In yesterday’s Politico, reporter David Siders told us that the El Dorado State’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, has vetoed legislation sponsored by members of his own party, legislation which would require all presidential candidates on the California ballot in 2020 to have previously released their tax returns before they could get their name on the ballot (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/16/trump-tax-returns-release-efforts-stall-243819).
In his veto message, Gov. Brown (once known derisively as “Governor Moonbeam”), said that if the legislation, obviously intended to make Donald Trump disclose his tax returns before running for re-election in 2020 in California, were to become law, it would set as a precedent a slippery slope: “Today we require tax returns, but what would be next? Five years of health records?…High school report cards?”
Gov. Brown was graduated in 1955 from St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco. When associate solitary reporter Linda Scott asked Patrick Ruff, the Principal of St. Ignatius, what traits most endured the future governor to the student body and the faculty, Ruff said, “He was a great, fun student. He was always sliding down the icy slopes of the Northstar Ski Resort in Placer County, near the northwest shore of Lake Tahoe, where St. Ignatius College Prep has a ski lodge. As he slid down the most precipitous run, he would always yell, ‘Some day I’m gonna keep my fellow Democrats from finding out what’s really in every president’s tax returns.’”
Brown is seventy-nine years old and is, thus, three years older than Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate.
Associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith asked Sanders whether he would support a future presidential run by Brown, who ran for president three times. Sanders said, “I’d be delighted to have Jerry run for vice-president as my running mate in 2020.”
“Us old duffers have the wisdom of old age. We’re a lot smarter than whippersnappers like Paul Ryan."