identified, which generally means apprehending them. Some commenters have also tried to blame the perceived increase in shoplifting – more on that later – on the Black Lives Matter or police abuse reform movement which saw a major surge after the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020, arguing that cops are more afraid to make arrests now, lest they be accused of police brutality.

    But unless police happen to be on the scene and catch a shoplifter in the act, it is usually store personnel who apprehend shoplifters, so this doesn’t really offer a good excuse for what do appear to be low arrest rates in SF for this type of crime:

    “…state and local crime clearance reports show the problem is not San Franciscans’ failure to report shoplifting to police, but the SFPD’s low rate (4.9 percent) of making arrests in reported thefts compared to police elsewhere in the state (10.5 percent).”

    – From cjcj org/news/13165

    Being arrested is a traumatic experience, typically costing arrestees time and money and affecting their records regardless of what happens afterward, so more SFPD arrests of shoplifters would presumably have some impact.

    Nevertheless, despite the shocking Melendez video and some high-profile incidents of organized shoplifting, the rates for this crime in San Francisco are in fact still much lower than they were back in the 1980s, and have fallen further since 2019:

    “The data shows police-reported shoplifting incidents that are from
    pre-pandemic dates. Also looking even further back then pre-pandemic,
    the data shows that shoplifting rates have been falling more or less
    steadily since the 1980s.

    According to the SF Chronicle, 710 shoplifting incidents were
    reported in the city from January to April of 2021 in comparison to 933
    shoplifting periods from the same period in 2019, an actual decrease.”

    – From davisvanguard org/2021/07/are-shoplifting-rates-in-san-francisco-rising-data-says-nope/

    Some of the people who believe, despite the evidence, that shoplifting is way up in San Francisco, also like to blame state Proposition 47, the criminal justice reform measure that helped address the epidemic of mass incarceration by releasing some non-violent offenders from overcrowded jails.

    But contrary to the myth that the law now lets people caught stealing goods worth less than $950 get off scot free, California statutes actually classify it as a misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to six months in jail, in addition to potential civil liability to the store owner for:

    • the retail value of the merchandise, if the property is not recovered in sellable condition
    • damages of at least $50 but not more than $500, and
    • costs of bringing the action.

    – From criminaldefenselawyer com/resources/criminal-defense/crime-penalties/petty-theft-california-penalties-defense

    While it’s true that prosecution rates for shoplifting are down since the start of Covid not long after district attorney Boudin was elected, it’s a bit of a stretch to hold him mainly responsible, as a July 9 San Francisco Examiner article shows:

    The numbers show the prosecution rate for shoplifting cases involving
    a misdemeanor petty theft charge for a loss of $950 or less fell under
    Boudin, from 70 percent under former District Attorney George Gascon in
    2019 to 44 percent in 2020 and 50 percent as of mid-June 2021.

    Prosecutors filed charges in 116 of 266 cases presented by police
    involving petty theft in 2020, compared to 450 of 647 cases in 2019,
    according to the data provided by the District Attorney’s Office.

    On the other hand, the prosecution rate for certain organized retail
    theft cases remained between 81 and 84 percent under both Gascon and
    Boudin between 2019 and 2021.

    The office charged 35 of the 43 organized retail theft cases presented in 2020,
    compared to 21 of the 25 cases in 2019…

    Boudin said the decline in prosecution rates for shoplifting cases is
    a reflection of the “difficult choices” his office had to make during
    the pandemic, when the Hall of Justice closed most of its courtrooms and
    city officials decided to largely empty the jails, in part to prevent
    an outbreak.

    “We made an intentional decision to prioritize crimes involving
    violence, injury to human beings and use of weapons,” Boudin said.

    – From SFExaminer com/news/data-shows-chesa-boudin-prosecutes-fewer-shoplifters-than-predecessor/

    So if you’re inclined to blame Chesa Boudin, which of the following alternative courses of action do you think he should have taken?

    • Prioritizing the prosecution of petty theft over crimes involving violence?
    • Trying to force the courts to reopen their courtrooms to enable more prosecutions, and the sheriffs to refill the jails, risking Covid outbreaks?
    • Violating the Constitution by somehow prosecuting people without due process?

    Meanwhile, while shoplifting in San Francisco has decreased in recent decades, homelessness is way, way up. Which must be a bit of a head-scratcher if you think homeless people are disproportionately the ones to blame for such petty crime.

    More to the point though, what should concern us more as a society?

    • Petty theft, whether organized or by individuals, from retail establishments of property worth less than $950 per offense?; or

    • Organized State robbery in the form of taxes, often many thousands of dollars a year per victim, that leave people with fewer resources to help themselves and their families and exacerbate poverty?

    In humanitarian terms, which is the greater problem that we should be more concerned over?

    While it’s frustrating to see blatant, repeated shoplifting from stores occurring in the community, which ultimately means higher prices for everyone, libertarians should resist the agenda – often pushed by conservatives – of just inflicting harsher punishments on the residents committing these thefts. Asking government to put more people behind bars for longer terms tends to be far costlier to the public. Not to mention a far greater threat to freedom.

    We should not let this largely manufactured panic over shoplifting cause us to vote out a district attorney who is pursuing real, valuable reforms.

  • Go ahead and engage in vote-buying, just don’t be hypocrites

    Go ahead and engage in vote-buying, just don’t be hypocrites

    I heard the same thing about the controversial new Georgia voting law (the “Election Integrity Act of 2021”) that most of you probably have – that it criminalizes giving water to people waiting in line to vote. That part is what many in the media seem to want to focus on. Taken out of context, it definitely sounds like the GOP carrying vote suppression to an utterly petty level.

    Then I read what that part of the legislation, which applies within 150 feet of a polling place or within 25 feet of any voter at a polling place, actually says:

    “No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector.”

    You remember Brad Raffensperger? The Republican secretary of state in Georgia who defended the integrity of the election results that showed Biden winning the poll in that state and resisted pressure from the president when Trump phoned him and asked him to “find” over 11,000 votes? Well, Raffensperger promised last year that the state would crack down on “line warming,” or handing gifts to people waiting in line to vote as a way to “inappropriately influence voters in the crucial final moments before they cast their ballots.”

    So yeah, Republicans trying to suppress the vote, and Republicans trying to stop shenanigans by their opponents – the two go hand in hand, one providing cover for the other. But the deeper truth is that both sides are trying to rig the system in their favor as best they can. Certain voters in certain areas are generally presumed (with lots of evidence) to be likely Democrat voters. The Republican Party is trying to reduce voter turnout in these areas by making it more difficult to vote, while the Democratic Party is trying to increase voter turnout in these same areas by, among other things, bribing voters. The media mostly understands the first half of this dynamic, and reports it as such, but ignores or misses the flip side of the coin. Free water and snacks may not seem like much of an incentive to vote, but if someone’s on the fence, a little detail like that can make a difference. And in a tight race, every bit of turnout matters.

    Again, both halves of the establishment are trying to rig the game in their favor, they just have different ways of trying to cheat. And don’t think for a minute that this is just about whether people waiting to vote can be given water. That’s just media spin. The real question is whether anything of value can be used to lure people to the polls. If gifts of bottled water are allowed, it won’t stop there; the envelope will be pushed. Democratic operatives will supply as many inducements to vote in areas and among populations where the vote tends to swing their way as they legally (and sometimes maybe illegally) can – snacks, sandwiches, whole chickens, tote bags, gift certificates, etc., so that more of “their” people will make it to the polls.

    Don’t get me wrong though – I oppose this Georgia law. Attempting to influence voters should not be criminalized, regardless of whether the lobbying occurs right before they vote or at some other time. Ditto for vote-buying. Your vote belongs to you, and true ownership isn’t only about the right of use, it’s also the right to transfer the thing in question to another person or group of your choosing. If you can’t sell your vote, in a sense it’s not really yours.

    Politicians and election commentators seldom acknowledge this, but – especially for someone trying to make ends meet – getting the equivalent of $5 (about the price of a bottled water and a snack) or $20 or $50 or whatever from somebody hoping you’ll vote the way they want you to, may have more of a direct, positive impact on your life than any votes you as one individual cast in the voting booth.

    For some people, a decision to sell their vote (or to receive something of value, however slight, from someone seeking to influence how they cast it) might be not only rational, but a more honest reflection of their values and priorities than any selection available to them on the ballot, and thus a more legitimate expression of democracy.

    Only let’s call it what it is, and not pretend this latest hullabaloo is motivated by a sudden humanitarian concern for grandma’s physical nourishment while waiting in line to vote, from people who never showed any similar interest in her well-being when she was waiting in line at the DMV, or sitting around at court after being called for jury duty.

    Attempted vote-buying is nothing new. The reason many people vote for the politicians they do in the first place is because the pols promise free stuff. If they’re allowed to get votes by promising “free” health care, “free” education, “free” border walls, “free” Covid relief checks, etc., after they’re elected, why shouldn’t they be allowed to get votes by handing out freebies before the vote, and using their own resources to pay for them, instead of stolen tax money? That way voters have a chance to get something concrete, in advance, that is at least a bit more ethically sourced, and they don’t have to just rely on politicians’ promises. It would be an effective way of transferring money from the rich (big money donors) to the poor (low-income and minority voters) without coercion and without government taking the lion’s share before the money gets to those for whom it’s purportedly intended.

    If you’re recoiling in horror from the idea of buying and selling votes, you can rest easy. It’s about as likely to become law any time soon, as the Biden administration is to be fiscally responsible. Please direct your outrage toward the practices already in place now that tilt the political field in favor of the well-heeled. Like shutting less deep-pocketed alternative party candidates out of debates, not allowing voters to register with their parties in many states, and charging outrageous filing fees just to get on the ballot or have a candidate statement. When I ran for State Assembly last year, no statement appeared by my name in the voter information pamphlet, because they wanted to charge me $1572.00 to print one. But of course voters reading the pamphlet weren’t informed of that reason; all they saw was a blank space, giving the impression that I just didn’t care enough to write anything. Just one of the dirty little tactics of the 2-party duopoly cartel.

  • November 2020 Ballot Recommendations

    Proposition A – NO. This $960 million bond measure (the estimated cost to taxpayers of borrowing $487.5 million after all the interest and costs are paid) promises everything but the kitchen sink. Prop. A would supposedly fund “investments” (the Voter Information Pamphlet’s biased language) in “supportive housing facilities”, shelters, parks, recreation facilities, facilities for “persons experiencing mental health challenges”, streets, etc. All things that could be paid for out of the city government’s $13.7 billion regular budget (a budget larger than those of many states and even most countries!). But as CPA and former civil grand jury member Craig Weber pointed out, they would rather spend that budget on things like an average salary of $108,774 and an additional average cost of $49,864 in benefits for their over 38,000 employees (a bloated “city family” larger than the entire city of Burlingame).

    Proposition B – NO. We’re sympathetic to the desire to shake things up after Mohammed Nuru, the longtime head of the Department of Public Works (and ex-boyfriend of mayor London Breed) was arrested by the FBI on multiple charges of corruption. But Prop. B isn’t exactly a house-cleaning. Nearly half of current DPW employees would just be transferred to a newly-created Department of Sanitation and Streets, with duplicative support staff meaning an additional cost of $2.5 to $6 million annually, according to the Controller’s statement. What it does not do is guarantee that bureaucrats who are not doing their jobs in keeping the streets clean will be replaced, or that the new department won’t be subject to the same kind of cronyistic political appointments as the old one. As former judge Quentin Kopp notes, it’s just an attempt to “take the heat off City Hall criminality” without fundamentally changing anything.

    Proposition C – YES. This measure would simply give non-citizen residents the same opportunity as other San Franciscans to serve on city boards, commissions, and advisory bodies. Libertarians strongly support the right of people to move freely from one country to another, and for people to have full equality under the law regardless of citizenship, which is ultimately just another Big Government program that enables those in power to divide and control people and extort money from them on the basis of nationality. According to a ballot argument by the LGBT Asylum Project and others, 35% of voting-age San Franciscans are foreign-born, and we oppose restricting any of these individuals from full political participation. As we argue in a paid statement in the Voter Information Pamphlet, “Laws must not be allowed to discriminate on the basis of innate characteristics like race, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin.”

    Proposition D – YES. While we generally oppose additional government spending and bureaucracy, the life and death power that law enforcement agents have over the rest of us creates an even more pressing need for independent oversight than is the case for the rest of government. Incidents like the gladiator-style fights that the Public Defenders Office learned some SF sheriff’s deputies were staging among inmates for their own amusement, drive the point home. Prop. D would create an Office of Inspector General with the power to investigate in-custody deaths and complaints against Sheriff’s Department employees and contractors in at least some cases, and make recommendations regarding the department’s use of force policies. Also an Oversight Board that would hold public meetings and receive input from the public, as well as being able to subpoena witnesses and require the production of evidence. At less then a $3 million additional annual cost, this seems like a good pro-freedom tradeoff. In the wake of the killings of George Floyd and numerous other Americans at the hands of law enforcement, the need to rein in the abuses of gun-toting government agents should be abundantly clear to everyone, and this measure to create some independent oversight of the 800 or so SF Sheriff’s Department employees should do at least a bit to help.

    Proposition E – YES. This measure would remove the absurd requirement that San Francisco maintain a minimum of 1,971 sworn SFPD officers, a mandate so out of whack with actual needs and budgetary considerations that it has not even been consistently followed anyway. Our paid ballot argument supporting Prop. E notes that this force size exceeds not only that of neighboring cities like San Jose, which has more residents than San Francisco, but even the per capita policing in Paris under the hated regime of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette that was overthrown in the French Revolution of 1789! While certain types of incidents such as auto break-ins have been up the past few years, the SFPD has plenty of capacity to address this trend if they get their priorities straight and focus on investigating and responding to real crimes against life, liberty, and property, rather than victimless actions like drug sales and use, prostitution, and public camping. Additionally, mental health crises and other types of service calls should involve personnel trained to address those situations, not police officers (who have a disturbing tendency to use excessive force against the mentally ill and others), and efforts underway to transfer some of these responsibilities away from the SFPD will likewise free up  more officers to focus on apprehending actual criminals.

    Proposition F – NO. Trying to parse what this 125-page monstrosity of a ballot measure would actually do is extremely difficult, which is a reason in itself to regard it with a high degree of skepticism. We couldn’t figure out from the text itself what the net effect of swapping a payroll tax for a gross receipts tax in all their respective intricacies would be, but according to the Controller’s statement it amounts to an estimated $97 million/year tax increase. Which is no doubt why Mayor Breed and the entire Board of Supervisors, unreformed statists all, are supporting it. You might think politicians would have more sense than to try to foist a massive tax hike on local businesses during a government lockdown that has already forced more than half of The City’s retailers to close their doors, many of them permanently, but you would be underestimating #GovernmentGreed. The Democrats who run SF claim that Prop. F would provide relief for businesses most impacted by the government’s ham-fisted response to Covid-19, but of course they could have provided that relief without tying it to higher levels of legalized theft that will harm other businesses.

    Proposition G – NO POSITION. We debated this one. Several of us thought this was a clear libertarian “yes”, but several other members had concerns including that minors still legally under the control of their parents could be influenced by them on how to vote. On the flip side, 16 and 17 year olds do still pay sales tax and other taxes, and “taxation without representation” was one of the prominent complaints of the American colonists who seceded from Great Britain in 1776. You make the call.

    Proposition H – YES. Prop. H represents a rare local ballot measure that would actually increase economic freedom, by streamlining or eliminating a few of the city government’s myriad noxious regulations that make it expensive and difficult to start and maintain a business in San Francisco. Currently, the Planning Code needlessly prohibits many sensible and harmless uses of commercial space. This has contributed, even pre-Covid19, to a glut of business failures and vacant storefronts. One sentence in the Controller’s statement kind of says it all, noting that under the measure, “Fees for additional reviews required due to City errors would be waived.” Does anyone other than the most retromingent statists think it’s reasonable to impose additional fees on businesses as a result of government errors?

    Proposition I – NO. Riddle: How do you top an effort to increase business taxes by $97 million during the worst economic downturn the U.S. has seen since the Great Recession, if not the Great Depression (Prop. F)? Why, with an effort to raise real estate taxes during a housing shortage when there are over 8,000 homeless people on the streets of San Francisco according to the official count (which is probably an underestimate) by double that amount. This would be Prop. I, which the Controller’s statement estimates would add an average $196 million a year to the cost of housing and commercial real estate. A pair of small business owners writing in the Voter Information Pamphlet note that the measure doesn’t just apply to the sale of property, but also to small business and storefront leases – in other words, a hit on some of the same businesses that some of the same Supervisors supporting this proposition claim that they are trying to help with Prop. F. “At a time when many [mom and pop businesses] are desperately trying to sell, break, or renegotiate their leases, this tax will increase their rents and threaten their safety nets when they can least afford it,” write small business owners Gwen Kaplan and Rodney Fong.

    Proposition J – NO. What would an election be without some kind of appeal to rob people “for the children”? Enter Prop. J, a regressive $48 million annual parcel tax increase that would hit every property owner (small or large) in the city not given a special exemption with an extra $320 on their property tax bill, to flow into the coffers of the SF Unified School District. Close behind appeals to commit robbery for the children are arguments to do it for the teachers, and this measure promises “raising the salaries of teachers” – oh, and unspecified “other School District employees” (read: members of bloated administrative non-teaching staff). The SFUSD would also have the “sole discretion as to allocation of the proceeds” among these and other assorted purposes – meaning they could if they chose spend 90% of the money on more administrative bureaucracy.

    Proposition K – NO. The LPSF won the “lottery” process to be selected as the official opponent on this one, and its supporters – again a laundry list of local political power players including every member of the Board of Supervisors – decided to try to sell it as an anti-racism measure, touting the fact that it would override the California Constitution’s Article 34, a 1950 ban on government development of housing for low income persons unless first authorized by a public vote. “Prop. K is a step towards removing this racist legacy”, they write. In reality Article 34 says nothing about race, and does not stop low cost housing from being built by independent builders. It simply prevents government officials from using taxpayer money to subsidize such housing against the will of the public. The irony is that supporters of Prop. K are making arguments suggesting that they want to engage in racism by handing out housing on a preferential basis to people of certain racial backgrounds. Rather than attempting to get into the housing construction business, an endeavor that won’t end well, the mayor and Board of Supervisors should cut the red tape and expensive bureaucratic requirements that prevent more affordable housing getting built by independent builders. Legalize tiny homes and ADUs (accessory dwelling units, also called “granny units”), for example. And make more legal free parking places for people living in RVs and vans. Those options won’t be ideal housing for everyone, but they work for many people and are better than sleeping on the street, as thousands of San Franciscans do now.

    Proposition L – NO. This is an effort to pressure businesses to pay their top executives less, or other workers more, when those executives receive more than 100 times the median pay of their workers, by stealing more money from such companies in the form of a higher gross receipts or payroll tax. Unfortunately, robbing a company as a whole won’t necessarily come at the expense of its overpaid executives, but could easily instead negatively impact other workers who may see lower compensation or be more likely to lose their jobs (or not get hired in the first place), as well as at the expense of members of the public who could face higher prices for the company’s products. It could also cause some businesses to stop doing business in San Francisco, costing local jobs and reducing the choices available to residents. Executive overpay is a legitimate concern when driven by factors other than simple market-based compensation based on relative demand for different types of labor and skills, but a better way to address the issue is through corporate governance reforms to make management more accountable to shareholders. Not by simply feeding a State which is even more bloated than the biggest independent companies and whose own top employees are already overpaid at the public’s expense.<!–break–>

  • March 3, 2020 Ballot Recommendations

                Longtime freedom-oriented observers of politics in the City by the Bay won’t be greatly surprised that exactly none of the local measures on the March 3 ballot are worth supporting. The Libertarian Party of San Francisco recommends voting NO on all five. Here’s some brief thoughts on why:

     

    Proposition A – $845 million City College “Job Training, Repair and Earthquake Safety” bond

    According to a faculty union representing teachers at City College, spending on administration has grown to comprise 10% of the school’s personnel costs, up from 7% just five years ago.

    An October bulletin published by the union describes how students, teachers and community members recently had to “push back on exorbitant raises” for top administrators, “including a proposal to compensate Associate Vice Chancellors at $275K/yr.” Meanwhile, City College enrollment is down from 90,000 in 2011-2012 to 65,000 today, according to a piece by Marc Joffe of the Reason Foundation. “With so many San Franciscans living on the streets, investing in educational infrastructure seems to be an especially odd priority,” he writes. We agree. Vote NO on Prop. A.

    Proposition B – $628.5 million “Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response” bond

    Another massive tax-and-spend measure in the name of “safety”. San Franciscans have already voted time and again to appropriate money for earthquake preparedness and emergency services. Just last year voters adopted a $425 million bond measure billed as protecting the city from flooding and earthquakes. As with all bond spending, this measure is wasteful – the controller estimates that borrowing $628.5 million will end up costing taxpayers over $1 billion by the time the principal is repaid with interest to the companies financing the bonds. A nice deal for Wall Street financiers perhaps, but not so great for overtaxed residents including tenants, who could see up to half the cost of the measure passed along to them in the form of higher rents.

    Proposition C – Retiree Benefits for Former SF Housing Authority Employees

    The Housing Authority is a local agency, but has been funded by the federal government. Now some former SFHA employees are being hired by the city government. This measure would make them eligible for city government retirement benefits based not just on their time as municipal employees, but also based on the years they spent drawing federal government paychecks. This sounds like a recipe for double-dipping, and most government employees are already over-compensated compared to people doing similar work in the voluntary sector. Increasing government employee compensation also means stealing more money from the taxpayers to pay for it. We say Vote NO.

    Proposition D – Vacancy Tax

    This measure would tax owners of commercial storefront property for allowing it to sit vacant, incentivizing landlords to rush to fill leases quickly rather than taking the time to consult with community members and groups and seek out tenants who are a good match for their neighborhoods. The usually statist editors of the Bay Area Reporter newspaper correctly point out that retail vacancies are growing nationally “as a result of the convenience of online shopping, competitive prices, and speedy delivery”, and that “the challenges of doing business in San Francisco” , among them “bureaucratic red tape and a protracted permitting process, onerous taxes, scarcity of workers” make the problem even worse here. They note that instead of “doing the hard work of cutting the red tape that frustrates and discourages businesses from operating in our neighborhoods,” the Board of Supervisors “punted and placed Prop. D on the ballot.” We agree – please vote NO.

    Proposition E – Limits on Office Development

    This measure would limit the amount of office space that can be built in San Francisco unless the city government meets its goals for the development of “affordable” housing. More housing is urgently needed, but development of new office space should not be held hostage to this need. Creating laws like this based on guesses about what future needs will be is a bad idea. Limiting creation of office space will also pave the way for politicians to hand out special exemptions based on political favoritism and corruption. One such loophole already built into the measure would allow new office space development in exchange for affordable housing being built off-site, but would require such off-site housing to be located “within an economically disadvantaged community”. In other words, new housing for poor people would have to be located in places where poor people already live, further reinforcing the de facto segregation of the city into poor and wealthy areas, as driven by past government policies like redlining, rather than allowing market development to happen organically. Vote NO on Prop. E.

    Aside from voting to oppose the ballot measures, the LPSF also voted to support three candidates in this election:

    Starchild for State Assembly (write-in)

    Such is the lack of democracy in this largely one-party town that incumbent Assembly member David Chiu was the only candidate to fill for his District 17 seat that comprises the eastern half of San Francisco, leaving an opening for a write-in candidate to run in the primary and automatically appear on the November ballot without having to feed the State by paying a filing fee of hundreds of dollars. LPSF chair Starchild decided this was too good an opportunity to pass up, and decided to collect the signatures needed to be that candidate. The erotic service provider and freedom activist says the core of his campaign message will be the idea of a consent-based society in which government does not tell people what to do with their own bodies and resources, and you can live your life as you choose so long as it does not involve initiating force or fraud against others. “Consent is not just about sex, it matters in every aspect of our lives,” Starchild asserts. He also pledges to champion the rights of homeless people, immigrants, sex workers, independent and homeschool families, the kink and poly communities, people in the cannabis and psychedelic communities, and others who have been marginalized and harmed by the statist quo, while cutting the 6-figure salaries and lavish benefits of those in government who are profiting off the backs of the poor and the victims of government taxes and fees.

    Maria Evangelista for Superior Court Judge

    Like newly elected district attorney Chesa Boudin, Maria Evangelista is a public defender who has worked at the award-winning SF Public Defender’s Office built by the late Jeff Adachi. Her opponent, by contrast, is a former prosecutor. In a criminal justice system that has given the U.S. what is widely reported to be the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, we need more judges whose background is in trying to keep people out of jail, rather than trying to lock them up. Evangelista’s parents emigrated from Mexico to work as farm workers and took refuge here in San Francisco as undocumented migrants, and her mother collected recycling to help make ends meet, so she has first-hand experience of being poor and on the wrong side of the authorities, if not the law (the Feds actually have no constitutional authority to criminalize or regulate who migrates to the U.S., only the process of becoming a citizen). “Every day I see how our courts have failed to meaningfully address homelessness, car break-ins, and violence”, she writes. “Everyday I see how the courts are disproportionately arresting and imprisoning people of color. We are stuck in a cycle of catch, imprison and release.” It is notoriously difficult to find solid information on the policy positions of candidates for judge, but from her background we believe Maria Evangelista is likely to be the more pro-freedom candidate in this race, and recommend Libertarians support her for Seat 1 on the Superior Court.

    John Dennis for Congress

    There was some dispute in our ranks as to whether we should be recommending a vote for a Republican in a partisan race, but John Dennis has a history of engagement with the freedom movement dating back to Ron Paul’s first campaign for president back in 2007, when he walked the streets alongside many of us canvassing for the libertarian Republican and lifetime Libertarian Party member. A plurality of our committee felt that history, and his positions aside from some regrettable stances on immigration and homelessness, make him a more pro-freedom choice than establishment incumbent Nancy Pelosi or any of her other challengers. John is against overseas wars and in favor of cutting Pentagon as well as other government spending, auditing the Federal Reserve, a return to sound money, and reining in warrantless spying on Americans by the federal government. While we cannot endorse candidates of other parties, we recommend a vote for John Dennis for Congress in District 12 as the best choice in a race without a Libertarian candidate.

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