Senate District 27 commentary




On Saturday the mailbox contained the first big-money financed, hidden agenda hit piece of the season. It was aimed at Sen. Fran Pavley and pictured a senior woman blowing a gum bubble. The brochure was mailed from Sacramento by the California Senior Advocates League and urged recipients to call Pavley’s office to complain about her having voted for Senate Bill 1234.

Copy on the back made all manner of rant about the legislation being “a pension scheme the state can’t afford and that could create a multi-billion dollar liability.”

Research shows that it’s really a retirement savings program for private company employees who don’t have a pension or retirement program. It’s funded by voluntary contributions from the employee into a special account, sort of like the Scholar College Savings Account program.

Real senior organizations such as AARP and Congress of Seniors actually supported the bill. The California Chamber of Commerce and the conservative National Federation of Independent Business withdrew their opposition to the bill.

The bill was authored by Sen. DeLeon and passed on the Senate floor vote 23-13. Pavley was one of the 23 aye votes.

These hucksters must hate Google. Three clicks on the search engine revealed the mailer to be a none-too-clever attack on Pavley by a political action committee financed by California Now Independent Expenditure Committee, a Super PAC funded by Chevron, Philip Morris and many others having nothing to do with senior citizen concerns.

Even using the word NOW in the PAC name is a cynical shuck, hoping voters will associate it with the National Organization For Women.

So here we have an election eve message sponsored by a deceptively named “League,” carping about legislation designed to help private company employees with their retirement planning, and utterly failing to make any logical connection between the stated issue and Sen. Pavley’s overall competence in serving her district.

I strongly urge everyone who cares about electioneering truth to use Google search to find who the sponsoring group is, where they get their money, what they have spent it on recently, and what the subject of the stated issue is really all about.

Jess Thomas

Agoura Hills

I left the Sept. 30 Fran Pavley- Todd Zink debate in Calabasas shaking in anger.

Todd Zink recited platitudes about accountability, but flatly refused to take accountability for the sleazy ads coming from the so-called “California Senior Advocates League” (a front group for Chevron and other businesses). Chevron is funding both the Cal Senior Advocates League attacks on Pavley and his campaign. He could refuse Chevron’s money and denounce the ads, or he could implicitly endorse demonstrable falsehoods. Guess which he picked?

To make matters worse, Zink stated that Proposition 32, which he favors, would stop dark money. Proposition 32, nicknamed the “billionaires’ bill of rights,” won’t stop Citizens United-style takeovers of our democracy.

Zink is either naive or deceptive.

I’m voting for Fran Pavley, who has demonstrated integrity and leadership on the issues that matter to this district—education, environment, public safety, and reducing congestion on the 101 Freeway.

R.L. Miller

Oak Park

Californians must oppose AB 32 and its author, Sen. Fran Pavley. Everyone must learn about the Nov. 14 AB32 cap-andtrade carbon auction.

This auction will create a new California-only tax on energy that will further hurt the already weak California economy.

California business groups, large and small, testified against this auction at a Sept. 20 California Air Resources Board hearing in Sacramento. Recent stories about the auction have headlines like “Air board readies assault on state economy” and “Business groups protest Calif.carbon market.”

In addition to sound economic reasons, there are now many sound scientific reasons to oppose AB 32 and its proposed “global warming solutions.”

Problems with global warming science are described by William Felsman in his Sept. 20 letter.

On June 11, 2011, Lord Christopher Monckton of the UK and I described the problems with global warming science and AB 32 to Pavley’s field representative in Santa Monica. Lord Monckton is one of the world’s leading skeptics of man-made global warming. However, we have never received a response from Pavley regarding our serious concerns.

Readers must reject the smear tactics of Blaine Ziolkowski (Aug. 30) and Jay Kapitz (Sept. 6). Ziolkowski and Kapitz have attempted to divert attention away from my specific Aug. 23 questions to Pavley about AB 32 by engaging in a bogus ad hominem attack on me. They are the type of people who made possible a nonsensical bill like AB32 in the first place.

All the other states—Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington—that were once part of the Western Climate Initiative have withdrawn, leaving California alone in its futile effort to solve the worldwide problem of global warming.

It is now time for Californians to use common sense and to reject AB32 and Pavley. Indeed, Pavley should seriously reexamine her own support for AB32. Hopefully, she will recommend suspension of the Nov. 14 AB32 cap-and-trade carbon auction.

Also, hopefully, Ziolkowski will leave “CO2-polluted” California and move back to Michigan, where he can live in “green” Detroit. Ziolkowski should take Kapitz with him.

James E. Enstrom

Los Angeles



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *