This is just a quick note, as my baby is crying in the other room. I wanted to get
out publicly - somewhere - that both of the electronic voting booths in my district
in San Benito County (R.O. Hardin School in Hollister) acted irregularly for not 
presenting the option to vote 'No' on Proposition 1A. 

The precinct officer canceled out my vote (I think, because he just unselected all
my entered votes and I believe he followed through with the vote. He assured me 
that my vote wouldn't be counted twice, however). They had me vote on paper using
a ballpoint pen instead. I was only one of two voters there, so I wasn't able to
observe whether they offered the electronic voting machine or insisted on paper
ballots from that point forward.

A technician was called in, who verified the problem, but as far as I know at least
one of the two machines was left online, as they wanted to see if it happened again
to the next person. This, after getting verbal confirmation from the voter using 
that machine that the option to vote "no" was absent there, too.

I took a really poor picture of my voting booth with my cellphone, before I was told
that cameras are not allowed. I post it here if it is of any use in future 
investigations.



The area right above the yellow "Back" and "Review" buttons is where there is only 
one choice displayed for prop 1A. Even though you can't read it, it provides only
the option to vote "Yes" and you can tell even from this photo that there is only
a single choice. The choice did not wrap around to the next column, and unfortunately 
the reflection of the ceiling lighting obscures that area, but the whole right 
column was for Prop 1B, and even around the glare you can see there are two options
to vote for that proposition: "Yes" and "No".

This concerns me. One, it could have just been a programming problem, and the reviewers
didn't catch it. That is the most optimistic thing that could have happened, but
even that is really horrible and whoever signed off on the ballot being full and 
complete should be investigated and fired. But what if it is an attempt to 
invalidate all ballots and force a re-vote, or something along those lines? 

Questions on my mind:

+ Mine was the Democratic ballot. What did ballots for Republican or independent
  look like?

+ Why didn't the discovery lead to an immediate shut-down of at least the two
  voting machines in my district?

+ Did an immediate review of all county voting machines take place? If so, by
  whom and what were the results?

+ How is an abstain vote for Proposition 1A to be counted? Is it "No" or "Abstain"?

+ Why shouldn't I be able to take photographs of my ballot as I'm casting my vote?

+ Who is accountable for problems such as these?

+ Does anybody care?

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link

Over the past few weeks, I've received a couple emails and a couple actual
snail mailings from El Rancho San Benito, asking me to fill out a survey.
Each time, I've looked at the survey and have been unable to fill it out,
because of problems with the questions. I'll take a few minutes now to
publicly respond to the survey, along with some commentary on why the 
questions are bad.

The original letters are printed very nicely (they obviously have an immense 
marketing budget). In my read-and-response below, all text in italics
is as written on the DMB survey. Everything else is my response.


El Rancho San Benito Community Outline
Please review the following community elements and check "support" or "oppose"
for each one. Please provide use with any additional comments you may have at 
the bottom of this form, or give us a call us at (831) 635-5910. You may also
take this survey online at www.elranchosanbenito.com/survey.
	
AFFORDABLE AND MARKET RATE HOMES
The El Rancho San Benito outline includes 6,800 homes to be built over an 
approximately ten year period – including 1,360 homes at below-market rate 
for qualifying incomes.
How can I check "support" or "oppose" on this? I support below-market rate
homes in general, but I oppose El Rancho San Benito from the get-go for reasons
not asked about. How does this number of below-market rate homes make ERSB 
special - isn't it mandated that a certain percentage of new development be 
below-market?

The outline includes long-term funding to aid other housing needs of 
the county including the Emmaus House for battered women and their 
children, the homeless, farm worker housing and Habitat for Humanity. 
Again, who would oppose supporting battered women, children, farm workers,
and low-income earners? This is a non-question.

TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS

All streets within the El Rancho San Benito community will be built and 
maintained by the community. 

hmm... the people living in the community will put on the gloves and pave
the roads? Just what does "community" mean, when the streets will most
certainly be built and maintained by workers that wouldn't be able to 
afford to live there, even if they happened to qualify for the below-market
rate homes?

El Rancho San Benito will also include a new, project-financed, 
four-lane divided parkway through the site – providing a new connection 
between Highway 25 and Highway 101 at Betabel. 

This parkway will be useless to Hollister and most of San Benito County, 
since the Parkway runs SouthWest and not NorthWest. There will be no reason 
to take it to go North on 101, because 25 offers a more direct route. There 
will be no reason to take it to go South on 101, because that is what we use 
156 through San Juan Bautista for. Great that El Rancho San Benito will have
a huge highway running through it, further dividing the ecology and 
creating runoff, but please don't believe it will benefit the county as
a whole!

The project will also provide $170 million for additional highway 
improvements in the county. Such improvements can include the widening 
of Highway 25.

Well, we do need the money, but why do people think we need to widen
25? It seems to be running fast enough and safe enough since the dividers
were put in... and most of that $170 million comes from county assessments
that we would receive from any development.

PUBLIC FACILITIES
El Rancho San Benito will donate land and money to provide for all of 
the community's public facilities - including sheriff, fire, schools 
and parks - to ensure the community is self–supporting.

Interesting twist of the word "donate", when these facilities will
directly benefit the residents of El Rancho San Benito and not the county
as a whole. But yes, a self-supporting development would seem to be one
of the minimum requirements.

ECONOMIC REVITALIZATION
El Rancho San Benito will create an estimated 1,800 construction related 
jobs and approximately 8,000 long-term jobs. 

Wow! 8,000 long term jobs! Let's see, at 6,800 houses, that is more
than one new job per house. How does that figure? Are the people living 
there going to work there? Doing what? Who will pay them?

Approximately $3 billion in local economic activity will be generated 
during the approximately ten year build–out period.

"Local" meaning San Benito County? Or, "local" meaning Gilroy's big-
box stores? Specifically, how will $3 billion make it into our local 
economy?

SAN BENITO GATEWAY IMPROVEMENTS
El Rancho San Benito will fund improvements near Highway 25 - including 
trails, greenbelts and historical exhibits that celebrate the county's 
agricultural heritage - to help make this area a welcoming gateway into 
San Benito County.

Eagle Ridge promised public access to their undeveloped property,
too. But once they had their houses and golf courses built, they no 
longer had any incentive to follow through with campaign promises. Why
should we believe DMB will do any different?

LONG-TERM LEGACY FUND
The El Rancho San Benito outline includes the creation of a long-term 
"Legacy Fund" that will raise approximately $80 million over its first 
twenty-five years. One-half of the Legacy Fund will be used to provide 
financial assistance to county residents in need of affordable housing. 
The other half will be used to purchase and preserve important agricultural 
lands in San Benito County. 

This is just one of those things that we'll have to see to believe. I'm 
thinking most of that will go to administration of the fund, fighting 
whatever lawsuits, paying taxes, and what-not.

Okay, basically, I simply cannot respond to this survey the way it is 
written because of a few things: One, it provides for very black and white
responses to questions that demand thoughtful, considered, and non-
absolute responses. The questions assume a premise that this-or-that is
true. This is a problem with surveys in general.

Two, this really isn't a community outreach as it is marketed to be, because
while everyone gets to see the survey questions, only DMB gets to see the 
responses.

Three, if you oppose any of the issues as written, you come off as a heel. 
Of course I support giving money to people that need it! Of course I support
safer highways and more jobs! 

I have to conclude that the purpose of this survey really isn't to find out
how the community feels, but to subtly tell the community how it should feel,
to get us in step with DMB and El Rancho San Benito, so that when it comes 
time to vote, our supervisors will feel apprehensive about voting 'no', 
voting against all the goodies dangling almost within arm's reach, voting
against "community", whatever the definition of that word happens to be at
the time.

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link

I just got a visit from Richard Place, who is running for San Benito
County Supervisor, District 3, against the incumbent Pat Loe. I asked
him specifically what his opinion was on El Rancho San Benito, and 
he said that while he couldn't commit on how he would vote, he is 
currently against the development, mostly based on economic analysis
or lack thereof. He agreed with me that Hollister and San Benito County
would not benefit, and Gilroy's big-box stores would.

Mr. Place isn't against development in general, though - he said he
is inclined to support the Santana development, because it has been on
the books for years and it does seem that it will benefit our local
economy.

It is vitally important that we understand how the candidates will 
likely vote on the El Rancho San Benito issue, before we vote 
them in this June. As I find out more by talking to the candidates 
directly, I'll post their responses here. If you are a candidate and
would like to talk with me directly, please feel free - just give me
a call at 831-636-9900.

Also, remember to join the El Rancho San Benito community discussion 
list at ElRanchoSanBenito.US.

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link

Write your representative to co-sponsor House Resolution 635,
which is the first step to hold President Bush, Vice President
Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld accountable for their
lies.

Here is my letter, which was conveniently auto-generated for me
by the website at VoteToImpeach.org.


Feb 28, 2006

Representative Sam Farr
United States House of Representatives
1221 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-0001

Dear Representative Farr,

I am writing to ask that you co-sponsor H.Res.635 which will create a
select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to
war before Congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war
intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating
against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for
possible impeachment.

The President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense and other high
officials must be held accountable. Our Constitution demands no less.

Sincerely,

Paul McNett
881 B St
Hollister, CA 95023-4505



Thank you.

© 2006 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link

If President Clinton could get impeached for lying about getting a blowjob
in the Oval Office, then President George W. Bush and his top cronies should
get impeached for lying to the American people and the world about the 
rationale for going to war and killing 2,000 American soldiers and 
tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

Apparently, there's even growing support for impeachment among Republicans.
See the wikipedia article at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush

And if you want to add your name to a national referendum to impeach, 
you can do that from Ramsey Clark's website at:

http://www.votetoimpeach.org".

History will certainly find our president guilty of all kinds of crimes. But
even if we can't get him impeached because of the current Republican majority
in Congress, we should at least try. He lied to us. He took away our
constitutional rights. 

Articles of Impeachment

© 2005 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link

Thank you, Senator Boxer, for doing the right thing yesterday. You give this 
independent voter hope that the Democratic Party may be slowly coming around.
Screwy things happened in Ohio, and you got it on the radar screens of ordinary
American citizens. Don't stand on the sidelines and just accept the will of
the fascists in power, for that is how they got their power in the first place.
Question everything they do, and do it publicly, and democracy will eventually
prevail.

© 2005 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link

I've begun my ballot posting for next week's election. You can get pissed at how
I'm going to vote by looking at http://paulmcnett.com/ballot2004.php.

© 2004 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link

This is an excerpt of a post I made to Profox on October 15, 2002. I thought
it would be appropriate to repost it now, as Americans may be gaining a slightly
different perspective of this war of late.

...(By) responding in kind to terrorist attacks, we are eating right out
of the terrorists hands. WE ARE RESPONDING EXACTLY HOW THEY EXPECTED AND
PLANNED FOR US TO RESPOND. They want to instigate instability around the
world and war, especially waged by a superpower, brings instability. 
With instability comes new opportunities for would-be evil powers to take 
hold.

We knew that a massive terrorist attack was coming, we know that another
one will occur one day, we know that our waging war against Iraq will do
NOTHING to thwart that. GWB took office looking for excuses to invade
Iraq, and is now taking advantage of the fear of the average American to
make it happen.

War is always more costly than peace. If we kill Saddam Hussein (along with
countless innocent Iraqis), we will have spent billions of dollars to cause
mass instability in an already instable region, causing a next generation
of pissed off people to make killing American's their life's work.
Remember, we used to be friends with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

When will the cycle stop? When all humans, everywhere, have been
exterminated? Or is it about time that someone makes an evolved choice and
says no to this continued, senseless, bloodshed.

© 2004 Paul McNett       [/Politics] permanent link