Public Investment: February 2006 Archives

George Lucas is visiting DC...

"Lucas, who has never been identified with political causes, said Tuesday that his visit to Washington was strictly nonpartisan...

Lucas is not listed as a political donor to any federal candidate for office or party in the past few election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission records."

but, there is this...

Asked about the role of democracy in Star Wars' imaginary Evil Empire, Lucas said, "In the Empire, Congress is irrelevant. They come, they talk, they rant, they rave, they vote, but it doesn't mean anything because the emperor controls it all. He doesn't care about the democracy part of it.'

It's a little horrifying to consider that someone as outstandingly and phenomenally wealthy as George Lucas has never given so much as a dime to participating in the democratic process, but, like a lot of people, it sounds like he's starting to wake up. Glad to see he's apparently taking the political message of Episode III - "So this is how liberty dies, to the sound of thunderous applause" - seriously.

The Governor's advisors are divided about Prop 82, the preschool for all initiative.

Richard Riordan, the governor's former secretary of education, and his wife, Nancy Daly Riordan, are among Proposition 82's leading supporters. Some of the big donors to the governor's campaigns - Robert and Elizabeth Lowe and Warren Hellman - are also lending their names to the campaign to tax high earners to pay for universal preschool.

On the other side, the campaign against Proposition 82 is relying on advice from some consultants who have worked for Schwarzenegger's political committees or Citizens to Save California, a coalition of business groups that supported Schwarzenegger's November 2005 initiatives. Two of the governor's staunchest allies are heading up the campaign against Proposition 82: California Chamber of Commerce President Allan Zaremberg and Small Business Action Committee President Joel Fox.

Hence the Governor can't take a position. Nevermind that very prominent pro-business groups, such as the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, have given him perfect cover by endorsing it. This guy just has no set of values guiding him when it comes to anything that's fundamental or important. He has very strong convictions about exercise programs. That's about all we've seen so far. He can't take a stand if any of his crony corporate contributors or right-wing advisors behind the scenes have a problem. That is not the kind of person who deserves to lead a state like California.

Dan Walters makes no sense today:

What no one - not only politicians of both partisan stripes but the larger public as well - wants to acknowledge is that when it comes to state spending, there's no free lunch.

If you filter out the cynical journalist-speak from this sentence from the paragraph before, you'll see that thi sis actually exactly what Treasurer Angelides has been saying:

Angelides has uttered the usual bromides about closing corporate tax loopholes and imposing higher taxes on the rich but has been vague about fully financing what he and other Democrats are advocating.

So what Mr. Walters is really saying is "well, my back of the envelope calculations don't match with what the State Treasurer has come up with. He must be wrong, and I must be right, and it's better just to be cynical about these things anyway." He mentions the Governor's addiction to free-lunch thinking (lets $220 billion on the credit card! whee!) in passing towards the end, but wouldn't that have been a better topic for a column?