By George Neumayr on 6.12.02 @ 12:03AM
Gray Davis's new TV ad accuses Bill Simon of losing $23.1 billion less than Davis has squandered.
In a desperate attempt to divert attention from his $23.6
billion deficit, Gray Davis launched a false television ad against
Bill Simon this week. The ad accuses Simon of mismanaging a savings
and loan in the early 1990s at a cost to taxpayers of some $90
million dollars.
Now, squandering $90 million dollars in taxpayer funds is a good
day for Gray Davis. But his charge against Simon isn't even true.
Davis manages to package into his 30-second television ad a great
deal of deception.
"Bill Simon inherited a fortune, but how has he managed on his
own?" says the ad. "When he directed a savings and loan, the thrift
made bad loans, went belly-up, and was seized by the federal
government. Simon's mismanagement cost depositors millions -- and
the bailout for his mistakes cost taxpayers $90 million more. On
top of it all, now Simon is suing the government -- asking
taxpayers to pay him back his investment. Bill Simon: If he can't
run an S&L, how can he run California?"
Lie number one is that Bill Simon directed the S&L. He
didn't. Western Federal Savings and Loan belonged to Simon's
father. Simon sat on the thrift's board as a monitor for his
father, but he didn't "run" it.
Nor does Davis include another key piece of information: the
federal government, not William Simon Sr., may have cost taxpayers
some $90 million by rashly seizing the savings and loan before he
could turn it around. The Sacramento Bee
reports that the U.S. Supreme Court "ruled in a
precedent-setting decision in 1996 that Congress had changed the
rules regarding savings and loan associations in the middle of the
game. In March, the U.S. Court of Claims ruled that there had been
a specific breach of contract in the Western Federal case."
"The Simons maintained that they could have made a success of
the business were it not for the federal law change, and are among
a group of creditors suing the federal government for breach of
contract on those grounds," reports the Bee.
Davis's ad appears to be a stretch even by standards of modern
political advertising. His grasping at straws reveals a deep vein
of defensiveness: Unable to explain his own mismanagement -- he
inherited a swelling surplus and then proceeded to spend through it
like a drunken sailor -- he feels the need to fake up a record of
mismanagement for his opponent.
"He's out there every day accusing the governor of gross
mismanagement," Davis adviser Garry South pouted defensively to the
Los Angeles Times.
"We think it was high time that he had to answer for some of his
own mismanagement in the private sector."
The thin gruel served up in this week's attack ad isn't likely
to appease angry Californians. They see a govenor who has wasted
not millions, but billions. While the state's budget
cratered, Davis was busy stuffing his pockets with campaign money
from companies like Oracle that benefited from unnecessary state
business.
These companies were not giving Davis money because of his
charming personality. They knew from the start that his
administration was for sale. The coin-operated governor, as some
now call him, could not have made this plainer had he installed a
toll booth at the entrance to his office in the state capitol. The
California Teachers Association -- no friend to Simon -- has
publicly denounced Davis for his crass request of a million dollars
during the middle of a "policy" meeting at the state capitol.
Cheap shots at his opponent will not conceal this corruption.
The failure of a savings and loan that Simon didn't even run is of
little interest to Californians, who still haven't heard an
explanation for the failures of Davis's state government.
topics:
Television, Business, Law, Supreme Court
