File under Meathead and the Pork barrel, with kudos to Kausfiles for directing our attention to Dan Morain's story in the LATimes.
Rob Reiner (Meathead, Spinal Tap) sponsored California Proposition 10, which slapped a 50 cent tax on each pack of cigarettes in order to fund various programs for children under five. The new tax collects about $700 million a year from the state's most unpopular minority, smokers. Eighty percent of that is distributed to county commissions for use in local programs. The other 20% goes to a "First Five Commission," in order to fund public education campaigns. Since Prop 10 was passed, the First Five Commission has been funded to the tune of about $800 million.
The head of the First Five is, you guessed it, Rob Reiner. In that position, Reiner has:
• Given $230 million in advertising and public relations contracts — including the preschool ad blitz — to firms that helped Reiner create the First 5 commission. As companies competed for the business, Reiner wrote a letter recommending one firm, which won.
• Paid $206,000 of the tax money to three political consultants, though they had no contract. One of them — Benjamin Austin, a former Los Angeles deputy mayor — said they helped coordinate the government activities of Reiner, the First 5 commission and the media consultants.
Maybe that's public money well spent, and maybe it's not. What is very disturbing is that Reiner seems to be using the commission to fund political activities, including the passing of new propositions. Reiner's next political project is proposition 82.
Police sirens wail as a scruffy teenager, clutching a bag, runs frantically through the streets. Entering a schoolyard, he reaches into the bag. Out comes … a graduation gown, which he dons to receive a diploma.
The scene is from a television ad, paid for with tax money and made by consultants close to Hollywood producer Rob Reiner. It aired across California this winter, touting the benefits of preschool. "When kids go," the narrator says, "we all benefit."
The release of the ad, and two others, by a state commission Reiner heads coincided with his launch of a ballot initiative that would tax the rich to fund preschool for all California 4-year-olds.
Reiner's commission has spend $23 million on the preschool ads, "making it one of the largest state-funded advertising campaigns ever in California." The three consultants mentioned above are now working openly on the campaign, though that is almost certainly what they have been doing with the 200 grand in tax money that Reigner paid them. One of them, Benjamin Austin, is the Prop 82 campaign manager.
In fact, Reiner managed to pass an initiative that taxes people in order to fund the passage of more initiatives. No doubt Prop 82 will contain a similar provision, and soon billions of public dollars will be funneled to a political machine consisting of Reiner and his friends. Any independent political organizations that oppose Reinerism will be overwhelmed on TV and Radio.
California is such a dysfunctional state that anything is possible, and worse is directly proportional to more likely. But this seems so egregiously abusive that there is some hope it will spark reform. The power to tax, John Marshall observed, is the power to destroy. Here it seems to be in the business of destroying fairness in elections.
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