Yesterday, I explained how the official title for California’s Proposition 28 tricks voters who favor tougher term limits into supporting a measure that will dramatically weaken those limits.
The title’s slipperiness is anything but accidental. It was designed to fool, hiding the fact that the measure doubles the time legislators can park themselves in the state assembly and ups senate tenure by 50 percent. Instead, voters read that Prop 28 “reduces” (ever so slightly) the time a politician can serve in both chambers, from 14 years to 12 years – something affecting less than one in ten office-holders.
“The proponents of the measure are longtime opponents of term limits who have long wanted to roll back California’s voter-approved legislative term limits,” says Jon Fleishman of the Flash Report, who serves as volunteer co-chairman of “No on 28.”
Still, the sham ballot title is only one part of the Prop 28 scam.
The biggest financial backer behind Prop 28 has been billionaire developer Edward Roski. While at the very same time legislators were awarding Roski’s company the special environmental exemptions he needed to build a sports stadium, Roski just happened to plunk down over a million bucks to the politician-prized petition drive, helping the measure get on the June 5th ballot.
“That’s crony capitalism and that stinks,” argues Fleishman.
“In a state with a 12-percent-plus unemployment rate,” Philip Blumel, president of U.S. Term Limits, points out about legislators, “the jobs they’re fighting the hardest to keep are their own.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.