This flier arrived in (some -- mine, at least) PUSD-area voter mailboxes on Saturday as part of the No on Measure CC campaign. If you don't remember the novelty song "Fish Heads" by Barnes and Barnes I reference in the headline here, a great Dr. Demento favorite 30 years ago, perhaps you ought to watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKDtUzRIG6I
And now that you're back, jeez, is that there red snapper giving voters the hairy eyeball, or what? The gelatinous, long-dead eyeball, that is. Have you ever seen anything grosser in an election mailer? Seeing as how the main anti-CC voice in the district, Ross Selvidge, is a bigtime fly fisher, Rocky Mountain subspecies, he's certainly seen a lot of fish heads and dead eyes. So maybe he's not so shockable ...
The CC battling today, Monday, some three weeks before the election, went on in the form of semi-mass e-mail battles between Geoff Baum, the PCC board member, who it turns out voted against the PCC trustees' endorsement of the parcel tax to help fund the schools, and CC supporters.
Geoff is one of the rare members of ACT, the local progressive political organization, who is not a Democrat -- he's an old-fashioned, Connecticut-style moderate Republican, the most endangered species in California (or American, I suppose) politics.
So he's liberal on social issues, proudly tightfisted on some spending issues.
ACT's Ralph McKnight commented on a widely distributed ACT e-mail aimed at getting out members for a phone bank for the tax measure that Geoff had voted against endorsing CC, and the battle was drawn.
Some of his usual allies in the political and artistic establishment -- "Do you have any
idea about what its failure would mean to our 20,000 students?" asks Maureen Carlson --are outraged.
Here's Geoff in a "Hello friends" e-mail:
"I am a little surprised by the tone of the responses and threats of
political punishment being leveled simply for my decision not to be a public
supporter of Measure CC. ... The zeal of those who support Measure CC is admirable, but let's not fall into the patterns that have poisoned much of the dialogue in our national political scene where opponents use inflamed rhetoric to demonize those
who do not fall into line with their prescribed political perspectives."
Geoff says that when Ross, his friend and neighbor, asked him to sign the ballot arguments against CC, he declined, not wanting to get involved in the public campaign one way or the other. So far, few big names or organizations have joined the No side. The only one I know of is the full Chamber of Commerce board, after its Executive Board reportedly voted to support it.
I'm voting for CC. Our editorial board endorsed CC, by no means entirely happily, given already high taxes and the lousy economy. But with cuts from the state so severe, we saw no alternative.
