In a remarkable column in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal right-wingers John Lott and Bradley Smith use the backlash against Prop 8 donors to suggest an end to campaign finance disclosure laws. They cite some of the more well-known examples of voter accountability for Prop 8 backers – Marjorie Christofferson, the Cinemark movie theater chain – to argue that campaign donations should be treated like a secret ballot:

How would you like elections without secret ballots? To most people, this would be absurd.

We have secret balloting for obvious reasons. Politics frequently generates hot tempers. People can put up yard signs or wear political buttons if they want. But not everyone feels comfortable making his or her positions public — many worry that their choice might offend or anger someone else. They fear losing their jobs or facing boycotts of their businesses.

And yet the mandatory public disclosure of financial donations to political campaigns in almost every state and at the federal level renders people’s fears and vulnerability all too real. Proposition 8 — California’s recently passed constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage by ensuring that marriage in that state remains between a man and a woman — is a dramatic case in point. Its passage has generated retaliation against those who supported it, once their financial support was made public and put online.

This column could only be written in light of persistent media efforts to paint Yes on 8 donors as victims. By erasing the true victims – 18,000 same sex couples and the innumerable other couples who wished to follow them to full equality – folks like Steve Lopez have constructed a situation where the far right can use those supposed victims as a battering ram against campaign finance disclosure rules they’ve long opposed.

Lott’s and Smith’s argument is pernicious. They argue that mandatory disclosure limits freedom of speech and of political action, that anonymous donations have protected groups like the NAACP (from government harassment, not public accountability, as the columnists neatly ignore), and that public pressure to disclose donors will accomplish what regulations currently provide (yeah right).

This is not just a wingnut attempt to protect their wealthy allies. It’s an effort to lay the groundwork to undermine California’s disclosure laws in the event we return to the ballot to repeal Prop 8 in the near future. Without disclosure rules, it is highly likely that we will see much larger sums of money donated to the anti-gay cause.

Even before the post-election backlash unfolded, many wealthy donors and companies refrained from donating to the Yes on 8 campaign for fear of alienating customers and Californians. If these rules are relaxed then companies that rely on same sex marriage supporters for their profits could take that money, give it to the haters, without the public knowing or being able to take their business elsewhere. It could provide their side with a significant financial advantage over ours in a future ballot campaign.

That is likely the reason behind this op-ed. Sure, they buried it on the day after Christmas, but you can be assured it’s not the last we’ll hear of this argument. We would do well to prep our own response – that the public’s right to know is sacrosanct, that if the right wants money to be equated with speech that implies disclosure, and that this is nothing but an end run around our laws to allow corporations to dominate our elections.

Dan Smith reports that we’re nearing a deal on the work-around budget which would cover half of the state’s projected deficit between now and mid-2010.

“The areas of negotiations have significantly narrowed, and on those issues we’re very close,” said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.

Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, talked via videophone to Schwarzenegger, who is vacationing in Idaho. Talks will continue over the weekend, with leaders hoping lawmakers can be called back to Sacramento by the end of next week to approve a final deal.

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said Democrats are “moving closer” to the governor’s demands for deeper spending cuts and an economic stimulus package. “But we don’t have any agreements,” McLear said.

We know that the main sticking point issues were: 1) eliminating CEQA for certain infrastructure projects, 2) privatizing a lot of those public works contracts and 3) cutting state worker holidays and overtime.  So the fact that Democrats are “moving closer” to those positions isn’t exactly heartening, although it’s contradicted somewhat later in the piece.

Bass said Democrats are trying to meet the governor’s desire to stimulate private investment in public projects without hurting public employees by shifting their jobs to contractors.

The Democrats believe changes to state employee pay must be hashed out at the bargaining table between unions and the administration. “There’s no question that state workers know that they’re going to be part of the solution as well, but we also think it’s very important to respect their ability to have a say in how that is done,” Steinberg said.

Privatization is simply not the answer, it has no relevance on budget savings (cost overruns exist in the private world, too) and is just a way for Arnold to reward his Chamber of Commerce pals.  

But what’s notable here is that these are meetings between the Governor and the Democratic leadership, and the Republicans have been completely frozen out due to their inability to play nice with others.  The byzantine plan for a majority vote on fee increases and tax shifts is still operative, and if it survives the subsequent legal challenge, suddenly the Yacht Party would be powerless.  The Very Serious pundits have already turned against Yacht Party rhetoric on spending as the source of the problem, and even the most casual observer understands that the 2/3 rule is destroying the state.  There ought to be a formal voting down of 2/3 (even this work-around will be insufficient to approve a new budget in June, which requires a 2/3 vote) but this is a creative solution to a crisis largely created by the rulemaking structure of the body and Republican intransigence (not to mention Arnold’s vehicle license fee slash, the dumbest first act by a Governor in many a year).