Tag: quentin kopp

Commentary: Quentin L. Kopp

Over five years ago, I opined in these pages about then U.S. Senator Kamala Harris and her dishonesty in securing $97,000 from California taxpayers as a member of the California Unemployment Insurance Board to which she was appointed in 1993 by her boyfriend Willie Brown, then-Assembly Speaker, while simultaneously paid by Alameda County taxpayers as an Alameda County deputy district attorney, supposedly a full-time endeavor. The following year (1994), she was named to the California Medical Commission at an even higher tax-paid salary which was increased in 1998 to $99,000 per year. Somehow, she evaded a state law prohibiting payment for two jobs which might result in conflicting responsibilities.

Commentary: Quentin L. Kopp

Honoré de Balzac aptly proclaimed in 1901 in “The Works of Honoré de Balzac”: “And thus bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pygmies, came into the world.” And, with approximately 38,000 employees, do we have such preponderant dynasticism at City Hall and elsewhere in our 49 square miles, plus SFO and other lands and buildings which teem with such regimens.

Commentary: Quentin L. Kopp

“Far more important to me is, that I should be loyal to what I regard as the law of my political belief, which is this: A belief that a country is best governed, which is least governed.” On June 19, 1972, one George Hoadley so declared at the Ohio Constitutional Convention, the third Constitutional Convention in Ohio’s history as a state.

Commentary: Quentin L. Kopp

Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court in the 1950s and ‘60s (who swore me in as a lawyer entitled to practice law in the U.S. Supreme Court, which I never did!), when governor of California, began a political address thusly: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to see the dense crowd here tonight.” A voice from the back shouted: “Don’t be too pleased. We ain’t all dense!”