In an earlier posting, I introduced the general purpose of the Republican Central Committee. But I'd like to do a quick run-down of the accomplishments of the current committee and the remaining objectives for this term. The current membership of this committee has done more to get involved in local elections than in recent history, and has built opportunities for the next committees to build upon.
Shortly after being sworn in at the December 2006 RPLAC meeting, we quickly got involved in the Signal Hill city council elections, particularly the campaign to elect Nancy Long, a Signal Hill activist working to get more transparancy from the current council. Thanks to efforts by this committee in both phone banking & walking precincts, we helped Nancy quickly become more competitive; Nancy was actually leading by 23 votes for the final seat prior to provisional ballot counts. Of course, this margin never holds for a Republican candidate like it does for a Democratic one. By the time the provisionals were done, Nancy had fallen short of election. After consulting with my San-Pedran raised friend Steve Baric, president of the CA Republican Lawyers Association, Nancy decided not to pursue a lengthy recount or lawsuit, and will instead hopefully run for one of the three open seats in 2009. I've saved my yard sign from her campaign, and look forward to working as soon as she files to add a Republican to the Signal Hill City Council.
In February, I had to make a decision to work with a local friend & conservative Democrat Richard (Dick) Vladovic in his election bid for the local LAUSD seat. No Republican filed for this seat, but two far-left Democrats, UTLA activist Jesus Escandon & Progressive (aka Cindy Sheehan) Neal Kleiner, had filed to challenge Vladovic. I made the decision that it was more important for Republicans to step up and have an effect on every local election, rather than have Republicans stay home & hope that local Democrats will choose the most conservative candidate. Dick Vladovic won election in May, and has been a great leader for the community. Because I worked closely to help him win election, we now have a connection that will help us in future elections. This is the "big picture" in furthering our principles and values.
In August 2007, this committee stepped up its commitment to the state party's mission of getting more involved in local races by supporting four Palos Verdes Republicans in the November elections for Rancho Palos Verdes City Council & the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, my former hometown & high school district, respectively. A critical mistake we made was underestimating the influence of the local teacher's union (PVFA) & the Democrat incumbents. While Republican RPV City Councilmember Steve Wolowicz received the most votes of any candidate, our Republican challenger for the 2nd seat, RPV Traffic Commissioner Paul Wright came 80 votes short of the third and final seat. Paul ran a great campaign, and has already been encouraged by many, including myself, to run in 2009. In the PVPUSD race, we were unsuccessful in defending incumbent Dave Tomblin's seat and electing challenger Paul Neights. Both candidates were ironically painted as "union candidates" by the local union activists themselves, and unlike the City of Los Angeles, Palos Verdes residents do not exactly endorse the "union label". I learned a lot by participating in these races, and am still proud to have supported all four. I am already looking forward to the opportunities for both RPV City Council and the PVPUSD board for 2009.
For Tuesday's election, I have personally been working with San Pedro activists to fight Propositions S & 93, including ironically the local Democratic club. Most of their members also see the problems with these measures and worked with my local neighborhood council to hold a local information forum on Proposition S, the communications tax "preservation" measure. The forum was great for our side, and we recruited about 40 volunteers who walked their neighborhhods this past weekend to encourage voters to vote "NO". San Pedro is a great town, and has a lot of conservative Democrats that know "when to say when" to higher taxes.
We are currently engaged in the Long Beach Unified School District elections by encouraging Republicans to get involved in the campaigns for both incumbents Jon Meyer & Felton Williams. We'll continue to do so through their April re-election. We also support the recall effort of LBUSD Board member and TALB loyalist Michael Ellis, and will continue gathering signatures.
For the remainder of this year, once the Long Beach local elections are completed, our primary focus will be on winning the Assembly seat currently held by termed-out Assemblywoman Betty Karnette. We need to ensure our strongest candidate emerges to take on the strong Democratic candidate, likely LB City Councilwoman Bonnie Lowenthal. Bonnie is going to have a "machine" similar in structure to the Clinton one, and our nominee will need to be ready to spend and do what it takes to win. Bonnie will be a full-time candidate, so our nominee must be as well. This is primarily why I am asking ALL Republicans to get behind two-term PVPUSD Board Member Gabriella Holt, who has dedicated herself full-time to building the strongest campaign now to take on the Democrat nominee.
I'll go into a more detailed analysis of Gabriella Holt in a future posting.
For now, I encourage everyone to learn more about this committee and how to get involved in local elections, including Gabriella Holt's. 2008 offers numeroud opportunities for Republicans to make a difference; I hope we all find at least one and get involved.
Showing posts with label Proposition S. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Proposition S. Show all posts
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Misrepresented Voter Propositions on February 5th Ballot
One of the things that really burns me up is when legislators create horrible propositions and rely on misrepresentation to fool ignorant voters to vote for them. On the February 5th ballot, there are two such propositions that are being misrepresented to voters, Proposition 93 the "Term Limit Reduction Measure") statewide and Proposition S (the "Communication Tax Reduction Act") in the City of Los Angeles. I do take solace in the fact that these Democratic legislators at both the state level and in the Los Angeles City Council realized that they need to market their schemes as conservative practices. Term Limits and Tax Reductions...what conservative voter wouldn't vote for those?
The issue with both of these is each ballot measure does the exact opposite of what their titles state. To start, Proposition 93 on the statewide ballot markets itself as a Term Limit Reduction measure. It does reduce the OVERALL length of a state legislator (going forward) from 14 years to 12 years, but allows the legislators to serve all 12 years in either the Assembly or the State Senate. Here are the two things that Assembly Leader Nunez and State Senate Leader Perata (the two primary sponsors of this measure) do not want you to know:
1) The measure will allow all of the current legislators to start their 12 years "now" (as in 2008), as opposed to counting the number of years they have already served toward the twelve. Proposition 93 will lock most of them in until 2020due to the inherent strength of incumbents. When's the last time a CA state legislator was voted out of office or had their seat switch parties? So if you favor the gross overspending by our state Legislature and its consistent performance of passing nanny legislation, passing this measure will lock in twelve more years of just that!
2) The current requirement is that legislators can only serve 8 years in the State Senate and only 6 years in the Assembly. This measure extends the number of years legislators can serve in each, which also retains incumbents. Termed-out assembly members and state senators usually have to decide whether to compete against each other for an overlapping district in order to "stay employed". This is one of the few incentives for legislators to appeal to a broader base. If they can't, then they'll be limited to the 6 to 8 years that their limited agenda can support.
The latest television ads for Proposition 93 talk about how important "experience" is, and that our current legislators can't gain the necessary experience in less than 6 years. Boy, I wish my employers had been open to giving me 6-8 years to become "experienced" before I could solve any problems! Our current legislators sure have found ways to run up our state spending beyond its revenues over the past 6 years! Why should we reward them with 4-6 more years of job security? Do you really think that these current legislators are now going to use their renewed term extensions to suddenly solve the financial problems they created? What indication do any of us have that the current legislators have learned "the error of their spending ways", and are now going to work with the Governor to reduce their spend-happy ways? If Proposition 93 passes, get ready for a HUGE tax hike! This is the only solution that Assembly Leader Nunez is considering to fix the state budget crisis.
I urge everyone to vote NO on Proposition 93!
(If you're not a voter in the City of Los Angeles, the next proposition will not be on your ballot. But it's still important to see what kind of misleading ballot measures exist on a local level as well as the state level.)
In 2007, the State Court of Appeals affirmed a Superior Court decision that found the current Communications Tax in Los Angeles to be constitutionally illegal. It was never submitted to the voters of Los Angeles for approval, and the heavily-Democratic Los Angeles City Council continued to ignore advice to place the tax on a measure for the voters to approve. (Maybe because they know that even Democrats have a threshold of the number of taxes they want to pay.) Villaraigosa’s so-called tax “reduction" from 10% of current phone services to 9% is actually a tax hike. Even though the Superior Court threw out the tax hike in July 2005, over two years ago, the City kept collecting it anyway, about $162 million per year. What the Mayor and the City Council don't want voters to know is that if you vote “no,” you don’t pay the tax at all, because the court threw it out. If you vote “yes,” the tax comes back, and not only will we continue to pay the tax on our phone services, but it will add Internet, DSL, wireless services, text messaging, instant messaging, VoIP, PCS and other similar services at the "reduced" 9% tax rate.
But this is not necessarily why voters need to vote NO on this proposition. The issue of this measure is the misrepresentation of the measure to voters. The Mayor's office and the Democratic City Council members are calling this measure a "tax reduction", when it is in fact a "Tax Preservation".
Lately they have been trying to appeal to social liberals by talking about the government services that will be cut if the measure fails. And there will have to be cuts, as the City will lose about $270 million. The City will have to ask the tough questions about its spending, such as why it allows the contractor for the new LAPD Headquarters downtown (a friend of the Mayor's) to run over budget by over $140 million without any accountability. They'll also have to reconsider the $285 million in pay raises to the public service employees. The list goes on and on, and my opinion is that the City Council should be able to tighten its belt. Those that cannot propose such fiscal responsibility should be voted out next year; I'll be holding my council member, Janice Hahn, to just such a standard.
There MUST be more conservative voters in both the State of California & within the City of Los Angeles than I have recently assumed! To have to market these propositions in such a manner as to try and attract naive conservative voters shows that even liberal legislators understand that basic human nature favors conservative principles and values. But of course...most of those reading this posting could have told them that!
The issue with both of these is each ballot measure does the exact opposite of what their titles state. To start, Proposition 93 on the statewide ballot markets itself as a Term Limit Reduction measure. It does reduce the OVERALL length of a state legislator (going forward) from 14 years to 12 years, but allows the legislators to serve all 12 years in either the Assembly or the State Senate. Here are the two things that Assembly Leader Nunez and State Senate Leader Perata (the two primary sponsors of this measure) do not want you to know:
1) The measure will allow all of the current legislators to start their 12 years "now" (as in 2008), as opposed to counting the number of years they have already served toward the twelve. Proposition 93 will lock most of them in until 2020due to the inherent strength of incumbents. When's the last time a CA state legislator was voted out of office or had their seat switch parties? So if you favor the gross overspending by our state Legislature and its consistent performance of passing nanny legislation, passing this measure will lock in twelve more years of just that!
2) The current requirement is that legislators can only serve 8 years in the State Senate and only 6 years in the Assembly. This measure extends the number of years legislators can serve in each, which also retains incumbents. Termed-out assembly members and state senators usually have to decide whether to compete against each other for an overlapping district in order to "stay employed". This is one of the few incentives for legislators to appeal to a broader base. If they can't, then they'll be limited to the 6 to 8 years that their limited agenda can support.
The latest television ads for Proposition 93 talk about how important "experience" is, and that our current legislators can't gain the necessary experience in less than 6 years. Boy, I wish my employers had been open to giving me 6-8 years to become "experienced" before I could solve any problems! Our current legislators sure have found ways to run up our state spending beyond its revenues over the past 6 years! Why should we reward them with 4-6 more years of job security? Do you really think that these current legislators are now going to use their renewed term extensions to suddenly solve the financial problems they created? What indication do any of us have that the current legislators have learned "the error of their spending ways", and are now going to work with the Governor to reduce their spend-happy ways? If Proposition 93 passes, get ready for a HUGE tax hike! This is the only solution that Assembly Leader Nunez is considering to fix the state budget crisis.
I urge everyone to vote NO on Proposition 93!
(If you're not a voter in the City of Los Angeles, the next proposition will not be on your ballot. But it's still important to see what kind of misleading ballot measures exist on a local level as well as the state level.)
In 2007, the State Court of Appeals affirmed a Superior Court decision that found the current Communications Tax in Los Angeles to be constitutionally illegal. It was never submitted to the voters of Los Angeles for approval, and the heavily-Democratic Los Angeles City Council continued to ignore advice to place the tax on a measure for the voters to approve. (Maybe because they know that even Democrats have a threshold of the number of taxes they want to pay.) Villaraigosa’s so-called tax “reduction" from 10% of current phone services to 9% is actually a tax hike. Even though the Superior Court threw out the tax hike in July 2005, over two years ago, the City kept collecting it anyway, about $162 million per year. What the Mayor and the City Council don't want voters to know is that if you vote “no,” you don’t pay the tax at all, because the court threw it out. If you vote “yes,” the tax comes back, and not only will we continue to pay the tax on our phone services, but it will add Internet, DSL, wireless services, text messaging, instant messaging, VoIP, PCS and other similar services at the "reduced" 9% tax rate.
But this is not necessarily why voters need to vote NO on this proposition. The issue of this measure is the misrepresentation of the measure to voters. The Mayor's office and the Democratic City Council members are calling this measure a "tax reduction", when it is in fact a "Tax Preservation".
Lately they have been trying to appeal to social liberals by talking about the government services that will be cut if the measure fails. And there will have to be cuts, as the City will lose about $270 million. The City will have to ask the tough questions about its spending, such as why it allows the contractor for the new LAPD Headquarters downtown (a friend of the Mayor's) to run over budget by over $140 million without any accountability. They'll also have to reconsider the $285 million in pay raises to the public service employees. The list goes on and on, and my opinion is that the City Council should be able to tighten its belt. Those that cannot propose such fiscal responsibility should be voted out next year; I'll be holding my council member, Janice Hahn, to just such a standard.
There MUST be more conservative voters in both the State of California & within the City of Los Angeles than I have recently assumed! To have to market these propositions in such a manner as to try and attract naive conservative voters shows that even liberal legislators understand that basic human nature favors conservative principles and values. But of course...most of those reading this posting could have told them that!
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