Libertarian Party of San Francisco News

The philosopher Confucius was reportedly once asked what he would do if he were a governor. He responded that he would first "rectify the names" to make words correspond to reality, for "If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish."

    I'm not precisely sure what the ancient Chinese sage meant by that, or what examples he may have had in mind, but I've thought one possible interpretation of this quote is that language must not be allowed to be abused in such ways that speech grows full of dishonesty and contradictions, or else there won't be a basis for efficient human action. Perhaps a kind of social equivalent to how free market economists talk about State central planners not being able to efficiently run an economy because they do not have access to accurate price signals.

    These thoughts were provoked by an ad for Sprint cellphone service that I heard earlier this evening. In the ad, a man comes on and says something along the lines of, "Oh great, another wireless ad. You're probably sick of all these phone ads with all their confusing terms about their networks and offers and blah blah blah. But Sprint is going to do something different." Then he quotes a monthly price and basically says if you don't like it after a month you can have 100% of your money back, guaranteed. A few more details are conveyed in a similarly reassuring tone.

Free speech is crucial and must be defended.

The founding fathers recognized this and gave us the first amendment as a guard against tyrannical government, so that we are free to spread ideas even when those ideas are not popular with those in power.

Ida Mojadad’s wretched March 28th San Francisco Weekly article on San Francisco’s “Development Impact Fee” is so factually erroneous that it deserves to be deconstructed for the propaganda it is. Far too often, reports in San Francisco are P/R repeaters, and I have noticed this type of fake news seems to crop up quite often when Supervisor Matt Haney is cooking up a kickback.

There has been an ongoing problem of collusion between government officials and municipal bond advisors who often actually write the bond bills for profit. And then deceptively work with government to sell them to an unsuspecting public. To address this issue, the California State Assembly passed AB-195 which was approved by Governor Jerry Brown and on January 1, 2018 became Law. Sections of that law governs the way local governments can present bond measures on ballots:

1. Measure shall be a true and impartial synopsis of the purpose of the proposed measure,
2. and shall be in language that is neither argumentative nor likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.
3. If the proposed measure imposes a tax or raises the rate of a tax, the ballot shall include in the statement of the measure to be voted on the amount of money to be raised annually and the rate and duration of the tax to be levied.

Section 18401 of the California Elections Code says election officials who allow non-compliant ballots to be put before the public are criminally liable.

As this complaint clearly shows, Proposition A was enormously non-compliant. The Libertarian Party of San Francisco (LPSF) was designated official Opponent of Proposition A by the SF Dept. of Elections. LPSF members called attention to these issues before the Ballot Simplification Committee. They were ignored.