Gov. Rell To Crack Down on Sleazy Billboards
February 15th, 2008 by Peter
FIC Blog has had occasion over the years to lament the sleazy anti-family billboards along our state’s highways. Gov. Rell has now issued an executive order halting new contracts to build or maintain billboards on state property and is submitting legislation to prevent existing contracts from being renewed once they expire. Gov. Rell apparently sees the same thing that many of our members–and particularly our female members–have expressed concerns about:
“You start driving around, and you see these things,” she [Gov. Rell] said. “You see some of these billboards, which are just a little too suggestive. I started thinking to myself, ‘When did this start?'”
Watch for more information as the governor’s proposed bill winds its way through the legislative process.
excellent!!! I hope it passes, I hate those billboards, and the truck that drives around with a big advertisement for an “adult” store
Respectfully, I vehemently disagree.
From what I have read, sleazy billboards were only a very minor component of the Governor’s thinking, to the minor extent that she was actually thinking at all.
Her biggest reasons (excuses) were the aesthetic beauty of the highways and safety, because supposedly, the billboards block scenic views and create a distraction.
Meanwhile, in one of the most hostile and dysfunctional states to and for business in the country, with the highest or near-highest taxed citizens, with more government waste and fiscal recklessness that can even be measured, she is abandoning tens of thousands of dollars on permit fees annually for the billboards alone, not to mention the lack of advertising for the (remaining) struggling businesses in this stifling, socialist state.
As for the sleazy billboards, those particular contracts simply could have been denied if they were deemed inappropriate, and they have nevertheless been around a long time, and with impunity. Where has Governor Rell been if she finds these billboards so allegedly offensive? “When did this start?” I would expect that inane and appalling question from the same woman who was John Rowland’s Lt. Governor for 9 1/2 years and conveniently later claimed that she never knew what was going on during his scandals. The jury is still out if this woman is a conniving liar or a blithering idiot, but in either case, she should not be a Governor.
Furthermore, if this was such a vital issue, then it should have been included in her budget address and not three days later.
This governor only knows how to do two things when she’s not burning up more of (our) money that she doesn’t have: over-react with melodrama for the benefit of the TV news cameras, and set up wasteful commissions to tell us what we already know.
Then again, commissions aren’t needed to satisfy a personal, and grossly irresponsible whim.
She abused her power, interfered with the legislature’s power, further added to our dismal business environment and economy and infringed upon the rights of vendors already doing business with the state, and literally, all over night. Constitutionally, this kind of drivel is not what executive orders are for, and neither are they to be used until an equal but separate branch of government eventually or hopefully leans in favor of her whim of the week. This nonsense is a shameful travesty. But coming from a Governor who already broke the state mandated budget cap, the state Constitution has about as much value to her now as Confederate currency in 1866.
In addition to that, her proposed legislation and interim executive order were poorly written and broadly ambiguous. This was nothing short of utter incompetence, driven by a dingbat, whiz-bang, spontaneous, poorly planned, warm and fuzzy, touchy-feely agenda. This Governor is a pathetic and an abysmal disgrace. And to the extremely limited extent she has ever come down on the side of cultural issues, it was while she placed one big toe in the water and one wetted finger in the air, a political calculation. She threw us a couple bones. Make no mistake about it, she is no friend to us in the life and family movement, and we are nothing to her but a thorn in her prima Donna side, covered up by that phony, cheesy, cutesy smile of hers. She is a liberal, secular hack and an inept abomination as a leader.
If she is so intent on seeing unimpeded vistas of church steeples and rolling hills (while driving at 60 mph, a “distraction” in itself), then she should go to Vermont.
And preferably stay there.
Doug