We have federal and state laws which exist to prevent a government’s awarding of resources to groups of people based on race, gender or ethnicity, in terms of employment, contracts and education. But this is precisely what The Plan aims to do.
My friends have heard me tell more times than they care to remember about the city’s increasing resemblance to George Orwell’s Animal Farm ever since San Francisco voters decided to give up one of the most significant portions of their hard won franchises by voting for district election of supervisors.
Color-coded maps showing the distribution of voters on key election issues, November 2022. Maps by Chris Arvin.
The November 2022 election is over. Now comes the easy part – analyzing the results. I’ll add my voice to the chorus of those trying to make sense of voter sentiment in the last contest of an election-filled year.
After reading the October issues of the Richmond Review and Sunset Beacon newspapers and seeing multiple columnists sharing their voting recommendations that seem to skew to the right, I asked the editor if I could submit a progressive’s point of view of the issues. Thankfully, he was open to sharing my perspective.
The City’s political clubs offer the average citizen an opportunity to engage with San Francisco’s often-lively elections. The 35-year-old Richmond District Democratic Club is among the oldest and most respected of these clubs. Before every election, candidates and representatives for ballot propositions make their case to club membership, hoping to earn a coveted endorsement.
Progressives are on the far left ideological spectrum, bordering on socialism where city policy dictates what’s best for everyone and it’s their way or the highway. The progressives got organized in the late ’90s and took control of the DCCC, which gives the official endorsements for Democratic Party and supplies money to its candidates and propositions. That, coupled with district elections and the abomination that is ranked-choice voting, gave us what we have – a mayor and a majority of supervisors who couldn’t find their way out of a corn maze.
It is time for new, big, bold ideas to solve the issues that have only gotten worse while worn out, old ideas fail again and again. We need to start thinking outside of four-year electoral terms and look to real long-term solutions and root causes.
The California legislature adjourned Sept. 30, but the condescending SF Board of Supervisors reconvened after Labor Day, ready to repudiate good government at taxpayer expense and act imperialistically with its six-figure annual salary plus pension and medical benefits.
While there are two similar-sounding housing measures on San Francisco’s November 8 ballot – Propositions D and E – only one of them will make it faster and easier to build more affordable homes and that’s Prop D: Affordable Homes Now.
Prop. H is a socialist power grab, as Mayor London Breed calls it. It’s undemocratic (actually, it’s anti-democratic), as one of its main features is to cancel elections for mayor, district attorney, sheriff, city attorney and city treasurer a year from now.
Today we are reaping what was sown when Gavin Newsom became mayor. Newsom appointed Mark Buell to run the Rec. and Park Commission and Phil Ginsburg to head the RPD.
Political cartoon by Ralph Lane. “What Could Happen,” or “The Downside of Octogenarian Job Security”
It was a bittersweet victory because of the election of Donald Trump and the four years of havoc that ensued, but it was that conversation and many others that led to the formation of Richmond District Rising (RDR).
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 