For the purposes of full disclosure again (I posted a message a few weeks back), I work for a non-profit consumer rights organization called the Consumer Federation of California. We are currently doing everything we can to defeat the “reprehensible scam” being perpetrated on California voters under the guise of Proposition 10.

So yes, I’m going to post this on other sites and forums because we are being outspent by Pickens and his fossil fuel corporate funders by over 100 to 1 in this campaign, and our ability to get the word out is limited. And yes, I will try and check back in this time to participate in any discussions this post might generate.

Now to the issue at hand: Has our ballot measure process been totally corrupted by big money interests? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves in the No on 10 campaign, as we saw oil tycoon and former swift boat funder T. Boone Pickens dump ANOTHER $4 million into the  Prop 10 campaign coffers last week. According to state records, Clean Energy Fuels Corporation (Pickens natural gas company) has now pumped nearly $19 million into this corporate greenwash, while we on No on 10 side has raised about $150,000.

Clean Energy Fuels is a small company that loses money every year. How can it afford to lavish $19 million on a ballot measure? The answer is simple: Instead of investing in research and development, Mr. Pickens’ Clean Energy is investing in buying an election. This massive political spending by a small company is proof that passage of Proposition 10 would be a bonanza for Mr. Pickens.

The central program in Prop 10 is a $2.5 billion giveaway to trucking companies to subsidize purchases of natural gas-fueled trucks. Trucks that qualify for rebates under Prop 10 are permitted to emit air pollution at levels identical to petroleum or diesel-fueled trucks. It is estimated that Prop 10 will increase natural gas vehicle sales in California by 500%. Most trucks subsidized by Prop 10 will fill up at Mr. Pickens’ gas stations.

Prop 10 EPITOMIZES how big money is distorting the political debate in this country to favor corporate interests over the public interest. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a blatant attempt by ONE CORPORATION seeking to enrich itself by bankrolling a ballot measure specifically geared to do this. As blatant and egregious as this scam is, we have had great difficulty to get the media interested in exposing this fraud – both in terms of Pickens the man, and Proposition 10 the measure.

Granted, every major environmental group in the state is opposed to it, as is every newspaper editorial board (I believe it’s somewhere around 34 editorials against, and 0 in support). Similarly, just about every known organization, from the far left to the far right has also recommended a “No” vote. In fact, the Yes side has NO organizational backing AT ALL!

So I guess the real question on November 4th is how will all this grassroots opposition compare to the over $20 million (so far…much more assuredly to come) being spent by the “Yes” side on all those slick and deceptive television and radio ads? It’s hard to turn the TV on without seeing a Yes on 10 ad claiming this $10 billion boondoggle will solve global warming and end our dependence on foreign oil

And just a reminder as to who Pickens really is and what motivates him: he’s not the friendly old renewable energy convert depicted in his “Pickens Plan” ads. In fact, the Huffington Post reported today that Pickens may even be selling off his wind turbines.  This is the man that was the primary funder of the false and slanderous attack ads against John Kerry by the Swift Boat Veterans of Truth in 2004 and who has an egregious legacy on the environment, and a long track record of conning communities and local governments into deals that benefit Pickens at the expense of the public. In fact, Pickens just said in an interview on 60 Minutes he has no regrets over the swift boat ads.  Now he’s set his sights on the natural gas market…and he’s using Prop 10 to do it.

So that’s I’m posting today, in hopes that we can both ignite a dialogue on the corrosive role of corporate money on the democratic process as well as convince everyone that is yet undecided to vote No on Prop 10.

We’re asking that everyone check out our No on 10 website www.noonproposition10.org and share it with as many people as you can and hyperlink it to your blogs or websites if possible. And if there are any good ideas out there as to how to reform the ballot measure process I’d love to hear those too.  

Hey, at least I know somebody’s listening. Mad Props out to the presidents of California and Nevada Young Democrats, Rocky Fernandez and Heather Brown respectively.  The two presidents focus on the culture warrior issues on the ballot, Props 4 and 8. Both of these propositions are in danger of passing, but we can work to make sure that these horrible things go down in flames.

So, Stay for Change!

Volunteer for Prop 4 here and for Prop 8 here or go here to find the No on 8 Field Offices.  The CDP is also doing work against 4 and 8, sign up here or find the field offices here.

Remember how the little girl from Hillary’s 3AM ad turned out to have grown into a young woman who was working her ass off for Obama? Well, there is now a California version. The girl from the Yes on Proposition 10 ads has a simply devastating response ad blasting the initiative.

She goes through it all. How the Sierra Club and every major environment group oppose Proposition 10. How the League of Women Voters says Proposition 10 misspends $10,000,000,000. How the Chair of the Air Resources Board says Proposition 10 increases global warming. And bonus points for pointing out how the wasted money will probably go out of state.

No wonder a Texas oilman has dumped $19 million into the Yes campaign — it is but a small investment. Vote no on Proposition 10.

For years, some Very Serious People have been complaining about how there aren’t enough competitive races.  And so, the Republicans thought, yeah, we’d like more competitive districts because we’re getting our butts kicked in the ones we helped draw after the 2000 census.  The goo-goo groups (good government) saw a chance to get some additional street cred and, more importantly, additional leverage.

I’ve got plenty of respect for the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, but they have the most power when there are a bunch of moderates in the legislature. I know, they would never think that they are, in fact, an interest group in their own right, but, folks they are. They are a special interest just like any other.  They do what maximizes their own interests.

Arnold then saw an opportunity in Prop 11, he could also expand his own power and gravitas. Arnold was able to cobble a semi-respectable coalition for the proposition including a few more Republicans and a few poorly informed Democrats. (Bob Hertzberg? Really, dude? You drew the damn maps that they are so upset about.) They then got all the Very Serious People aboard with a somewhat specious argument that Prop 11 would bring in more moderates and make elections more competitive.

The problem with all of this? We didn’t actually need any of this for competive elections.  They are here, up close in person in 2008.  I suppose the trouble is that the Very Serious People weren’t expecting all these Republican seats to become competitive.  You see, they wanted the Democratic seats to become competitive too (or in the case of some, the Democratic seats only).  But, like it or not, competition is here:

Democrats will have a rare opportunity in next week’s general election to capture a few seats in the state Legislature, which would help them inch toward a two-thirds majority, a vote threshold needed to approve a state budget or a tax measure.

State legislative seats switching hands between parties is extremely rare in California – it hasn’t happened since the legislative district lines were redrawn in the beginning of the decade. Democrats are hoping to buck that trend with increased Democratic voter registration fueled by the popularity of presidential hopeful Barack Obama. (SF Chron 10/28/08)

Never mind that Matthew Yi chose to acknowledge only three seats Democrats can take from Republicans, ignoring AD-26, AD-15 notably.  The long and short of it is that these competitive races undermine the entire argument for Prop 11, that only a different mapping system can provide competitive elections. Nope, not true, and Prop 11 couldn’t even do anything to actually create any competitive districts.

Prop 11 is a phony solution in search of a phony problem. Vote No, we don’t need to give Republicans additional power to satisfy these Very Serious People.

Not unexpectedly, it required a major disaster to awaken former Federal Chairman, Alan Greenspan, to the long overdue reality that the free-market, free enterprise economic model fails to trickle down wealth to the poor and near poor but concentrates wealth at the top.

The free market model or Neoliberalism was developed by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman at the Chicago School of Economics Chicago where it became an axiom that the private sector was the key to long-term economic stability.  Neoliberalism has gradually become the prevailing economic conventional wisdom in the United States and has been foisted on most countries through pressure from the United States or through the IMF and World Bank, America’s secret instrument of exploitation.

Simply stated, free-markets, a system with as little government interference as possible in the operation of market mechanisms, have been allowed to operate with increasing privatization and deregulation and a minimum of government transfers.  In theory, when free-market economics operates at peak efficiency, the so-called fabled “invisible hand”, coined by Adam Smith, was empowered to distribute wealth to all deserving citizens.  The theory of the “invisible hand” must be one of the most distorted ideas in the history of economics.  Adam Smith did not mean nor imply that people should be deserted by the government to fend for themselves but rather that all peoples’ needs must be met.

The deregulation of the banking system and the privatization of the Federal Reserve in 1913 are at the root of the current financial crisis and have paved the way for unfettered greed  to trigger the virtual collapse of that system.  The collapse spells the end of any credibility for the notion that by investing wealth at the top it will automatically reach the bottom.

Managing the money supply, interest rates, and exchange rates, or the monetary system, is a vital function in the economy and should serve the public interest in a democratic society.  Since it is privately owned, the Federal Reserve is almost entirely independent of the government consisting of twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major U.S. cities in twelve regions and organized in a similar fashion to private banks whose shareholders consist of private banks in each district.

As well, funding for the Federal Reserve System is independent of the government and depends on interest earnings on its portfolio of investments.  Its decisions do not need to be ratified by either the president or Congress.

Instead of protecting consumers in recent years, the Federal Reserve has adopted policies that have supported large financial institutions in their frenzied, greedy pursuit of wealth ultimately pulling the rug out from under the economy.  While deregulated financial institutions were offering mortgages at initially low interest rates to high risk borrowers, the Federal Reserve was expanding the money supply and lowering interest rates to facilitate this feeding frenzy.  Eager homebuyers flocked to their nearest bank to borrow money at the ostensibly bargain basement interest rates and without the need to meet stiff credit requirements.  Mortgage-debt in 2000 was $4.8 trillion while in 2006 it rose to $9.3 trillion.  When borrowers began defaulting on their mortgages, banks that had used the mortgages as collateral to borrow for investments in other risky instruments were suddenly unable to meet their obligations.  The downward spiral into total collapse was well underway.

If the Federal Reserve had been a public institution, it might have implemented a different set of policies to avert the disastrous bubble that has now burst.

Another way in which the Federal Reserve has become complicit in the financial crisis is through its non-interventionist approach to the proliferation of very risky financial instruments known as derivatives.  With risky mortgages backing further risky, highly-leveraged investment in derivatives, the calamitous outcome was inevitable.

In addition, deregulating the financial system created the conditions which engendered the financial crisis by transforming commercial banks, whose primary purpose was to serve as a safe place for consumers to deposit their money, into investment institutions where risk-taking for profits was the central objective.  Now, consumers hard-earned money was now being deposited into apparently safe institutions when, in fact, it had indirectly become the source of funds for greedy investors who were willing to take risks to earn large profits.

Regulation of the banking system was solidified in the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prohibited a commercial bank from owning speculative financial institutions.  It imposed restrictions on the integration of banking, insurance and stock-trading companies to protect the consumer from losing their money through risky investments.

Since the 1980s, the banking and investment sector has been pressuring Congress to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act to afford them the opportunity to increase their profits by using depositor’s money to back risky investments.  Their efforts succeeded when Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 which repealed Glass-Steagall and allowed commercial bankers to underwrite and trade instruments of a highly risky nature.  It also lifted most restraints on the monopolization of the institutions in the financial sector of the economy.

To compound the problem of deregulating banks, Congress passed an amendment to an appropriations bill which deregulated derivatives.  Derivatives are an extremely risky investment which is highly leveraged.  Banks would now be free through their investment arm to risk depositors’ money in an investment that should be reserved for those who want to gamble large profits at the risk of large losses.

By deregulating the banking system, freeing derivatives from regulation, and creating a privately owned Federal Reserve System paved the way for the financial crisis which is not only destabilizing the American financial system but the global one as well.  Deregulation and privatization are two of the main pillars in the free market economic system and their failure is proof that the non-wealthy members of society are adversely affected.  In this case, it is clear that privatization and deregulation were not intended to benefit the non-oligarchical members of society but to create opportunities for large accumulations of wealth.  The only hope of ending the financial crisis and avoiding another one is to reform the system to protect all the people.

State of Darkness: US Genocides since 1945.

http://www.stateofdarkness.com

The other day I wondered if the No on 8 side was being too cautious in their advertising, instead of putting an actual face on the discrimination and harm that would be suffered if marriage rights were eliminated for a particular class of people.  Well, this video isn’t exactly that, but it certainly makes the point about discrimination.  Via Amanda at Pandagon, this is my favorite video of the cycle.  A group redubbed the voices on a video of young people ranting about all the supposed consequences about gay marriage, and changed it so they say “interracial marriage.”  It’s kind of perfect:

See, this comes down to discrimination, pure and simple.  The other side wants to talk about ancillary outcomes, but really they want to hurt LGBT people.  I mean, we have to be willing to say that.  The other side has no problem outlining what they consider to be the stakes, as crazy as they think they are:

“This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” said Charles W. Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and an eminent evangelical voice, speaking to pastors in a video promoting Proposition 8. “We lose this, we are going to lose in a lot of other ways, including freedom of religion.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby based in Washington, said in an interview, “It’s more important than the presidential election.”

“We’ve picked bad presidents before, and we’ve survived as a nation,” said Mr. Perkins, who has made two trips to California in the last six weeks. “But we will not survive if we lose the institution of marriage.”

I’m glad that No on 8 is raising a lot of money, and that high-profile Californians like Maria Shriver are on board.  But at some point in this final week, someone has to break this down.  This is about harming same-sex couples.