Letter
to the editor: A voter's rebuttal
Is
the "Our View" section really
the conjoined opinion of twenty co-workers
or is it an editorial piece doctored by
someone with a powerful demand to be looked
upon favorably by her peers? Last Thursday,
the On-line Forty-Niner published an article
denouncing Arnold as a viable gubernatorial
candidate. Although this opinion was forthright
as well as backed by a limited number of
circumstantial evidence, it held a misinterpreted
-- or rather an under-referenced view on
Proposition 49. The "After School Programs.
State Grants Initiative Statute" is
written to take effect starting next school
year, not in the incorrectly mentioned seven
years. This issue was creatively written
so that our state, families, friends, and
children will not have a long-term, one-year
fix that we will be paying off for the next
30 years (not an estimated number). No wonder
the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
supported this proposition. By utilizing
money straight from the General Fund, this
proposition will not damper the current
budget crisis within our state. Bond issues,
including the three that passed during the
same election last year, have just less
than 50 percent of the money going to the
actual program itself. We, the voters in
this state, passed three bond issues last
year totaling about $37.8 billion. While
almost $18.6 billion will go to the programs
(barely over 49 percent), we will have wasted
$19.21 billion on interest. Now that my
300-word limit is almost up and I have to
cut this lesson a little short, please make
wiser choices such as paying-over-time instead
of a long-term, one-year fix. Finally yet
importantly, let me help us visualize this
amount of money that we are paying for not
to go to our programs for the next thirty
years as a result of poor choices: $19,210,000,000.00.
Ouch!
--
Chris Lanski
Kinesiology major |
