Yesterday Phil Angelides had a phone banking event in San Francisco. A number of his supporters made phone calls for him and a few were even in front of the building chanting and waving signs. In the spirit of political debate, some supporters of Arnold Schwarzenegger including me showed up to wave signs as well.

The Angelides supporters did not play nice. One of them called us Nazis and another stole a stack of Schwarzenegger signs from me and ran off with them. They chanted how much they hated Arnold and stole a Golden Bear chant to say this was union territory. We responded with “No new taxes” and “Scoreboard.”

They tried to intimidate us. The Angelides supporters even dropped water on us from the windows of their building and broke a megaphone of Arnold’s supporters. When the police came to interview people about the damaged megaphone, the person they were looking for had conveniently left the building.

For a minute Angelides himself appeared to encourage his supporters. Mayor Gavin Newsom also showed up to rally the Democratic faithful.

The one thing I did not expect was the lack of manors of Angelides’s supporters. I can understand rowdy and childish behavior from college students, but these were grown mature looking adults.

Keep Fighting
While the certainty of Arnold’s victory is growing every day, we cannot stop now. It is still a close race for many of the down ticket candidates. There are great conservatives including Tom McClintock and Tony Strickland who need those last few points to win. Arnold’s coattails can help, but we need every vote we can get. The campaign structure for Victory 06 is immense and is still in need of volunteers for the last hours of the campaign. On the national level Republicans might falter, but we can make California a big victory.

In 24 hours I went to two protests where I met some good people and groups. On Friday I went to a rally/protest/sign waving event sponsored by the East Bay Coalition for Border Security. We distributed literature about why we need to secure the southern US border. Many people were also supporting George Bruno for Congress.

Earlier today I went to counter a protest staged by the ANSWER Coalition. It was kind of similar to one I went to in March, but a good deal smaller. They changed the venue slightly, moving to Market Street where there is a straight view to City Hall. I find it interesting that ANSWER always brings the same set of issues up no matter what the main topic. One of their all time favorites is to trash talk Israel. In response the San Francisco Voice for Israel was there to defend Israel’s right to exist.

Despite the phalanx of ANSWER people, there were no serious confrontations. Since SF voice for Israel was on one side of Market Street and the protestors on the other, it was fun to guess who the drivers were honking in support of. I do know which side the people who flicked us off were on.

God bless America and Israel.

Yesterday Berkeley College Republicans President Josiah Prendergast and Cal Berkeley Democrats President Suzanne Ruecker appeared on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company. The interview speaks for itself.

Does Josiah favor supply side economics? See what he says.

On Friday from 10-2 the Berkeley College Republicans will be having a dunk tank on Sproul just south of the Savio Steps. You can stop by and buy chances to land people in the water for $2 for one ball or $5 for three balls. If the excitement of getting someone wet is not enough, then you can feel good knowing all your money goes to the American Cancer Society to help breast cancer research.

The event was originally scheduled for last week, but the University put up several bureaucratic hurdles that effectively blocked the event at the last minute. Even though they had said the week previous to the event everything was set they came up with another thing we had to do less then 24 hours before the event. While it is possible the bureaucracy just missed something, I would be surprised since there was a dunk tank on Sproul just recently for Homecoming activities. The Student Advocate is helping to investigate the situation.

The schedule as of now:

10:00-10:30 - TBA
10:30 - 11:00 Melissa Jones, Former BCR Senator
11:00 - 12:00 Lev Ingman, Person to dunk
12:00 - 1:00 Josiah Prendergast, President
1:00 - 1:30 Phil Kahn, Webmaster
1:30 - 2:00 Chris Page, Director of Propaganda, I mean Publicity

Mention this and get the special, $10 to push the button.

If you don’t like Republicans or breast cancer, stop by. The worst that could happen is you help save a life.

One of the most contested city council races in Berkeley is District 7. Incumbent Kriss Worthington is being challenged by George Beier. Both Beier and Worthington wrote letters to the Daily Cal recently in which they make their cases.

The primary concern of a city council member is to work on local issues for the betterment of their community and constituents. Since district 7 (map) contains many students, the logical choice is a person with a proven record of serving students.

George Beier has some good ideas. He is a Cal alumnus and I have seen him reaching out to and talking to students, one thing I wish elected officials in Berkeley would do more often. One plank in Beier’s platform caught my attention. He wants to create a student city council district. This sounds great; however the idea was tried a few years ago. From what I have researched, the student district had to be scrapped because it would conflict with higher level laws. The person who purposed and worked on the student district so long ago was Kriss Worthington.

Worthington has experience on the city council and has fought for students. I have been watching some city politics since I came to Berkeley and one of the first things I noticed was Kriss Worthington was looking out for students. I have seen him at ASUC Senate meetings, I have met students he appointed to city commissions. Every issue I can remember Worthington has come down on the side of students.

All the students I know and trust who are involved with city politics fully support Worthington. Some of the students I don’t trust to run the ASUC support Beier. To make things even better EAVP Jason Chu supports both of them.

If Beier was running in a different district, he would be a good candidate. However everything Beier wants to be for students Worthington has record of doing.

I am proud to support and endorse Kriss Worthington for District 7 of the Berkeley City Council. In Worthington we have a friend who has always been there for us and has a record of working on behalf of students.

North Gate News Online, a publication of Berkeley’s J-School, reports on Measure H:

Berkeley voters will decide Nov. 7 whether to pass a measure calling for the U.S. House of Representatives to start impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney…

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates heard from so many residents unhappy with Bush that he said he decided to push for the measure.

“A lot of people felt… the president had really shredded the constitution and was trampling all over it. Arresting people without them knowing why, eavesdropping on people,” said Bates, who is up for re-election. “So we said … let’s put this on the ballot to actually give people a chance to vote, so they can have a say in what they think about the future of this country.”

Berkeley, renowned for its political protests, is the pioneer on this measure as the first of four cities to approve it for the ballot.

The article also focuses on how two different conservatives are viewing the measure:

“It’s ridiculous. I question the wording of the ballot measure,” said Derek Yee, 20, a junior at University of California at Berkeley and member of the Berkeley College Republicans. “I don’t know how constructive this ballot measure would be.” […]

“The people of California feel President Bush deserves to be removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Jerry Denham, co-founder of the Conservative Caucus in Walnut Creek.

In the September issue of the Patriot, Alex Marlow attacks the measure. There is a cost involved, and the city wishes to fund a “task force” to investigate further. I don’t see why taxpayers should have to pay for information that bloggers will research for free. But, honestly, I’m on the fence. It would have been unthinkable just a few months ago, but I’m close to agreeing with Denham (and a growing number of conservatives and libertarians) on this issue. Someone push me over the edge, one way or another (though there’s actually 4 different sides to this).

On Monday, Al Gore was in town to promote Proposition 87. From Inside Bay Area:

The former Vice President and 2000 Democratic presidential nominee urged a cheering crowd of about 2,000 people Monday at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park to get out the vote for the oil-drilling-tax measure on November’s ballot…

Environmental devastation, war, famine and disease “are not political problems, they’re moral imperatives and they’re up to us to confront,” Gore said. “It starts right here in the state of California when you pass Prop. 87.” […]

Proposition 87 would tax oil companies for oil they take from California, raising about $4 billion for use in developing alternative energy sources with a goal of reducing the state’s dependence on gas and diesel by 25 percent within 10 years.

Here’s the lovefest from local bloggers: Happening Here, Berkeley Bubble, The Third Path, and Complikated. This was about as harsh as it got, from the latter blogger:

He showed up in a hybrid with “100+ MPG” painted on the side, but he had such a heavy police escort that I’m sure his travel wasn’t as efficient as he’d like us to believe. Of course, I don’t know if he’d even be allowed to travel without all of the security so it’s a moot point. Besides, ever since I saw An Inconvenient Truth, I’ve been a big fan of the former Vice President, so a small amount of hypocrisy from a man who has done so much good seems permissable, no?

Feel free to discuss Prop 87 and why we should or should not support it. FYI, I’ll be voting no.

Today in The Wall Street Journal there is a nice front page article about the Berkeley College Republicans. It is a good reminder of how the rest of the country views our campus.

For Republicans, the ascendant Berkeley group is a cause for celebration. Dan Schnur, communications director for John McCain’s 2000 presidential run and now a lecturer at Berkeley, often speaks to Republican groups around the state and talks about how the Berkeley Republican students have become a big student club on the liberal campus. “At first, the audiences are surprised, and then they’re inspired,” Mr. Schnur says. “It has a tremendous motivating effect” in mobilizing Republican voters.

My theory as to why the Berkeley College Republicans are so popular is we are needed here more then anywhere. It is because the university and city have leaned so far to the left that people have seen the faults of liberalism magnified. In such an extreme environment, any countering viewpoint is good for debate.

The strength of the Berkeley Republican students is surprising given that the club barely existed in the late 1990s. A revival began in 2000, when several new students restructured the group to hold social activities as well as engage in political debates and attend Republican conventions. They also founded a conservative publication called the Patriot. To spread the conservative gospel, the club has set up a Web site, created an alumni database, regularly brings speakers to campus and holds weekly meetings.

I sometimes forget how far the club has come in recent years. There used to be a time when a dozen members at a meeting was a good turnout. Now the average attendance is around 50 people. I am proud to continue the Berkeley tradition of cutting edge political activism, only this time for the right side.

Daniel McCarthy has a devastating piece on College Republicans and campus conservatives in the latest issue of The American Conservative:

The young men and women of the Right aren’t reading much Richard Weaver these days—nor much Robert Nisbet or Russell Kirk, to name two other seminal conservative thinkers critical of modern warfare. The time when Young Americans for Freedom wore badges blazoned with the slogan “Don’t Immanentize the Eschaton” has long passed. Now College Republicans parade in shirts proclaiming “George W. Bush Is My Homeboy.” The campus Right has almost always been more activist than intellectual, just as the wider movement has been more political than cultural. But where once students were at least familiar with the names Kirk and Weaver, or Mises and Nock, today they look to Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter for guidance. They’re little acquainted with the wisdom of the contemporary Right’s founding generation, and it shows…

The predominance of the CRs predictably gives college conservatism a partisan slant—a CR chapter is an unlikely place to find criticism of Bush from the Right. What’s more, the CRs naturally put a low premium on encouraging students to read the canon of intellectual conservatism—whose works, after all, are more concerned with history, literature, and philosophy than with practical politics. From the point of view of a campus activist, “Why should I spend my time reading about Albert Jay Nock or Irving Babbitt, when I could be out changing the world?” asks Emporia State University Professor Gregory Schneider, a historian of the conservative youth movement….

A casual acquaintance with the conservative canon wouldn’t change any College Republican’s mind. But students who seek a fuller knowledge will find little in the conservative intellectual tradition that accords with George W. Bush’s view of the world and America’s place in it. Increasingly, conservatives over the age of 65—including George Will, Milton Friedman, Jeffrey Hart, and Bill Buckley himself—have come to see the Iraq War as folly. If students critically engage the works of the wisest men of an even older Right, they too may be forced to conclude that George W. Bush is no conservative all—or else that Kirk and Weaver, like James Lawrence, are really leftists.

A lot of good history in the article. And, more importantly, a lot of unfortunate truths.

Is the state of college conservatism really as intellectually empty as this article portrays it to be? Or is it worse? Comment away.

UPDATE: Event stopped by university at last minute. More details to follow.

On Wednesday from 10-2 on the south treeline of Sproul (just south of the Savio Steps), the Berkeley College Republicans will be having a fundraiser for breast cancer research. This will in involve a tank of water and you throwing balls to land people in water.

The schedule of who will be in the dunk tank when is subject to change, but as it stands now.

10:00 - Andrea Rasmussen, Internal Vice President
10:30 – Phil Kahn, Webmaster of BCR and statewide College Republicans
11:00 - Chris Page, Director of Propaganda, I mean Publicity
11:30 – John Kim, Cool person in general
12:00 - Josiah Prendergast, President
12:30 - Lev Ingman, just get him wet
1:00 - Victoria Mitchell, ASUC Senator
1:30 - Danielle Williams, Community Service Director

Last year (the Daily Cal link is no longer valid) the event raised over $500 for research.

Mention this and get the special, $10 to push the button.

If you hate me or my ASUC coverage stop bitched and start throwing things. If you want to help a good cause, have fun, or express your frustration that Republicans exist stop by.

Kerry Eskenas has a new article on America’s foreign policy:

It appears to have become a favorite pastime of the Democratic Party to pin the blame on President Bush for every injustice and all of the suffering that occurs in the world. It’s incredible to watch liberals speak with a straight face as they proclaim that the source of everything that is wrong in the world is not in the perpetrators themselves but is instead a consequence of the Bush administration. As time has gone on, this attitude has become crystallized in the words of prominent Democratic leaders and liberal interest groups…

It is time for the Democrats to acknowledge that the United States cannot be expected to solve all of the world’s problems. As a superpower, it is true that the United States has many responsibilities in the world. But it is irrational to assume that the ultimate blame for all of the world’s problems can be pinned on President Bush…

Check the whole thing.

If you read any stuff on Beetle or Jeremy Koo both of which you should read because they are great, then you would have head about the latest from the ASUC. If you read the Daily Cal yesterday, you would be completely clueless. Next week the ASUC Senate will consider a bill that would pay $22,679 in legal fees for President Oren Gabriel.

The only good news is if you are doing any building projects Student Action has plenty of tools lying around. Student Action controls four of the five executive offices and 12 of the 20 senate seats. Every Student Action Senator and two from other parties support this bill.

If the audacity of this criminal action is not apparent, let me elaborate.

First, Gabriel has no grounds to claim he was acting for the association; the case is titled Gabriel v. Associated Students of the University of California. Gabriel chose to seek action against individual members of the Judicial Council for his own personal gain.

According to the Daily Cal:

Gabriel, however, was not an official within the association at the time he filed the case, as his term as senator had expired and his presidential term had not yet been confirmed.

First, his term as senator was still valid as senators do not take office until the fall. Second, Gabriel was disqualified from the presidential race for the lies of his spokesperson and Student Action Party Chair Suken Vakil.

Second, the case Gabriel brought was to stop the Judicial Council from acting in its constitutional authority. After J-council had disqualified Gabriel along with the entire Student Action Executive Slate the members of Student Action refused to participate in the resolution process within the ASUC. In an attempt to stop further hearings Gabriel took the matter to Alameda County. Only after his request was denied did the disqualified Student Action Executives suddenly become interested in participating in the appeal of the case before the J-Council.

From the Daily Cal again:

“The Judicial Council was violating the ASUC bylaws and their own rules of procedure so in order to make sure that the will of the students was followed, it was necessary to hire legal counsel,” Gabriel said.

I think if Gabriel wanted to follow the will of students he would have appeared and explained himself before the students of the Judicial Council prior to taking them to court. I wrote an op-ed for the Daily Cal over the summer that dealt with this situation.

To understand all the background I made a timeline for the last issue of The Patriot. Jeremy Koo’s impressive timeline is also helpful.

If you are mad you should contact the 13 Senators that have betrayed you. If you voted for Dmitri Garcia of the Defend Affirmative Action Party then you probably condone shakedowns of ASUC funds for unfounded legal fee payments. Background on BAMN’s extortion of $15,000 here.

If you have any questions about this case or any of what Student Action did over the summer ask away, especially if you are new to the blog or were away over the summer.

Since Calstuff is currently dead, I invite all the anonymous SA supporting commenters to come here and tell me I am wrong.

The Chronicle has been running a series of stories about the underground sex slave trade. San Francisco is apparently a major center of the multi-billion dollar black market and Mayor Newsom thinks it’s time to crack down:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is developing a plan to fine and possibly jail landlords who let massage parlors operate as brothels in their buildings… “It’s time to let these traffickers know San Francisco is not the city to be operating in,” Newsom said… Newsom said he’s even open to the idea of putting pictures of johns on billboards — something that has been tried in Oakland.

America’s most “progressive” city taking its cues from the Scarlet Letter… Don’t get me wrong, sex slavery is unquestionably wrong. However, are all of the prostitutes at these brothels forced to perform against their will? I would guess that some women actually choose to work in the field. Likewise, customers, or “johns,” also willingly choose to be involved in an exchange of money for services. The intent is to shame those who knowingly exploit sex slaves. More likely, those that get caught will be publicly humiliated for a victimless crime. The end result will be an industry driven even deeper underground, solving no problems and creating many more.

The logic is just too much for Newsom and other moral crusaders. But at least they’re doing something, right?

“We’ve spent $1 million already, and we revoked one massage license permit in a year,” he said. “I think we need to keep on it, but I also think we can bring building inspectors in to do more with the landlords.”

This is the classic Warrior mentality: spend a lot, accomplish little. Pump more money to fight the underground market that your policies have created. Win a few battles here and there, but the War was lost from the start. Need proof?

In 1994, New York police were able to shut down all the known illicit massage parlors in Nassau County by fining landlords up to $1,000 a day until they evicted unlawful tenants. Landlords who refused to evict faced criminal charges of permitting prostitution and criminal nuisances. Police also persuaded the major regional newspaper to stop running ads for massage parlors.

But, a decade later, after money dried up for the special enforcement program, the massage parlors were back, said Donna Hughes, a sex-trafficking expert at the University of Rhode Island.

Some actually realize that there is only one solution, and it’s staring us in the face:

“We need to know what we are talking about, what’s really out there, before we jump to conclusions,” [Supervisor Jake McGoldrick] said. “Maybe we should examine legalization, like in New Zealand or the Netherlands, and recognize contractual, consensual sex has always been, and will always be, a part of human culture.”

But others want to ignore the facts:

Newsom says straying into conversations about morality won’t do anything to help trafficked women.

“This is not a problem of political resolve,” he said. “The worst thing we can do is muddle this issue with the broader debate of prostitution — we need to stay focused on trafficking because that’s where the abuse is.”

Muddle the issue? I can’t even believe that Newsom is this blind to reality. He would rather throw millions at a problem just to say that he did something than actually help solve the problem. The worst thing to do is not talk about the broader debate of prostitution and how criminalizing it has contributed to the problem of sex slavery. This is not about the morality of prostitution. This is about the morality of laws that punish choice and create chaos. This is about attacking the causes of problems rather than the effects. Why don’t we ever hear about sex slaves from Nevada?

It’s fine if you don’t think prostitution is a good thing (and I don’t think so either). You don’t even have to agree with the philosophy that adults should be able to do whatever they want with other consenting adults. But if you willingly ignore the tragic consequences that are directly and indirectly caused by prostitution prohibition, and act as if you’re trying to help, then who’s the real whore?

Shawn Macomber infiltrates a Berkeley union protest and lives to tell about it at Reason Online:

There was something oddly edifying about showing up to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) dual protest of a Starbucks and Landmark Cinema in Berkeley, Calif., last month, and being instantly recruited to help hoist the Dignity and Respect for the Working Class banner.

“Your Fellow Worker’s arm is tired,” one of the black-clad protestors implored me and I answered the call. How could I not? It had that “Wow, political romantics don’t immediately recognize you as a killjoy” ring to it. A reach for a revitalizing swig of Diet Coke, however, almost brought solidarity to a crashing end. One of my fellow sign holders literally gasped. I might as well have shown up to a Christian Coalition meeting with a bag full of recently aborted fetuses…

IWW members and Starbucks and Landmark workers assured him with loud cheers they were, indeed, on the side of working people and, so, all that was left to do was march and spread the word. I begged off my corner of the banner—damn, Fellow Worker wasn’t playing, this thing is heavy—but tagged along anyway with the red-and-black flag waving revolutionaries as they clogged first the sidewalks and then the streets shouting, “Who’s in the Streets? The Working Class! Who’s Gonna Fight? The Working Class! Who’s Gonna Win? The Working Class?”

“Working Class better get out the way of my car,” a young black man in a tricked out Honda Civic retorted as his light turned green.

Check out the whole thing.