Friday Snippets: Issue Ads, Reagan Day & the Anti-Meg, Anti-Steve Websites
While the Jerry Brown campaign was successful in pressuring the California Chamber of Commerce to pull the Issue Advocacy ad off the air, one thing the campaign won’t be able to do is have the issues raised by the Chamber go away.
A Brown campaign spokesman called the ad “misleading,” but the facts are clear that Jerry Brown campaigned against Proposition 13 and left the state in deficit. Those issues will come back via other vehicles.
Brown’s position on Prop 13 now is: I was against it before I was for it and now I don’t want to talk about it.
Can he maintain that position through Election Day in November?
CalChamber Can’t Take the Heat
Yesterday, Capitol Weekly broke the news that the California Chamber of Commerce pulled its critical TV ad of Jerry Brown after receiving complaints from Brown, his wife, and their friends.
Last time I checked, we were in the midst of an Election Season. And the last time I checked, Elections were occasions when people actually took sides based upon their convictions.
The truth is, that ad was the most refreshing thing to come out of the Chamber in years. It was a tough yet entirely fair analysis of Brown. Widely known as the Godfather of the public employee pension crisis that is now destroying the state of California and the instigator of the global warming silliness that will literally kill our economy, there has never been a Governor more out-of-touch with businesses and taxpayers than Jerry Brown. By pulling the ad, Cal Chamber threw a damp cloth on what could have been the most virile effort to take down the one threat that stands in the way of a new generation in California.
Let Stockholders Do Their Share
Last week we saw two attempts to rein in executive compensation in Los Angeles. One attempt was the right way. The other was not only the wrong way, but it could be disastrous for the company. Maybe even lethal.
Let’s look at the right way first.
Barington Capital Group, a New York investment firm with an activist bent, last Monday sent a five-page letter of complaint to the chief of Ameron International Corp. in Pasadena. Barington, claiming to represent a group of shareholders who own 3.7 percent of the company, precisely and dispassionately laid out its argument. Its letter included a chart showing how the stock of the company lagged its peer group as well as two broader market indexes over five time spans.
Barington made other intelligent arguments. It said, for example, that Ameron should cut internal costs since they equal 6 percent of sales vs. only 2 percent at a group of peer companies.
Modest soda taxes don’t affect consumption or weight gain
Modest additional taxes on sweetened soft drinks don’t do much to curb consumption or child obesity, according to a study released today. But more significant levies targeting soda might have more impact.
The study, published in the journal Health Affairs, could find no significant connection between soda consumption or weight gain among children and special taxes on soda. The taxes in the study averaged 3.5 percent, and none were larger than 7 percent.
“If the goal is to noticeably reduce soda consumption among children, then it would have to be a very substantial tax” said Roland Sturm, the study’s lead author and a senior economist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “A small sales tax on soda does not appear to lead to a noticeable drop in consumption, led alone reduction in obesity.”
New soda taxes have been proposed in California and elsewhere. Democrats in Congress considered the idea as a way to finance an expansion of health insurance for the poor but dropped the proposal in the face of opposition from the beverage industry.