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Edited on Wed Jun-01-05 06:37 PM by David Zephyr
Dear Warren,
I am requesting that you please give serious consideration to seeking the Governorship of California in the next election cycle. I ask this of you as a Californian, as a parent and a grand parent, and as a small business owner who has watched with great sadness the reckless and cavalier attitude demonstrated daily by our current Governor in Sacramento.
For many decades now, I have greatly admired both your professional career in the entertainment industry and, more so, your life-long, participative activism on behalf of the oppressed and less fortunate in our society. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Warren, you have consistently made your stand with working women and men in their struggles for fair pay, their right to form unions, and to strike when needed. You have always been a clear and unambiguous voice for civil rights and civil liberties from clear back in the 1960’s.
Now our Golden State is in trouble as perhaps never before. Governor Schwarzenegger clearly lied to the California public when he ran for office about many, many things. First, he lied when he said that he had a secret “plan” to search out waste in the state government which he claimed to have identified (although he refused to ever reveal where the waste was even when questioned). Schwarzenegger told the public that by eliminating that “waste” that he would solve California’s financial woes. However, upon becoming Governor, he immediately ran to Wall Street and borrowed $15 Billion inflating the state’s debt to over $30 Billion!
Schwarzenegger lied to the teachers in our state. He lied to the business people who have never seen one dime of refunded workers compensation moneys refunded to them by the insurance industry that helped elect him. The workers got stiffed and the small businesses never saw a dime.
Schwarzenegger refuses to address the fundamental inequity of Proposition 13 which now by my estimation actually has the owners of some skyscrapers paying less property tax than lowly homeowners because of inflation since 1978. Warren you recently pointed out correctly that a minor tweaking of Proposition 13 could immediately generate upwards of $5 Billion in revenue to the state. Of course, there are those who will immediately cry that “businesses will leave California”. The fact is that Californians are having to leave California because they cannot afford to live here anymore. Adjusting Proposition 13 makes sense.
Warren, you have called for public financing of election and for a single-payer universal health care system and for a state government that rightly challenges the strong but that also protects the weak and less fortunate. I agree with you. But who will lead the state in that direction?
It is your time, Warren. No one is more qualified, more experienced or more uniquely positioned to take on this pompous, loud-mouthed bully in Sacramento than you are. I am certain that the people of my beloved California will respond overwhelmingly to your great intellect, your passion, and most of all your great sense of fairness.
Of course, there are other candidates that the Democratic Party can field for the Governor’s race and they certainly would be good people and it may indeed be their "turn" this cycle, but it is not their time. Warren, I believe it is your time.
Come on, Warren. You’d make a great Governor of California. Here’s my hope that you will give it serious consideration. Wishing you and Annette and your (large) family all the best…and hoping to soon be able to say with pride: Governor Beatty.
David Zephyr Claremont, California
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