Election Slate for November 5, 2024

Dear Friends,

Each election I prepare a slate card for my friends so we can debate how to vote here in San Francisco (and beyond). Here’s what I have based on various organizational endorsements and various discussion with local activists… I’d love your input! (Thanks especially to Ben.)

In solidarity,

Stardust

PS: Life under late-stage corporate-welfare capitalism and billionaire-choose-all “democracy” can be discouraging. Please remember that there are other ways to change society than just the elections.


Federal

President and Vice President: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz (if you want to go third-party in Cali, that’s fine… just please NOT Robert F. Kennedy and NOT in a swing state, thanks!)

U.S. Senator (term ending January 3, 2031): Adam Schiff
U.S. Senator (remainder of term ending January 3, 2025): Adam Schiff

U.S. Representative, District 11: no vote (as protest against Pelosi who will get elected anyway… yes I know some of you support Pelosi)

California State

State Senator, District 11: Scott Wiener (lots of problems with the Wiener, but better than the alternative)
State Assembly Member, District 17: Matt Haney (also not my favorite, but better than the alternative, sigh)

Schools

Member, Board of Education (no more than four):
Matt Alexander, Virginia Cheung, Jaime Huling, Laurance Lem Lee

Trustee, Community College Board (no more than four):
Alan Wong (yes, ONLY Alan Wong, no others, sigh)

District

BART Board of Directors: Edward Wright

San Francisco City and County

Mayor: Aaron Peskin (yes, ONLY Peskin — avoid inexperienced candidates like Lurie and billionaire-funded candidates like Lurie, non-compassionate somewhat corrupt mayors like Breed, and SF conservatives like Farrell… for some policy positions and a survey you can take to see which candidate best matches your views, see
https://www.sfchronicle.com/election/article/sf-mayoral-candidates-policy-issues-19847216.php )

Member, Board of Supervisors, District 1: Connie Chan
Member, Board of Supervisors, District 3: Sharon Lai, Moe Jamil
Member, Board of Supervisors, District 5: Dean Preston
Member, Board of Supervisors, District 7: Myrna Melgar
Member, Board of Supervisors, District 9: Jackie Fielder, Roberto Hernandez (NOT Trevor Chandler, well-funded Republicanish candidate)
Member, Board of Supervisors, District 11: Chayanne Chen, Ernest “EJ” Jones

City Attorney: leave blank (Chiu will win despite my disapproval)
District Attorney: Ryan Khojasteh
Sheriff: leave blank (Miyamoto will win)
Treasurer: José Cisneros

California State Propositions

Proposition 2: Yes (bonds for schools)
Proposition 3: Yes (protect right to marry regardless of race or sex)
Proposition 4: Yes (protect water and land, prevent wildfires)
Proposition 5: Yes (allow local bonds for affordable housing)
Proposition 6: Yes (remove prison slavery from state constitution)
Proposition 32: Yes (raise minimum wage)
Proposition 33: Yes (help low-income renters by allowing cities to pass or strengthen rent control laws without state prohibitions, repeal Cost-Hawkins, please don’t fall for SPUR and other realtor and massive property owner opposition to this measure)
Proposition 34: No (billionaire corporate landlords seeking revenge against AIDS Healthcare Foundation)
Proposition 35: Yes (support Medi-Cal)
Proposition 36: No (don’t restart the drug war)

San Francisco Propositions

Proposition A: Yes (improve school safety and accessibility)
Proposition B: Yes (shelters, healthcare facilities, and public safety improvements)
Proposition C: Yes (inspector general to investigate and prevent corruption we’ve had here in San Francisco)
Proposition D: No (limits # of commissions increasing mayoral and police chief authority)
Proposition E: Yes (taskforce to improve operations of city commissions)
Proposition F: No (reduces police department reporting and offers incentives to delay retirement)
Proposition G: Yes (rental subsidies for extremely low-income seniors, families, and disabled persons)
Proposition H: No (earlier higher pension benefits for firefighters)
Proposition I: Yes (pension benefits for registered nurses and 911 operators)
Proposition J: Yes (effective funding for children, youth, and families)
Proposition K: Yes (Upper Great Highway at Ocean Beach closed to private vehicles as open recreation space)
Proposition L: Yes (tax Uber, Lyft, Waymo, et al, to support city mass transit)
Proposition M: No (some parts of it are good, but it would destroy Prop L if passed)
Proposition N: No (good idea, but unfunded, Board of Supervisors should handle it without proposition)
Proposition O: Yes (guarantee reproductive freedom)

Updates will appear here as available from your comments and other sources.


Reading Mary Wollstonecraft

I’m reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Although often addressing the concept of reason, the essay frequently resorts to religion, which I suppose is to be expected for a document written in the 18th century. Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as a founder of feminism, still displays many of the biases of an upper-class person at the center of the dominant empire of the day. However, I still found many of Wollstonecraft’s pronouncements compelling.

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie, c. 1797

For example, I very much appreciated the following comments on education:

To prevent any misconstruction, I must add, that I do not believe that a private education can work the wonders which some sanguine writers have attributed to it. Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then fairly be inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education.… Consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as well render it independent. In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. This was Rousseau’s opinion respecting men; I extend it to women, and confidently assert that they have been drawn out of their sphere by false refinement, and not by an endeavor to acquire masculine qualities.

Perceiving the “stream of popular opinion” that biases the education of a given era is much easier when one lives during another time. Reading Wollstonecraft causes me wonder what biases of my own education I am not able to perceive. Which catechisms do I feel obliged to insert in my writing to make it acceptable to the palate of my present–day readers?

I also appreciated Wollstonecraft’s comments on love, friendship, and marriage:

Love, from it’s very nature, must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant, would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone, or the grand panacea; and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious, to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship. It has been well said, by a shrewd satirist, ‘that rare as true love is, true friendship is still rarer’.

This is an obvious truth, and, the cause not lying deep, will not elude a slight glance of inquiry.

Love, the common passion, in which chance and sensation take place of choice and reason, is, in some degree, felt by the mass of mankind; for it is not necessary to speak, at present, of the emotions that rise above or sink below love. This passion, naturally increased by suspense and difficulties, draws the mind out of its accustomed state, and exalts the affections; but the security of marriage allowing the fever of love to subside, a healthy temperature is thought insipid only by those who have not sufficient intellect to substitute the calm tenderness of friendship, the confidence of respect, instead of blind admiration, and the sensual emotions of fondness.

This is, must be, the course of nature. Friendship or indifference inevitably succeeds love.…

In my experience, friendship may succeed love, which gives me hope for the fulfillment in a long–term marriage.

Wollstonecraft displays some understanding of the folly and destruction wrought by the upper classes in the following passage:

Birth, riches, and every extrinsic advantage that exalt a man above his fellows, without any mental exertion, sink him in reality below them. In proportion to this weakness, he is played upon by designing men, till the bloated monster has lost all traces of humanity. And that tribes of men, like flocks of sheep, should quietly follow such a leader, is a solecism that only a desire of present enjoyment and narrowness of understanding can solve. Educated in slavish dependence, and enervated by luxury and sloth, where shall we find men who will stand forth to assert the rights of man, or claim the privilege of moral beings, who should have but one road to excellence? Slavery to monarchs in ministers, which the world will be long in freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished.

Let not men then in the pride of power, use the same arguments that tyrannic kings and venal ministers have used, and fallaciously assert that women ought to be subjected because she has always been so. But, when man, governed by reasonable laws, enjoys his natural freedom, let him despise woman, if she do not share it with him; and, till that glorious period arrives, in descanting on the folly of the sex, let him not overlook his own.

Words of this 18th-century prophet bring to mind the folly, the excesses, and the destructive force of the Trumps and the Musks, the deranged politicos and the disconnected billionaire class, seemingly focused on the subjugation not only of women but of labor, the working and middle classes, disabled, and queer folk, and on the destruction of the environment, resting their hopes on escape to their gated communities, on their underground shelters, or on terraforming other planets.

Election Slate for November 8, 2022

Dear Friends,

Each election I prepare a slate card for my friends so we can debate how to vote here in San Francisco (and beyond). Here’s what I have so far, based on the ballot I received in the mail, various organizational endorsements, and various discussion with local activists… I’d love your input! (Thanks to Ben, Ruth, and Andy for their input.)

It’s in order as it appears on my ballot.

Election Day is just around the corner on this coming Tuesday… please do vote!

In solidarity,

Stardust

PS: Life under late-stage corporate-welfare capitalism and billionaire-choose-all “democracy” can be discouraging. Please remember that there are other ways to change society than just the elections.
——-
California State Offices

Governor    no endorsement
Lieutenant Governor    no endorsement
Secretary of State    Shirley Weber
Controller    no endorsement
Treasurer    no endorsement
Attorney General    Rob Bonta
Insurance Commissioner    no endorsement
Board of Equalization 2    Sally J. Lieber

Federal Offices

U.S. Senator    Alex Padilla
U.S. Senator (remainder)    Alex Padilla
US Representative 11    no endorsement

California State Offices (cont.)

State Assembly 17    David Campos
State Assembly 19    Phil Ting
All the Justices    Yes
Superintendent of Public Instruction    Tony Thurmond

City and County Offices

Member, Board of Education (no more than 3)    Alida Fisher, Gabriela López, Lisa Weissman-Ward
Member, Community College Board, term ending 1/8/27 (no more than 3)    Susan Solomon, Anita Martinez, Vick Chung
Member, Community College Board, term ending 1/8/25 (vote for one)    Adolfo Velasquez
Assessor-Recorder    Joaqúin Torres
District Attorney    John Hamasaki (not Brooke Jenkins!)
Public Defender    Mano Raju

State Propositions

Proposition 1   yes  
Proposition 26    no
Proposition 27    no
Proposition 28    yes
Proposition 29    yes
Proposition 30    yes
Proposition 31   no

City and County Propositions

Proposition A    Yes
Proposition B    Yes
Proposition C    Yes
Proposition D    No
Proposition E    Yes
Proposition F    Yes
Proposition G    Yes
Proposition H    Yes
Proposition I    No
Proposition J    Yes
Proposition K    (removed)
Proposition L    Yes
Proposition M    Yes
Proposition N    Yes
Proposition O    Yes
——-

Garage Sale on August 13, 2022

Click on image to view larger size.

Not yet pictured are two backpacks, some books, as well as an artsy ceramic chess set.

The Grand CD Giveaway

Please have a look at these CDs to see if you’d like any of them.

Drop me an email with your list if you do.

I’ll be giving them away first-come, first-served with priority to those who can pick them up from my place in San Francisco.

They are in alphabetical order by the first name of the artist or band name excluding the word “the” at the beginning. You can click on the pictures and/or expand your browser view to enlarge the CD label text as needed.

A-D–

D-H–

H-M–

M-R–

R-W–

Election Slate for June 7, 2022

Dear Friends,

Each election I prepare a slate card for my friends so we can debate how to vote here in San Francisco (and beyond). Here’s what I have so far, based on the ballot I received in the mail, various organizational endorsements, and an online discussion with local activists… I’d love your input! (Thanks to Andy and Laurel for their input.)

It’s in order as it appears on my ballot.

At the end, I’ve included links as to why a “No on H!” vote is so important this time around.

Election Day is just around the corner on this coming Tuesday… please do vote!

In solidarity,
Stardust
——-
California State Offices

Governor    Luis Rodriguez
Lieutenant Governor    Mohammad Arif
Secretary of State    Shirley Weber
Controller    Ron Galperin
Treasurer    Meghann Adams
Attorney General    Rob Bonta
Insurance Commissioner    Nathalie Hrizi
Board of Equalization 2    Sally Lieber

Federal Offices

U.S. Senator    Alex Padilla
U.S. Senator (remainder)    Alex Padilla
US Representative 11    None

California State Offices (cont.)

State Assembly 17    Campos
State Assembly 19    Ting
Superintendent of Public Instruction    Marco Amaral

City and County Offices

City Attorney    None

City and County Propositions

Proposition A    Yes
Proposition B    Yes
Proposition C    Yes
Proposition D    No
Proposition E    Yes
Proposition F    Yes
Proposition G    Yes
Proposition H    No

For more information, check out some of these links–

https://www.theleaguesf.org/https://www.theleaguesf.org

https://www.sfbg.com/2022/05/09/endorsements-chesa-boudin-june-7-san-francisco-election/

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/03/vc-lives-matter-silicon-valley-investors-want-to-oust-san-franciscos-reformist-da/

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2022/04/san-francisco-crime-wave-media-public-defender-chesa-boudin/

https://www.boudinfacts.com