Latest Results From Nov. 3 Election

Updated as of  7am Nov 4.  Percentage in parentheses indicates vote of lowest in-the-money candidate in a multi-winner race. Green indicates LP choice is winning, red indicates losing.

Election	Libertarian Choice	LP Result	Votes	Precincts
Redwood City School Board	Jack Hickey	20% (30%)	2310	100%
Chaffey Community College Board	Chris Agrella	7.5% (33%)	2790	100%
Carmel City Council	Lawrence Samuels	4.5% (10%)	709	100%
Carmel City Council	Savva Vassiliev	0.7% (10%)	110	100%
L: San Mateo city sales tax	LPSM arguments against	39%	4030	100%
U: San Carlos city sales tax	LPSM arguments against	56%	3063	100%
A: San Buenaventura city sales tax	LP Ventura opposes	56%	9601	100%
C: San Buenaventura limit large retail	LP Ventura opposes	55%	9378	100%
A: San Francisco better budgeting	LPSF supports	69%	46023	100%
B: San Francisco more supervisor staff	LPSF opposes	48%	32284	100%
C: San Francisco sell stadium naming	LPSF supports	58%	39065	100%
D: San Francisco special sign district	LPSF opposes	54%	36995	100%
E: San Francisco ban extra city ads	LPSF opposes	43%	28868	100%
Sunnyvale City Council seat 2	Mike Flores (unofficial)	45%	6034	100%

The Carmel City Council election was conditioned on the passage of Measure G to incorporate the city, which Samuels and Vassiliev opposed. Measure G failed, with 52% (2178) "no" votes.

Doherty on Guns Oct 29 @ Tarzana; Samuels on Chaos Nov 15 @ S.F.

[An Oct. 20 email from the LPCA]

• In Defense of Chaos with L.K. Samuals, Nov. 15 Reception in San Francisco
• Gun Control on Trial with Reason's Brian Doherty Oct. 29 in San Fernando Valley
• Collect Signatures, Save Campaign Funds
• 2010 California LP Convention
• California Coffee Club

Monterey Libertarian Leads Tea Party Protest At Health Care Town Hall

Former Libertarian Party Northern Vice Chair Lawrence Samuels led Montery County Tea Party protesters at a town hall meeting on health care convened by Congressman Sam Farr, according to a Sep. 12 article at KCBA.com (Fox 35 in Monterey).  The article said:

Many Monterey Tea Party members showed off their strong messages in the streets. The organizer said the President's recent speech didn't change their views on the health care bill. "To stop Obama care and bring back real reform and health care not government take over," said Lawrence Samuel. [sic]

Lawrence Samuels Leads Effort to Preserve Carmel Valley

Libertarian Party of California Northern Vice-Chair Lawrence Samuels is running for the proposed city council of Carmel Valley in order to defeat the incorporation of the town this November.   From an article by Jessica Lyons in the Monterey County Weekly:

Lawrence Samuels is running for a seat on the Carmel Valley Town Council. But he doesn’t want the job, and he doesn’t believe Carmel Valley should be a town.

On Nov. 3, residents will vote on incorporation. On the same ballot, they’ll also be asked to elect five leaders to sit on the Town Council, and they’ll vote on whether members of the council – in future elections – shall be chosen by district rather than at-large.

Of course, the latter two measures are moot if the majority of Carmel Valley voters say no to forming their own town. And that’s what Samuels, chair of the Monterey County Libertarian Party, wants them to do. He says incorporation will ruin the valley’s rural nature.

“The other side truly believes this [incorporation] is going to make Carmel Valley more quaint, but they don’t realize once they’re gone, and the city doesn’t have enough money, they are going to build hotels, give land away to developers, build big resorts.”

What's Wrong with Banning Black Cars?

By L.K. Samuels Mon, 13 Apr 2009

When a proposal in California to ban black painted cars was revealed in March 2009, the blogosphere and talk radio buzzed with cries of "outrageous." The state legislature, under the auspices of the California Air Resource Board, pushed to reduce auto emissions by controlling the color of vehicles. Because black paint encourages heat absorption, any reflective material painted over dark-hued cars would likely fail to stop reflective heat, violating the 2006 California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32). And since black is the second most popular color for cars, the opposition was intense. In the face of angry voters, the eco-bureaucrats naturally back-pedaled on this unpopular provision.

But one wonders what is so awful about outlawing dark-colored vehicles? Why complain about the lack of individual choice?

In recent years, America's policies have taken a sharp turn down the road of "banamania." Some West Coast cities have already banned plastic shopping bags, certain dishwashing detergents, and Styrofoam containers. The U.S. Congress outlawed the broadcasting of analog TV signals as well as sale of incandescent light bulbs. At least with the incandescent light bulb ban, which goes into effect in 2014, the government still lets people buy the more energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs even though they are laced with highly toxic mercury.

American lawmakers seems to be on an outlawing-everything spree.

The California Energy Commission is exploring regulations to outlaw energy-sucking big-screen televisions for the noble cause of the environment, denying charges that it wants to simply control people and do a little social engineering. In 2004, the California legislature banned teenagers from artificial tanning booths, citing increases in skin cancer as the reason. Some suggested that the lawmakers should have also outlawed tanning on the beach, but the sun refused to comply. In another case, local authorities have banned water bottles, mostly at universities and government buildings. In New Jersey, lawmakers nearly outlawed "Brazilian" bikini waxes.

So the question becomes, why all the fuss over the color of a car?

We've become a society hell-bent on banning whatever the political elite or some lobbying group doesn't like. Get used to it. So what if the state's gone wild? The legislature has been doing it for decades. We even criminalize particular vegetation. In fact, federal and state governments spend billions of dollars annually to eradicate a common variety of weed.

Since much of the banning is done in the name of the environment, you can expect more where that came from. Now that CO² has been classified as a greenhouse pollutant considered harmful because of its supposed climate change properties, it is only a matter of time before the biggest greenhouse gas is criminalized. Water vapor makes up over 95 percent of greenhouse gas, so it must be considered far more dangerous than the CO² and thus must be labeled as a harmful gas, outlawed and forced out of the atmosphere. How about gravity? People have been saying for years that gravity sucks! Why not liberate people from its heavy effect? We could all get around better without that annoying limitation of weight, and save all that money from expensive dieting, exercise, and weight-loss programs.

Why not let the political system ban all sorts of inanimate objects, for whatever reason? Other democratic nations do it all the time. The Australian government recently banned child pornography on the internet. Unfortunately, the ban was soon extended to include many other types of sites. But nobody was supposed to know. When the international whistleblower site Wikileaks posted the banned list, the Australian Communications and Media Authority banned Wikileaks, which had discovered that most of the blocked sites had nothing to do with porn.

But the Australian censorship regulators had to do something to stop porn, so they imposed stiff penalties for violators. Any Aussie caught informing the public about the secret list can be jailed for up to 10 years. And if a Website or blogger unknowingly links to one to the secretly outlawed Websites, that person's site can be secretly listed on the secret list as well! The penalty for linking to secret banned sites can be as high as $11,000 per day, an amount that recently was levied on an anti-abortion site. After being taken offline, Wikileaks only terse comment was: "The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship."

But banning inanimate objects wouldn't harm free speech in the United States. Or would it?

Actually, a federal judge in San Francisco issued a 2008 injunction to ban and shut down the U.S. Wikileaks site after it posted embarrassing documents (the injunction was lifted two weeks later). Maybe banning things could lead to unwanted consequences. Maybe banning black cars is also a free-speech issue. Maybe outlawing things could lead to censorship of ... [CENSORED].