Jon Coupal: Our tax dollars are funding high-priced P.R. campaigns

THE reported instances of waste, fraud and abuse of our taxpayer dollars are so common now, it takes a lot to shock us.

[Jeff Barker]

Jon,
I wish you would have called to discuss the high-speed rail project rather than sniping from afar after rezading a few inaccurate blog posts. I could have explained to you in detail how taxpayers are getting a much better deal through a contractor than by bringing on a full state civil servant staff... unless you are now advocating for a larger state workforce?
Also --$80 billion??? Provide backup before you sling around inane, wildly inaccurate numbers like that.
--Jeff Barker
Deputy Director
CA High-Speed Rail Association

[Jay Tulock]

Those last couple of paragraphs are gems, and every taxpayer should read them, know them. These fools at high speed rail could not build a pedestrian path from San Francisco to San Deigo for their claim of US $40 billion. This Jeff Barker fellow is one of their paid consultants who does not understand public relations or he would not be defending his over paid salary in the corrupt scheme in numerous newspaper forums, it makes him look like a fool, and no doubt when the $9 million contract kicks in, the PR people will tell him to shut up he is hurting the cause of taking taxpayer money. Barker attempts to use the current tide against the state employees to justify the structure of instead paying consultants with little oversight. Here is the rule people: under supervised state paid consultants take more money are are more wasteful to taxpayers than state agencies. Ask anyone on the inside in Sacramento. The high speed agnecy is the worst structure of all. Barker is defending his job in the corrupt structure. Here is the bottom line people: overturn Proposition 1A. The fools at Howard Jarvis have one thing wrong: they are not out there collecting signatures for the next ballot initiative to overturn 1A and cut off the corrupt agency and its army of overpaid, do nothing consultants like Barker. NIMBYs unite: they will promise you the moon, the are lying. They will take your property, they will run trains in your backyard, they will not build you a tunnel, they will tell you maybe they can. Overturn 1A!

[Marketing Sociologist]

Love Mr. Coupal's editorial. Discovered it via Internet "buzz."
Will not speak about California, but in Arizona, state government is the largest employer (that is a crime in itself). City of Phoenix is the largest city government. They have a flank (more than 10) of public relations people. The city does not hire the cream of the crop when they hire PR professionals. So they need to tap into agencies. They go for the big name agencies with staffs of 50 or more. The city of Phoenix avoids the independent public relations consultant.
Using Phoenix as an example of all government or corporations, the larger agencies service their accounts with interns. The interns become "account managers" and perpetrate the downward spiral of knowledge in the field.
There are more than 1,000 unemployed journalists in the Four Corners region - the Rocky Mountain News, Albuquerque Tribune, Tucson Citizen and soon the Mesa Tribune all closed. Even the Arizona Republic has laid off hundreds of journalists. Few of these journalists are getting public relations jobs. The high paying jobs all go to young interns rather than seasoned professionals, see http://eeocagenda.blogspot.com/2009/10/four-p... , http://eeocagenda.blogspot.com/2009/10/this-c... and http://eeocagenda.blogspot.com/2009/10/anothe...
So not only are governments spending $9-million (I'd say that's around what Arizona state government spends on PR consultants), they're paying agencies for unpaid interns. They pay huge staff salaries and still need to go outside. Yet they all piss and moan how they are billions in debt because of "the economy," not the fact they are bloated and don't need all those employees.
These interns think - and are taught by the lame PR practitioners who populate agencies - press releases is what public relations is all about. They have heard of, but don't know how to fully utilize, 21st Century marketing tools like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
Check these blogs for more on this, http://marketingsociologist.blogspot.com/2009...
http://marketingsociologist.blogspot.com/2009...
Richard Kelleher, M.B.A.
Marketing $ociologist
MediaRelationsExpert.com

[SENNIT FORD]

This has nothing to do with P.R.........It is the same old right wanting to bring the only issue which is not a California thing, but the only industry needed to get our country back and functioning not just in CA, which is really being "sold" as an insidious cost plot by the left in order to spend.
America has NO industry in spite of auto manufacturers bringing back high powered cars and making us believe they will rule our decrepit roads again. NO WAY. When CA shows a profit, we will be the pilot program to make America and Europe compete with Asia without having to be afraid to borrow in order to give full ownership of the construction to China. How beholden do you want to be to China? We USED to have an imagination, Airlines,Auto Industries which profited, and we ignored the only thing which made our country great. The Railroad.China in two months will have added another 3500 miles of railway and passenger cars in ONE YEAR and is the NUMBER ONE auto manufacturer in the world. Why? Ask the Republicans.