Voter Recommendations - Propositions

Sacramento Progressive Alliance.  Voter Recommendations.

Proposition 30	Yes	Temporary funding for education and public services.
Prop. 31	No	State budget reforms/cuts
Prop.32	No	An attack on labor unions by corporate PACs
Prop.33	No	Good driver insurance rate hike
Prop.34	Yes	Ends death penalty
Prop.35	Yes	Curbs human trafficking
Prop. 36	Yes	Revision of 3 strikes law
Prop. 37	Yes	Mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods.
Prop. 38	No recommendation	Pre-K; k-12 school funding. Tax increase.
Prop.39	Yes	Tax increase for out of state business. Closes a corporate tax loophole.
Prop.40	Yes	Approves new Senate Districts

Candidate recommendations will follow. 

Suspending Prop. 98 Would Permanently Rob Billions From Public School Students

By Marty Hittelman
President
California Federation of Teachers

Repealing corporate tax breaks makes more sense

To address the ongoing state budget deficit, the governor and legislative Republicans have proposed suspending Proposition 98, the state’s minimum school funding law, so they can cut several billion additional dollars from school funding. The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) strongly opposes suspending Prop. 98.

The governor and Republicans refuse to provide more state revenues to cover the necessary education programs. Meanwhile, they’ve been busy handing out huge tax breaks to corporations. So, while cutting public school students’ basic education, the governor and his Republican allies have punched huge new loopholes in the state’s budget benefiting a handful of the largest corporations.

California schools have been cut $11 billion in the past year. Suspending Prop. 98 would further drain basic resources from schools that have already been forced to increase class sizes, cut programs critical to student learning, cancel bus routes and eliminate summer school programs, as well as librarians, counselors and arts and music classes.

Educating our kids is investing in our future. Closing corporate tax loopholes that benefit only a handful of the largest corporations is a common-sense step to take. California can’t afford tax breaks for big corporations while our kids are neglected.

The wealthiest people in California and large corporations, after years of tax reductions, could afford more taxes to support the well being of the entire population. CFT proposes to increase state revenues with fair tax policies for individuals and businesses that can afford it.

Suspending Prop. 98 would devastate public education

Statewide, education program reductions have resulted in layoff notices to 25,000 certificated and 10,000 classified. Millions of dollars have been taken from each K-12 school district, and will result in class sizes increasing by as much as 35%.

In community colleges and universities, students will lose classes, contingent faculty and support personnel will be laid off, and student costs will rise (proposed quadrupled tuition), along with the time necessary to graduate.

California already underfunds education and other services

California ranks 47th in the nation in K-12 per-pupil spending. California community colleges rank 45th in the nation in per pupil spending. California ranks 48th in the nation in state employees per resident. When the governor and the Republicans say, “We have a spending problem,” they are dead wrong. California is under-funding education. California’s K-12 public schools educate more than 6.3 million kids. The community colleges serve 2.5 million adults. These are the largest systems of public education in the country. Failure to adequately fund them will severely impact the state’s future.

Another way: tax fairness to preserve and improve education and other services

California is the richest state in the richest country on earth. The problem is not that we don’t have the money. The problem is one of priorities, and that the money is in the wrong pockets. The top 1% of wealth holders owns 34% of the wealth. Their tax rates today are lower than they used to be. In 1993 the highest tax bracket in the California was 11% of income; today it is 9.3%. The same is true for corporations. In 1980 California corporations contributed nearly 15% of the state budget; today they pay 11%. The Legislature has enacted more than $12 billion in tax cuts for individuals, families and businesses over the past 15 years. It is time to reverse this trend so we can continue to provide necessary services to Californians. We need to address the state’s structural budget problem, with progressive tax policies that largely do not adversely affect the average Californian.

Repeal corporate tax loopholes put in place during last year’s state budget deal would save more than $2.5 billion a year. That’s preferable to suspending Prop. 98 and cutting billions from public education. Our kids get only one chance at their youth and their education.

Close loopholes, not schools!

Marty Hittelman, a community college math professor from Los Angeles, is the President of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) which is a member of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The CFT represents faculty and other school employees in public and private schools and colleges, from early childhood through higher education in California.

Posted on July 15, 2009

Governor proposes suspending Prop. 98

"Not once in the two decades since California's Proposition 98 school-funding formula became law have lawmakers bucked education groups to suspend it – so Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's push to do so has rocked the Capitol.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans are rushing to embrace the idea, but with tax hikes off the table, there may be no easy alternative in bridging the state's $26.3 billion shortfall." The Sacramento Bee. Jim Sanders.
Even without suspending Prop 98, school funding has decreased from $56.5 billion to $50.7 billion.
In spite of the dramatic cuts in school spending, the Sacramento Bee editorial page accuses the Democratic Legislative leaders ( Bass and Stienberg) as being unwilling to lead.
Further cuts in school funding must be stopped.
The Governor and the Republicans incessantly demand more school budget cuts.
So, now I have 120 fewer Sheriffs to protect my neighborhood.
250 fewer teaches to assist school children, and cuts in higher education that will hurt the economy for decades.
Welcome to Mississippi. That is the kind of society the Republican legislators want to create.

California's budget problem: Prop. 13

Harold Meyerson: Prop. 13 opened state's road to insolvency
ShareThis
By Harold Meyerson
Published: Friday, May. 29, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 15A
To understand why the woes of California's economy threaten the nation's economy, we must understand the state's road to insolvency. The Age of Reagan did not commence with the Great Communicator's inauguration in 1981. For its real beginning, we need to go back to June 1978, when Californians went to the polls and enacted Proposition 13.
By passing Howard Jarvis' malign initiative, California voters reduced the Golden State to baser metal. Under Republican Gov. Earl Warren and Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, California epitomized the postwar American dream. Its public schools, from kindergarten through Berkeley and UCLA, were the nation's finest; its roads and aqueducts the most efficient at moving cars and water – the state's lifeblood – to their destinations. All this was funded by some of the nation's highest taxes, which fell in good measure on the state's flourishing banks and corporations.

Amid the inflation of the late 1970s, however, the California model began to crumple. As incomes and property values rose, Sacramento's tax revenue soared – but the parsimonious Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, neither spent those funds nor rebated them. With the state sitting on a $5 billion surplus, frustrated Californians grumped to the polls and passed Proposition 13, which rolled back and limited property taxes – effectively destroying the funding base of local governments and school districts, which thereafter depended largely on Sacramento for their revenue. Ranked fifth among the states in per-pupil spending during the 1950s and '60s, California sank to Mississippi-like levels – the mid-40s in rank – by the 1990s.

Since 1978, state and local government in California has been funded more by taxes on personal income and sales. Bank and corporation taxes have been steadily reduced. In the current recession, with state unemployment at 11 percent, tax revenue has fallen off a cliff.

But the problem with Proposition 13 wasn't merely that it reduced revenue. It also made it very difficult to increase revenue.

Raising taxes now requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, though in 47 other states, a simple majority suffices. California has become overwhelmingly Democratic in the past two decades, but Republicans have managed to retain footholds – representing just over one-third of the districts – in both houses of the Legislature.
The conservative backlash of 1978 also swept into the Legislature a proto-Reaganistic generation of Republicans, later dubbed "the Cavemen." Compared with today's GOP state legislators, though, the Cavemen look like Diderot's Encyclopedists. The current Republican crop has refused in good times as well as bad to raise business or other taxes. (Increasing the tobacco tax, for instance, has failed each of the past 14 times it has come up for a vote.)

Abetted by little local Limbaughs who inflame Republican brains, they protest that the state already has the nation's highest taxes. In fact, California ranks 18th among the states in percentage of personal income paid to state government, and its presumably beleaguered wealthiest 1 percent, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, pay just 7.4 percent of their income to the state while the poorest pay 10.2 percent.

But the myth of soak-the-rich high taxation persists among Republicans – so much so that the GOP front-runner to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger in next year's gubernatorial election, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, is calling for cuts in business tax rates, even though the state is staring at a $24.3 billion deficit that it somehow has to close. In short order, unless the federal government steps in with a bridge loan, the state will throw 940,000 poor children off its health-care rolls and lay off tens of thousands of teachers.

Because California is so much larger than any other state, and its unemployment rate is among the nation's highest, the collapse of its capacity to spend will counteract some of the effect of the federal stimulus and retard the nation's recovery – much as its aerospace slump retarded the recovery of the mid-1990s. The Obama administration ignores California's plight at its own – and the nation's – peril.

The nation's banks are stuck with so much bad paper from California mortgages gone awry that a huge contraction in state spending would make their assets even more toxic. In the short term, the only way to avoid a further downturn may be a federal loan to the state.

A more permanent, homegrown solution to California's woes (and it may take a state constitutional convention to get it) would require the state to eliminate the two-thirds threshold for enacting taxes, to repeal Proposition 13's freeze on the value of commercial properties (some of which are still assessed at their 1978 levels) and to end the process of ballot-box budgeting through the initiative process, which is now more dominated by monied interests than the Legislature ever was.

In Washington, the Age of Reagan may have shuddered to an inglorious end, but we also need action from state governments – and Sacramento in particular – to move us toward a more sustainable economic future.

Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A. Weekly. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.

The meaning of the special election: Marty Hittelman

The meaning of the special election
by Marty Hittelman


The May 19 Special Election has come and gone, but the results may not be easy to interpret. For one thing, each political persuasion (including mine) can find something in the results to validate their own beliefs. The anti-tax ideologues didn't even wait for the results of the May 19 special election to begin spinning. According to them, the defeat of Propositions 1A through 1E was due to the California electorate’s enduring anti-tax feelings.

There is plenty of evidence to dispute such a simplistic conclusion. The bulk of the "No" campaign came from public sector unions and their community allies determined to prevent further cuts to California's vital social services—the government programs that help make our society livable.

Indeed, traditional allies and adversaries were jumbled together on both sides, and a confused electorate is one that tends to vote “no.”
Polling shows that the hardcore anti-tax vote is pretty much constant, representing about 20% of the electorate. Clearly this was not sufficient to defeat the initiatives.

Another factor in assessing the election is that most voters did not bother to vote. While typical of a special election turnout, this phenomenon suggests voters did not believe the ballot measures represented a real solution to the problems of closing the state’s structural budget gap and funding essential public services.

We can reasonably surmise these proposals were defeated for a variety of reasons. But the clearest lesson should be that the people of California did not support a state budget process that occurred behind closed doors, involving only the governor and the legislative leadership, who dumped a half-baked mess of virtually incomprehensible ideas on the voters and said, here, you solve it. Proposition 1A, in particular, was so convoluted that even its advocates couldn't explain it clearly.

If an open, democratic budget process had occurred, 1A and the other propositions never would have made it to the ballot, because their tortuous logic and flaws would have been made all too apparent.

Now the propositions have been defeated and the ever-shrinking Republican legislative minority still possesses just above one third of the votes, leaving them in the same position that forced the special election: the driver’s seat. California’s archaic (from 1934) and nearly unique (just two other states) constitutional requirement for a two-thirds legislative vote for passing the state budget means the legislative Republicans are a classic example of “tyranny of the minority.”

Throughout the campaign the governor maintained, with typical disregard for facts, that these measures would “fix the state budget.” They were never going to. The Democratic Legislative leaders had a more plausible, but equally cynical argument: you had to vote for this package, because there was “no alternative,” due to Republican ideological unity and intransigence.

In the coming days we will see if the Republicans can take their responsibility to govern seriously, or stay stuck in the same reverse gear that brought them massive defeat in the last election and a shrinking share of California’s electorate. If they can’t change, Assembly and Senate Democrats should take a small portion of their political war chests and go out to the Legislative districts that have changing demographics. Enough of these districts now exist that a well-organized voter registration and election campaign leading to the November 2010 election could force the hard line anti-taxers below the magic one-third threshold.

Another alternative: go directly to the ballot to ask the people of California to understand what nearly every other state's citizens do: that our Legislature should practice democracy by majority rule.

The past few decades have seen an unfortunate redistribution of this country's wealth upward. The richest one percent own more than one third of our combined wealth. Recent polls show that large majorities support increasing taxes on the rich and closing corporate tax loopholes to keep California livable. This should give courage to our political leaders. But expediency is not why the governor and Legislature should focus on progressive taxes to solve the budget problem; rather, they should do it because it is their job to clearly explain the links between taxes and the important services they fund, and because it is the right thing to do.
Hittleman is the President of the California Federation of Teachers. Not to be confused with the CTA.

Economic Crisis and schools

Last year California had a serious budget crisis, over 34 billion in missing revenue. The legislature and the governor passed some temporary tax increases and made harsh budget cuts to get us through this year. Propositions 1 A- 1E, would continue this budget “solution” for a total of 4 years. However, the state, like other states continues to fall further behind. We will soon receive an estimate from the Legislative Analyst’s office, but it appears that California is at least $21.3 billion behind at this time even with the increased taxes and budget cuts.
California, and most other states, have a budget crisis as a result of the national economic crisis – significantly a banking crisis. The robber barons of finance capital have stolen the money, they have looted the treasury and our pensions and now they want to return to business as usual without any significant reform of the economic system. Just give them more tax payer money to bail out the banks.

It is past time for us to say- NO. It is time to restore Glass -Steagal, gain ownership of some major banks, and to get a national health care system along with bailing out the states to avoid draconian cuts in schools and other human services.

The severity of the national and international economic collapse has created budget shortfalls for state and local governments. Dean Baker, CEPR Co-Director and an author of a report says "Since many states are required by their charters or constitutions to balance their budgets, states will end up using federal stimulus dollars to offset these shortfalls." It currently looks as if much of the stimulus package will be used to back fill state budget shortages which sharply limits the potential success of the stimulus.
California will receive a great deal of money for education. The proposals have been approved. Most of the money will go to hire teachers who have been scheduled to be laid off.
As we debate the ballot issues, it is important to keep in mind that the economic crisis was not created in Sacramento, it was not created by schools and teachers. There is a great deal of misplaced anger being posted and shouted.

No on Prop. 1 A.
Since 2002 the CSU has lost almost $1 billion in state funding. Students have been charged more fees to make up the losses. Prop. 1A places a spending cap on the state budget that will make these cuts permanent. The CSU budget will not be restored to the levels of 2002 and your tuition will continue to rise. The Board of Regents is voting this week to increase tuition for the Fall by 10%.


[Prop 1A] would actually make it more difficult for future governors and legislatures to enact budgets that meet California's needs and address state priorities. It would amend the state Constitution to dictate restrictions on the use of funds put into the reserve and limit how "unanticipated" revenues can be used in good years. It could lock in a reduced level of public services, including university education, by not taking proper account of the state's changing demographics and actual growth in costs.


Yes on 1 B.
California's k-12 education system is in crisis because it is underfunded. Contrary to the wishes of the voters, politicians continue to fail to adequately fund our schools. When comparisons include cost of living- California ranks 47th. out of the 50 states in per pupil expenditures. Our schools are suffering. This is unacceptable.

Prop. 1 B would begin to repay the schools some $9 Billion taken by the Legislature from school funding this year in response to the economic crisis. The money would be repayed beginning in 2011, when we hope this economic crisis will have passed. Prop 1 B would return California to the minimum guarantee of funding for schools that exists in current law.
Note in the post below, the public votes with the teachers and does not have confidence in the legislature.

Schools could see $3.6 billion cut

Education could see $3.6 billion cut
Department of Finance officials told education groups today that K-14 schools could see a $3.6 billion cut due to a projected drop in revenues, as the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office suggested in March would be a possibility.

Finance officials did not tie the reduction to the May 19 ballot measures but said $3.6 billion is the amount in allowable school cuts under Proposition 98 assuming the LAO's projection of $8 billion in lower revenues proves accurate, said Dennis Meyers, assistant executive director for the California Association of School Business Officials.

The ballot measures may have little impact on 2009-10 school funding, Meyers said, because the $3.6 billion figure is based on a revenue decline regardless of whatever gap exists should Propositions 1C, 1D and 1E fail. But he said the measures' failure could put more pressure on the governor and the Legislature to take the full $3.6 billion.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said earlier today that the state can't cut too much out of education without jeopardizing federal stimulus funding. The federal package requires that the state maintain school funding at its 2006 level to be eligible. He said he'd prefer to look for savings in corrections and acknowledged that health and human services would face cuts if the ballot measures fail and the state faces a significant revenue drop this year.

Categories: Special election 5/19/09, State budget
From: Capital Alert. The Sacramento Bee
Posted by Kevin Yamamura

Response:

California’s needs an education system that produces more skilled high-school graduates today more than at any other time in our past.

California's k-12 education system is in crisis because it is underfunded. Contrary to the wishes of the voters, politicians continue to fail to adequately fund our schools. When comparisons include cost of living- California ranks 47th. out of the 50 states in per pupil expenditures. The children in our schools are suffering. This is unacceptable.

California students leave middle and high schools at the rate of 140,000 per year and cost taxpayers $46 billion annually in crime, social welfare, health, public assistance and other taxpayer costs.

Duane Campbell

Proposition 1 A

Prop. 1A -- Frog Soup, Anyone?
You know the story of the frog who is thrown into a pot of water. If the water is too hot at the beginning, the frog jumps right out. But if the water is comfortable enough at the beginning, but then the temperature is slowly increased, the frog will stay in the water until it is boiled alive. That's exactly what Californians will be doing if we vote for Proposition 1A -- slowly, but permanently destroying public education and public services in California.

Proposition 1A, and all of the little attachments, is bad for our schools and bad for the people of California. Whatever short-term benefit we get from the state's budget-rescue package pales in comparison to the long-term disasters that await education and other important programs which are supported by the state.

I'm having a hard time getting the "spending cap" to make sense in my mind when I also realize that there's no "human-dignity floor," or a level of human-needs services that we also agree never to go below. We've already cut many of our state programs so severely that the next step is to eliminate many vital programs altogether. The state budget is already rigged so that it's impossible to get new revenues and new programs in place, so every cut is permanent.

The other dynamic is that the fastest growing part of the budget is prison funding, carrying with it a host of mandated funding increases. With mandatory sentencing laws and 3-strikes laws on the books, along with federal court mandates to dramatically improve its abysmal prison health care program, the prison-funding part of the budget can only increase. Which means that with a spending cap, the rest of the budget can only go down.

And, we're locking in the spending cap at a shockingly inadequate funding level. Our schools are already the most poorly funded schools in the country. Sure, the temporary pay-off in Prop. 1B will keep us at 48th or 49th out of 50 states for a few years, but that's as good as it will ever get! Mental health programs have already been decimated, and Prop 1E will take more. Prop. 1D is going to tap into children's services. We're robbing our own kids, and this is the best we can do?

I'm also deeply dismayed that my own union, CTA, is endorsing this package. Remember the good ole' days when CTA used to fight against Schwarzenegger's hare-brained ideas. Thankfully, the California Federation of Teachers is opposing Prop. 1A, and so is the California Nurses Association, SEIU and an expanding group of other wiser labor unions.

California needs a better deal. Let's scrap California's budget process altogether, with its un-democratic two-thirds majority requirement for new funding, get rid of Prop. 13, and write a new state constitution.

Please vote no on 1A.
From: Thomas Morse. The Teacher Lounge.

California Proposition 1 A and 1 B

No on Prop. 1 A.


Since 2002 the CSU has lost almost $1 Billion in state funding. Students have been charged more fees to make up the difference. A spending cap on the state budget will make these cuts permanent. The CSU budget will not be restored to the levels of 2002.


[Prop 1A] would actually make it more difficult for future governors and legislatures to enact budgets that meet California's needs and address state priorities. It would amend the state Constitution to dictate restrictions on the use of funds put into the reserve and limit how "unanticipated" revenues can be used in good years. It could lock in a reduced level of public services, including university education, by not taking proper account of the state's changing demographics and actual growth in costs. Prop 1A would also give future governors new power to make budget cuts without legislative oversight. Like several other propositions , Prop 1A came from a deeply flawed process that resulted in measures written in haste and without public input or analysis.



Yes on 1 B.



California's k-12 education system is in crisis because it is underfunded. Contrary to the wishes of the voters, politicians continue to fail to adequately fund our schools. When comparisons include cost of living- California ranks 47th. out of the 50 states in per pupil expenditures. Our schools are suffering. This is unacceptable.

Prop. 1 B would repay the schools some $9 Billion taken by the Legislature from school funding this year in response to the economic crisis. The money would be repayed beginning in 2011, when we hope this economic crisis will have passed. Prop 1 B would return California to the Minimum guarantee of funding for schools that exists in current law.


Suggested by Duane Campbell

CFA, Obama, and Prop.1 A

Election results

Like all who worked so long and hard for this victory, I am elated at the Obama win.
See below:

And, Oregon voters defeated Prop.58 which would have banned bilingual education- like California’s Prop.227.

On the other hand, the battle for California Prop.8- the ban on gay marriage has been lost. A major defeat.

The mobilization of the Evangelical Right to pass Prop.8 counteracted the mobilization of the Obama campaign. We lost some close Congressional races such as Cal. Districts 3 and 4 due to this Right wing mobilization. We seem to have lost district 4 by only 400 votes- Charlie Brown V. McClintock although thousands of votes are yet to be counted.

Vote No on Prop 8

http://tinyurl.com/5cp6xt
http://www.noonprop8.com/


Hi, you may or may not know me, but someone you know does, and that’s why you’ve gotten this letter. My name is Sean Campbell and I’d like to tell you a little about why I am against Proposition 8, the initiative that would reverse the state Supreme Court’s ruling and eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. If you support Prop. 8, I don’t expect you to undergo some magical conversion as a result of my few words. If I can only influence 1 vote, it will have been worth it. I would just ask that you give me a couple of minutes to explain why I oppose Prop. 8.

I am a straight man in my 20s. I like basketball and guitar and poker and my girlfriend. Most of my friends are straight, but I have a few gay friends like many people do. Growing up in Sacramento I knew some people I’d met and spent time with were different in some way from others but I didn’t really know what being gay or lesbian was until my parents told me. In school, boys teased other boys with words that you hear less nowadays but still hear from adults. I think my parents were relieved when I got in trouble for kissing a girl in kindergarten because they knew that life would be easier for me as a straight person. When I moved to San Francisco in 2000, some of my friends from back home made comments (and still do) about the reputation of the city. I was definitely surprised to see how there was a gay district and many gay-owned businesses. I didn’t really see why it was enough of a big deal that so many would mention it upon hearing where I lived.

After moving back here after college I began to work doing small business accounting. I’ve been lucky enough to establish a foothold and now have 4 clients, 3 of whom are gay. One of my former clients just got married to his partner of 12 years. As we became friends I remember him telling me how I was one of the only straight male friends he had. I thought that was kind of strange and told him so. He told me that he hoped that in my generation things would be different and there would be less division between gay people and straight people in terms of friend groups. He and his partner looked so happy at their wedding reception. Gay couples and straight couples came together to celebrate their union and wish them well. To me, it looked just like the traditional wedding I had recently attended; lots of happy people celebrating love and commitment. They asked for donations to the No on 8 campaign in lieu of gifts, so I donated $25.

Another designer I work with just married his partner of 25 years in a small, private ceremony. They own established businesses, a vacation home in Arizona and work in the same office. They are very different from each other, but very complementary in terms of personality. Their commitment and love is apparent, and they have been waiting to get married for years. I know they will enjoy growing old together. I congratulated them and in their honor I donated another $25 to the No on 8 campaign.

Just a couple of nights ago I received an email from two of my clients announcing their marriage, to take place next month before the election. They own established businesses, work from their home and have adopted two beautiful children. They are some of the best parents I’ve ever witnessed; their whole lives are designed around raising these children with good manners and good morals. They sacrifice so their children can have the best care and schooling possible. They also asked that no one buy them gifts but instead donate to the No on 8 campaign. I again donated $25 and resolved to write this letter for all of these friends of mine.

I believe in treating people equally under the law, no matter religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or any other attribute. It’s one of the most important and significant achievements of American democracy. Our country has gone through a lot in order to bring this ideal closer to reality, and in some respects (and for some people, like my friends) this project remains incomplete. I realize that for some people the concept of two people of the same sex being married seems strange or wrong. It used to be that in this country marriage between people of different races was considered strange or wrong, or illegal. Luckily, my parents didn’t care, and I’m the result of their marriage and love. I realize that our airhead Mayor Gavin Newsom has been on your television telling you things “whether you like it or not”. He’s not my friends’ best advocate, to be sure, and I regret his election every day when I hear about all our problems here in San Francisco and his total lack of will to solve them.

I don’t ask you to agree with or endorse same-sex marriage or go against your religious or personal beliefs. I ask that you honor that great American tradition, to live and let live. I ask that you decide that government doesn’t have a role in regulating private behavior between consenting adults. I ask that you live your life in your way and let my friends live theirs.

I want my friends to be able to express their love and commitment the same way you and I can. Please vote No on Prop. 8 on November 4th. Thanks for your time.