Brent Schulkin

“The deeper the river, the less noise it makes.”

-Amioun proverb

We are pretty screwed. I get the impression this is going to be way worse than we think. I have seen a few links with some alarming chatter such as this one, this one, and this one by my friend David. I don’t know where the truth lies, but things are certainly worse than we are being told.

I watched Obama’s Oval Office address. I wanted to be impressed. I kept imagining what Bush’s response would have been so that I’d feel better about Obama’s. But it was weak, and the weakness of it was underscored by watching what Rachel Maddow would have said if she gave the speech. Rachel got it right. That’s what we need. Obama didn’t offer anything bold. I don’t want him to stop the oil spill, and I don’t think he can. I want him to use this exceptional moment as an opportunity to really change the way we think about energy and the planet. This is not only “the oil spill moment”. This is “the climate change moment”. We don’t just need to change BP. We need to change everything. He sat there making the nation feel like somehow things are OK and things will go on being the same and we will make some investments in renewable energy and there’s no cause for alarm. Screw that. WE NEED MORE ALARM. I want him to ban drilling, turn GM into a company that only makes trains and windmills, demand a gas tax, and maybe punch Jim Inhofe in the face for good measure. Yes, this nation needs to feel hope after the oil spill, but making us feel like “things will be OK” feels dishonest and counterproductive. Realistically, we need hope and leadership delivered with an emotional tenor that feels more like this:

Our civilization can survive, but first we need to abandon the illusion that standing where we have been standing is safe. Now is the time to leap off the cliff. We’re going to a place we’ve never seen before.

I haven’t been blogging because there isn’t time, but I feel obliged to keep up my tradition of telling you what to vote for. The key to a successful democracy is for everyone to have critical thinking skills. But since we don’t have that, just copy me, do exactly as I say, and you’ll be juuuuust fiiiiiine.

Senate:

Boxer. For the win.

House of Reps:

6th district: Lynn Woolsey. Still got it.

8th district: Pelosi. Get it girl.

9th district: Barbara Lee. Politicians represent their districts. Barbara Lee REPRESENTS for her district.

Governor:

Man, do you remember the recall? If there’s one thing that I appreciated about the recall, it was a variety of choices. We had Arnold, Arianna Huffington, the porn star…good times. It makes me sick that we don’t get to have that sort of choice with our democratic primary. I really didn’t want to vote for Jerry Brown. I do not like him. When he came out strong against Prop 66 in the weeks before the 2004 election, he lost me. That’s when it became clear that he (not to mention Schwarzenegger, Davis, Wilson & Deukmejian) was not intellectually honest, was not serious about common sense ways to cut unnecessary spending on prisons, and could not be counted on to make the decision which was clearly the moral one, but didn’t fit the script of someone running for Attorney General. So I’m voting for Jerry, and it feels icky, because Jerry Brown hates Norman Williams. I would like to sincerely apologize to Norman Williams for the vote that I’m about to cast.

Lieutenant Governor:

I’m pretty torn on this one. I’m planning on voting for Gavin, but if people have good arguments for Janice Hahn, I’m all ears until Tuesday.

Secretary of State:

Debra Bowen has done a good job.

Attorney General:

Kamala Harris. She is fully legit, and I would be proud to have her represent me. I’m a big believer in “smart on crime”, and that was the title of her book. She endorsed Obama when it was not yet safe to endorse Obama. She has certainly done some things which I haven’t agreed with, but overall I’ve seen her take a series of courageous stands which have impressed me. Especially refusing to seek the death penalty when that police officer was murdered. I’ve got a number of Facebook/Silicon Valley friends who seem to support Chris Kelly. I do not understand this.

Insurance Commissioner:

I really can’t decide on this one. As of right now I’m leaning towards De La Torre, but open to arguments for Jones.

Board of Equalization:

Betty Yee

Superintendent of Public Instruction:

Tom Torlakson

State Senate:

DIstrict 8: Leland Yee
District 12: Fiona Ma
District 13: Tom Ammiano (a legend. total baller)
District 14: Nancy Skinner
District 16: Sandre Swanson

THE PROPS:

Prop 13: Yes

Prop 14: No. I’m not a fan of the way our political parties work, but this is not a good solution…seems to me you are reducing information available and reducing the number of choices on the ballot. Kind of confusing, but I know there’s one group that I trust on this issue, and that’s fairvote.org. Here’s what they say.

Prop 15: YES OH MAN YES YES YES! Here’s Lessig to explain why.

Prop 16: NO for the love of god NO. The SFBG explains this one eloquently.

Prop 17: No

Other Stuff:

Superior Court Judge, Seat 6: Linda Colfax
Superior Court Judge, Seat 15: Michael Nava

East Bay stuff:
Alameda County Superior Court Seat 9: Victoria Kolakowski
Board of Education: Joaquin Rivera

I know a few of these people but I’m actually just copying these endorsements from the SFBG:

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 12
John Avalos
Michael Borenstein
Sandra Lee Fewer
Chris Gembinski
Hene Kelly
Eric Mar
Milton Marks
Jake McGoldrick
Jane Morrison
Melanie Nutter
Connie O’Connor
Larry Yee

ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 13
David Campos
David Chiu
Michael Goldstein
Robert Haaland
Joseph Julian
Rafael Mandelman
Kim-Shree Maufas
Carole Migden
Aaron Peskin
Eric Quezada
Alix Rosenthal
Debra Walker

Finally, I’d like to give a shout out to my friend Josh Becker running for assembly in Palo Alto. Not only did Josh have the foresight to be the first investor in my last venture, but I know for a fact that Josh has an outsider’s perspective, and he will be well-equipped to bring new perspectives to the Assembly. It makes me happy to see Josh set aside a fantastic career to tackle difficult, stressful, and frustrating issues on behalf of the public. I hope my Palo Alto people will give Becker a shot.

I’ve been maintaining a blog for a long time, but in the past year or so it’s really just become impossible to keep it updated regularly. Rather unfortunate because this past year has been filled with so many amazingly important experiences, learnings, people, decisions, milestones, and so on. But when you put everything you have into starting a company, you have to drop some things, and one of the things that I’m dropping for now is my old website. I wanted to put up a website that would automatically update itself with Twitter posts etc, since that doesn’t require me to pay extra attention to it. It also had to be a basic brochure site with some more professional sound bytes about me. I learned about the need to have readily available sound bytes after The Economist explored around my old site and reported that I was a “self-described ‘road warrior turned activist’” although that phrase was their own invention.

Anyway, I waited for a long time for Typepad to evolve, but that has not happened fast enough, so now I got this new Wordpress installation. Yes, all the permalinks to my old site are broken, but hopefully only temporarily. The content is still out there in the ether…. When it comes down to it, the bulk of my new site is simply made up of 3 Twitter feeds that I write (schulkin, virgance & carrotmob). If I start doing other relevant activity I’ll add those feeds into the lifestream as well. Let me know if you guys have any feedback on this site…happy to receive your ideas about what design theme I should put on this site. Let this be a reminder that if you were subscribed to my old blog via RSS, that feed is probably busted, so try again. Maybe I will try to post more short “Tumblr-style” posts with this blog. I’ve said that before though, and failed. We shall see. Anyway, thanks for checking out version 3.0 of brentschulkin.com!