Just When I Think I'm Out, They Pull Me Back In

I've mentioned before that I have somehow managed to stay on liberal Democratic mailing lists even though I re-registered as a Republican in 1994. Now I can't even hide from them by moving 400 miles away. Today I got an e-mail from Tom Ammiano, apostle of Harvey Milk, former San Francisco Supervisor, frequent candidate for mayor of The City, and most recently, California State Assemblyman.

In case you haven't surmised from my past posts, particularly my San Francisco Diary, Tom Ammiano is not exactly my favorite politician. I get "friends of . . . " e-mail from leftist San Francisco Democrats all the time, but I must admit this is the first time I've received one from the erstwhile Supervisor from the Castro District. So, what the heck, I figured I might as well see what he's up to.

Dear Tom wrote to me and 300,000 of his closest friends to inform me of the great work he's doing in Sacramento. He's "consistently pushing for reform in Sacramento including protecting tenants rights by ensuring responsible investment at CalPERS [the California Public Employees Retirement System], reforming California's Three Strikes law, and closing loopholes in our tax system to make corporations pay their fair share. I am now proud to report that a majority of my legislative package for this session has passed for this session and these bills will now be heading to the Senate for approval."

How "improving" the already grossly generous public employees pensions is going to protect tenants is beyond me, but what do I know? Tom seems to think that corporations paying their "fair share" means turning over their entire profit to the state to pay for the squatters (oops, tenants) being protected by CalPERS. He neglected to mention that his marijuana bill is not doing nearly so well as his socialist schemes.

That would be plenty for one fine politician to accomplish, but wait--there's more. Tom has proposed AB1982, which "places a temporary hard cap on the number of charter schools authorized in the state." Those of you who know history know that to a liberal, "temporary" means "forever." Just consider that temporary excise tax on telephone service you paid each month which was temporarily passed to defray the costs of the Spanish-American War. Ammiano is a big fan of ignorant voters so he takes lots of campaign funds from the California teachers associations where public employees with big pensions are paid big salaries to indoctrinate future Democrats without requiring them actually to learn anything. Charter schools (and vouchers) are a serious danger to public school ignorance, so Tom wants to limit the number to a few token charter schools which can't do much overall damage to the Democrat majority.

Next, we have AB2337. This bill would "prohibit the use of public pension funds in predatory investment schemes that are used to displace people from their homes." Now I'm not entirely clear on this, but I think this is different from the CalPERS bill that would protect squatters/tenants who don't want to pay their rent. This one is designed to protect the "working class" buyers who take on legal obligations and debt far beyond their ability to pay. It was a federal law promoted by Barney Frank and implemented by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which brought on the national foreclosure crisis and property market crash, but Ammiano wants his name to be added to the noble Democrats who are bravely blaming lenders for granting mortgages which they would never even have considered without Democrat threats to their very existence.

Ammiano also discusses the state budget. He will work to make it right, even though he can't explain how it went wrong. For one thing, he's going to stop all this cutting of expenditures which he claims are all necessary. He calls expenditure-cutting "an excuse to eliminate our safety net programs (like midnight basketball)." He goes on to meld his socialist rhetoric with his compassionate leftism and says "the state's budget simply cannot be balanced on the backs of our state's most vulnerable populations." He doesn't say so, but I'm guessing that he doesn't intend to balance it on the backs of the gay and lesbian community either, even though they are among the wealthiest demographics in the Bay Area.

Ammiano then kindly reminds me that June is LGBT Pride Month. Here in Caliente, we don't have a big parade like San Francisco's, which takes place on Sunday, June 27. Ammiano invites all of us to join himself [sic.], the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and Pride At Work at the big 40th annual event. It's like Christmas for San Franciscans, because everybody gets to don his gay apparel.

And now, loyal readers, you have another example of why I finally got my rear in gear and moved out of San Francisco.