Editor,
In Sara Zaske's Feb. 6 Examiner article "Director Reiner for Prop. H," she reports Rob Reiner as saying that California schools dropped from spending the most money per pupil of any state to being 44th in per pupil spending.
Are your reporters aware that K-12 education spending presently accounts for nearly half of California's $100 billion-plus budget? That compares to about 6 percent of the budget going to the Corrections Department. And with prison guards in the state's fancy new prisons making $70,000 a year, it's widely recognized that Corrections has plenty of waste to go around in its relatively meager share of the plunder. Only an irresponsible fool like Reiner would try to imply that California spends too little taxpayer money on schools.
As a journalist seeking to objective truth -- or failing that, at least to tell both sides of the story -- Zaske should not have let a preposterous statement like Reiner's go unchallenged. Does she *ever* write stories critical of bloated government? Since I've started paying attention to her reporting in the Examiner, what I see looks suspiciously like lap-dog cheerleading.
By the way, she got the meaning of the word "approbation" exactly backwards. It means approval. Which is exactly what Proposition 13 deserves for giving taxpayers some small measure of relief from the rapacious politicians in Sacramento. Their overspending on feel-good legislation like Proposition H has now burdened Californians with a multi-hundred-million dollar deficit that we the people are being asked to cover with massive borrowing to be paid back by our children through still higher taxes.
Helping the children, indeed!
Sincerely,
Starchild
Libertarian for School Board
3531 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94114
(415) 621-7932