By Brian Brokaw, Alliance for a Better California 2012

On the eve of Tuesday’s California Primary, and with the focus soon shifting to the November ballot, let’s take a quick look at some spending figures in races throughout the state:

• $7,000,000 (and climbing by the day) = the amount that independent expenditure committees and Super PACs have spent in state legislative races on the June 5th ballot, according to the Sacramento Bee.

• $46,700,000 (and climbing) = the amount that tobacco companies alone have contributed against the tobacco tax measure on Tuesday’s ballot, according to maplight.org.

• $0.00 = the amount by which the so-called “Stop Special Interest Money Act” will decrease political spending by billionaires and corporate-funded Super PACs, independent expenditure committees, and ballot measure committees.

• Exponentially = the amount by which Super PAC spending and influence in California will increase if the SSIM measure – more appropriately called the Special Exemptions Act – passes in November.

The drafters of the Special Exemptions Act – the same multimillionaire and billionaire businessmen our nation has to thank for the Citizens United Supreme Court case, as California Watch reported – very carefully wrote the measure to exempt themselves.  

According to the SSIM campaign’s website: “Among other issues, the initiative was drafted to comply with First Amendment limitations announced by the United States Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, 130 S. Ct. 876 (2010). There the Supreme Court struck down federal election law restrictions on independent expenditures-direct advertising by a corporation or union to promote a point of view such as support for a candidate-but it did not change existing law, which allows restrictions on direct contributions to candidates.”

In plain English, that means that Super PACs and independent expenditure committees – which are pumping millions of dollars to influence races up and down California – are EXEMPT. The same exemption, of course, goes for contributions to ballot measures – meaning tobacco companies, for example, will continue to be able to spend tens of millions of dollars on future initiative campaigns, as they have this election cycle to fight the tobacco tax.

Yet if you take the initiative’s funders at their word, “Stop Special Interest Money removes Big Money Interests from politics so that public officials will pay more attention to the people who elected them.”

The chutzpah of the measure’s backers in making such an intentionally misleading claim would almost be laughable – if it weren’t for the devastating impact the initiative would have on everyday Californians. While exempting billionaire businessmen and many powerful corporate special interests, the measure takes away the ability of working Californians and their unions to speak out on issues that impact all Californians – like cuts to our schools and colleges, police and fire response times, workplace safety, consumer protections, homeowner rights and unfair corporate tax giveaways.

So as you look at all of the spending in Tuesday’s elections, remember that corporations already spend 15-times as much as unions spend on political contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ opensecrets.org.  If the Special Exemptions Act were to pass, it would effectively silence the voice of union members while giving corporate special interests and billionaire businessmen free rein to exert even more influence over our political system, and that hurts all of us.

By Brian Brokaw, Alliance for a Better California 2012

The Lincoln Club of Orange County – the driving force  behind the so-called “Stop Special Interest Money” initiative on the November ballot – is hosting one of the nation’s leading campaign finance reformers at its annual black tie fundraising gala on Saturday night: Karl Rove.

That’s right. Just one day after a mystery donor who will forever remain anonymous contributed $10 million to Rove’s Crossroads GPS – the King of Super PACs himself is coming to California to spread his gospel of good government reforms.

And his Lincoln Club hosts, who have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to place the phony reform initiative on the ballot (along with the previous two attempts in 1998 and 2005), have certainly paid close attention to Rove’s Super PAC tactics ever since the Citizens United decision led to their explosion onto the national scene.

How so?

The initiative’s proponents claim that their measure bans both corporate and union contributions to candidates, prohibits campaign contributions from government contractors, prohibits corporations and unions from collecting political funds from employees and members via voluntary payroll deduction, and makes all employee political contributions by any other means strictly voluntary, requiring annual written consent. Sounds fair and balanced, right?

Take a closer look – this measure creates a giant loophole that allows corporations to make unlimited political expenditures supporting or opposing candidates, without restrictions, and unlimited contributions to ballot measures – while silencing unions.  

The measure says it will stop corporations and unions from collecting political funds through payroll deductions — but corporations almost never use payroll deductions to collect funds to support or oppose candidates or ballot measures; they use their corporate profits. Corporations already spend 15-times as much as unions spend on political contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Unions, of course, collect dues from members through payroll deduction to represent those members in bargaining, advocacy and politics.

That brings us back to Rove and the Lincoln Club.  That huge loophole in the measure would allow corporations to spend without any limits using a web of shadowy front groups, big business associations and corporate Super PACs.

In other words, if the initiative passes – Super PACs modeled after Rove’s, along with their anonymous $10 million donors – will become the law of the land here in the Golden State.  

(Welcome to the new and improved Alliance for a Better California 2012. They’ll be fighting the awful paycheck deception measure on the November ballot. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

By Brian Brokaw, Alliance for a Better California 2012

Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association – who makes his healthy living (last reported to be $300,000 annually) fundraising, concealing, and dispensing special interest money through what the Sacramento Bee calls “a sophisticated series of nonprofit corporations and political action committees” – this week issued a righteous call to “STOP SPECIAL INTEREST MONEY.” How about that?  

Of course, anyone who has followed California politics over the last few decades knows that the group founded by the late Jarvis, now led by Coupal, is one of the biggest, most powerful, most-entrenched special interests under the dome.  As the Bee’s Dan Morain notes, “[Jarvis] is part of the Republican establishment, almost always aligned with Chamber of Commerce and real estate interests, and often with tobacco, oil, gambling and other big businesses.” Of course, we don’t know exactly who funds Jarvis’ activities because they don’t have to tell us – but it’s a safe bet that elderly homeowners on fixed incomes didn’t fund the nearly $7 million that Jarvis raised in 2010.

Continued…

Coupal’s blog post hits the nail on the head, however, when he notes that some politicians “are making war against regular folks, while assisting narrow, well-heeled, special interests to prosper.” That is exactly the aim of the “Stop Special Interests Now Act” – better described as the “Corporate Power Grab Act” – upon which Coupal lavishes his blatantly disingenuous, self-serving praise.

The “Stop Special Interest Money Now Act” purports to be a “simple, fair and balanced solution…limiting both corporate and union political giving.” The initiative’s proponents claim that the measure bans both corporate and union contributions to candidates, prohibits campaign contributions from government contractors, prohibits corporations and unions from collecting political funds from employees and members via voluntary payroll deduction, and makes all employee political contributions by any other means strictly voluntary, requiring annual written consent. Sounds fair and balanced, right?

Take a closer look: a giant loophole in the Corporate Power Grab Act will allow corporations to continue to make unlimited political contributions supporting or opposing candidates, without restrictions, and unlimited contributions to ballot measures – while silencing unions.

The measure says it will stop corporations and unions from collecting political funds through payroll deductions — but corporations almost never use payroll deductions to collect funds to support or oppose candidates or ballot measures; they use their corporate profits. Corporations already spend 15-times as much as unions spend on political contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Unions, of course, collect dues from members through payroll deduction to represent those members in bargaining, advocacy and politics.

That brings us back to Coupal. His real agenda behind backing this phony measure is pretty clear. If this measure were to pass, it would effectively silence the voice of working families while giving corporations free rein to exert even more influence over our political system. The huge loophole in the measure would allow corporations to spend without any limits using a web of shadowy front groups, big business associations and corporate Super PACs.  Coupal and his corporate supporters know all too well that this measure won’t do anything to curb corporate influence on politics. It’s just common sense that Coupal wouldn’t support any sensible reforms that would strike at the heart of the real problem in politics: unchecked corporate power.  What the measure would do is to make it virtually impossible for workers to speak with a collective voice to counterbalance corporate influence. Remember that 15-1 figure mentioned earlier. If Coupal and his big corporate allies succeed in passing this bogus measure, corporations will outspend unions by 1000 to 1, if not more.  

Coupal and his backers know all of this. Why won’t they just fess up to their true motives?

There is only one answer to that question: it’s simply a corporate power grab. Unions fight for fair wages and benefits, for workplace safety, for smaller class size in our schools, for better health care for our children and senior citizens, and to keep our communities safe with adequate police and fire protection.  Most of these battles occur in city council or county supervisor chambers, in school board rooms, in the state Legislature or through initiatives on the ballot.  If working people with middle class values are eliminated from the political arena, large corporations and business interests will have free rein to do whatever they want to grow their profits.

That would be good news for Jon Coupal and the corporate giants who fund him to do their bidding. But it would be a disaster for California’s middle class.