The first photo is Howard Jarvis. Jarvis authored and passed a California State proposition that lowered my taxes at a time when crooked property assessors were running wild all over California. His legislation set an upper limit on how fast property taxes could rise and he built in a 2/3rds rule against legislation to raise taxes of any sort.
Jarvis' blessing occurred exactly 30 years ago. Since then I have saved over $100,000 in property taxes. I am now receiving Social Security. My property taxes would consume 100% of my Social Security if I didn't have the benefits of Jarvis' law. I couldn't live in San Francisco. Thank you Howard Jarvis.
The second photo on my computer screen is Philip Anschutz. Philip is a brilliant and skilled businessman who lives near Denver. Philip saw a newspaper idea that was tried out in Amsterdam and then in London...a free daily newspaper supported entirely by advertising.
He set one up in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Washington D.C. Area, the Examiner. Both papers are in areas with close-in thriving suburbs. The papers are well designed, offer good coverage of local news, use numbers (other journalists hate numbers) and have been a stunning success while all other local dailies wither. But the greatest blessing is that the San Francisco Examiner is generally pro commerce. The other dying paper in San Francisco was founded in the late-1800s and still adheres to the popular socialist and communist ideas of that long gone era.
It is a blessing to have a newspaper that doesn't stupidly ignore the lessons of the past 100 years that have seen communism and socialism fail.