Superman Poizner, Erudite Will and the Ever Controversial Sarah Palin
You’ve probably seen the gubernatorial campaign ad of Steve Poizner pulling a car back from going over a cliff like George Reeves as Superman in the 1950s TV show.
Poizner’s campaign calls the ad “Liberal Failure” and in the first eight seconds of the 30-second spot a quote from Washington Post columnist and TV pundit, George Will, appears on the screen: “…Liberalism has Tarnished California Gold.”
The quote is actually the title of a Will piece published January 10.
I found the article among my papers in cleaning up my desk the other day. I had saved it and marked some of Will’s observations.
Will was writing about the student and union-member protests at UC Berkeley over the 32-percent student fee increase. Certainly, an increase of that magnitude was a shock to the budget of the students, although as Will pointed out, the new tuition was “still 70 percent below student costs at Stanford and other private institutions in California that Berkeley considers no better than it is.”
Banned By Labor
What are we to make of the California Labor Federation’s decision to put a prominent Bay Area Democratic political consultant on a banned list that includes Wal-Mart, union-busting hotels, and a major donor to Prop 8?
In case, you missed it, consultant Jude Barry was placed on the fed’s “Do Not Patronize” list, a dishonor reserved for who “have been identified as unfair employers and adversaries of the labor movement.”
What was Barry’s sin? Did he work for a strikebreaking firm? No. Did he become a Republican?
No.
Barry’s sin was his involvement in a controversial electronic signature technology.
Politics Often Behind FPPC Complaints
Ah, politics. The clash of ideas, the roar of the crowds and the whining of the candidates.
There’s nothing like calling a press conference and tossing out some angry accusations to brighten a slow news day and maybe grab some free publicity.
And if nothing comes of the charges, hey, at least the name gets spelled right.
For years, the accepted way to end one of those table-pounding news conferences was to hand out a copy of a letter that was being sent to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission, demanding that the other side stop its terrible and illegal TV ad/fund-raising letter/hidden arrangement/dirty trick/mean talk.
There was absolutely no down side to that letter, either, since the FPPC was typically so far behind in its watchdog duties that the election would be over long before anyone even looked at the letter, much less took action.
Let’s Put an End to Tax Tyranny
Taxpayers are sick and tired of being used, abused, and forced to pay for government programs and services they don’t want at prices they can’t afford. They are irate at having to bail out politicians, most of whom have no notion of what true public service is all about and who run for office only because they can’t get real jobs and have egos that require constant maintenance.
In the immortal words of Howard Jarvis, “We’re mad as hell!”
California taxpayers are carrying an unsustainable tax burden. They don’t need to see the new report by the National Conference of State Legislatures to tell them that last year’s tax increase was the highest percentage increase – more than 10% — of any of the twenty-four states that raised taxes in 2009. They feel it in their bones. They also don’t need to hear that unemployment is at 12.5 percent — without counting the marginally employed and those who have given up looking for work — and home foreclosures are at record highs, to know that they are struggling just to get by.