November 6, 1991
Dear Everyone:
Another year, another election.
This year the election in Contra Costa County was
fairly small. Some Concord City
Council Members, school district stuff, water district.
So small, in fact, that “Jeannie”
didn't even notice it until the weekend before election day, by which
time it was too late to register to vote.
She'd moved and, although she still in the same county,
apparently her registration failed to follow her to the new address.
Oh, well, no biggie.
Except, that is, for proposition M.
The City of Concord has something called the Human
Rights Ordinance, which is intended to cover discrimination cases.
When you get evicted by your
landlord because he doesn't like the color of your skin, or your ethnic
background or gender, the Human Rights Ordinance allows you to take your
case before a Commission.
Now for prop M: It
would amend the HRO to exclude “mediation of disputes arising out of
complaints based on sexual orientation”.
In other words, if you're evicted and you’re Black, OK; but if
you're evicted because you're gay, forget it.
This is so blatantly absurd that I had to read it
twice to make sure I got it right. And
as for the Proponents! Beware of
an “Argument in Favor of Proposition…” that
has more exclamation points in it than Macy's has sales.
And
italics.
And
bolded lettering. And
underlining!!!
The crux of their argument is that the HRO “grants
homosexual special minority status (equal to blacks and Hispanics)…“.
Special
minority status? How is that
different from “regular” minority status? And just who are we trying to
incite to riot here, the Blacks and Hispanics for being “equated” to
gays? Or the other way around?
Or the non-of-the-above
“majority”?
According to these hysterics, San Francisco is
powerless to “stop totally naked homosexuals from parading through the
streets for fear of riots…” and they (the people out to “protect”
Concord) don't want our charming little community to turn into another
SF. The opponents avoid all the
emotionalism and concentrate on calmly saying, over and over, that it
would cost the city state and federal funds (because of the
discrimination) and, besides, it's unconstitutional.
Unconstitutional? Hells
bells, it ain't even grammatical.
Whoever heard of anybody,
naked or otherwise, “parading through the streets for fear of riots”?
All of this galloping absurdity might not have
gotten as much attention if there had been anything serious on the
ballot. As for the Candidates;
they were all either stridently supporting or passionately opposed to
prop M, which made it easy to drop all the political propaganda into two
easily identified categories: “Stinks”, "Stinks More“.
One character stated “Qualifications and Education”
consisted of “A vote for me is a vote against my opponent!”
Well, yes. Those
of us who vote regularly learned that a long time ago.
You only just figured it out?
Doesn't sound like you've had
much experience as a politician (both a plus and a minus).
Only the Water District candidates managed to stay
out of the “mud”.
In other news…
I spent some quality time this weekend with my
furnace, now that winter might actually come.
I dragged out the instructions.
(This is the easy part.
I put all of the Owner’s Manuals
and User Guides to any and all appliances together in a large,
three-ring binder which I keep in the pantry.)
Looking for the directions for getting the filter
out to clean it, I see “the filter should be checked every 3 to 4
weeks”. I said, “This is a joke,
right?” It takes me that long
just to figure out how to get the #@*% cover off.!
And just as long to get it back
on again. A couple of years ago,
I went through this silliness. Got
the cover off. Got the filter
out. Vacuumed it.
Put it back.
Put the cover on. Then, when we
had the first real cold spell, the furnace wouldn’t work.
I finally had to call a repair
man to come and look at it.
Turns out, the cover had slipped off because I
wasn't able to slam it down as hard as it was supposed to be done.
The repair man was so delighted
at not having to crawl around inside the furnace, looking for real
trouble (he'd thrown his back out playing soccer the day before) that he
just smashed the cover in place and didn't charge me the usual $62 fee
for showing up.
This time, I
think I got the cover on okay. But
why can't they make these things more User Friendly?
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |