Tag Archives: california

Call For Entries: Disinfo Rehab Mail Archive – June 2008 Primary Edition!

It’s that time of year again, when people decimate entire forests so that they may flood your mailbox with endless amounts of political mail. This June we’ve got all sorts of mayhem on the ballot, what with the Nation/Leno/Migden rage-a-thon in full swing, and an assortment of those ballot measures folks just love to put on the ballot, and assorted other electoral detritus and term-limited open primaries that makes San Francisco (and Bay Area) politics so much fun.
As always I don’t always get the latest and greatest political mail, or at the very least tend to only get certain pieces targeted to westside Democratic voters. So, if you get some particularly egregious piece of political mail, or if you wanna show off your mad mail skillz, or if you really would like to help me lead the charge in debunking politicos and their spin, feel free to send me either a) a pdf or JPEG of said mail or b) email me and let me know what you have and we’ll make arrangements to either have you mail it in or I’ll pick it up.
Most mainstream media outlets can debunk tv commercials rather easily, since they either end up on YouTube, the candidates’ websites, or can record them off of TV.
Mail, however, does not usually get noticed as easily, and passes “under the radar” and into the voters’ mailboxes. By publicizing what campaigns are doing, and discussing the tactics used to convince you, the voter, of what to do, we can all get a better understanding of what’s being said out there.
Check out our 2006 archive and our 2007 archive, and let the fun begin!
PS: For more information on how direct mail is created, check out this clip of my good friend (and super smart consultant) Jim Spencer, who appeared on the Daily Show a while back.
PS2: If you’re a support of Speaker Pelosi and like Our Fair City, I’ve been working on a new blog that’s in the embryonic stages in support of Our Speaker and City. I’m sick of people bashing our City like it’s some hippie dippie Disneyland, and bashing Nancy Pelosi. If you have suggestions or would like to help, please feel free to drop me a line.

Yes, San Franciscans, There IS an Election on April 8th! Vote for Jackie!

Many people don’t realize that there’s an honest to goodness Special Election on April 8th. There’s been some campaign activity, to be sure, but even with all the nice pieces of mail from the Elections Department, et al, it’s easy to forget. Heck, I forgot to apply for an absentee ballot this time around, and now have to go vote in person!
As I noted on my way more popular blog on all things MUNI, right now we don’t have anyone in Congress representing the 12th CD (which includes part of San Francisco and San Mateo County) due to the death of longtime Rep. Tom Lantos. Now, if 50%+1 of the good people of the 12th CD vote for Jackie Speier, we can send her to Congress immediately (she doesn’t have to pass “GO” and doesn’t need to collect $200), and we can have one of the most effective members of the Legislature (yes, we’ve had a few and she was one of them) be representing us on some pretty important issues right now.
If, however, we don’t vote, and she doesn’t make the threshold, there’ll be a “Special General” election, that will coincide with the June Primary. However, she’ll win that one for sure, but we will not have anyone in Congress representing us. Besides, put it to you another way – how many of the current crop of candidates kicked ass on privacy issues and have a train named after them? Hint: Just one, and isn’t some hippie-dippie Green candidate.
Today (Sunday, April 6th) there’s an event for Jackie at the Machinists Hall down in Burlingame. For a mere $10 donation, you can enjoy a fine spaghetti dinner and meet the candidate and her many supporters. It’s an easy commute for those of you in San Francisco – you can take BART or Caltrain to Millbrae, and walk a few blocks to the union hall.
Whatever you do today, be sure to vote on April 8th! We can all talk big in San Francisco, but now it’s time to do something about all that big talk, and send an effective legislator to Congress who can shake things up. Go Jackie!

State Lawmaker Wants to Tax Facebook Gifts, and iTunes Music? OMGWTF?

calderon-itunes.jpg
Thank God for term limits, loopholes in term limits, and a perpetual budget “crisis” in Sacramento, for it allows California’s well paid lawmakers to invent new and improved ways to to invent half-assed ideas and “solutions” that just create more problems.
We saw it last year when the state Assembly voted to gut MUNI funding (and funding for every mass transit agency in the state), all the while cooing “green” to the cameras. Today, we have the strange case of Assemblyman Charles Calderon, who’s eager to tax America’s #1 music retailer, iTunes (and apparently all those little dollar gifts on Facebook as well).
To do so, however wants to avoid the 2/3 vote in the Legislature, because well, he’d need some Republicans to vote for it. So instead, he’s trying to get some wording changed in the code that governs sales taxes, which mandate that to levy a sales tax on something, it has to be something tangible, in Our World, as opposed to the virtual world. (i.e. that rubber ducky you bought your high school friend on Facebook should be taxed the same as if you bought one at the dollar store.) The advantage to this back-door approach is that you only need a simple majority to rewrite code language. Clever, but not particularly honest, since the effect would be to, um, levy new taxes on consumers.
First, let’s tackle the politics of this little gem. Ya see, the state of California’s budget system is a joke, hepped up on mandated spending (courtesy of the voters) and mandated debt (all those *@#$! bonds, also voted on by the voters), and the usual Dumb Things Legislators and Governors do. We’ve heard big talk from Gov. Doofinator for years, but after all this time he’s done nothing besides pile on bond debt like crazy. The revolving door of legislators, term limited (thanks, voters!) doesn’t help much either – everyone’s so busy looking ahead to the next job, they really don’t do anything productive to get past the BS and find some honest solutions.

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Crap-tastic Crack Shack Sells for 935,000? Put This On A Billboard And Send It To the Hippies Of The World, Please!

This just in: yet another crap-tastic crack shack has sold in San Francisco for $935,000. SocketSite has been following this one for a while so go there and see pics of this decrepit piece of real estate.
I seriously wonder if we should put this on a billboard, with a pricetag, on billboards that say “Memo to Hippies: The SF of the 60s is dead. Do not come here and expect to rent a room in a big nice house for cheap and live off of handouts. Unless you’re rich enough to buy this crapshack and renovate it to livable standards, please, stay away. Thank You.”
Or something. I mean, at this point, all the housing measures in the world (along with all the ones we’ve passed) don’t seem to mean much if even a craphouse like this is selling for almost a million dollars.
Put another way – how do you build lots of “cheap affordable” housing on super expensive dirt? More importantly, is it really feasible for anyone to build anything that’s not super expensive condos for wealthy childless couples anymore when you have garbage selling for almost a million bucks?