1115.org

At the beginning of April we brought you news of a San Francisco group’s efforts to honor President Bush by renaming a sewage treatment plant after him.

Those efforts are bearing fruit, and the issue may soon be in the hands of San Francisco voters:

If you’ve attended an event or festival in San Francisco lately - or even just hung out at a city park - you’ve probably seen them.

Admittedly, they’re hard to miss. Someone in the group is usually toting a large American flag, and another is often carrying a boom box blaring patriotic music. Sometimes one of them dresses up as Uncle Sam.

They’re the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco, but don’t let the serious name fool you. The group’s intentions are in the gutter: They want to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant come January, when the next president is sworn in.

During the inauguration, the group also wants supporters to participate in a “synchronized flush”- a way to send a gift to the renamed plant, which supporters say, would be a “fitting monument to this president’s work.”

It sounds like a harmless joke, or maybe a college civics lesson gone awry. But the handful of friends who dreamed this up over beers one night say they have already collected 8,500 signatures in support of the plan - 1,300 more than the minimum needed to put the question to city voters in November. When they submit the signatures in July, election workers will have to verify that at least 7,168 are from registered city voters for the measure to qualify for the ballot.

“It’s a very simple yes or no question, and there’s no real fiscal impact- just the cost of relettering the sign in front of the plant,” said organizer Brian McConnell. “This is the way the democratic process is supposed to work, even though it’s a silly idea in some people’s eyes.”

Silly might be an understatement. Howard Epstein, chair of the San Francisco Republican Party, called the measure an abuse of the system and “loony bin direct democracy.” He vowed to “use all means” to defeat the measure if it qualifies for the ballot. That includes those very expensive glossy mailers, he said.

“There’s no use other than to make these nutcases feel good,” Epstein said. “It’s typical San Francisco crazies.”
[…]
Organizers of the petition drive believe the measure will pass, noting that 2006’s Proposition J calling for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney passed with 58 percent of the vote.

Here’s hoping Epstein’s fervent efforts to defeat the proposition bring it to the attention of enough San Francisco crazies to make it pass.