Pirate Cat Radio's Vote F*cker Guide

Mike Gravel

Endorsed Vote: Yes

If we were multi-millionaires, we would totally be backing Gravel. He's like Kucinich, except angry! If we didn't care about whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton won the nomination, we would be all over Gravel. He wants to reduce the US nuclear stockpile. He would withdraw from Iraq in 120 days, and he opposes war with Iran and Syria. He would increase the minimum wage to a living wage. He supports legalizing and regulating drugs. Back in the day, the dude filibustered for 5 months by himself trying to end the Vietnam draft. His "cranky uncle" style speaks to Pissed Off Voters, and he's big on youtube.
A couple of his proposals make some of us nervous: replacing income tax with sales tax, and national initiative process like CA propositions. But with Kucinich out of the picture, he's the last idealistic Democrat standing.

Barack Obama

Endorsed Vote: Yes

Let’s face it: it’s either going to be Hillary or Barack. And despite the issues we have with him, Barack is a quantum leap better than Hillary. They both have raised huge amounts of money, but at least Barack isn't taking money from lobbyists. Here's a few key policy differences:
• Barack opposed the war from the start. Hillary refuses to apologize for voting for the war.
• Barack thinks millionaires should pay Social Security tax on all of their income. Hillary is fine with everything except their first $100K being exempt from Social Security.
• Barack and a bunch of other Senators tried to add restrictions to the "PATRIOT" Act. Hillary voted against them.
And then there's the way Hillary's lackeys are getting ugly. A couple of her boys made insinuations about Barack's drug use. Another said Barack "can't shuck and jive at a press conference." And big Bill Clinton has turned into a shameless attack dog--putting words in Barack's mouth and making borderline racist remarks. Finally, there's the practical considerations. For better or worse, a lot of people HATE Hillary. They seriously despise her and they'll never vote for her. If she's the nominee, the general election will be a brutal bloodbath. Hillary might be good at that kind of trench warfare, but who wants to see that?

Barack makes us feel good about politics. He sounds like a real person when he talks. And lord, can that man talk. Even if we didn't like him, we might vote for him just to hear his speeches. He's so smooth, he's winning over conservatives and moderates who would never vote for a Democrat otherwise. And that's what gives us hope that he might be able to change the way Washington politics works. Voting for a smooth-talking, mainstream Democrat makes us feel a little like a battered spouse going back to an abusive relationship, but dammit, maybe this time things will be different.

Cynthia McKinney

Endorsed Vote: Yes

If you're a Green, you gotta love Cynthia McKinney. She's light years more experienced and better prepared than the other candidates. She gives the Green's some much-needed national credibility, and she has the potential to bring African-Americans into the party for the first time since . . . ever?

Endorsed Vote: Yes

This is a $185 million bond for fixing up our city parks. The money would go to 12 neighborhood parks, several waterfront parks, bathrooms, athletic fields, trails, forestry and $5 million for projects specified by community input. It's hard to argue with that. Our parks could use the love, and replacing a bunch of skunky old park bathrooms with new one is reason enough to vote for it. The only real reason to oppose it is because bonds basically suck. They’re like credit cards for governments. For every dollar the city gets from a bond, we pay two bucks in interest that goes to rich banks and investors. The fact that we need to rely on bonds for basic stuff like this is yet another sign that the rich aren't paying their fair share of taxes. So vote no if you want to indirectly protest the inequities of our tax structure. Or vote yes if you want to pretty up some parks.

Endorsed Vote: Yes

Tear that fucker down! How morbid is it to watch all those tourist lined up at Fisherman's Warf to go take a tour of Alcatraz. "Oh look honey, that's where the Birdman took a crap! And that's where Al Capone would go for a quick blowjob!" Whose stupid idea was it to put a prison on a beautiful island in the middle of our gorgeous bay anyway? Screw Alcatraz. Go to Angel Island instead and enjoy a beautiful hike or bike ride. If you want to revel in your prison fetish, San Quentin is right across the way. Go see what the prison-industrial complex has done to America: The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world! Half of the prisoners in state prison are there for non-violent crimes, 20% for drug offenses. That all costs us $60 billion a year. And then there's the devastation our criminal "justice" system has caused the African-American community. 10% of black men between 25 and 29 are in prison (compared to 2.4% of hispanic and 1.2% of white men). More black men are in prison than in college. Back in 1980, 3x more black men were in college. Shameful. Our prison and criminal "justice" systems are broken. We need to blow it all up and start over. And what better symbolic way to start it off than dynamiting Alcatraz?

We know this is only a symbolic policy statement--and a vague and non-specific policy statement at that. Prop C doesn't offer any details about how to accomplish the hard work that would be involved in actually tearing down Alcatraz. And the people behind this are super new-agey. But for better or worse, they're the ones who put this on the ballot, and this will probably be our only opportunity to voice our opinion on Alcatraz. Tear that prison down!

Endorsed Vote: Yes

Poor kids go to SF City College, and every time the fee increases, more of them drop out. If it passes, Prop 92 will lower community college fees to $15/credit (currently 20$) and limit future fee increases.

It also sets a minimum funding level for Community Colleges. CCs have often gotten the shaft in the budget funding game--they're not as popular as K-12 and not as sexy as UC and the state colleges. Some people don't like that style of mandating spending levels by proposition. We think Community College is important enough to lock in some money for them. Finally, Prop 92 takes power away from the Governor in appointing people to the Community College Board and gives it to Community College groups. Proponents say this will result in less political hacks getting appointed. Opponents say it gives more power to bureaucrats. Who knows. The important thing is that Community College is vital for poor people to get a shot at an education. Lower the fees, vote yes.

Endorsed Vote: Yes

This will monkey with the term limits for California state Senators and Assembly members. Currently, you can serve up to six years in the Assembly (3 2-year terms) and eight years in the Senate (2 4-year terms), for a total of fourteen years in the legislature. Prop 93 would reduce that total allowed time to twelve years, but it would allow you to spend the whole time in either the Assembly or Senate. The problem this is try to solve is the "term limit mambo" that politicians do when they get termed out. For example, San Francisco Assembly member Mark Leno is termed out after this year. So he's challenging SF Senator Carole Migden in the June primary. The idea is that Prop 93 will allow politicians to spend more time on governing and less time campaigning.

A lot of people favor term limits because they distrust politicians and they figure the less time they spend in office, the less damage they can do. Before we had term limits, powerful incumbents would spend 30-40 years in Sacramento, and they became so entrenched and powerful, the public couldn't really hold them accountable. So term limits are good at keeping politicians on their toes.

But there's a dark side to term limits. Running a state as big as California is wicked complicated. It takes a long time for politicians to learn how all of the committees and budgets and processes work. What's happening now is that as soon as Senators and Assembly members are getting the hang of things, they get bounced out of office by term limits. Complex, important legislation can take years to develop and pass through all of the hoops. When politicians don't know what's going on, they can become dependent on lobbyists who have decades of experience in working the system for big business interests.

But just because the waters aren't murky enough, there's one more caveat on this one: it has a grandfather clause that let's current Assembly members and Senators to serve a total of 12 years in their current house, even if they were in the other house before. The leaders of the Assembly (Fabian Núñez) and Senate (Don Perata) put that in there so they could keep their jobs for another six and four years, respectively. We're not so stoked about that. They aren't evil, but they're stereotypical politicians with histories of sketchy ethics violations, cozying up to Arnold when it's in their interests, and generally blowing with the political winds.

But in the long run, we think Prop 93 is a good reform to how Sacramento works. We want to give our elected officials a chance to learn to be effective in Sacramento, we don't want them to be overly dependent on lobbyists, and we want them focused on governing instead of campaigning.