Over the years one of the main ploys by our politicians has been to make government so complicated that people can’t understand it. What the people c… - Howard Jarvis

Tax shelters are a coffin for money.

I was out there and I knew how the people felt. During the campaign, I debated a school superintendent in Southern California. He said, ‘Why if you pass 13, we’ll have to shut the schools down.’ And everybody stood up and clapped. They wanted the damn schools shut down. Even Richard Reeves wrote in that Esquire article of his that Paul Priolo, the Republican leader in the Assembly, said ‘Whenever I tell an audience that Jarvis will bring local government to a halt, all I see is smiling faces.’

I think the wealthy, the middle class, and the poor voted for 13 because I think people from every class resented the fact that government was stealing too much of their money. I think the general idea in California and all over the country, with rich and poor alike, is that the government is too invasive; it has too much control; it passes too many laws; it curbs too many freedoms.