Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Heh
In boredom, I strolled over to check out San Francisco's special election plans. Some interesting things:
The voter's guide has paid arguments.
Proposition D has to do with how they appoint folks to some transit board. It requires that at least one nominee has a physical disability. No one in the arguments seems to consider this particularly interesting, though, so maybe such things are typical.
Prop H bans firearms in San Francisco. Yeah. I'm actually wondering where the uproar is. This is the kind of thing that gets huge attention from certain elements, and I haven't heard squat about it. Very little in The Chron. The San Francisco Chronicle's special election blog doesn't even cover the San Francisco election. Some of the paid arguments in the voter guide against it are pretty funny, though.
"We have a bridge to sell anyone who believes criminals will turn in their handguns."
"If guns were 43 times more likely to kill their owners, hunters and NRA members would be stacked up like cordwood in America's hospitals!"
The SF Republican party goes Godwin:
"One of the first laws enacted by the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazis) was to ban the private ownership of guns. Proposition I would do the same."
Just as a reminder, the proposition we're talking about is Proposition H. I'll get to I in a second.
Think! Daly's Proposition H will:
-Take the rights of residents to defend themselves.
-Leave small business owners vulnerable to criminals.
-Give police the right to search your home.
-Cost the taxpayer money to litigate
-Safer, for thugs to assault you.
The last line would've been harsh, had they got the parallelism right.
There's something more impressive about this measure, though. It doesn't apply to non-residents of San Francisco city/county. In order to make it constitutional, the writers had to allow out-of-towners to bring in their guns. "No, no, officer, I'm a resident of... uh... that city just on the other side of the border."
Prop I has to do with military recruiters in public schools. It's a "declaration of policy." Imagine what impact that would have. If you imagined anything, you imagined wrong.
The argument in favor includes chanting. Yes, chanting, in a written voter's guide. "Money for jobs and education! Bring the troops home now! College not combat!"
Anyway, the college not combat guys didn't even bother dealing with the voters guide beyond the supporting statement. No rebuttal to the opposing statement. No paid arguments.
The rebuttal to the supporting statement is... uh... not very gentle. Read it yourself (p. 90).
The paid opposing arguments all run along the lines of "this will cut off funding for our schools!!!" They are all incorrect, though, because the measure doesn't actually do anything, so schools won't change to be in violation of the Solomon Amendment.
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