STATE SUBSIDY

Here's Viacom and the state working together to ensure that the streets of Oakland look like the bottom of an ashtray. State billboards come from the Prop 99 Tobacco Tax to keep tobacco in the public consciousness. Rob Reiner's "I love the children" Prop10 also feeds Viacom's public service function. And then the state promotes its other big sin tax-- the lottery--- on billboards too. In this time of $25 billion state budget deficits, why can't state agencies stop spending on billboards?