Simon earns Endorsement of California Organization of Police and Sheriffs

This does mean a great deal. Your stereotype assumption about California voters is misplaced. Law and order is very high on the majority of likely voters.

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Your stereotype assumption about California voters is misplaced

Relax, guy. I said that I wasn't being a contrarian or anything like that. I was asking a legitimate question and I wasn't being sterotypical, RATHER, I am working from the plethora of stories that I read from California where there is, indeed, some VERY whacky things happen, espeically the lack of respect for law enforcement.

I didn't imply that all Californians didn't like law. In fact, I am delighted that this endorsement does mean what it means.

P.S. What is with the "Vote Green" bumper sticker? I hope that you are not support the Marxist-Socialist, Ralph Nader. Then I would tell you that your vote is what is "misplaced".

Dan, has Simon responded to the scathing article in the Left Angeles Times about Simon and the S&L scandal? The Davis crowd are airing an ad on the tv and I saw the article in the Sac Bee defending Simon but haven't heard anything from Simon...

Excellent.

Dan, has Simon responded to the scathing article in the Left Angeles Times about Simon and the S&L scandal?

Yes he did respond, but of course the press aren't so eager to run that story. So then the question arises about him going up with his own ads, and then that whole discussion comes up again.

He's probably trying to smoke Simon out and make him spend his scarce resources too early when voters aren't really paying attention. My guess is that Simon's people have a plan in place. They were really savvy in the primary when this kind of thing came up and I'm sure they know what they are doing now.

Personally, I think Simon's strategy is very, very risky. Most voters don't have a clue who he is, and Davis could well create a lasting negative impression long before Simon begins to introduce himself to the electorate.

I agree.

I believe the longer Simon allows these Davis ads to go uncontested, the more time these ads have to satuate and ferment. By the time Simon thinks people are starting to pay attention, their may already be dubious feelings or an entrenched negative impression about him.

Forgot to mention. Did anyone see the "McLaughlin Group" this week? McLaughlin predicted a Dimwit sweep in the top 7 statewide positions in November which would include the governor's race...

Don't get me wrong. I still plan on voting for Simon.

Its just that you have police organization after police organization testifying against shall-issue CCW laws. Make that police chief after police chiefs.

I agree. That the endorsement takes some wind out of Davis' sails, and that is good for Simon. Davis is just plain bad for California. So are the liberal democrats that can't keep their hands off my wallet.

I'm actually feeling a little bit of shadenfreude at California's misfortunes, though, could it be called shadenfreude if I'm living in California too? I, so wanted businesses to start leaving California during last years electricity mess. I so wanted power outages after power outages, where companies like Cisco, HP and others decide that they have had enoguh and are going to move to Texas, Nevada or some other state. I, so liked the commercials other states were running in California trying to lure businesses away from here. Maybe, a collapse of the state would wake up the people about the mess the liberals have turned the state into. Then again, maybe not.

satuate=saturate

From Today's Sacramento Bee:
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/3193001p-4241587c.html

Davis' ad distorts Simon's S&L business record

It's not usually hard to feel sorry for little guys who get crushed by an overreaching and arbitrary government agency.

But what if the little guys are millionaires, and the "crushing" includes a taxpayer bailout of their failing savings and loan? The clear lines in such a story, admittedly, get a little hazier.

Yet that is what happened in the case of the Simon family and their investment in Western Federal Savings and Loan. The story is important just now because Bill Simon Jr. was one of those investors. And Simon is running for governor, the Republican candidate challenging Democrat Gray Davis in the November general election.

Simon, who has little experience in government, is running in part on his record as a "successful businessman." Davis, never a bashful campaigner, has taken that challenge head-on, airing ads this week that question Simon's fitness for office based on the failure of the savings and loan he helped direct.

"If he can't run an S&L," Davis asks, "how can he run California?"

Simon's business record is fair game. But this commercial is a cynical attempt by Davis to mislead ill-informed voters. While it is true that the savings and loan failed, the business went down only after the government broke its word to the investors. Simon is not the villain here. He is the victim.

Here's what happened.

In 1988 Simon's late father, William E. Simon, a former U.S. treasury secretary, wanted to buy a reasonably healthy Los Angeles-based savings and loan called Western Federal. Before he could do so, though, federal regulators encouraged him to also buy a failing and debt-ridden thrift, Bell Savings, and merge the two. To induce him to rescue Bell, the feds made certain promises to Simon and his investment group.

One of those promises had to do with capital reserves. Savings and loans, like banks, must maintain a certain amount of cash in reserve as a hedge against bad investments and uncollectible loans. Bank managers typically want to minimize these reserves, because any capital kept idle for this purpose is money they can't invest to earn higher returns for the business.

Federal regulators told Simon's group that, by merging the two institutions, they could claim "good will" from Bell's business as part of their reserves. In business, good will is the amount you pay for a company above and beyond what its assets are worth by themselves. It represents the intangible value of a company's place in the community, but it is not something you could auction off if you had to raise some money to pay your bills.

The Western Federal deal was one of a series of late-1980s transactions brokered by the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. Faced with mounting losses that would have kept the fund from covering all of its insured deposits, the agency gave sweet terms to investors, many of them well-connected, who were willing to put up some of their own money to turn around failing thrifts. The Simon group invested $210 million and got a $500 million note to cover Bell Savings' bad loans, plus tax advantages worth another $170 million.

Despite those benefits, the deal still would not have penciled out without the accounting provision allowing the new, merged entity to count $116 million in good will as part of its reserves. But a year after the deal was done, Congress abruptly changed the law, prohibiting the very technique that had made the Bell rescue possible.

Eliminating this kind of creative accounting made sense for the long run, but doing it retroactively had a devastating effect on Western Federal. Overnight, a huge gap opened in the thrift's balance sheet. The Simons and their partners would have had to come up with an additional $150 million to keep their business in line with the new regulations.

The Simon partnership didn't have another $150 million to throw into this enterprise. So they gave up. The feds seized Western Federal and spent $92 million to stabilize it before turning it over to new owners. The Simons, meanwhile, lost $40 million in the deal.

They weren't the only ones treated this way. Investors in hundreds of other savings and loans were given the same raw deal. Some sued the government. The Supreme Court eventually ruled in a 7-2 decision that the 1989 law represented a breach of a contract. The government had promised the investors one thing and done another.

Based on the high court's decision, Western Fed's investors filed a claim for damages. A federal court found the Simon group's petition valid. The only issue remaining is deciding how much the breach of contract contributed to the S&L's eventual collapse.

Davis describes this lawsuit derisively in his campaign ad as Simon "asking taxpayers to pay him back his investment." Well, OK. Two courts, including the highest court in the land, have ruled that the government shafted Simon and the other investors. His family never would have agreed to the deal to save Bell without a clear, written promise from the government that was later broken. Given the facts, who wouldn't do the same thing in his shoes?

Simon is still a long way from proving that his background in business would make him a good governor. But the Western Federal story, rather than being an example of bad management, is a clear-cut case of bad government. If Davis can't see that, maybe he is the one who is unfit to be governor.

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About the Writer
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The Bee's Daniel Weintraub can be reached at (916) 321-1914 or at dweintraub@sacbee.com

Personally, I think Simon would be a fool to spend money now. NO ONE is paying attention to the ads. The election is five months away. Have you seen Davis' ads? They're very poorly done.

Davis is trying to do one of two things: get Simon to spend his money early (waste his money) when NO ONE is paying attention except for people like us, or, 2) Davis is trying to stop his negatives from going up. Davis' negatives exceed 50% ... that is NOT GOOD. A labor poll released last week shows Simon up by 8 ... two other private polls released two weeks ago show the race dead even. ALL polls -- even the discredited Field Poll -- show Davis with negatives at 50% OR HIGHER.

Davis has major problems. I will change my opinion about Simon doing ads before Labor Day IF Simon's negatives go up OR Davis' negatives go down.

If those don't happen in the next ten weeks, Simon is wise to keep his resources intact until after Labor Day.

Go Simon!

Maybe they figure with Simon as Gov., there will be less people to arrest. (ie Davis).

Thanks for the ping--great news!!!

SIMON BUMP!

No offence was intended. None was taken. California consistently votes pro law enforcement. When the death penalty issues are on the ballot, an overwhelming majority approves them.

The "Green Vote" thing...well, we were having some fun directing the typical democratic voters who are becoming increasingly..ummmm..disenchanted with Davis, but would never vote Republican. Hopefully we can suggest that they could continue to cast a warm fuzzy vote into the Green party…thus taking one from Grayout and dropping it into the black hole of 3rd. party votes. Thus, the winky face. It is a confirmation that I'm not really promoting 'Green', just subverting Demo votes.

Yup .. SiMon needs to be doing what he is doing now.. Laying the base for the attack that IS to come ...

Let Davis run and run his lame ads ... How many damn times can he shoot himself in the foot? over 12 million times so far with the attack ads... LOLOL

I think Simon can get by on 50 million.

What will GraYout raise and spend?

Last I saw, he had in the high 20 million area to blow..I shur hope his well runs dry quick.

Nope, Simon needs to keep being and doing what he is doing .. he is available, he is reaching out, I don't fret about his offshore stance or S&Ls these days, I worry about paychecks and education and infrastructure.

There is a lot of damage to be undone before this state can be called "Golden" Again ..

This may be the best shot to start down a new road minus some GOP high mucky-mucks (Parsky) to name one ..

I hope Simon wins Big and flushes the republiRats that are not like us "regular Joes".

Thanks for explanation.

I like the idea...very clever. Hopefully, it will also be effective.

You do have a good point in what you say. If Simon can conserve his resources until post Labor Day, he will obviously be much better off. However, I do believe there is some risk in this strategy if Davis sustains or increases negative ads against Simon throughout the summer months.

I live in the San Diego area and have not seen one Davis ad. It appears that hardly anyone here is paying any attention to the Simon/Davis race with the Danielle van Dam murder/Westerfield trial gobbling up all the media attention here.

Under these circumstances, the Simon campaign shouldn't spend money here. San Diego generally goes more conservative than L.A. or even Imperial county to the east, anyway.

I must confess that since 1996, I feel conservative candidates should be far more aggressive in combatting and countering Democrats and their campaigns of defamation, fear-mongering, and bold prevarications.

I know Davis is in trouble, but this is California. Tides can turn in strange intervals. Nothing seems conventional here anymore.

Outstanding.

But now you know Davis will be trumpeting the organizations run by the suits in law enforcement that always seem to go democrap.

I worry about paychecks and education and infrastructure.

You and most everyone else in the state.

Davis had made some tactical errors. Or, maybe not. I suppose if he starts talking about paychecks and education and infrastructure, people will start point fingers AT HIM and say, "Yeah, Mr. Davis, why are we worse off than we were four years ago? Hmmm?"

I know Davis is in trouble, but this is California. Tides can turn in strange intervals. Nothing seems conventional here anymore.

I think that best summarizes the starting point for both candidates. Grayout has the bucks and can afford to "burn" some of his corrupt donations early on. One "convention" thus far is that no sooner does he do this then it gets nullified by another scandal, story of incompetence or bad economic news. Burn grey burn!