Posted on 02/28/2006 9:24:22 PM PST by calcowgirl
Actor-director Rob Reiner is taking a lot of well deserved media and political heat--from politicians in both parties, for a change--over a lavish promotional program for preschool education financed by tobacco tax money controlled by a commission he heads.
Although Reiner and the First 5 California Children and Families Commission insist that he didn't play a direct role, it's perfectly clear that the commission was using public money to boost a Reiner initiative to tax the wealthy for preschool programs.
(snip)
The bigger issue is the emerging syndrome of wealthy Californians pursuing their pet causes through the initiative process, spending millions of dollars to place measures on the ballot that, in turn, generate billions of dollars that are spent without the scrutiny normally given to public funds. The preschool media campaign financed by the First 5 Commission is an excellent case in point. But it's not the only one.
California's new stem cell research program is another. One wealthy man, Robert Klein, generated the initiative that authorized $3 billion in state bonds to finance stem cell research grants, touching off both a feeding frenzy among researchers and a political storm over how the Klein-chaired commission disbursing the grants operates. Just this week, a trial began in Oakland on a lawsuit filed by conservative groups, attacking the constitutionality of the Klein initiative.
Lest we forget, Arnold Schwarzenegger personally sponsored a 2002 ballot measure that will take effect this year, shifting about a half-billion dollars in the budget to the after-school programs he favors.
The Reiner-Klein-Schwarzenegger approach is a variation on a syndrome that first arose in the 1980s and 1990s--groups, mostly environmentalists, sponsoring initiatives for bonds and then writing into the measures specific appropriations for private interests that contributed campaign money.
(Excerpt) Read more at shns.com ...
But it's OK because their hearts are pure and their cause is just! :^)
Seems like he knew whereof he spoke.
Sen. Poochigian Requests Attorney General Investigation(snip)
“There have been calls for audits to connect the paper trail about the process in which taxpayer money was spent on the ‘First 5 California’ and ‘Preschool for All’ campaigns. I applaud and support these efforts. However, the key question is not whether or how the money was spent. Public records show that hundreds of millions of tax dollars have been spent on public relations and advertising campaigns associated with ‘First 5 California’ and ‘Preschool for All.’ The threshold question is whether funds were spent legally.
“For this reason, I am requesting that the Attorney General open a formal investigation into whether taxpayer funds were illegally used to influence signature gathering efforts and build support for the Proposition 82 ‘Preschool for All’ campaign. If taxpayer funds were found to have been used illegally for campaign purposes, the Attorney General will likely have the ultimate responsibility of prosecuting the claim, or seeking injunctive relief to safeguard public funds and the election process. The potential civil penalties for misuse of state funds for campaign purposes in this matter could exceed $69 million dollars for the ‘Preschool for All’ television ad buy alone. There could be millions of dollars more in civil penalties if other funds were found to have been spent inappropriately.
With enough advertising money and celebrity backing, they can pass almost anything. There aren't enough taxpayer groups and aware citizens to combat those campaigns, although they are doing a very good job lining up to oppose Proposition 82.
http://www.stopreiner.org/
Reiner's initiative would further worsen the trend of Californians moving to other states by imposing an additional 1.7% tax "surcharge" on "millionaires" to fund government-run pre- school. A "millionaire" is defined as anyone earning more than $400,000 per year.
Capital is extremely fluid, so any new tax on income is easily avoided by switching one's residency and/or business headquarters to a state with a lower income tax, incluidng Nevada, which has no income tax at all.
In 1991, a boost in the state's top income tax rate to 11% produce a DECLINE in state revenue as high income Californians fled the state to avoid the tax.
Reiner steered hundreds of millions of dollars in (tobacco-settlement) public dollars to his friends in the ad and television business with those pre school ads.
Good. He deserves it.
All the better to indict him with! ;-)
funny
his cast name was so fitting him.
But the absence of checks and balances in the initiative process creates problems as well.
You will never meet a liberal who accepts the judgment of the mob. Liberals revile the concept that in a democracy, the voice of the people, no matter how seemingly unreasoned or insensible, is the final word.
Conservatives recognize the fatal flaw in democracy but allow it because they also have faith in the wisdom of free peoples. Liberals simply can't tolerate any circumstance that bypasses paternal republicanism.
I believe that a direct democracy process, an adjunct to due process, would have been approved by our founding fathers under the circumstances they feared most. The whim of the governing elite, including the judicial.
I'm firm in this belief for one very good reason. Our founders never met FDR. They feared and forecast his corrupting presence but were limited in judging the scope of his injury to our system which only first hand knowledge could gage.
The elite paternalism that FDR embedded into our political system is evident almost 60 years later, expressed in the influential public voice of Dan Walters and the McCltachy Syndicate.
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