Robert Klein was not always the hard-charging Chair of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC), responsible for spearheading the raising and spending of $3 billion (to be repaid with at least $6 billion in California taxpayer funds) for cutting-edge (except for
what's already been done in South Korea) embryonic stem cell research to be conducted, among other places, at Stanford University (from whose law school he was graduated) and at companies founded by Stanford researchers and whose royalty payments on patents owned by Stanford and financed by Proposition 71 money, should they be somehow "repatriated" to the people of California as promised by Mr. Klein during the campaign to pass that Proposition (the provisions setting forth the requirements for said Chair position having been written by him to exclude all others but himself) will most likely make it impossible for bond counsel to California State Treasurer Phil Angelides (the elected official responsible for selling the $3/6 billion in stem cell bonds and currently a candidate for Governor of California) to provide an
"opinion" qualifying those bonds for "tax-exempt" status, thereby requiring the state to offer these bonds as taxable, which will require the taxpayers of California to turn over even more of their cash in the form of state taxes to the Wall Street bankers and high-net worth individuals who will be making the most assured part of the money (guaranteed by the "full faith and credit of the State of California [and its taxpayers]) flowing from here to there under the provisions written into law and the California constitution by Mr. Klein and his scientist-entrepreneur and lawyer associates from
The Farm, with the support of 59.1 per cent of California voters, in November, 2004.
what happened in Fresno in the early 1980s
Earlier in his career, Mr. Klein made a name (and a considerable amount of money) for himself by being on both sides of bond sale arrangements he put into place in the name of the people of Fresno, when he both engineered the bond sales as an agent of the local government and profited from them as a partner of some of the beneficiaries of these "moderate-income housing" bonds.
As Mr. Klein's oft-repeated promises to offer "bond anticipation notes" to charitable and non-profit institutions who might want to take a flyer on the stem cell bonds he hopes to sell once the litigation hanging over the offering of these bonds is resolved (sometime in 2006) and consign themselves to making a "grant" of that money to Mr. Klein and the ICOC are re-iterated with increasing frequency on
public television and
public radio, those seeking more complete background information about his past experience with public financing as a source of private advancement might want to take a look at the obscure-but-now-available article published in the
Fresno Bee way back on May 13, 1984, under the title
"County bond consultant's role questioned." It seems that the more some things change, the more they remain like what they always were.
the Chair compliments this reporter on his proposal for a "virtual CIRM" and a "California BioGrid™"
To hear this reporter proposing to the ICOC, on January 25, 2005, from a conference room at UCLA to their meeting place at UCSF, that it build a "cyber CIRM" (California Institute of Regenerative Medicine) and Mr. Klein calling his comments "a very eloquent statement" before completely disregarding them, click
here
explore the backstory by reading and listening to Stem Cell Wars, Volume 1
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