Take Your Badonk-a-Donk to Vote!

It's Election Day here in California. You have till 8PM to go vote and if you live in this State, please take yourself to the polls, if only to defeat the insane anti-rent control proposition.

Yeah, sneaky Proposition 98 wants to end rent control and the folks behind it are counting on a low voter turnout to get it through. But you are not going to let that happen because you are going to vote! Can you imagine life in this state without rent control? It would be pretty miserable and housing would become even more unaffordable.

Down here in LA, we also have to choose a county supervisor. I sometimes think local elections are nastier and more partisan than presidential ones. No less than SEVEN pieces of mail arrived yesterday trashing Bernard Parks and supporting Mark Ridley Thomas in our local race for County Supervisor. Enough already from the political action committees! And if they aren't sending me tons of mail that ends up in the trash, unread, they're calling on the phone!

I pretty much stopped answering the phone over the past two weeks because I couldn't take the constant harassing by pollsters wanting to know, "Can we count on your support for Bernard Parks?" AAGH!

Check out how divided this race is:

Bill Cosby and Magic Johnson, the LA City Council and the current County Supervisor are all behind Parks, who happens to be our former LAPD chief. All the political action committees love to point out how Parks was LAPD chief during the Rampart Scandal, the biggest police corruption scandal in US History. They even send fliers of Parks standing in a big pile of money and refer to the cost of Rampart.

However, Barack Obama, the current police chief, Bill Bratton, and pretty much every union out there, is for Ridley Thomas. I'm not sure what he's accomplished, good or bad, other than jump from one political office to the next.

And what does either one of them really stand for? A bunch of vague promises about fighting for working families and creating stronger communities. How exactly are they going to do this? How are they going to make this happen?

Crickets are chirping...

So, if you live in California you have till 8:00 PM to weigh in on the madness. Good luck getting yourself to the polls.

Comments

Jameil said…
yay! you know i love political activism!! VOTE!!
Natasha said…
Hey out there in the sunny west. Wondered if you knew about this scary racist running for the judicial bench in L.A.? I read about him today at racialicious.

http://www.racialicious.com/2008/06/02/white-supremacist-wants-to-take-the-bench-in-la/#more-1639

Peace,
Natasha
Haute in LA said…
Headed to the polls after work!

OMG, I wonder HOW Bernard Parks' people got my MICHIGAN CELL PHONE NUMBER!?!?? They call me at least 3 times a day!!!
Lisa Blah Blah said…
Yeah! I voted by mail (and have ever since the last presidential election, when I waited in line for three hours to vote. Three hours during which my unemployed/stay-at-home self was paying a babysitter. Yeah, I was plenty ticked off.) and tho' it's more convenient, it's not the same as standing in line, talking to people, and then getting your "I Voted" sticker. Go on out and vote!
Anonymous said…
Yes down with Prop 98! In San Francisco our lovely Mayor has been trying to sneak in Prop G which would give developers a carte blanche to built multi-million dollar condos for the super rich in the Bayview/Hunter's Point neighborhood - where the last large group of Black people and other people of color who earn less than $65K live.

He gets to be the hero for gay marriage while slashing the budget for homeless programs, low-cost medical care and affordable housing goes unreported. 46% of the Black population is now gone from the city because rents have nearly tripled. SF has always been over-priced due to more people wanting to live here than available housing but the past 2 years it has been especially brutal.

Actually changing the population of the city will change the voting patterns from progressive to conservative. I've had to point out to people that SF is not quite as liberal as they'd believe. Oh I have to mention that the commercial I saw raised red flags.

It had a Black male voiceover and talked about more jobs and parks being built. Sounds good, right? But as I learned from robocalls used during the Presidential campaigns these tend to be deceptive and sure enough I looked into it and discovered it was about the condos and about building a new stadium for the football team on land they don't have to pay for.

Magic Johnson is a little suspect to me these days as his support for Clinton was tied to him getting a hedge fund in place with one of her biggest donors and in a guilt by association [sorry] I'd question any endorsements he'd make.
Liz Dwyer said…
Jameil,
I'm hearing that the anti-rent control proposition is failing. Thank goodness it is! Whew!

Natasha,
Yes, there's been a few articles about him in the press and then various entities have been calling and leaving messages that basically amount to, "Don't vote for that crazy racist!" I hope he doesn't get elected.

Haute,
Those Parks people are outta control with how many times they called. They were such harassers!

Lisa,
Whew, three hours! I remember standing a long time too. They tried to shut our polls down even when people were still in line and everybody threw a fit over it. I guess I should vote by mail too, because it would be simpler, but I'm with you. I like the feeling of going and getting my sticker too!

Heartsandflowers,
Enough already with the high priced condos! They keep being built down here too and I don't get who they think is gonna live in them. Where are people moving if they're leaving the city? Here they moved to the Inland Empire but now with gas prices and the housing crash, I think more black folks will just leave California. And I don't like your mayor all that much even though I don't know much about him. He always comes across as a total sleazeball.
Anonymous said…
LA -

The Mayor is a sleazeball. He got embroiled in a sex scandal of his own with the wife of his campaign manager who was also on the city payroll. Unfortunately that Prop passed. I wonder if the people in that neighborhood realize they may not be living there a few years from now.

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