The California presidential primary is June 5, 2012, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and you can vote this weekend in some counties, including San Francisco, at the Registrar’s office, and you can deliver your absentee ballot to the Registrar’s office when they are open this weekend, Monday June 4 and Tuesday, June 5, 2012. You can also deliver your absentee ballot to your polling place on Tuesday, June 5, 2012. Your votes are needed for Yes on 29 and Peace & Freedom and Green Party candidates so that we cut down on smoking tobacco and so that these 2 parties continue to exist.
Tobacco kills 16,000 Californians every year, yet the tobacco companies are trying to promote their deadly product by trying to defeat a $1 luxury tax on tobacco, Prop 29, that would cause lots of people, especially young people, to either never start smoking or to stop smoking. Most smokers start smoking before they are 18 years old and if cigarettes are too expensive, they will not be bought. If you do not buy tobacco, you do not pay the $1 luxury tax. The point of the tax is to help eliminate smoking tobacco, a long overdue goal. Looking at the top donors list for Prop 29 and its tobacco industry opponents by going to the California Voter website at
http://www.calvoter.org/voter/elections/2012/primary/props/prop29.html and then clicking on the top donors for and against Prop 29 at
http://maplight.org/california/proposition/2012/june/prop-29/funding you will see that the tobacco companies and friends contributed so far $46.8 million to defeat Prop 29 while the supporters contributed $12.3 million. The tobacco companies have contributed the top 58.8% to the anti-Prop 29 campaign, which you can learn by highlighting the top 5 starting with Number 5, Santa Fe Tobacco and going up to Philip Morris tobacco. For those of you who smoke and cannot understand the disaster that is tobacco smoking for which this whole society pays as healthcare is a social concern, please look at the graphic pictures that will be on cigarette packs by September 2012 at:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/21/cigarette.labels/index.html The picture of the healthy lung next to the smoker's lung says it all: STOP SMOKING SO YOU CAN BREATHE
Your Yes on 29 vote is urgently needed.
Equally urgent is your vote for all Peace & Freedom and Green Party candidates you can due to the reactionary Top Two Primary which will cause only the top two vote getters in the primary to be on the ballot, which means Peace & Freedom and Green Party candidates will most likely not be on the November ballot, and if this happens in 2014, the governor’s race, those 2 excellent parties will disappear from the ballot FOREVER. It also means that the top two in November could easily be 2 Democrats or 2 Republicans, and a losing candidate in a 3-way race could win 33% of the vote and still not be on the November ballot. There is a legal challenge to this unconstitutional law, which was enacted with Prop 14 on the 2010 ballot, but meanwhile, it continues to exist, so your vote for Peace & Freedom and Green Party candidates is urgently needed, as is your registration as these 2 parties now must double their registration to stay on the ballot.
In San Francisco, we have the opportunity to have Green Party candidate Barry Hermanson challenge Nancy Pelosi for Congress on the November ballot, long overdue. Statewide, you can vote for Peace & Freedom Party candidate Marsha Feinland for US Senate. If you are registered Peace & Freedom Party or Green, you can and should vote for your candidate for president, the only office not subject to the Top Two outrage, and of course your Central Committee, also not subject to Top Two.
It is GET OUT THE VOTE (GOTV) WEEKEND. Remember: Vote Yes on 29 and for Peace & Freedom and Green Party candidates.