On April 19, 1972, John B. Connally, Jr., then-U.S. secretary of the treasury, declared at the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting in Washington, D.C.: “A democracy unsatisfied (by support of the people] cannot long survive…. We live in )robably the most turbulent and tormented times in the history of this nation. Criticize … disagree, yes, but also we have as leaders an obligation to be fair and keep in perspective what we are and what we hope to be.”
It has been a new year at City Hall where Supervisor Aaron Peskin from Telegraph Hill was elected president after 11 roll call votes by our district heroes, almost tying Congressman Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield for roll call votes. This columnist wishes President Peskin two years of leadership achievement. My hero, U.S. President Harry Truman, once reminded Americans: “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, imagination and all the unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”
Herbert Hoover was the first U.S. president to give his salary back to the government (after the Great Depression commenced in his first year of office in October, 1929). Now the U.S. government would like everyone to do it!
It has been observed: “How do you know when a politician is lying?” The answer is: “When he (or she) opens his (or her) mouth!”
To suggest that there is any similarity between Proposition 1 and the act signed by Gov. Reagan (actually in 1967, not 1970) is preposterous. Judge Kopp must know that the 1967 act, which the sponsors said would reduce the number of abortions in California, was nullified, along with all other state abortion laws, by Roe v. Wade.
The California legislature adjourned Sept. 30, but the condescending SF Board of Supervisors reconvened after Labor Day, ready to repudiate good government at taxpayer expense and act imperialistically with its six-figure annual salary plus pension and medical benefits.
I think it’s timely to recommend (as I traditionally have done since my first year on the Board of Supervisors in 1972), ballot measure votes and candidate elections.
Following my last musing about the deplorable results of such ward elections and their rise under threat of California Voting Rights Act litigation in such small cities as Millbrae, San Bruno, South San Francisco, Foster City and Redwood City, I discovered a possible silver lining.
In his latest penned annunciation, Mr. Quentin Kopp makes some allegation that district elections for San Francisco city supervisors are equivalent to “dirty” ward politics that is beneath the grandeur of the city of San Francisco. I’m paraphrasing.
… we should be ever grateful that his voice is still strong. San Francisco would be infinitely poorer without him.
As San Franciscans observe the 256th anniversary of the country’s declaration of our independence from British rule, we give thanks for the successful recall of Chesa Boudin from district attorney status, the defeat of a Board of Supervisors’ ballot measure to diminish our authority to remove a non-performing public official from office, the repeal of a 1932 ordinance conferring a trash collection monopoly on Recology’s predecessors – thus enabling next month a law requiring competitive, open bidding for such public contract, and ignominious defeat of a $400 million general obligation bond which, with interest over 30 years, would have cost taxpayers $1.005 billion!
In his most recent column, your conservative, libertarian commentator Quintin Kopp distorts the facts to suit his opinions.
An anonymous wit once declared in the 1950s: “We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business.”
We do however know of Republicans who “harvested” votes and ballots in Florida and Texas that got prosecuted. Also of Republicans who voted more than once in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina.
As always, I am impressed by the commentary by the Honorable Quentin L. Kopp, this time advice on ballot measures in the May issue of the Sunset Beacon, where he begins with the prose by Walt Whitman where he says “I know nothing grander than a well contested American national election”.
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 