Democrats Vote for War; S.F. Democrats Oppose Public Advocate

On 7/21/20, the House of Representatives voted 93 to 324 to oppose cutting the $740 billion military budget by 10% which was proposed by the Lee-Pocan Amendment No. 9 to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Roll Call Vote 148, with 139 Democrats joining 185 Republicans in voting to oppose this very small, but very necessary, cut to the war machine. See http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2020&rollnumber=148. On the same day, the House of Representatives voted 129 to 284 to oppose withdrawal of US troops from its illegal occupation of Afghanistan proposed by Rep. Omar’s Amendment No. 5, Roll Call 144, with 103 Democrats joining 181 Republicans in voting to support this genocidal drain of our tax dollars to steal Afghanistan’s considerable mineral wealth. See http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2020&rollnumber=144, https://amendments-rules.house.gov/amendments/OMARMN_135_xml[1]71320125101511.pdf and https://www.bing.com/search?q=afghanistan+mineral+map&FORM=QSRE1

The fundamental issue is war and peace as the war machine is by far the biggest theft of our tax dollars and it is the biggest threat to human existence and Planet Earth. The biggest war machine in the world is the American military, which only exists to maximize the profits of the oil companies and the munitions makers. These two reactionary votes demonstrate clearly that the Democratic Party is just as much a war party as the Republican Party. We cannot have guns and butter and these two reactionary votes demonstrate that there is no fundamental difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Also on July 21, 2020, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, all Democrats, voted 6 to 5 against putting a Charter Amendment for a Public Advocate position on the ballot, with Supervisors Fewer, Mandelman, Peskin, Safai, Stefani and Yee opposing this urgently needed whistleblowing position to stop the rampant corruption under the pretext of insufficient funds in a city which has 147,400 millionaires and 75 billionaires and in a state which has 663,000 millionaire households including 170 billionaires, all of whom should be taxed by the Supermajority Democratic Legislature and Democratic governor with the progressive income tax to pay all our bills, thereby eliminating San Francisco’s $1.7 billion deficit many times over. These people all claim to be liberal but they just gave us an inexcusably reactionary vote. In the November 2016 election, the voters gave Proposition H, the Public Advocate measure, 167,000 votes, 47% of the vote. The corruption is now much worse with people under indictment and thus the necessity of a Public Advocate is even greater. See https://sfelections.sfgov.org/november-8-2016-election-results-summary for Prop H, the Agenda and Minutes for the July 21, 2020 meeting at https://sfbos.org/meetings/42, and the televised proceeding available to everyone at https://sfgovtv.org/program-schedule repeated many times over the weekend and also seen on Comcast TV in San Francisco.

While the stench of corruption is apparently not sufficient for the majority of the Board of Supervisors, the public health menace of feces, intravenous needles and garbage on our city streets due primarily to the 40 year homeless crisis which started under Democratic Pres. Carter finally moved 7 of the 11 supervisors to put a Charter Amendment on the November 2020 ballot creating a Sanitation and Streets Department separate from the Public Works Department which currently is contracting out the street cleaning to non-union outfits, a golden opportunity for corruption, and 2 commissions overseeing the budgets of the Sanitation and Streets Department and the Public Works Department. They managed to forget about the contrived excuse of insufficient funds during the current pandemic as a threat to our health is obviously a threat to our life. The 4 Democrats who put money before human life are Supervisors Fewer, Mandelman, Stefani and Yee.

Opposing the war machine and taxing the rich are fundamental to Peace & Freedom Party and the Green Party and this is what makes them viable. You can register online at https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/
For more information, see
http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/home/
and
http://www.cagreens.org/