The day after election day politicians still remember people played a part in them getting into office. They speak of "mandates" (the more time an elected official says mandate in their speech the thinner the margin the won by) or they repeat their campaign promises and say "the people have spoken". Then the cameras turn off and its back to their offices to determine how to best pay back their political donors and forward their own personal agenda. Two shining examples of this are the Governors of Oregon and New Jersey.
Last week I crowed about many states voting down public bonding questions. The mandate that almost universally sent throughout the country (there were a few notable exceptions) was that the people spoke and rejected their state and local government's uncontrollable desire to raise taxes, often for things the private sector could do better.
The governor of Oregon, Ted Kulongoski, has been pushing for years to increase the cigarette tax through the legislature, the appropriate method for such legislation. However his attempts were thwarted by "House Republicans" who objected to A) the wording of the legislation that did not set aside the added revenues for the proposed health care plan, and B) using cigarette taxes as guaranteed income since the estimated income is based on the current number of packs sold and does not include the number of people who would quit after the tax tripled.
So after his pet project got spanked down hard (60-40) did Governor Kulongoski say "the people have spoken, they mandate no new taxes"? No he said they were "confused", "didn't understand the issue" and "were deceived by the tobacco companies who bought the elections". Yes the tobacco companies spent an estimated $12 million on advertising against Measure 50, about 75% of what was spent trying to pass it, and that doesn't include the governor's use of tax dollars to propagate the measure in the first place.
What Kulongoski, like many urban liberals, don't seem to understand (or remember in Kulongoski's case since he was born in rural Missouri) is that rural farmers, who understand self reliance and are living a near subsistence existence themselves, don't understand why they have to pay extra so others can get health care.
But fear not, the hubris of Kulongoski is not faltering. After dismissing the real mandate that the people don't want a tax increase, he said he will reintroduce it in the state legislature. WTH? He played the nuclear option of going for a constitutional amendment to increase the taxes and the people, in a resounding voice, said "NO!!!", and he proposes to raise it again in 2008, and if necessary 2009. This is not about serving the people of Oregon who clearly did not agree with measure 50, it is about serving himself.
But when you talk about self serving you should immediately think of Jon Corzine, the Governor of New Jersey who was elected to the US Senate but resigned to run for Governor because he is a megalomaniac and his hubris couldn't deal with being one of 435 members of the US congress, his ego could only be satiated by being sole executive of a state with a budget and GDP exceeding half the countries in the world.
New Jersey voted down 2 of 3 public questions that addressed bonding and raising taxes. The one that rankled Corzine's feathers the most was rejecting his crusade for state funded stem cell research. Jon Corzine believes so much in state funded stem cell research that he put up almost $200K of his own money to publicize the issue. Corzine chalks up the question's resounding failure (55-45, a political landslide) to "uninformed voters" who "fell prey to a campaign of fear", led by "the Catholic Church and other groups".
What makes Jon Corzine's emotional and dismissive remarks about the "uninformed" voters of New Jersey, is that many people in NJ have an understanding of the market and understand that if embryonic stem cell research promised so much, the pharm houses and bio-techs would be throwing money at it like a fireman throwing water on a fire. In 2006, the New Jersey legislature passed a law setting up a $270 million stem cell research fund, with the stipulation it not be used for embryonic research. The defeated public question removed such stipulation and in fact listed diseases "such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, sickle cell anemia and spinal cord injuries."
But private industry is not throwing money at embryonic stem cell research, because unlike the misinformation distributed to NJ voters in the guise of an interpretation, business will back a winning cause that will earn it money. Embryonic stem cell research has, after decades of research, failed to produce anything useful. Adult stem cell research has been wildly successful, and despite the ever growing list of cures and treatments developed, since the strands created in the labs are shorter deemed to not have the same potential as embryonic research.
Corzine, who amassed his vast fortune on Wall Street, knows that once embryonic stem cell research is proven to be useful corporations will toss around all of the money that they have to develop cures for the diseases stated above, but until then they will concentrate their efforts on adult stem cell research and medicines to attenuate the symptoms of them. They will continue to put the lion share of their money where they will get results, and invest more frugally in non performing avenues, such as embryonic stem cell research.
But the issue of stem cell research is not totally germane to my point. What is central to my argument is Jon Corzine's disingenuous denial that the people are not informed. To the contrary, the voters in NJ know the truth behind the issue, it is not based on scientific data, it is based on emotion and emotion alone. The fact remains the proposition lost not because of the excuses Jon Corzine and his followers offered, but because the voters, who were hailed as geniuses for putting him in office, are smarter than he gives us credit for... and we're tired of paying the highest property taxes in the country.
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