HispanicVista Columnists

A Reverse Robin Hood
By Raoul Lowery Contreras

Movie Director Rob Reiner (AKA Meathead) objected to my presence in the same room as he pushed for his cigarette-taxing Proposition 10, ten years ago, to the California Parent Teachers Association.

Reiner emotionally, almost tearfully spoke about how California poor children would benefit by taxing cigarettes 50-cents a pack. Reiner’s tax scam passed by 1% of over 7-million votes and raises about $580 million annually with 80 percent going the county commissions and 20 percent to the state commission.

Poor children would not see the money. Middle class and wealthy suburban children would have money rained on them by Reiner and Prop.10 crafted county and state commissions. So, I asserted in a fit of clairvoyance.

Reiner, I declared, was a Robin Hood-in-reverse.

My other assertions -- criminals would rob stores of cigarettes, not money; smuggling of non-taxed cigarettes from outside California would skyrocket. The required percentage (6% of $580 million = $34.8 million) of mandated advertising spending from this slush fund would make Reiner buddies rich. So far they have wracked up over $25-million in profits, thanks to Rob Reiner.

Convenience stores have become war zones with robbers stealing cigarettes with some clerks killed along the way. Smuggling cigarettes from Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Tijuana has mushroomed.

Reiner was forced to resign as state chairman of the Proposition 10 (First5) Commission after accusations of using Commission funds as a political slush fund. Specifically, he ran slush funds through his friendly ad agency for ads designed to promote Reiner’s illegal "Universal pre-school" proposals. The ad commissions: 15-percent.

Ugly stories have now surfaced of how Reiner’s slush fund is being perverted and intentionally denied the very poor children the tax scam was supposed to help.

San Francisco Chronicle: "Scores of savvy San Francisco parents have tapped a pot of taxpayer dollars for everything from children's ice skating lessons and Monterey Bay Aquarium field trips to supplies for Halloween parties and chartered buses to the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield."

A sampling of the grants from the Chronicle:

"Multi-Family First Time Camping Experience" included a camping lesson and overnight trip to Big Sur for six families.

"Couples Travel and Learn Together" included an overnight stay at the Four Points Sheraton in Pleasanton, where couples from Chinatown took marriage workshops. It also included $250 in Target gift cards."

"Families of La Piccola Scuola Italiana" (pre-school in Italian, RLC) included holiday party space rental and the purchase of a Babbo Natale (Italian version of Santa Claus) costume."

San Francisco parents (the Chronicle writes) get Parent Action Grants of up to $3,000 the first year and up to $4,000 for each of the next two. Personal income "doesn't matter because the program isn't based on financial need."

For example: Beth Freeman, an associate professor at UC Davis requested a grant for her Potrero Hill play group of middle- to upper-middle-income families in an application titled "Potrero Hill Toddler Play Group." The grant paid for parenting lectures on positive discipline and potty training, art projects, a field trip to the Crissy Field Center, an Easter egg hunt, a Halloween party and a toddler dance party.

Mr. Reiner can you explain the grant for middle-class children to attend Italian immersion preschool? Explain the grant for a "gardening and healthy eating project" for a dozen women. Grantee Annemarie Kurpinsky says, "The kids grow their own planter garden and learn that food doesn't originate in a grocery store." Wow!

The 58 county First5 commissions in California are sitting on a combined balance of more than $2 billion, according to a survey published in the Sacramento Bee. At the state level, First5 California Children and Families Commission has a surplus of almost $367 million.

Teachers are being laid off while the Reiner Commissions fund $250 Target cards for marriage workshop-attending San Franciscans and squirrel away $2.4 BILLION while the State of California is billions, perhaps $20 billion in a financial Black Hole.

State Senator Dave Cox is concerned how this money is spent because Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature’s Democrats are proposing a $1.75-a-pack tax on cigarettes to help provide health care coverage. Is this more money for Italian language lessons?

California has an estimated 800,000 uninsured children. Advocates say it would cost less than $500 million annually to provide health coverage for them.

Senator Cox says, "Each dollar we put in (to these child health programs) generates a $2 federal match. This funding can help us to meet the growth in that program in the out years and can help us to address real healthcare needs today."

If, then, we redirected just a quarter of First5’s annual revenue to children’s health care, we could insure 800,000 poor children’s health because the federal government would match that money 2 to 0ne.

Poor children would be insured; poor children would be served. Reiner said so ten years ago. That’s when Reiner wouldn’t even allow me in the same room to hear his pitch of how poor children could be plucked from poverty by dollars paid by smokers and spent by Reiner.

Hundreds of thousands of poor children are without health insurance while well-to-do women are getting lessons in "gardening" and "potty training." Hundreds of political appointees are paid exorbitant salaries to pass out blue-collar money to well-to-do parents of well-to-do children. All this while the state is broke. It must stop.
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Contreras’ books are available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com…He produces and anchors "News & Views 61" on San Diego’s TV Channel 61