Talk:Pete Wilson

The article seems pretty neutral. I was a political reporter covering Wilson's run for Senate, and also lived in San Diego (but didn't vote for him) when he was mayor. Even his critics give him credit for his work transforming San Diego (the most successful mayor of the postwar era). The governor's part mentions Prop 187 and his anti-affirmative action efforts. Perhaps it should say "controversial". It also says he reduced infrastructure spending -- hardly flattering

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The article is a little too pro-Wilson, not mentioning that he was the least popular governor of California in the state's history up to that time, and that he was widely hated by many sectors of the state's population. Additionally, his use of ethnic and racial stereotypes in the pro- Proposition 187 campaign, although helpful in getting him re-elected, greatly damaged the California Republican Party and in particular its popularity amongst Latinos, which has never completely healed. There should also be mention of his failed race for the Presidency, and his current role as advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The idea that Wilson damaged the Republican Party of California is completely false. Wilson and Lundgren hardly suffered at all with Latino voters. (Lundgren actually lost because his percentage of the white vote fell dramatically.) Here is an excellent article examining the figures and debunking the myth: http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_05_08/cover.html 24.113.82.222 10:40, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

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In my opinion, it is pretty darn accurate and unbiased. Every politician in history have had haters. I believe the key thread of any summary biography is the consensus. For example, the fact that he won overwhelmingly over Kathleen Brown is far more important than the fact that at one time during his governorship he had poor poll numbers ie: don't election results trump mid-year poll numbers? And the above comment states that he used racial and ethnic stereotypes in the bid for Prop. 187. I lived through that campaign and don't remember anything to support that accusation. And, with over 40% of California Latinos voting for Prop. 187, the argument doesn't hold water. Again, with 187 winning by a large margin, I believe that this is more important than the fringe groups trying to make Wilson something out that he is not. Because if he is a racist, then the majority of Californians are too.

There should be a mention of his failed race for the Presidency. There already is mention of his role as advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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I think this is very pro-Wilson. I think quips like this "and obtained anti-fraud meansures that drove down workers' compensation premiums by 40 percent" mislead the reader into thinking that he left California with a great and wonderful workers compensation system.

A more balanced approach might be:

"He successfully obtained anti-fraud measures in California's workers' compensation system. Some believe these were responsible for lowering premiums by 40 percent during his administration, while others believe that the reduction in workers' compensation premiums were largely due to improving share prices on the stock markets. After the Governor left office the same workers' compensation that was in place suffered from huge increases in premiums when the stock market began to fall, a point that was then used by Governor Wilson's campaign to aid Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bid for the California Governorship."

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Pete Wilson did not announce his presidential candidacy at the statue of liberty. And their were no hispanic protesters. He announced his candidacy at the Los Angeles Police Academy in September of 1995. How do I know.. I was there when he announced it.

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That is correct. Wilson did not announce his candidacy at the statue of liberty nor were there hispanic protesters. I was at the speech he made in front of the statue of liberty, which was done shortly after he announced and I didn't see any protesters, hispanic or not. This lie came from Mother Jones magazine and is completely incorrect. This is another example of a mis-information campaign meant to sully a great public servan't legacy, but the facts are the facts.

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Going back to workers' comp reform in California, Wilson in 1993 did indeed a reform measure - one of the top barriers to strong economic growth in California, the business community will tell you. During his time in office, costs were cut up to $4 billion annually, which did translate to a 40% decline for California companies. Those savings were passed along to reduce costs for California employees and raise benefits for injured workers.

Bottom line: workers' comp reform is like squeezing a balloon -- squeeze one side, another side bulges. It's a problem that plagued Wilson, then his successor, Gray Davis, and now Schwarzenegger.

Here's a good rundown on the workers's comp situation in California during the Wilson years and beyond, courtesty of UC-Berkley's Institute of Government Studies (the link: http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/library/htWorkersCompensation.htm#Topic3):

"In 1993, the Legislature passed an employer- and labor-supported package of reform bills which targeted perceived fraud, the rising number of "stress" cases and the costs associated with vocational rehabilitation benefits. Fraud penalties were increased and psychiatric cases over stress were eliminated in many cases. Vocational rehabilition was capped at $16,000 per employee.

Legislation passed in 1994 SB 30 (Johnston, D-Stockton) removed the floor on premiums which insurance companies specializing in the sale of workers' compensation insurance could charge. Effective January 1, 1995, insurance companies could sell workers' compensation coverage for whatever they wanted, reportedly 7-15% below cost. Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush reported that employers paid $3.9 billion less in insurance premiums in 1995 than in 1993. By 1997 insurance companies dealing in workers' compensation policies were beginning to go out of business or were taken over by the California Dept. of Insurance when audits revealed large shortfalls in cash reserves to cover claims.

Although tax rates for unemployment insurance decreased 3 years in a row during the last 3 years of the Wilson administration (1995-97), and insurers were charging employers less for coverage, workers' disability benefits had not changed since 1991. When Gray Davis was elected governor in 1998 he pledged to support legislation increasing workers' benefits. However, between 1999 and 2001 Governor Davis vetoed three measures to raise workers' benefits, citing unacceptable costs to employers and the risk of driving jobs out of California. The 2001 measure, SB 71 (Burton, D-San Francisco) was widely believed to be a compromise that both business and labor would approve. However, Davis vetoed the legislation on the ground that the unexpectedly severe energy crisis was already a serious deterrent to job growth in California and he was unwilling to add more costs to employers for workers' compensation benefits.

Gray Davis faced re-election in 2002. On November 28, 2001 the California Federation of Labor endorsed him on the understanding that he would re-open talks on workers' compensation reform. On February 15, 2002 Davis signed AB 749 (Calderon, D-Norwalk).

AB 749 increased minimum and maximum weekly payments for temporary and permanent disability in addition to doubling death benefits for workers' families. It assessed harsher penalties for failure of businesses to carry workers' compensation insurance and for fraud practiced by both employee and employer. Premiums for the state's largest provider of workers' compensation insurance were projected to decline an average of 2.9% in January, 2003. While critics said this fell far below the 14.9% cuts sought by state officials, many considered it a more straightforward piece of legislation than many of its predecessors.

In 2003 additional reforms were included in two bills signed by Governor Davis in the waning days of his administration. AB 227 and SB 228 established standardized rates for every medical care provider, including outpatient surgery centers, set fee schedules for pharmaceuticals, capped the number of visits to chiropracters and physical therapists, and required "utilization reviews" which would set care standards for injuries. Although hailed as a major overhaul of workers' compensation by Davis, who maintained that the bills would cut over $6 billion from workers' compensation costs, business leaders and Republicans in the Legislature questioned the savings estimates. The Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau, the leading insurance industry research group, calculated that the reforms would save only $3 to $5 billion. Compensation costs in California have risen from $9 billion in 1993 to $32 billion in 2002.

Despite these reforms, workers' compensation in California remained one of the most expensive systems."

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I'd love for someone to sow me one example of Pete Wilson used a "racial" or "ethnic stereotype" in running for office. The grandson of immigrants, and a governor who appointed Lations and African-Americans to senior positions in the executive and judiciary branches, he was always careful to point out the benefits of legal immigration, whereas crossing the border illegally is indeed a federal crime -- hence, "right way, wrong way".

Critics invariably point to the "they keep coming ad" in the 1994 governor's race. But the stock footage wasn't something Wilson's campaign invented. It was footage shot by the Border Patrol, at a U.S.-Mexico checkpoint. It wasn't a stereotype, but was typical of the mess we have in policing our border -- a responsiblity the federal govenment seeming can't adequately address.

We're going to hear a lot about immigration between now and 2008 (has anyone noticed how Hillary is trying to outflank Republicans by calling for tougher border control?), so it's important to set the record straight, imo.

Can we use terms like "[programs] that many believe"? Often times, the effects of political programs, even following many years of hindsight, are highly debatable. This article fails in the same way most political biographies on Wikipedia fail - it skims over the inherent ambiguity of the effects of public policy decisions.

Additionally, per comment #2, "haters" is slang, and has no proper use in a Wikipedia article or discussion.

I can't believe nobody wrote about Wilson's name being mentioned in Rage Against the Machine's song "Without a Face".

11/18/05

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Can we use terms like "[programs] that many believe"? Often times, the effects of political programs, even following many years of hindsight, are highly debatable. This article fails in the same way most political biographies on Wikipedia fail - it skims over the inherent ambiguity of the effects of public policy decisions.

Additionally, per comment #2, "haters" is slang, and has no proper use in a Wikipedia article or discussion.

05/08/06

Stumbling on this page, it's *very* clear that the balance in this article is minimal. The picture painted for this governor is rather rosy, with only a small amount of critical balance applied. I've added some more information about his budgetary practices as San Diego mayor and as governor, which could easily be expanded on. His changes to the budget, and the legislation that he promoted, caused significant long-term effects on the California economy.

It is debatable about whether the workers' comp reforms he supported actually proved effective, as the system as a whole has definitely proven to be one problem after another. It is easily documentable, however, that he merged many state agencies without increasing their budget, and consistently reduced spending for many projects. While this did result in a leaner expense bill for the state, reduced infrastructure spending - in both San Diego and California - is one of the primary causes for poorly maintained roads, highways, and state lands. If there's no money for maintenance, there's no maintenance, plain and simple.

I documented some easy-to-find examples of the non-rose-tinted aspects of his changes in spending. I think the least biased section, before my additions, was the segment on Energy Deregulation. Otherwise, I think there is still some significant bias, especially in the type of wording used.

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This has now gone the opposite way. The recent major changes are now almost 100% critical. I liked it the way it was before.

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Accurate, fact-based criticisms are necessary as a balance to accurate, fact-based acknowledgements. Facts are facts. Instead of providing direct credit to someone that was not solely responsible (i.e., he did not personally provide unsubsidized health care, did he?), it is much more accurate to state what happened during his term, credit him with the things he did, and credit him with what he supported (rather than wording it as if he single-handedly accomplished various things).

A perfect example is his time as Mayor of San Diego. At the time, the Mayor was essentially only the chair of the city council - he could only be called a proponent, rather than having done anything single-handedly.

Additionally, the "100% critical" additions could easily be joined by much more. Previously, there was a ton of credit, and one less-than-positive aspect to the article. Now, there's more balance. And balance, by the way, is how to minimize bias.

Why Doesn't anyone on here sign their name?

Its kind of important in a discussion like this to know who your talking to, at least a screen name or online persona, or else you just have a lost of anonymous paragraphs arguing with each, each saying they know what they know be personal experience and rarely quoting a soure--Dudeman5685 02:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

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Wilson's Infrastucture Record

I didn’t realize that Pete Wilson did such a lousy job as mayor of San Diego. Somebody should tell the locals, beginning with the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, which every year hands out a “Pete Wilson Courageous Leadership Award” for exemplary leadership in service to the San Diego region.

What Wilson did offer as mayor was vision. Consider what’s going on in New Orleans post-Katrina: lots of confusion over how to rebuild.

San Diego wouldn’t have such problems thanks to reforms implemented by Wilson decades ago. He created a nonprofit corporation which delegates authority to act as the city’s agent in making the complex real estate deals that will be essential to redevelopment – a nonprofit with a paid staff and a board of volunteer real estate and land-use professionals.

The result was that the pace of redevelopment of downtown San Diego remarkably accelerated, transforming a decaying core with a declining tax and job base into one of America’s most vibrant and thriving urban environments.

To suggest that Wilson was not attentive to California’s infrastructure needs simply isn’t true. Among his accomplishments:

Then-Gov. Wilson opened the first two major freeways in California in nearly a decade – the Stockton Crosstown Freeway and the Century Freeway in Los Angeles.

In 1994, Wilson signed legislation establishing the California Infrastructure Bank (CIB) to assist local government in financing improvements to streets, sewers, drainage and flood-control systems, schools and parks, and public transit lines.

Wilson broke ground on the first privately financed toll road to be built in California in more than 50 years, the State Route 91 toll road in Orange County.

Wilson improved the state's water system by completing an emergency connection giving the City of San Francisco access to state water, beginning construction of the second phase of the Coastal Aqueduct, and expanding and enlarging a number of facilities. Among his first acts in office as governor was creating a State Water Bank to broker deals between buyers and sellers.

Wilson was also the state’s most prominent champion of the Alameda Corridor Project, successfully pushing the federal government to get that plan off the ground and running (the Corridor, a 22-mile truck- and railway connecting downtown L.A. with the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, handles about 25% of the nation's waterborne trade).

I’d expand the definition of “infrastructure to include military-base reuse. The conversion of Fort Ord from an Army base to CSU-Monterey Bay occurred on his watch, as did the handing-over of several military airfields statewide.

And I’d include earthquake recovery in this discussion as well. On this front, Wilson has impeccable credentials. Due to his administration’s cutting through red tape and unnecessary delays, freeways devastated by the Northridge Earthquake were rebuilt within 291 days, years ahead of schedule.

This is a header, please use it

I usually end up at this article by following the links from other articles. And I am sure not everything about Pete Wilson is great. I'm sure that each politician has his or her share of lovers or haters, but that does not apply here. What is required are facts, not opinions, assumptions, or unverifiable conclusions. We are not here to give conclusions on poll numbers, policies, or personal conduct -the best approach would be to provide the aforementioned poll numbers, policies, and personal conduct so that the reader can create his or her own personal conclusions. Additionally, when giving facts, we must provide everything as well as package it in a neutral point of view (i.e. "His policies on ... benefited ... however ..."). Please leave politics to the politicians.

I would really wish for the perfect governor, but I am skeptical that such a thing could exist. I'm not saying that Wilson was a horrible person or governor, but that not all of his policies were the best, and for anything that is considered a success, someone will argue that it was failure of some sort. Additionally, we can't go to unverifiable conclusions like "In recent years, as San Diego has struggled with keeping up with rising costs of overdue maintenance, many have pointed to the budget changes from Wilson's term as significantly contributing to the challenge of catching up in this regard." This sentence sounds like his budget policies were a deciding factor in this, however it is unverifiable.

In all honesty, the "Governor" subsection of the article looks like it was lifted off of campaigning materials.

On an irrelevant matter, please sign your comments using the four tildes.Cikoykip 10:08, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Tagged for bias

This page is not neutral. It is overly pro-Wilson in its word choice instead of sounding encyclopedic. The section concerning the California energy crisis does not address any role Wilson might have played in its cause. Many democrats can be sourced for blaming Wilson for the crisis. calbear22 July 28, 2007.

Sources and References

The sourcing in this article needs improvement. There are no inline citations in the text of this article. Some information might be unsourced. User:calbear22 07:11, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Term limits fact

Previous version of the Wilson page suggested that Wilson enacted term limits. While it could be said that he, as an executive, is enacting and enforcing the laws like term limits, such a statement is misleading. It implies that Wilson had a more direct hand in the passage of term limits, as if he signed term limits into law as governor. However, this is not true as term limits were passed in a voter initiative. I changed the article text to remove the confusion. Sourced California term limits from initiative with http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legismgt/about/supca.htm. User:calbear22 06:52, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Overtime

Wilson will be remembered (not!) for what he did to worker's overtime pay back in 1998.

The same reason apples to his association with the D-Day Museum. American D-Day veterans were a mixed group, the impoverished were not left out (pre-dates the Vietnam poverty issue by a few years). Whole CCC crews were drafted and sent to the English Channel. The Depression was more than just a word to these people, it represented years and years of hunger and poverty, humiliation that dug so deeply into America it will always be felt. Wilson and his Republicans revive that pain. These Americans were the people on Normandy Beach, and they weren't Pete Wilson.

When Wilson takes away overtime pay, he takes away the same food that our fathers fought to bring to us. There's no talk about hypocritical Democrats here, just Republican war profiteers who will always try to make themselves look palatable on the backs of the poor.

Do America a favor, fire Pete Wilson! Let him eat food stamp food for a while. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.212.157.235 (talk) 02:00, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Unnecessary information in lead

The lead section of this article, after giving a summary of Wilson's career, contains these lines: "On September 27, 2007, Wilson endorsed Rudy Giuliani for United States President. On February 4, 2008, Wilson endorsed John McCain as candidate for U.S. Presidency in a recording disseminated by telephone call on the eve of Super Tuesday. Giuliani dropped out of the race after the Florida primary." Does this really belong in the lead? It seems to me that it belongs more in the articles Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign, 2008 and John McCain presidential campaign, 2008 - it's information related to Giuliani and McCain rather than Wilson, and will swiftly become out-of-date (if it hasn't already). If it does belong in the article, it should probably be further down the page, in the section about his life since leaving office. Terraxos (talk) 13:37, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Move/remove Presidential Endorsements from Opening Text

The Nov 2008 election is far over. Who agrees it's time to move this presidential endorsement to a latter part of Wilson's article, or even remove them all together as they have little importance considering he's a Republican who endorsed another Republican. (go figure, right?) Zpowers (talk) 22:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)