Voters need to initiate reform and ignore corrupt ad agendas

If somebody showed up at your door with blood-red skin, hooves,
two horns on his head, holding a triton he used to poke you in the
belly, and said that he supported a particular ballot initiative,
would you vote for it?

Of course you would, as any decent and minimally perceptive
person should. Such a person knows that in the decrepit charade of
politics, those who don’t care to fool you with appearances
are more likely to be sincere about their positions.

And honestly stated positions are more likely to be based on
genuine ideas, rather than typical sleazy power motives.

So then why do coastal Californians, who pride themselves on
being chic and keen, continually fall for the puritanical image of
a schoolmarm in glasses and a plaid skirt lecturing on how the
future of our children relies on lining the pockets of union
bosses?

This is the image once again projected in the anti-reform attack
ads sponsored by the mafia unions and establishment corruptitians.
Never has their message been so transparently dishonest.

Take the ads against Proposition 75, which would prevent public
workers’ unions (whose members are forced to join) from using
their members’ dues for partisan campaigns without first
getting permission.

Very simple, very straightforward, and no honest person ““
left, right or bottom ““ could disagree with it. Yet
we’ve already seen attack ads actually declaring that it
might shut down all hospitals and schools.

I soon expect to see a commercial showing a little girl plucking
rose petals, followed by an atomic explosion and a cut to a shot of
Proposition 75 sitting on the button and flipping through a
newspaper.

Even I was almost fooled by one of the scare ads. Have you seen
the one where they show a pregnant Janeane Garofalo and claim that
Proposition 75 would forbid abortion as we know it? That scared me
smooth (until, thankfully, I woke up).

California’s landscape is now full of political weeds
““ unions, legislators, councilmen, regulations ““
preventing fruitful growth by stifling productivity.

When film companies relocated their production to Los Angeles in
the 1910s, their main reason was that the city was the
“nation’s leading open-shop, non-union city,” as
Robert Sklar writes in “Movie-Made America.”

Yes. The creation of the magical and entirely innovated industry
of Hollywood, which symbolizes California to this day, was due to
our city being the last free-market frontier in America ““
thanks to which there was “a constant inflow of new residents
seeking inexpensive bungalows and work.”

Compare that with the news that recent governors ““ rather
than running California ““ have been running out Californians,
with 600,000 citizens moving out from 1995 to 2000. The inflow now
is from Mexico.

Which is why, after looking at the reform ballot (Propositions
74 through 77), I realized I hadn’t said “yes!”
this many times since that night Margaret Thatcher ran for prime
minister of my heart.

The initiatives seek to reform four basic facts of modern life:
stupid teachers, evil unions, gluttonous spending and undemocratic
district lines.

These have combined to bankrupt the state and make its education
system one of the worst and most expensive in the world.

You can’t remedy a fundamentally corrupt system by fueling
it with more funds. Yet this is what voters have done election
after election for years, to no educational improvement and to the
squandering of otherwise useful wealth.

It’s a sick game, reducing the creation of opportunities
outside of schools in order to maintain the horrific conditions
inside our schools.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the most physical fiscal
conservative since that other actor who combined Hollywood charm
with sincere Western bluntness, is testing the testes of
Californians whose balls are already to the wall.

Tuesday’s results will show whether our once-dynamic
legacy can be revived, or whether our mental naptime will
continue.

If you’d like to challenge Thatcher for
Mouhibian’s heart ““ and if you’re not Janeane
Garofalo ““ e-mail him at [email protected]. Send
general comments to [email protected].