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Professional Politicians & Crony Capitalists

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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.

7 replies on “Professional Politicians & Crony Capitalists”

…. That’s crony capitalism and that stinks ….

What really stinks about that sentence is that it calls cronyism, “Capitalism'”

That’s a bit like calling a gallon of white paint with two gallons of black stirred in to it, “black-colored white paint.”

Or Good, when mixed with evil, “evil good” or “good evil.”

The reason rent-seekers like Roski want to undo term limits, is because it’s more profitable to invest campaign cash with incumbents (who are very likely to be re-elected given advantages incumbents hold) then to have to invest in both candidates running for an office. Since one will lose, any money going there will be wasted, and if the winner finds out you helped the loser, you may find yourself targeted by his bureaucrat friends in government.

It’d be far better if politicians couldn’t grant favors to business, then campaign cash from rent-seekers wouldn’t flow to them.

It’s not money corrupting politics, it’s politicians corrupting commerce.

Brian — I understand your point. I prefer the “free market” to “capitalism” because the term capitalism is so misunderstood and disagreed upon. Mercantilism is a better term for crony capitalism. And it was Britain’s mercantilist policies that American colonists revolted against.

MoreFreedom — You are precisely right. This commentary has made the point several times. Thanks for making it again.

WHERE ARE THE GREENEIS? THEY ARE (usually) opposed to building anything (unless for themselves) as it might harm the Brazilian pigtailed worm (if such a speecies exists; if not- was made extinct by ovberbuilding).

And where are the “OCCUPIERS” who rail agaisnt the “1%”? (or, is only when the 1% are NOT giving to Dems? (Last I heard, the Cal. legislatrue was Dem dominated and Gov. Moonbeam Brown is a Dem.)

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