Bill Magavern's California & Sacramento ballot recommendations

Once again, it's time for my husband Bill Magavern's ballot recommendations for California and Sacramento. Bill's been sending these out for several years now and has, without trying, created a large demand for them. I frequently get begging, pleading emails from people all over the state (and even California absentee voters out of the country) asking for these recommendations as early as mid-October. I in turn beg Bill for them and he says: give me a break, it's mid-October! So they tend to come a week or two before the election.

Most of you who are reading this know me and Bill personally. For those who don't, Bill Magavern is the senior advocate for Sierra Club California. He is a former director of the Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project and Congress Watch.

He hasn't opined on candidates, so I will a little bit. Although I occasionally veer to the Green Party, I am pretty much planning to vote a straight Democratic line this year (note: I won't vote to re-elect U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, I just have to work too hard to get her to do the right thing especially on the Judiciary Committee).

I'll note that consumer advocate (and personal hero of mine) Harvey Rosenfield, founder of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and architect of the successful insurance reform measure Proposition 103 has endorsed Republican Steve Poizner for State Insurance Commissioner.

I'll also note that while Republican incumbent Secretary of State Bruce McPherson is not the worst Republican on the planet, in my opinion his Democratic opponent State Senator Debra Bowen is perfect for the job of Secretary of State. She is clean. She is smart. She cares deeply about these issues and knows the details really well. She is a person who cares deeply about doing public policy right and she is not a party hack. She's in a tight race and I'd personally like to see everyone give her as much as they can in the next day or two.

Click here to donate to Debra Bowen's campaign on-line.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for:

Bill Magavern's Recommendations:

BALLOT MEASURES, NOVEMBER 2006

CALIFORNIA-WIDE PROPOSITIONS

1-A, NO

This is a bad idea – channel all sales taxes on gasoline to transportation projects, mostly roads. Note that these are sales taxes, not gas taxes. All sales taxes should go to the General Fund, where they can be directed to the greatest needs in a given budget year.

1-B, NO

I’ve wavered on this one, because I do think we need to invest in improved transportation infrastructure. But the price tag is too high, almost $40 billion by the time it’s paid off. We should not borrow from our future when an increase in the gas tax could fund these investments on a pay-as-you-go basis, without paying interest. And not enough of the money would go to public transportation.

1-C, YES

Affordable housing and emergency shelters are badly needed, and appropriate uses of bond funds. There’s also money here for smart growth planning

1-D, YES

Many of our school facilities still are overcrowded or in need of repair, and it’s hard to think of a better public investment than public education.

1-E, YES

I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about it if the Legislature had accompanied this funding with the necessary policy reforms, but we’ve got to get the levees fixed before a Katrina-type flood hits the Central Valley.

83, NO

This was put on the ballot by publicity-seeking politicians, and will waste a lot of money that could be better spent on actually catching sex offenders. The odd thing about this measure, which is sure to pass, is that it will require sex offenders to move out of urban areas and into the rural and exurban areas that are usually represented by the Republicans who are supporting this so they can look tough on crime.

84, YES

This bond would supply needed funds for water quality, parks and land conservation, as previous funding is running out.

85, NO

Sure, it would be great if minors discussed all important life decisions with their parents, but having government require it is not going to make it happen.

86, YES

Taxing cigarettes is a good way to stop teens from ever getting addicted. Plus, the money would go to good causes like children’s health insurance, smoking cessation programs, and emergency rooms. Don’t bother waiting for the Legislature to raise tobacco taxes – it takes a 2/3 vote in each house, and almost every Republican legislator has taken a no-tax-increase pledge. In an interesting controversy, the national NAACP has endorsed this initiative, overruling its California branch.

87, YES

California is the only oil-producing state without an extraction tax, and that tax is a suitable way to fund clean-energy programs. I think the governance could have been structured better, but, again, the tax would never pass the Legislature, so this is our best chance to direct this money to a good cause, instead of boosting the profits of oil companies.

88, NO

As a parent of 2 public-school students, I’m in favor of putting more money into education, but this is the wrong way to do it: a regressive new tax that invades the turf of local government.

89, YES

Clean Money is the reform that makes other reforms possible. It’s already worked in Maine and Arizona, and California badly needs an alternative to dirty-money politics. I see the corrupting influence of campaign contributions all the time in the Capitol. The public funding system envisioned under 89 would allow candidates to run competitive races without being independently wealthy or dependent on the special interests.

90, NO

This is the most dangerous measure on the ballot, because it would create a huge obstacle to planning and land-use protections. Don’t be fooled by the “save your home” rhetoric – the poison pill here is the provision requiring that property owners be compensated for any governmental action that reduces the theoretical value of their property. So a restriction on building in a wetland, for example, or a zoning that prevents your neighbor from putting a nuisance next door to you, would cost local governments so much that they’d probably let the property owner do whatever he wanted (which is what is happening in Oregon after passage of a similar measure).

These recommendations are my personal opinions. You can find a full list of Sierra Club California’s endorsements of candidates and ballot measures at http://www.sierraclubcalifornia.org/elections/index.shtml.

SACRAMENTO COUNTY MEASURES

J and K, YES

I think district elections for school board should make the members more responsive, and more knowledgeable about the community’s needs.

L, YES

SMUD isn’t perfect, but it has lower rates, a cleaner environmental record and more responsive leadership than PG&E. Expanding SMUD into Yolo County will bring that better service to Yolo, while giving Sacramento ratepayers some economies of scale.

Q and R, NO

It’s amazing that so many of our local “leaders” have lined up behind a proposal to raise our sales tax to fund an arena that would not have to be located at the railyard, would not necessarily keep the Kings in town, and would require a contribution of only 10-15% by the wealthy Maloofs – who aren’t even talking to those local leaders. I’m a Kings fan, and would love to see the railyards redeveloped, but putting all the risk on the public and all the profit on the Maloofs is not prudent or fair.

Prop 89 May Hire Sweet Tired Cat

In his weblog today, Dan Weintraub recognizes that the new Prop 89 ad I blogged about yesterday is today the top political ad being viewed on-line--16,000 viewings on YouTube in less 48 hours (10 times more than Bill Clinton's 87 ad). He also suggests that we consider hiring "Sweet Tired Cat" which apparently got a couple few more viewings on YouTube.

Dan, we're working on it. It's been tricky because of how tired the cat is, but given that it's also sweet we have a shot. If we can put it together, can you join a conference call tomorrow with the me, Joe Trippi and the cat?

Seriously though--this video is catching on like wildfire. Bill Hillsman who created the ad said today, "this kind of insurgent internet campaign with an ad like this can amplify the paid media campaign by 1 1/2 to 3 times what you pay for it initially."

Doing the math, this week's internet explosion has turned this from $2 million to a $6 million ad buy--in other words, folks, we're in the game.

People Love Stop the Pounding Ad

Yesterday, the Prop 89 campaign went statewide with a new television ad and today the remarkable ad is the number one rated news video on YouTube. “Stop the Pounding” is the brainchild of Bill Hillsman, who engineered Jesse Ventura’s victory, as well as Ned Lamont’s primary win.

Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Salladay wrote this morning that the new ad "is one of the slickest and most engaging political ads in California right now. Which is ironic, because the ad argues for a halt to the oleaginous, overly simplistic but sometimes engaging political ads that dominate the airwaves during election season."

Watch the Ad:
http://www.89now.org/

Read Salladay’s review:
“Initiative Backers Produce Ad Calling For End To TV Ads”

Please help keep this ad on the air by making a contribution on the campaign’s secure online server:
https://secure.ga1.org/05/cleanmoney

For the latest campaign roundup, see yesterday’s Sacramento Bee:
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/nw/?postId=6960&pageTitle=Proposition+89%3A+Public+financing+measure+an+election+fix+or+a+bigger+mess%3F

This May be the Best Political Ad of the Election!

Reminder: I'm a paid operative right now, communications director for the Proposition 89 Campaign. But I want everyone I know to see this new spot. We’ve got 3 weeks left in the 89 campaign, and despite the opposition’s corporate ed board strategy, our reckoning shows we’re within reach of victory. C.N.A. has produced the perfect TV ad spot which is unique, hilarious, and created by Bill Hillsman, the media genius who vaulted Paul Wellstone and Jesse Ventura to national prominence and has an online cult following.

See the Hillsman Pounding Ad

It's airing starting today in every major media market in California. Please go look at this ad on YouTube and send it to everyone you know.

Please forward the link to everyone on your email lists by noon Tuesday, October 17.

See the Hillsman Pounding Ad

Note: Bill Hillsman is CEO and Chief Creative Officer of North Woods Advertising, a marketing communications and political and public affairs consulting company based in Minneapolis. His work for Paul Wellstone's U.S. Senate campaign won the 1990 Grand EFFIE, awarded by the American Marketing Association for the most effective marketing and advertising campaign of the year. His work for Jesse Ventura's gubernatorial campaign in 1998 and Ralph Nader's presidential campaign in 2000 received many more accolades. Bill has been named one of America's top 100 marketing people and one of the 50 media people in America who most influence our world.

About Time for 89

Hey, you should watch and listen to (and pass around) this great soulful rap song video, About Time for 89, that the California Nurses Association created to show the need to stop political corruption in California and pass Proposition 89. It's on uTube and it's fabulous!

Sara (full disclosure, I am now the Communications Director for Clean Money Now--Yes on 89). For more information go to www.89now.org.

The gay problem in the GOP

In the depths of a campaign haze, I emerge briefly from retirement to post this, my friend David Link's beautifully written and thoughtful piece in the Boston Globe on the Foley scandal's insight into the GOP "gay problem."

By David Link | October 5, 2006

THE TRAGIC OPERA of former congressman Mark Foley is the revenge of don't ask, don't tell.

Foley, a Republican from Florida, resigned Friday after e-mails and instant messages between him and several teenage congressional pages surfaced. The Republican leadership knew that at least one page had gotten e-mails where Foley admired the body of one of the page's friends, and asked the page for a picture of himself, e-mails the page naturally found sick and a bit creepy.

Republican leaders responded to the potential political problem by telling Foley to knock it off. With respect to the larger issue, though, there was no asking or telling. The boy's own revulsion at the obviously inappropriate attention was ignored, not only by Foley's partisan fellows, but by some news outlets that also had seen the e-mails.

If this has a familiar ring, look in the Catholic Church for the bell. Republican leadership was acting like the Catholic hierarchy, which played shell games with men accused of sexually abusing children. And there's a good reason for the similarity. The inability to deal straightforwardly with gay people leads to other kinds of truth-avoidance when things go south. But that's what comes from not wanting to know something, and going out of your way to remain ignorant.

We've come a long way since homosexuals had two basic options: the closet or jail. But a good portion of the electorate, most of them Republican, still seems to long for the good old days when we didn't have to think about ``those people." Both Libertarians and, generally, the Democratic Party have withdrawn their official support for the closet over time. States, too, are seeing what a losing battle this is, and allowing homosexuals to live their lives in conformity with, rather than opposition to, the law.

But that leaves Republicans and the religious right trying to live a 1950s lie in the new millennium. As Foley prepared in 2003 to run for the Senate, newspapers in Florida and elsewhere published stories about his homosexuality. But you'd never hear any of his colleagues saying such a thing. And Foley himself refused to discuss the issue, until his lawyer acknowledged Wednesday that the former congressman is indeed gay.

Being in the closet is hard to pull off without help, and for years Foley was eagerly abetted by his Republican brethren, whose willful blindness is at the heart of the current tragedy. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, majority leader John Boehner, and others in the House leadership are still under the impression that the closet, like Tinkerbell, will continue to live as long as we all believe. And believe, they do -- against all the evidence.

But the number of people who believe in the closet is declining day by day and generation by generation. Hastert and the rest of his cronies are their own victims. The political turmoil they caused for themselves is only just.

But their failure to acknowledge the obvious reality has other victims as well: the boys whom Foley apparently pursued. Some of the messages show some tolerance of Foley's advances, but not much more. This was no one's ``Summer of '42." The healthy disgust in one boy's use of the word ``sick" repeated 13 times seems about right.

But what can one expect from denying grown men -- and women -- a normal, adult sex life? Whether the denial of adult intimacy comes from religious conviction or the ordinary urge toward conformity, people who run away from their sexuality nearly always have to answer to nature somehow. For people who fear abiding and mutual love, the trust and confusion of the young is a godsend. Add to that the perquisites of power, and a degenerate is born.

Fortunately for the arc of justice, the closet ultimately works against itself. Foley's case and the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal are the last screams of the dinosaurs. It took the dinosaurs a long time to finally die off, or evolve into creatures that could continue to survive, and the same will be true of the closet's final supporters. But they will look more and more ridiculous each time that they take pride in holding up the ruins of this particular antiquity while tending to the wounded when the building again collapses.

Like the Catholic Church, the Republican Party in Washington guarantees its own future calamities in its enduring and steadfast habit of pretending that, unlike heterosexuality, homosexuality can be either denied or suppressed.

David Link is a writer and attorney in Sacramento, and a member of the Independent Gay Forum.