I tell off reporters when I think they’re asking me a stupid question or an irrelevant one. I compare their business to everyone else’s. I say they’r… - Howard Jarvis

There’s no question about it: My father was the most important influence on my life. He was a very stern, righteous, but fair guy who had a set of principles by which he lived. Those principles were: you never lied to anybody, you never took anybody’s money unless you had earned it, and education is essential. He would tell us that education was just like the cans on the market shelf: all you have to do is go take it off. But if you don’t take it off, you’re not going to get it. Nobody’s going to hand it to you.

After all, a government is supposed to be run by the people. We’ve developed in this country an apathetic philosophy that says: ‘I’m only one person. I can’t do anything—why should I take my time?’ The lack of interest means the people have lost faith in their elected officials. They have lost faith in their capacity to be part of government. They have lost sight of the fact that if this system continues as it has, it’s going to change American citizens into subjects.

One of the worst scare tactics used against us during the campaign was the dire prediction—based on the phony UCLA study that Governor Brown and other politicians cited—that hordes of public employees, perhaps as many as 451,000, would be laid off if 13 passed. Well, 13 did pass. And what happened?... There have been no massive layoffs of public employees or drastic cutbacks in governmental services in California… only 19,000 employees of local governments and school districts had lost their jobs because of 13. That’s less than 2% of the 1.1 million people who work for local governments and school districts in the state.