Reply #20: You think his swing to the left was real?

[madmusic]

I don't. It's a ploy. You've been around, so you must know they are experts in straw man moral panics, ever since The Dolphin Group got Chief Justice Rose Bird removed from the bench under the pretense of "soft on crime" this conservative propaganda machine has ruled the state. Her real sin was pissing off big business. That steam roller never stopped rolling. The same Dolphin Group produced the Willie Horton ad that brought down Dukakis in the 1988. They have and continue to Swift Boat with impunity.

Willie Horton's ghost comes to Santa Monica
By Robert Scheer
Published October 1, 2000 in the Los Angeles Times

Why should you care about the phony "living wage" initiative that the fancy hotels have put on the Santa Monica ballot if you don't live in that particular burg?

Because it's a classic case of the political process being bought by big money that is as cynical as all get-out, and the same tactics will be used against you and, indeed, already have.

snip


The Westwood-based Dolphin Group, which is running the slick campaign with massive mailings of ordinary, sincere, smiling folks saying they support the ballot initiative, is nationally known for having produced the infamous Willie Horton video ads that sank Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election.

snip

The Dolphin Group has a long history in the initiative process, having as far back as 1976 run the campaign defeating Proposition 14, which would have protected the hard-fought gains made by Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers.

The Dolphin Group is the same company that spent more than $5 million of Phillip Morris' money in a failed effort to pass a pro-smoking California ballot initiative, Proposition 188, in 1994.

As with the living wage initiative, which is designed to appeal to people who support a living wage--even though this initiative would curtail such efforts in Santa Monica--the wording on the tobacco initiative was similarly deceptive. It implied that the initiative favored restrictions on smoking, when in fact, if passed, it would have ended tough local ordinances designed to protect nonsmokers.

"People were not told that this would wipe out their strict local standards and impose a weaker law," Paul Knepprath of the American Lung Assn. said at the time.

As The Times reported in the Stitzenberger story, "his firm ran the 1986 campaign that resulted in the unprecedented defeat of California Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other Supreme Court justices. In that campaign, he and his partners organized a group called Crime Victims for Court Reform, which drew on mothers and fathers of murdered children who opposed the liberal Bird court."

more: http://www.robertscheer.com/2_localla/00_columns/100100.htm

After 30 years you must know about this, and you must know merit has little to do with it. It's propaganda and Californians are suckers for propaganda even when they can see it nationally in BushCo. It's as if Californians think they are too smart and too caring to get suckered. No one would sucker a smart and caring Californian!

Schwarzenegger will throw a few bones to the Left, but overall the state will swing even further, maybe much further, to the Right, and the Repuke's moral panic works once again. He has not been a good Governor and only got a good propaganda machine behind him.