We face another election and, as always, I am here to inform you on the proposals on your ballots – not so many this March, but come November, there will be a deluge. (In the presidential primary, vote Warren! And sign up here if you want to get email alerts to future updates like this.)…
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Why Warren
I dearly want Elizabeth Warren to become President. Ideally, I would be less emotionally invested. Our political culture focuses too much on Presidents, too little on movements. A progressive Democratic movement of regular people and non-famous politicians is what will flip statehouses, build unions, and campaign for new protections; victory at the federal level will…
Ballot recommendations, Nov. 2018: Oakland and area
Thank you for continuing to read my ballot writeups. See my statewide recommendations for Props 1-12 in my previous post here. My measure discussions for Oakland can be briefer, because a guiding principle unifies most of them. As I introduced my last post: I think most of my readers would now accept that we are…
Ballot recommendations, Nov. 2018: Statewide
I usually write up my recommendations for California ballot measures assuming intelligence but little context on the part of my audience. When measures increase taxes to fund government programs, I lay out, step by step, the case that these are important social priorities that need more public investment. The events of the last two years…
Ballot recommendations: Oakland/Alameda County, June 2018
Here are my recommendations on the ballot measures this June 5 that people in Oakland and Alameda County will be voting on – including the Bay Area-wide Regional Measure 3. Please vote, and find the official voter guide here. A summary of my local and statewide recommendations (which were in the last post): Measure number/description Jurisdiction…
Ballot measure recommendations: Statewide, June 2018
The statewide ballot measures up in June 2018 are sedate and understated by comparison with November 2016, but there are some stinkers hidden among them.As usual, I offer dual recommendations for you to consider – one recommending a “yes” for anything with objective benefit (“utilitarian”), the second also weighing whether it needed to be a ballot measure…
What’s the Deal with Ranked-Choice Voting in the Bay
The cities of Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Leandro all use the new method of Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) to elect most of their city officials. But in my experience, even if you live in one of those places, you likely have only a rough handle of how that specific system works. Which is a…
Knowing and Fighting the American Health Care Act
I’m writing this for people who want to know with the ACA (Obamacare) repeal: What on earth is going on? How much trouble are we really in? And is there anything I can do about it? Fundamentally, of course, nobody really knows what’s going on – it’s all a blur of Republicans and meat. And…
Local ballot initiatives for Oaklanders, analyses
I am concluding my election writing with analyses and recommendations on local measures on the ballot for Oaklanders. In this case, our measures are those being voted on in the city itself, Oakland Unified School District, Alameda County, the AC Transit District (buses), and the BART District. I am going from biggest areas (BART) to…
Cheat sheet: Statewide and local proposition recommendations
Since I know I took up a lot of space with all my Important Thoughts™ on the statewide ballot measures (part 1, part 2), here are all my recommendations in handy tabulated form – with internal links, even, so you can jump to specific ones. Again, the “utilitarian” recommendation is trying to answer whether the…