Prop 89 - Get Corporate Money Out Of Politics

We here in my house would like to get corporate money out of politics.  We figure that in terms of votes, corporations are not persons, Buckley v. Valeo notwithstanding.  We figure that if corporations were persons, each corporation would get one vote, just like each individual voter.  

But corporations should not get to spend millions of dollars to influence elections when we individual voters cannot afford to do that.  It violates the principle of one person, one vote.  It shoulders aside the limited time, energy and money of individual voters, and establishes the principle that elections can only be won by corporate shills, because the corporations bought the advertising - with our money.  It replaces the principle of government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed with the principle of the marketocracy, government deriving its powers from the corporations without any consent of the governed.  

A case in point is the California Special Election of 2005.  Corporate spending on the California Special Election, thus far, totaled more than $100 million dollars.  From AstraZeneca to Walgreens, from Anheuser Busch to Yahoo, companies whose products and services we buy every day have used our money to buy the television and radio advertising, the mailings, the loud and voluminous propaganda we are supposed to deem information with which to make informed decisions as voters.  Unbiased information is virtually impossible to come by in mainstream media.  

An abbreviated list of corporate donors to the California Special Election, naming only some of the outfits that contributed $100,000 or more, includes Anheuser Busch, Chevron,  E & J Gallo Winery, Merck, Pfizer, Target Corporation, and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.  

The contributions came from all over the United States.  Pfizer, $1,300,000, is based in New York.  GlaxoSmithKline, $1,300,000, is based in Philadelphia, PA. Merck, $1,300,000, is based in New Jersey.*  

Every corporation that sought to profit from influencing the California voters fastened on the Special Election like ticks on a dog's belly. All this for an election in which every single one of the Governor's ballot measures failed.  But it was worth it, they believed, to recoup some of their losses and gain more profit - Pfizer, for example had to pay $49 million in fines for defrauding a drug Medicaid rebate program and its subsidiary Warner Lambert agreed to cop a guilty plea and pay $430 million for illegal, fraudulent and aggressive marketing of unapproved uses for its drug Neurontin.  Crooks and liars.  Do you own stock in these outfits?  Look how your money is being spent, stockholders.  

Only that tiny fraction of the population with the money to compete with corporations can afford to buy the influence on elections required by this system.  Democracy has been overturned by the marketocracy.  

By contrast, there is the Clean Money/Clean Elections movement.  Clean Money takes corporate donations and all forms of private money out of election campaigns and replaces it with full public financing.  In a handful of states - Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Vermont - legislatures or the voters have passed Clean Money legislation.  The states have capped campaign spending for specific races; candidates are offered public financing of the full amount that can be spent on a campaign, in exchange for a promise that the candidate will not raise private funding.  In Arizona, Maine and Massachusetts, voters passed Clean Elections legislation by initiative, though the Massachusetts initiative was subsequently invalidated by the state legislature.  But in New Mexico, North Carolina, and Vermont, the state legislatures passed full public financing laws for specific races.  North Carolina's law covers judicial elections and the New Mexico law covers the Public Regulation Commission.  And Portland, Oregon passed a Clean Money - "Voter Owned Elections" measure in May, 2005.  

Nobody said that Clean Money would result in more liberals getting elected. Republicans and Democrats have run as Clean Money candidates.  Arizona, for example, is a state whose legislators have construed it a good idea to allow guns in taverns.  Arizona's Clean Money has been in place since 2000 and has survived court challenges by Republicans who claimed it was coercive, on the grounds that so many candidates voluntarily signed up for it.  

But Arizona's
Clean Elections Law Commission actually enforced the sternest penalty available to it and removed from office state representative David Burnell Smith, Republican, who overspent his limit by 17%.  Under state law, the penalty for a candidate who overshoots his publicly funded spending limit by more than 10 percent is to be removed from office.

In California, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D- Berkeley, authored AB 583 , the California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act.  It was supported by the League of Women Voters, the Greenlining Institute, California Clean Money Campaign, California Common Cause, California Sierra Club, California National Organization for Women, and other reform organizations.  When the bill failed, the California Nurses Association stepped up.  They collected more than a million signatures and got Prop 89 on the November 2006 California ballot.

Based on election laws already succeeding in Arizona, Maine, and Connecticut, Prop. 89, the California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act, establishes provides public financing for candidates who reject private money and sets tougher limits on contributions from corporations, unions and private individuals. It also closes some current campaign finance loopholes and strives to reduce the influence of professional lobbyists.  It contains tough penalties for candidates who break the law, including jail time and removal from office.

Los Angeles Times writer Steve Lopez wrote an article about Prop 89.  To quote some of the relevant grafs:

Did you happen to see the story yesterday by my colleague Marc Lifsher? He reported that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top campaign guy is also on AT&T Inc.'s payroll in Texas.

Why worry, you ask?

Because the Schwarzenegger administration has been involved in negotiations over a bill that would allow companies such as AT&T and Verizon to bypass local review and compete with existing cable companies.

AT&T is drooling at the prospect, which may be part of the reason why the telecom behemoth and its recent merger partner SBC have given more than a quarter of a million dollars to Schwarzenegger and the committees he controls. This is the governor we elected on a promise to terminate special-interest politics.

But let's be fair and look across the aisle. The bill was sponsored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles), and let's see if you can guess who honored Nuñez this past spring at a Pebble Beach clam bake that raised $1.7 million for the state Democratic Party.

Starts with an A and has two Ts..

There's more you ought to know and he writes it so well:

It would strictly limit campaign contributions by corporations, unions and individuals; put a lid on candidate spending; and establish publicly financed campaigns paid for with a .2% increase in the corporate income tax rate.

Although Prop. 89 is imperfect, at least one aspect of it is extremely attractive.

It has almost everyone in Sacramento in a dither.

The California Chamber of Commerce is aghast. The California Taxpayers' Assn. is against. Big Pharma, oil and insurance lobbyists are almost certainly hyperventilating. Legislators aren't exactly leading cheers and neither are the candidates for governor. And I just learned that the powerful California Teachers Assn. has joined the nattering naysayers.

Becky Zoglman, a CTA spokeswoman, told me her organization is in favor of reform but "we have some concerns about the way this one was written" and "we believe it would limit our ability to participate in politics."

What she means is that the group wouldn't be able to throw money around to win influence. CTA's political action committees have spent at least $13.6 million on candidates and $114 million on ballot measures since 1999, according to Jamie Court of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

But you shouldn't have to pay to participate in politics.

"Teachers' ideas should be strong enough to sway politicians; otherwise, their students are in trouble," said Court. "But this union, like many other people, believe they are heard because of the power of their money and not the power of their ideas. Prop. 89 is going to be a recall of politics as usual."

The arguments against?

Corporations, among other groups, will wage court battles arguing that limiting campaign donations is akin to limiting free speech. (But the 55-page proposition was vetted by constitutional experts who believe it will stand up.)

.

Keep your eye on that corruption:  dirtymoney.org is a chronicle of the chronic corruption of political decisions by campaign cash.  The initial weblogs reveal:

-- How
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez received a $50,000 political donation from Blue Cross, entitling the HMO to two world cup tickets, two weeks after Nunez helped the insurer defeat major patients rights legislation on the Assembly floor .
-- The way in which termed-out leaders of the California Senate have opened 2010 candidate committees  to continue shaking down donors for campaign cash - and which other lawmakers have followed their lead.

-- Why it pays to cheat in Fair Political Practices Commission filings now and pay little fines later.

-- How the threat of the prison guard union's $10 million campaign war chest prompted Governor Schwarzenegger to do an about face on prison reform.
-- Just what perks the life and health insurance lobby bought for lawmakers and their spouses - including golf, spa treatments and in-room movies - at the exclusive Pebble Beach last fall.

So once again, it is people power -  leadership in campaign finance reform persists in coming from the grassroots, cities and states, not from Congress, so many of whose members are the industry shills placed under the capital dome by corporate funding.  

Clean money allows voters to take control of politics.  Imagine a democracy in which voters, not corporations, pay for election campaigns, and make the rules.  Imagine a democracy in which legislators do not think they are beholden to corporations.  Imagine we can bring this to pass.  

*Source for all contributors' information:  California Secretary of State