Disinfo Rehab

San Francisco loves to pride itself on being the "leader" on all sorts of issues. Problem is, its "leaders" come up short. We say we ban plastic bags - but we don't because every liquor store in town is using plastic bags. We claim to be for all sorts of Big Important Non Binding Resolution on Big Issues, but of course, no one's listening because no one cares.

Today I propose some tough new laws that would make San Francisco in the vanguard of something we can all agree on - the end of that massive flood of dead tree mail full of hysterical BS that infects our mailbox every election year.

One of the main reasons you get so much of this junk is because….you're paying for it. Yes, that's right, you the San Francisco taxpayer were funding that flood of crap in your mailbox. That's because some do-gooders decided it's better if you pay for it, instead of those mean ol' "special interests."

Instead, the mean ol' special interests go ahead and fund their own campaigns, free of any interference from said candidates. This is better, how?

It's time for the citizens of San Francisco to ask our leaders to do better, and to set a high standard for taxpayer funded campaigns. That's why it's time San Francisco institute strict conditions on the use of tax cash for political communications.

Let's call it the San Francisco "Truth or Consequences in Taxpayer Financed Political Advertising " Law. And unlike some non-binding resolution, this will be something that has some consequences. Break the law? You pay the taxpayers back the cash - with interest.

Key Provisions would include:

-Telling the Truth: Any campaign mailer, online ad, TV ad, must file within 24 hours all the research detailing the claims in any ad. Said filing would be posted online within 24 hours for voters to review. If it's not filed or the campaign is found to be lying, they must refund the taxpayers the cost of said mailer. With interest. (For those that can't get online, print copies would be made available at all public libraries).

-Carbon Neutral footprint: this means ONLY using post consumer recycled paper, ONLY using organic inks, and all other means including eliminating gas-driven delivery, and so on. If that means direct drops to carriers, well that's life in the world of climate change, kids. This also means using local printers to do said work, since it's just San Francisco and it's not like anyone's sending mail to Vallejo or Los Angeles, so there's no reason they can't print locally at locally owned businesses.

-Tax-financed campaigns would also be required to file daily reports of campaign contributions from private sources. Instead of quarterly reports that are manipulated by campaigns, and making them hard to find online, campaigns would send in a list with copies of all checks (minus information that could lead to fraud) and said information would be posted online, within 24 hours for voter review.

And no one say it can't be done, this is where Google, eBay, Yahoo, Intel and a whole host of companies come from, so outsource it to someone from the second decade of the 21st century to do it, not some fools at the City who would just boondoggle it.

This is just a rough draft, and certainly not a set in stone policy. Obviously any taxpayer funded TV, radio, robocall or online ad would fall under the same general guidelines, etc. But I don't think it's unreasonable for us to ask the "big talkers" to stop talking, and start putting their alleged beliefs into practice.

It is time for us to ask more of those who are using taxpayer money to kill trees and send out political advertising. We've had enough of screaming headlines and distortions of facts from the people claiming to be "clean money" candidates. It's time for them to take the "clean money" - but stop playing dirty with the voters.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It never ceases to amaze me how blatant political spin can be passed off as "information," if you just make sure to quote spinners on all sides. That doesn't make what they're saying any more true - it just makes it seem that way.

Today, the Chronicle had yet another Ranked Choice Voting/Instant Runoff Voting* post-mortem, this time once again repeating the mantra of "RCV Will Make Candidates Nice and Coalition Blah Blah BLAH" all over again. In particular we hear how this is somehow making campaigns play nicer, and encourage "coalition building" amongst candidates, whatever THAT means.

Now, we've had this magical system for 6 years in San Francisco. Looking back at all the contested supervisorial races, could anyone argue that they got less hit mail from candidates and independent expenditures in the last six years? No. How about candidates doing the "buddy buddy system" to get elected? Well the only time we had that was in 2004 in District 5, and every single candidate that tried the buddy system got their asses kicked pretty seriously by the top two vote getters. The gimmicky joint mailers and so on didn't work.

Did we get more "liberals" elected in San Francisco? Did we have any sure losers somehow magically make their way to the top? Not really - most citywide elections since RCV have been uncontested, or in the case of Newsom's re-election, it was Newsom up against a pack of no-names that weren't serious about winning.

Turnout hasn't changed because of RCV either - it's driven primarily by what kind of elections are on the ballot. People turned out in higher numbers in 2008 to vote in the presidential election - not to vote for City Supervisor. Get Real.

The one thing that has changed is that at least at a district level, candidates should have a strategy to ID their supporters and get them to the polls, but they also need to look at the ones not ID'd as supporters and somehow convince them to mark them in the #2 spot when they vote. This is not an easy thing to explain to people, and there's no way to really track it either, but it's a nice safety net. Other than that, campaigns will have to fight a lot harder, a lot faster, because there is no more runoff to shake out the detritus - it's all or nothing on Election Day.

Whereas in the past, a runoff meant that the final two would have to formally ask for support from losing candidates, be held responsible for whatever stunts they pulled in the general election, and would have a one-on-one debate with their opponent (vs. the cast of 1000s we got in some districts), giving the public a chance to get a better look. True, turnout in a December election wasn't great, but they could have just as easily had the election just a few weeks later.

By the way, that old saw about "saving money" is pure bullshit, because the people who push this kind of thing also push for huge increases in government spending in other areas. Also, I don't like the idea of "democracy on the cheap" - we don't skimp when we're doing elections in Iraq - why should we here?

I'll be writing more as I interview more people and try and come up with something that's a bit more than just refuting the ping pong reporting that is considered "analysis" in San Francisco.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's post election time, and I'm tossing out these Deep Thoughts for fun...let's see which one wigs people out the most....

It's assumed that Rep. John Boehner is going to be Speaker of the House under Republican rule. That's because he's been the Minority Leader so far, and it's assumed he'll be the Speaker.

The thing is, he doesn't have to be. In fact, if these Tea Party people would read the Constitution they apparently cherish, they'd realize anyone can serve as Speaker, member of Congress or not. They only have to have the same eligibility requirements (naturalized citizen, 25, etc.) It just has to be the vote of the majority of members of Congress.

So if Tea Baggers wanted say, Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin (!) to be their Speaker, if they could convince a majority of their colleagues to do this, well, it'd be perfectly legal. Likely to happen? No. Could it happen? Absolutely.

It'd at least be a chance for these highly paid windbags to actually do something for the country instead of just talking all the time. It'd be interesting to say the least to see them have to give up talk show money, endorsement money, and speaking fees to sit there and figure out House rules to pass bills. But it would also be a chance to see if the Tea Party folks really believe what they say, or if they just wanted the job for the big pay increase and the big staffs and offices.

I'm guessing that these firebrands of the right will be too busy enjoying the perks of office and the benefits of being able to raise Big Money in DC to really care one way or the other, and will be too busy making sure to buy that new house in the DC suburbs. After all, one can't be living in a shanty when voting against Government Spending, right?

Posted by Greg Dewar at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The election results are in and the winners are.....well we don't know yet. We may not know for several weeks as mail ballots are counted and the tedious so-called Instant Runoff Voting process begins. But we do know this - there are many close elections, but due to the fact we're not having a runoff, and we're using IRV, some weird things are happening.

In District 10, we have a situation where the top vote getter on election day got 1200 or so votes and may be on the way to the Board of Supervisors, out of only 10,000 votes cast. (Hey wait, wasn't IRV supposed to increase turnout?). That's rather scary - when you consider that others had to get many more votes than that to also serve. We'll do the IRV counts going through the many, many loser candidates who got a handful of votes, and of course this all assumes people voted "1 2 3" (which they didn't), and in the end, God knows what the result will be. After a campaign that had a mob of candidates making 1 minute statements into a microphone, the voters really don't know who or what they're ending up with.

In District 8, we had higher turnout and a spirited contest between several well-funded campaigns. However, we also had some of the most negative and deceptive campaigning mailers produced (hey wait, wasn't IRV supposed to make this more "positive?") and we won't have a traditional runoff where candidates running such shamelessly negative campaigns would have been held accountable - and we'd have a clear choice and better debates.

And so on. The endless mess in District 6, which featured some of the nastiest campaigning, the shady "independent expenditures" and a distinct lack of disclosure on the part of certain candidates has led to a situation where any candidate elected in the IRV debacle is not going to have a clear mandate, or again, be held accountable to their statements.

Traditional runoff campaigns would provide voters a chance to make their choices clearly and force candidates to be more accountable for their general election campaigns. Also, voters would have had more time to focus on the local elections, free of the distractions of eMeg and Uncle Jerry and the endless list of stupid ballot measures that clutter the ballot in November. Plus, after a Giants season like this, voters would be more likely to pay attention than they could when having Giants Fever in October.

The promises of IRV have not materialized. They have not saved money. They have not rigged the elections for progressives. They have not made the campaigns "more positive." They have not resulted in more cooperation amongst the candidates. The second and third place endorsements are wankery for political hacks. And more money was spent on elections locally than ever before.

Time to hit the reset button, and take this out-of-town sponsored lab experiment and dump it in the recycle bin of history, kids.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)