Nicotine gum and patches are a healthy alternative to smoking; the best thing you can about vaping is that it's a better alternative. Calling it "healthy" is just wrong. Look at the ingredients, look at the contaminants, and look at how the vaping companies are trying to _increase_ addiction.
"Health"-probably the single most wrong-headed thing I've read here, and that's saying a lot.
> but if there is extra space on your ballot please also write in that Bonta is annoying person and it pains you to have to do this
Huh. In German elections, scribbling extra stuff on your ballot makes it invalid. Is this not the case in the US?
Some detail for our situation, from https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/service/glossar/u/ungueltiger-stimmzettel.html : "Ein Stimmzettel ist ungültig, wenn er den Willen des Wählers nicht zweifelsfrei erkennen lässt oder einen Zusatz oder Vorbehalt enthält.", roughly translates to "A ballot is invalid if it does not unambiguously reflect the will of the voter, or if it contains extra remarks or reservations."
Banning reservations makes sense - how are you supposed to unambiguously interpret a ballot with an X next to candidate, but with a reservation of "I hate that guy, but the other guy is worse"? I'm less sure about the logic of banning extra remarks in general. I guess banning extra remarks is maybe a strategy to preserve the secrecy and impartiality of elections, because you can't add extra details like "count my vote as 10x and I'll reward you, here's my contact info" or something.
The entire debate is so politicised that I have no idea which side is correct. The only thing I could find out is that there is big money in dialysis treatment:
The unions are spending money putting out "vote yes", the two big companies which run the clinics are spending money putting out "vote no" messages. Each accuses the other of bad faith. Maybe this union is indeed terrible and is just trying to extort money, but I don't think big business saying "We'll close down and people will die, rather than comply if this is passed" is any better.
And the only neutral-ish opinion I can find is this piece from 2002:
"Thousands of kidney patients each year die too soon in U.S. for-profit dialysis centers, Canadian and U.S. researchers find. Pooled data from eight studies show that patients in for-profit centers have an 8% higher yearly risk of death than patients in non-profit facilities.
Why? For-profit centers cut corners on patient care to make money, according a controversial report in the Nov. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association."
Fuck the SIEU? Okay! But fuck Fresenius and DeVita as well, for their threats of "well we'll just have to walk away and content ourselves with profits from other states" posturing.
California does not have a housing problem. It has immigration and building code/requirement problems on top of ludicrous inefficiencies in industry standards. Quasi-Gerrymandering under the guise of “affordable housing” is rather reprehensible. Soon enough(?) the boomers will be dead and outmigration will continue to gain pace. Californians pretending to care about supply issues will be without yet another made-up or self-inflicted battle to fight. Stop building stick-frame homes in chaparral and then clutching pearls when they burn down every 10-20 years on cue with the bio-cycle and shifting blame to the ever nebulous climate change feedback loops.
U is endorsed by YIMBY Action, SPUR, and (IIRC) Alfred Twu, as ~1/3 of it goes to affordable housing, and another chunk of funding would support bus and bike lanes on e.g. Telegraph. I don't think that funding would materialize without the proposition passing. Are you just worried that there's going to be a lot of money misspent, or something else?
Secondly, W (give everybody four $25 vouchers for local campaign contributions, in order to counter the bias of the small slice of people who normally donate to local races) seems like a cool idea that someone should experiment with, and Oakland is as good a place as any to run the experiment. Is it just the price tag on that one that pushes you to No, or the additional ads it would push on you, or something else?
"the health establishment is so focused on banning healthier alternatives to smoking"
Not mentioned, but a prominent concern for state governments: alternatives to tobacco threaten tobacco sales, which could threaten their "tobacco settlement" revenue streams.
"so much is at stake, the govt now is the biggest player in almost every facet of society and the economy."
>"I’m more interested in speculation about why you can’t have a candidate statement on the ballot if you spend too much money."
Seems pretty obvious to me. California wants to reduce money in politics. This is a way to incentivize candidates to spend less and/or to give candidates who don't have the money a compensatory advantage in getting their message out.
"I think if you hate the Jews and get your divine messages at a ziggurat, you should at least consider that it’s not the Judeo-Christian God you’re talking to."
I think it's fairly clear the gods actually followed by most of our political class are Mammon the god of money and Moloch-Baal the god of violence and untrammeled power.
Scott: "There is also a study purporting to show that flavored cigarette bans do decrease smoking"
Then Limelihood:
"…it's got some big problems. The study there only compares tobacco sales in a single city (San Francisco) before and after a ban on *menthol cigarettes.*
However, because there's no comparison to other cities, it's essentially worthless; tobacco sales throughout the US dropped at this time, and I don't know how this compares."
The lack of comparison to other cities isn't the only reason that study would be worthless when looking at flavoured tobacco products in general:
Menthol slows nicotine metabolism and thereby increases the half-life of nicotine, so it actually has a pharmacological effect on the primary mechanism of addiction to tobacco.
(Why did people think menthol cigarettes were so widespread when other flavourings weren't at all, despite being possible?)
Afaik, that's not the case with other flavourings.
The house members who watched the mayoral debate were very impressed with Thao and called her smart and well-spoken. But she is apparently involved in a scandal where she (allegedly) tried to bully a subordinate in the city government into working for her campaign (illegal) and then fired him when he refused to comply.
The smear campaign against Thao seems to have originated from a blog taking money from the Coal Terminal lobby (seriously). Because they targeted Thao I put her as my #1 choice as i don’t want to breathe coal dust or make it easier and cheaper for other countries to burn it.
Sorry to start a top level thread over a technical issue, but I am no longer getting any notifications when people respond to a thread I am following or to a comment I have made. When I go into the Substack app, I see a list of the posts, but they do not link back to the right place. Apologies to anyone who either feels or cares that I might be ignoring them. 
Nicotine gum and patches are a healthy alternative to smoking; the best thing you can about vaping is that it's a better alternative. Calling it "healthy" is just wrong. Look at the ingredients, look at the contaminants, and look at how the vaping companies are trying to _increase_ addiction.
"Health"-probably the single most wrong-headed thing I've read here, and that's saying a lot.
As a member of another SEIU branch, they are absolutely terrible. Anyone represented by them would be better served by another national.
> but if there is extra space on your ballot please also write in that Bonta is annoying person and it pains you to have to do this
Huh. In German elections, scribbling extra stuff on your ballot makes it invalid. Is this not the case in the US?
Some detail for our situation, from https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/service/glossar/u/ungueltiger-stimmzettel.html : "Ein Stimmzettel ist ungültig, wenn er den Willen des Wählers nicht zweifelsfrei erkennen lässt oder einen Zusatz oder Vorbehalt enthält.", roughly translates to "A ballot is invalid if it does not unambiguously reflect the will of the voter, or if it contains extra remarks or reservations."
Banning reservations makes sense - how are you supposed to unambiguously interpret a ballot with an X next to candidate, but with a reservation of "I hate that guy, but the other guy is worse"? I'm less sure about the logic of banning extra remarks in general. I guess banning extra remarks is maybe a strategy to preserve the secrecy and impartiality of elections, because you can't add extra details like "count my vote as 10x and I'll reward you, here's my contact info" or something.
The entire debate is so politicised that I have no idea which side is correct. The only thing I could find out is that there is big money in dialysis treatment:
https://californiahealthline.org/news/number-of-dialysis-patients-in-california-surges/
The unions are spending money putting out "vote yes", the two big companies which run the clinics are spending money putting out "vote no" messages. Each accuses the other of bad faith. Maybe this union is indeed terrible and is just trying to extort money, but I don't think big business saying "We'll close down and people will die, rather than comply if this is passed" is any better.
And the only neutral-ish opinion I can find is this piece from 2002:
https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20021119/more-deaths-in-for-profit-dialysis-centers
"Thousands of kidney patients each year die too soon in U.S. for-profit dialysis centers, Canadian and U.S. researchers find. Pooled data from eight studies show that patients in for-profit centers have an 8% higher yearly risk of death than patients in non-profit facilities.
Why? For-profit centers cut corners on patient care to make money, according a controversial report in the Nov. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association."
Fuck the SIEU? Okay! But fuck Fresenius and DeVita as well, for their threats of "well we'll just have to walk away and content ourselves with profits from other states" posturing.
Does anyone have arguments for or against Seneca Scott?
California does not have a housing problem. It has immigration and building code/requirement problems on top of ludicrous inefficiencies in industry standards. Quasi-Gerrymandering under the guise of “affordable housing” is rather reprehensible. Soon enough(?) the boomers will be dead and outmigration will continue to gain pace. Californians pretending to care about supply issues will be without yet another made-up or self-inflicted battle to fight. Stop building stick-frame homes in chaparral and then clutching pearls when they burn down every 10-20 years on cue with the bio-cycle and shifting blame to the ever nebulous climate change feedback loops.
U is endorsed by YIMBY Action, SPUR, and (IIRC) Alfred Twu, as ~1/3 of it goes to affordable housing, and another chunk of funding would support bus and bike lanes on e.g. Telegraph. I don't think that funding would materialize without the proposition passing. Are you just worried that there's going to be a lot of money misspent, or something else?
Secondly, W (give everybody four $25 vouchers for local campaign contributions, in order to counter the bias of the small slice of people who normally donate to local races) seems like a cool idea that someone should experiment with, and Oakland is as good a place as any to run the experiment. Is it just the price tag on that one that pushes you to No, or the additional ads it would push on you, or something else?
"the health establishment is so focused on banning healthier alternatives to smoking"
Not mentioned, but a prominent concern for state governments: alternatives to tobacco threaten tobacco sales, which could threaten their "tobacco settlement" revenue streams.
"so much is at stake, the govt now is the biggest player in almost every facet of society and the economy."
Amen!
>These people should be utterly ashamed of themselves and I hope there’s some way to make them cease to exist as an institution*.
*in Minecraft
What happened to okcupid? Is there a link I can read?
Umm WHAT?
Vaping is not a more healthy version of smoking. If anything it is worse because it pulls in even more children to consume nicotine.
Why the heck yes to all judges? Kick the bums out.
>"I’m more interested in speculation about why you can’t have a candidate statement on the ballot if you spend too much money."
Seems pretty obvious to me. California wants to reduce money in politics. This is a way to incentivize candidates to spend less and/or to give candidates who don't have the money a compensatory advantage in getting their message out.
Which OKCupid scandal are you referring to? What happened?
"I think if you hate the Jews and get your divine messages at a ziggurat, you should at least consider that it’s not the Judeo-Christian God you’re talking to."
I think it's fairly clear the gods actually followed by most of our political class are Mammon the god of money and Moloch-Baal the god of violence and untrammeled power.
Doesn't Oakland have a measure Y?
Scott: "There is also a study purporting to show that flavored cigarette bans do decrease smoking"
Then Limelihood:
"…it's got some big problems. The study there only compares tobacco sales in a single city (San Francisco) before and after a ban on *menthol cigarettes.*
However, because there's no comparison to other cities, it's essentially worthless; tobacco sales throughout the US dropped at this time, and I don't know how this compares."
The lack of comparison to other cities isn't the only reason that study would be worthless when looking at flavoured tobacco products in general:
Menthol slows nicotine metabolism and thereby increases the half-life of nicotine, so it actually has a pharmacological effect on the primary mechanism of addiction to tobacco.
(Why did people think menthol cigarettes were so widespread when other flavourings weren't at all, despite being possible?)
Afaik, that's not the case with other flavourings.
The house members who watched the mayoral debate were very impressed with Thao and called her smart and well-spoken. But she is apparently involved in a scandal where she (allegedly) tried to bully a subordinate in the city government into working for her campaign (illegal) and then fired him when he refused to comply.
The smear campaign against Thao seems to have originated from a blog taking money from the Coal Terminal lobby (seriously). Because they targeted Thao I put her as my #1 choice as i don’t want to breathe coal dust or make it easier and cheaper for other countries to burn it.
https://oaklandside.org/2022/11/01/sheng-thao-ethics-violations-zennie-abraham-leanna-powell-coal-mayor-2022/
My list of votes for San Francisco ballot props, in case anyone wants a single data point from an ACX reader in SF.
A: No - poison pill is poisonous.
B: Yes - incremental progress on garbage
C: Yes - audits might help, but probably not much
D: YES - the good housing-streamline one
E: No - the fake housing-streamline one
F: Yes - I like libraries
G: Yes - people in education outside of teachers unions think it's a good idea and well-structured
H: Yes - more voters on local issues.
I: No - pointless spending to ignore erosion
J: No - JFK Drive is good to drive on sometimes.
K: removed
L: No - renew it when it's over, maybe, not now
M: No - devil is ALL OVER these details.
N: Yes - no reason not to
O: No - don't give them more money they won't spend well.
Sorry to start a top level thread over a technical issue, but I am no longer getting any notifications when people respond to a thread I am following or to a comment I have made. When I go into the Substack app, I see a list of the posts, but they do not link back to the right place. Apologies to anyone who either feels or cares that I might be ignoring them. 
How did you vote on Oakland measure Y (the zoo one)?