Tuesday, October 30, 2018

My own Ballot

So.... how am I gonna vote?

Well, I live in California, in Nancy Pelosi's district. So here's how it comes down, officially:

FEDERAL

House of Representatives - Nancy Pelosi. She was a great Speaker of the House and I want her to be that again. She's going to win this seat and has no real opposition. But the vote counts.

Senate - Diane Feinstein. I really wanted Kevin De Leon to either push her to the left or take over. But even though he won the right to challenge her he never really put up a fight. That said, if the Democrats take over the Senate she becomes the head of the Judiciary Committee. That could be spectacular.

STATE

Governor - Gavin Newsom. I've watched his career from the moment he was appointed supervisor in the City of San Francisco, to Mayor, to Lt. Governor. Yeah, he's a bit of a greaseball but he's on the right side of just about every social issue out there, which John Cox is NOT. 

Lt. Governor - Eleni Kounalakis. I find her to be the more progressive candidate.

Secretary of State - Alex Padilla. The SoS position has become important as of late, as they can purge voter rolls. For that reason alone we cannot give the keys to Mark Meuser.

Controller -  Betty Yee. Just voting the Democratic line here. Betty Yee is part of the Chinese political machine of San Francisco

Treasurer - Fiona Ma. She's got the financial experience and that's good enough for me.

Attorney General - Xavier Becerra. See my logic for Secretary of State. Good lord Steven Bailey would be a terrible choice.

Insurance Commissioner - Ricardo Lara. Because he's not Steve Poizner. Don't let Poizner's "Independent" tag fool you. He's a conservative through and through and was a terrible commissioner before. He's also said some terrible things about immigrants. Lara is a career politician moving from one job to another because of term limits, but he's not Poizner.

Board of Equalization District 2 - Malia Cohen. You need someone in charge of collecting the taxes who agrees with the taxes. Period.

State Assembly, District 19 - Phil Ting. Another whose career I've watched for a long time now. One of the good guys.

Superintendent of Public Education - Tony Thurmond. More than anything else, the person in this post needs to actually believe in public education as opposed to charter schools. 

Judges - This is all Yes or No on this ballot. I will vote yes on all of them. This keeps Donald Trump from appointing someone else.

San Francisco

I live in a district that does not have an active race for Supervisor, Mayor, or most of the other fun stuff

Assessor - Carmen Chu. She holds the job now and she's doing fine.

Public Defender - Jeff Adachi. He's running unopposed.

Community College Board - Brigette Davila. Why not.

Bart Board, District 8 - Melanie Nutter. She's a transportation planner and Bart is expanding south. 

Board of Equalization - Gabriela Lopez, Faauuga Moliga (love this guys name) and Michelle Parker.

Statewide Propositions

1 - Bonds for Housing Assistance. YES. This is a no brainer.

2 -  Bonds for housing assistance for the Mentally Ill. YES.

3 - Bonds for infrastructure for water. YES.

4 - Bonds for building children's hospitals. YES. If you vote no then fuck you.

5 - I'm not sure what the purpose of this one is other than to allow older people to not pay taxes when they sell their homes. NO.

6 - Eliminates certain taxes that are presently being used to fund road and infrastructure repairs. If you vote yes on this one then fuck you. NO.

7 - Changing Daylight Savings Time. This bill actually does nothing. It only allows us to change Daylight Savings time by 2/3 majority in the legislature IF the Federal Government changes it. Kinda pointless bill. NO.

8 - Capping charges on Kidney dialysis centers. I'll be honest with you, I don't know why the hell this is being decided by the voters. This should be in the hands of the legislature or the Insurance Commissioner. But here we are. I think the idea is a good one, but it needs tweaking. But I can't bring myself to vote against it - because that's not good enough. YES.

9 - There is no Prop 9.

10 - Repealing Costa-Hawkins. Basically what this one does is repeals limitations placed on rent control and allows local municipalities to have control over rent control again. One side calls it "the rent is too damned high" initiative and the other says "it makes a bad problem worse". Thing is, they're both wrong. For one thing it does nothing to decrease rents - it just can help to keep rent from going higher. But the "bad problem even worse" part has nothing to do with rents, but with available investment capital. If this passes investment in new construction will become more scarce for a little bit, but then people will adjust their models and investment will start up again. But again, it can help keep rents from going higher. YES.

11 - Pay for EMTs and Ambulance workers while they are on call during their down time. Everyone wants this one. YES.

12 - Looks like it makes Free-range kinda mandatory for some animals farmed or food. Hey, it's California. YES.

Local Propositions

A - Earthquake safety Bonds. YES. Think about where we live. Duh.

B - Right to Privacy. I have no idea why this is on the ballot. I'm not sure it even does anything. YES.

C - Business taxes to fund homeless services. It's a decent idea - it's not a huge tax and the biggest employer in the city supports it (Salesforce). It looks like the big argument against it is that the taxes raised would be more money than many important services in the city. That said, housing costs an awful lot in this city. So it's an apples to oranges kind of thing. Bottom line, this fund also helps low-income people how have housing not lose it. So... YES.

D - Tax on Cannabis. YES. You wanna smoke it? Pay for it. It ain't a big tax - deal with it.

E - Allocation of Hotel tax for Arts and Cultural purposes. It just sets aside moneys already in hand for arts purposes. While people can argue about whether or not this is a good allocation of the moneys the real question for me is does San Francisco want to be known as a city that supports the arts. YES. 

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