4.03.2010

Steve Poizner's Bandini Touch

Everything Steve Poizner touches turns to scheisse.

He tried to position himself as the conservative candidate in the California Republican primary for governor, but he angered conservatives when he refused to help fund the part-time legislature initiative from his multi-million-dollar personal fortune. And his newfound "conservatism" seems like a convenient political ploy in this year of populist conservatism as he regularly supported tax increases in the past.

Poizner thought his personal fortune might buy him the governor's mansion, but then he ran into Meg Whitman's much bigger personal fortune. She leads him 63-14 in the polls. That is not a typo.

His latest political gimmick is a book to promote the fact that he spent a year teaching in a poor school (itself obviously a transparent political ploy). How's that working out? Not so well.
Poizner, who spent a year teaching at the school, donated thousands of dollars to help its students and recorded his experiences in the book, has been told he is no longer welcome there. He touts the publication in his campaign to show his commitment to fixing a failed education system, but many who teach and learn at Mount Pleasant say it's a caricature of their community intended to advance his political ambitions.

Throughout the pages of "Mount Pleasant," released Thursday, Poizner sprinkles details about his guest stint at what he characterizes as a rough urban school starting in late 2002, two years after he sold his high-tech company for $1 billion.

He was relieved, he writes, to find his Lexus safe in the parking lot after his first visit. He built a lesson around the corporate history of Kentucky Fried Chicken rather than that of Apple, thinking Col. Sanders would hold more relevance for the students than Steve Jobs.

He ruminates that the underprivileged and, often, uninterested teens on the fringe of Silicon Valley would never match the achievements of young people from his own affluent town of Los Gatos, in the heart of high-tech country.

Martha Guerrero is an associate principal who has worked at Mount Pleasant for 24 years and sent two children to the school, including a son now studying aerospace engineering at UC Irvine. She says Poizner exaggerated the school's problems to serve his narrative.
Rich white guy spends a year slumming in a minority school to make himself look good. The last guy that did that was at least a little more interesting.

Last fall I wrote favorably about Jerry Brown. Since then, I've learned that he's refusing to prosecute the CARB scandal wherein drastic new regulations were imposed based on a fake report by a fake scientist. And Brown actively supports the AB32 Global Warming Act which will further drive businesses and jobs out of California. And he is also the governor who unionized the state workforce, which is the root of the state's financial disaster.

I'll probably vote Libertarian, but eMeg is looking like the best of the major candidates.

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Happy Super Tuesday!