Word: california
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Reiner, the onetime regular on All in the Family and now a renowned movie director. But the speech, before the American Heart Association, is only tangentially about Reiner's childhood. More directly, he is imploring his listeners to help get out the vote for Proposition 10, a California ballot initiative that would tax tobacco to fund programs for preschoolers. "Politicians like to say children are the future," Reiner says, "but what have they done for them? Everyone knows that the first three years of life is when the brain develops. We must give every child a good start...
...more ambitious pieces of social legislation ever crafted on a state level. Picking up where the U.S. Congress left off when a proposed $368 billion federal tobacco lawsuit settlement was killed in June, Prop 10 would add a 50[cent] tax to each pack of cigarettes sold in California. The money, up to $700 million a year, would be channeled into antitobacco programs and early-childhood health and education. The higher prices would result in an estimated 25% drop in smoking--and consequent savings in the state's $7 billion annual cost of tobacco-related disease, according to the American...
Reiner expects to spend $6.3 million on Prop 10, including $1.1 million of his own. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop has taped a TV spot. Groups including the American Lung Association and the California Medical Association have contributed funds and organizers. Hollywood heavies from Steven Spielberg to Robin Williams have given money; and Hillary Clinton has agreed to attend an L.A. fund raiser. "Prop 10 would utterly transform the well-being of small children across the state," says Peter Digre, director of the L.A. County Department of Child Welfare Services...
Polls show Prop 10 ahead 48% to 33%, with 19% undecided. If it passes, it will be another testament to the ability of an individual to affect the course of social policy in America's largest state. In 1978 Howard Jarvis transformed California's tax status with his Prop 13; last June computer magnate Ron Unz launched a successful initiative against bilingual education. Reiner is far from a dilettante. Four years ago, encouraged by Tipper Gore, he began an intensive study of child-development policy. After consulting with experts, he launched his "I Am Your Child" foundation, produced...
...city built and embellished in such opposition to its own environment. The Mormons tried settling this parched valley, nothing but dust, rocks and Gila monsters, in the 1850s; they failed. In 1905 it was set up as a dry-gulch railroad town handling transshipments of fruits and vegetables from California to the Midwest. Labor strikes all but destroyed the railroad, and with it Las Vegas, in the 1920s. And then, in the '30s, three things made the place possible. Nevada legalized gambling and quickie divorce, and the New Deal created the Hoover Dam. Now people not only had reasons...