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…
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…
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…
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…
Thank you for reading my analyses and recommendations on the California statewide. Read Part 1 (51 through 57, bonds and constitutional amendments) here. In this Part 2, I am moving on to 58 through 67, which are all initiative statutes, items that become part of law, but not the Constitution, and could be amended later…
Once again, I’m attempting to digest and communicate the substance of what propositions are up on the California November ballot, with the detail and contextual perspective I and others would want to see. I explicitly do not impose a neutral or “moderate” viewpoint, but do try to be intellectually honest about pros and cons and…
With the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA) now qualified for the November 2016 ballot in California and renamed to Proposition 64, I see a lot of confusion out there on how, exactly, it would change legal penalties for marijuana. I touched on the the subject in my 6-post blog series, but not in depth.…
This is the 6th and final part of my series on the proposed Control, Regulate, and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act (“the Act”) that will likely reach the California ballot in November 2016. The series started here. Thank you for reading.Final observations: the world the Act brings us closer to. At the bottom of it…
This is part 5 of my series on the proposed Control, Regulate, and Tax Adult Use of Marijuana Act (“the Act”) that will likely reach the California ballot in November 2016. The series started here. Thank you for reading. What the Act does not do:Change DUI rules. Drugged driving will be just as illegal, and there are issues…
I’m going to conclude my spree of ballot-initiative opinions with those in the parts of California I and my friends live in most predominantly – Oakland and San Francisco. Most of these can be dealt with quickly, but the biggest issue, the minimum wage, is on the ballot in both cities, so I’ll bring those…
