November 8 California Election - get scared!
There's an election coming up in California November 8, and most people don't even seem to be aware. I did some outreach the past couple weekends at the Folsom Street Fair and the Castro Street Fair, and a lot of people didn't know about the state propositions. The scariest to me is Prop 73, which is about parental notification about abortion. It includes this definition: "Abortion" means the use of any means to terminate the pregnancy of an unemancipated minor female known to be pregnant with knowledge that the termination with those means will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born. For purposes of this section, "abortion" shall not include the use of any contraceptive drug or device.
Come on -- is that really necessary to have in the California State Constitution?
There's also a bunch of other stuff which Alliance for a Better California is working on. Unfortuntely, they aren't doing anything as a group to oppose prop 73 -- apparently they were worried it might alienate rural or religious types and hurt the chances of defeating the other propositions. So working against prop 73 is The Campaign for Teen Safety.
Also, there's a bunch of stuff on the local San Francisco ballot, the wost of which is prop F, in which the fire department and firefighters union is trying to scare people into thinking their houses would burn down if people don't vote for it. It makes a setaside for the fire budget. There is too much of the SF budget tied up in setasides already -- it's a bad way to figure out how to spend money -- locked in with no flexibility. There have been repeated audits about the wastefulness of the SF Fire Department -- rather than "browning out" stations like they're doing now, they could save money by things like not sending trucks when drunks pass out on Market Street or getting rid of call boxes which only result in false alarms.
Come on -- is that really necessary to have in the California State Constitution?
There's also a bunch of other stuff which Alliance for a Better California is working on. Unfortuntely, they aren't doing anything as a group to oppose prop 73 -- apparently they were worried it might alienate rural or religious types and hurt the chances of defeating the other propositions. So working against prop 73 is The Campaign for Teen Safety.
Also, there's a bunch of stuff on the local San Francisco ballot, the wost of which is prop F, in which the fire department and firefighters union is trying to scare people into thinking their houses would burn down if people don't vote for it. It makes a setaside for the fire budget. There is too much of the SF budget tied up in setasides already -- it's a bad way to figure out how to spend money -- locked in with no flexibility. There have been repeated audits about the wastefulness of the SF Fire Department -- rather than "browning out" stations like they're doing now, they could save money by things like not sending trucks when drunks pass out on Market Street or getting rid of call boxes which only result in false alarms.