Margaret Whitman's latest saturation radio ad is uncommonly offensive even for her.
I love living in California. Best State EVARRR!
But sometimes, I wonder why we are afflicted with the politics of California. I've always chalked it up to the eternal balancing of pleasure of pain that mark the presentation of our world.
But now Ms. Whitman, even Ms. Whitman, has surprised me with a new level of venality. The ad opens with a nice proposal to add a billion dollars in funding for California's UC and CSU systems.
This is a good idea. Ever since Reagan decided that higher education was a waste of money, and Prop. 13 hamstrung the state, UC and CSU have been punching bags in state politics
And how will she pay for it? It turns out that very small incremental surtax on the highest earners in the state will provide more than enough funding and, uh ....
Nah. KIDDING! Margaret will have the most immiserated people in the state cough up the dough. People will have to "work" for welfare, and then go off after two years. We'll take the money that these slackers would waste on food and heat, and hand it over to schools that now serve as an excuse to grind the most vulnerable of us further into despair.
Put aside the fact that the numbers don't even begin to add upas a way to fund higher education. What impresses me is simply the majestic venality of it all. You start with the concept of higher education funding based on stripping the poor of their benefits. Layer that on top of the cruelty of simply kicking the poor into the dirt after two years. Kid, we could feed you until you were two, but them's the breaks.
I don't have a problem with job training for the poor. In fact I think it is a great idea. But it has to be coupled with dependant care, transportation assistance, and the myriad other stumbling blocks that stand between the poor and a living wage. But, that's not what Margaret has in mind. Job training? Pfft. Perish the thought.
A person more cynical than I might wonder why Margaret doesn't save some money from her craven purchase of office and direct it to UC or CSU. Not her thing. Instead, she moneybombed Princeton with $30 million to blast her utterly repellant, and oft-expelled asshole sons into the lair of the Tiger. (No link here -- get it yourself.) Way to go Princeton! However, UC's saviors will have to be someone else or, collectively, the poor.
I love California. But this, I don't love.