Posted on 03/05/2006 7:45:54 AM PST by SmithL
CALIFORNIA VOTERS, beware. There is a new trend with ballot initiatives. Rich guys raise money to put pet measures on the ballot. Voters approve the measures. Rich guys acquire petty fiefdoms that put buckets of state government dollars under their thumbs.
Wealthy developer Robert Klein spearheaded the 2004 campaign for Proposition 71, the $3 billion stem-cell research measure. Wonder of wonders: Klein became chairman of the board that oversees the stem-cell program, campaign staffers got jobs with the new bureaucracy and the Legislature learned that, despite campaign rhetoric about sharing profits with taxpayers, Team Klein valued "the need to assure that essential medical research is not unreasonably hindered by intellectual property agreements."
This column, however, is about movie director/activist Rob Reiner. In 1998, Reiner sponsored Proposition 10, which taxed California smokers an extra 50 cents per pack in order to fund early-childhood education programs. Voters bit, and voila, Reiner became chairman of the state's First 5 California Children and Families Commission, which controls 20 percent of Prop. 10 receipts.
Team Reiner was well rewarded. Last month, the Los Angeles Times reported that First 5 spent $230 million -- of the $800 million it has controlled -- on advertising and public-relations contracts with firms that had worked on the Prop. 10 campaign. (First 5 Executive Director Kris Perry wants you to know that most of the $230 million went to TV stations, newspapers and other media -- not to the ad agencies.)
The Times also reported that, at the very time Reiner was working to qualify his latest brainchild, "Preschool for All," which will be Proposition 82 on the June ballot, First 5 spent some $23 million on ads to promote -- you guessed it -- preschool for all.
That's a no-no.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Ah, these liberals. If they was so smart, then they should commit their own time and money to a project, rather than taxing us for it. Peonage to be sure.
Note to Parker and Stone: Reiner has painted another big fat target on himself and is begging that you shoot at him, please do!
Anyone who pays to see anything produced in Hollywood - movie, TV or otherwise - might as well just send the money to the DNC.
---Wealthy developer Robert Klein spearheaded the 2004 campaign for Proposition 71, the $3 billion stem-cell research measure. Wonder of wonders: Klein became chairman of the board that oversees the stem-cell program, campaign staffers got jobs with the new bureaucracy---
The voters in California are unbelievably stupid. That's the long and the short of it.
Only about 65% of them. As a California voter I have a very strict policy. I never vote for any initiative that calls for increased taxes on anything, or bonds of any kind to be sold. Even if its to build libraries, fund preschools, raise the pay of cops and firemen - whatever. If the State Legislature wants to do something, well, there is little I can do about it. There are some things they should do, and a lot more they shouldn't. But the propositions have become total boondoggles. Like the federal government, the state will just have to start being more fiscally responsible and exercise its power of oversight. Neither of them do, and I'll be damned before my pocketbook takes responsibility for thier failures and inadequacies. If they take it from me by force, well I will not resist - but I will never willingly vote for them to do so.
I can't think of anyone worse than Rob Reiner running programs for our children. He is Meathead and will always be Meathead.
There's a reason they still call him "meathead".
Not all of us. Some of us Calif voters are fighting these cretin liberals tooth and nail.
It's probably about time to start entertaining an exodus from CA.
So do I & when the initiative people want you to sign the petition I jusk ask & if it is money costing then I tell them no & why.
I left California two years ago. I consider myself a political refugee.
Reiner apparently plans on returning to his throne after the election, although Schwarzenegger's office issued a statement Friday that noted, "There is no express provision for a leave of absence" for Reiner. Lawyers are looking at it.
Anybody know what the rest of this statement was? (It wasn't a press release on his website).
He's not going to oust him, but having lawyers look at how he can allow a leave and have him return?
The money from many of those State Bond issues could be the funds that take your recreation away from you or ever buy the land you live on,,,
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