Voting the California and San Francisco ballots

I'm feeling virtuous today; last night I got around to voting my absentee ballot. Couldn't very well do all this election work and forget to vote, could I?

The California ballot was not exciting. Gavin Newsom is going to be our governor; there's no evidence he's any less of a pretty face in an expensive suit peddling policies that enrich the wealthy than when he was our mayor. He finally waited out Jerry and here we are. Senator-since-1992 Diane Feinstein is putting away poor State Senator Kevin De Leon who never could make the sale of himself as an alternative. Diane would have served her state better by being willing to cede to a successor before they carry her out in a box.

To my mind, the only statewide contest worth caring about is electing Tony Thurmond to the position of Superintendent of Public Instruction. His opponent is a privatizing charter school advocate.

Only three of the statewide ballot measures seem worth much attention. Prop. 5 would further extend the scope of Prop. 13's restrictions on property taxes. The original measure has distorted and hampered local and state governance since 1979. The last thing California needs is more exemptions that shrink the tax base among residents who have lucked into real estate price inflation.

Prop. 6 is a Republican ploy to turn out their base by repealing a gas tax. Polls say it is failing; apparently Californians like the road and infrastructure improvements the gas tax funds.

Prop. 10 would allow localities to enact meaningful rent control. Real estate interests persuaded the state legislature to neuter local controls several decades ago and they are spending big bucks to keep rent control attempts hamstrung. I don't buy the idea that rent controls kill housing development; there's clearly money to be made in building housing in the California real estate market. Rent control might reduce the profit margins, but people gotta live. So I voted "yes" on Prop. 10.

Not living in a contested supervisor district, there's not much on the local San Francisco ballot of great interest to me with one vital exception: Prop. C. This is much the hottest local issue, imposing a small tax on San Francisco's largest businesses to fund housing, mental health and support services for our people who are living on the streets. As Joe Eskenazi explained in Mission Local:

Prop. C would raise the city’s expenditures on homeless issues from 3 percent of its budget to 6 percent — addressing San Francisco’s consensus No. 1 problem. More money is, in fact, a prime solution to the problem of not having enough money. And no serious person claims this city currently has sufficient resources to bring its homeless problem under control. ...

Sometimes voting seems useless, but there is almost always something or someone who matters a lot. Vote we must, unless we are content to be ruled by the other people who do vote.