Tag Archives: Proposition 32

California, Election 2012

California’s Billionaire Ballot: The Good, Bad, And Ugly

Photobucket

Populist governor Hiram Johnson gave Californians the ballot initiative one hundred and one years ago to combat the stranglehold of wealthy scions over the statehouse. Today’s New York Times reports on how California’s ballot measures are dominated by a handful of billionaires, including some trying to buy more power for themselves and their companies. Call it The Billionaire Ballot.

In modern history there has been no slate of ballot measures with so much concentrated wealth behind it. But can we judge a ballot measure by the billionaire behind it? It depends what the billionaire wants.

Here’s a populist guide to the Good, Bad and Ugly of California’s Billionaire Ballot:

The U G L Y: Two insurance billionaires are the big funding behind Proposition 32 and 33. Both initiatives have been rejected before. The tens of millions being poured in by two insurance billionaires are pure power grabs to get more money and power for the backers of Proposition 32 and 33.

Proposition 33 is backed by Mercury Insurance Chairman George Joseph, who has spent $16 million, 99.5% of the funds behind the initiative, to charge drivers more for not having auto insurance previously, even if the reason is they didn’t drive. Billionaires buying the ballot to help their own profits doesn’t get much uglier than Prop 33.

Prop 32 features the heir to the Berkshire Hathway fortune, including GEICO and another insurance company, buying the ballot to gut the power of labor unions in the political process. This of course helps the super-rich and insurance companies have more power. GEICO heir Charlie Munger Jr. poured $22 million into Prop 32, and it isn’t to benefit The People, but His People. Hiram Johnson rating: U.G.L.Y!

The BAD: Molly Munger, the other heir to the Berkshire Hathaway fortune, the liberal one, is funding an altruistic ballot measure, Prop 38, which is backed by the PTA and funds education. The problem is it has little public support and is likely not only to fail, but could bring down Prop 30, Governor Brown’s budget mending ballot measure, which Munger briefly attacked directly. Rule for billionaires in ballot measures: start with 70% approval rating, not 40%. IF you don’t have the public with you at the beginning, you are not likely to win voters over. And if there’s a competing ballot measure, it’s likely to be a pox on everyone’s house.

The GOOD: At least two billionaires have the right idea. Environmentalist and hedgefund manager Tom Steyer is funding Prop 39, an enlightened idea to close the state’s loophole on taking out of state corporations, and generate $1 billion for the beleaguered state treasury. Steyer used his money to stop oil companies from gutting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions law last election, for which he earned my consumer group’s Phillip Burton Public Service Award.

Nicholas Berrgruen’s financing pushed Prop 31 on the ballot at the last minute. It’s a two year budget cycle initiative reform that has positives and negatives, but Berrgruen sponsored the idea because he believed it would benefit Californians, not line his own pockets. In the end, that’s all we can really ask of billionaires that want to play in ballot measure politics: 1) Do it for the state, not to benefit yourself or your class 2) Don’t screw anyone else who has a better idea and is more in sync with public opinion.

It takes big money to play in California’s ballot measure process today, so billionaires are plenty welcome. But if they are in it for themselves, they aren’t likely to fool the voters, who have a remarkable knack for rejecting any ballot initiative with a stink behind it. In the end, the initiative process is still the people’s. Voters decide, and their judgment over the billionaires is the final verdict.

________________________________________________________________

Originally Posted on The Huffington Post by Jamie Court, author of The Progressive’s Guide to Raising Hell and President of Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.

Uncategorized

Tom Hiltachk, Master of Deception

This is an article written by Matthew Fleischer for Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for regular in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

Any lawyer with some experience in Sacramento politics can draft language for a statewide initiative. But crafting deceptive ballot measures that can trick people into voting against their core beliefs is nothing less than an art form.

For many years, the undisputed master of the misleading initiative has been Thomas Hiltachk. So it’s little surprise that Hiltachk is the author of Proposition 32, which promises to rid Sacramento of special interest money – but which would actually give almost complete control of state politics to corporations and the super-rich by effectively crippling the ability of unions to participate in elections and lobbying. Hiltachk has also quite possibly written into the initiative a poison pill that would shield corporations from its provisions and leave only unions to suffer the consequences if Prop. 32 passes.

A full-time political and election lawyer since 1998, Hiltachk is an old hand at drafting legislation benefiting Big Tobacco or beating back living wage campaigns. He is also the California Republican Party’s go-to legal mind for penning regressive ballot initiatives intended to give conservatives maximum political power in an otherwise majority progressive state. Like the political consultants at the Dolphin Group, Hiltachk is known for promoting “Trojan Horse” political gambits. As Hendrik Hertzberg put it in a 2007 New Yorker piece, Hiltachk and his law film Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, “specialize in initiatives that are the opposite of what they sound like.”

In other words, when political ideas won’t fly with voters on merit, Hiltachk and company trick Californians into voting against their wants and interests-and use every legal maneuver possible to keep voters unawares. If recent history is any indication, Hiltachk and his law firm have only one goal: Getting Republicans elected at any cost. (Hiltachk did not return repeated requests for an interview.)

Proposition 32 is just the latest in a string of initiatives authored by Hiltachk that do exactly that. In 2003, Hiltachk penned the initiative to recall then-California Governor Gray Davis. He later served as the spokesman and legal counsel for Rescue California-the committee that spent $3.6 million lobbying and signature-gathering for the initiative. When Davis lost his recall election to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hiltachk had little trouble finding his next job-as legal counsel to the new governor.

Working for the Schwarzenegger state house, however, didn’t stop his own efforts to push California’s political agenda as far right as possible. In 2006, Hiltachk and his firm authored and pushed for the Fair Pay Workplace Flexibility Act-a progressive-sounding bit of legislation that would have increased California’s minimum wage by a pittance. Hovering just above that carrot, however, was a giant stick. The bill would have eliminated overtime pay for many workers and frozen all future minimum wage raises without the consent of two-thirds of both houses of the California legislature-a nearly impossible feat.

In 2009, Hiltachk authored and promoted California Proposition 23-which would have eliminated the protections of California’s landmark environmental bill AB 32. As with Prop. 32, Hiltachk’s measure received the backing of the Koch brothers, to the tune of $1 million, donated through their company Flint Hills Resources. It failed miserably at the polls. But that didn’t deter Hiltachk-who served as legal counsel for billionaire Meg Whitman‘s gubernatorial campaign. The first thing Whitman vowed she would do in office was to suspend AB 32.

This past March, Hiltachk’s law firm even sued to prevent Democratic 10th Congressional District candidate Jose Hernandez from listing his job title as “astronaut” on the June ballot. Hernandez, whose life could not possibly better encapsulate the American Dream, grew up the son of immigrants, working in the agricultural fields outside of Stockton, California. He didn’t learn to speak English until he was 12. Hernandez literally worked his way up from the ground to become a scientist and crew member of the 2009 flight of the space shuttle Discovery.

A reaffirming life story? Not in the world of Thomas Hiltachk, where one person’s giant step for mankind is no cause for community pride-only litigation.

Hiltachk’s influence isn’t confined to state politics. In 2007 he was the legal mastermind behind the failed Presidential Election Reform Act-which proposed divvying up California’s massive pool of electoral votes by congressional districts in presidential elections, instead of in the current winner-take-all fashion. The effort would have virtually ensured a permanent gift of 20 electoral votes to Republican presidential candidates-a larger electoral chunk than the all-important state of Ohio. For good measure, Hiltachk is also the treasurer for this year’s No on 37 campaign-an agribusiness attempt to thwart labeling of genetically modified foods.

Proposition 32’s Trojan Horse nature fits Hiltachk’s modus operandi-it’s a law masquerading as campaign finance reform that really serves as part of a national effort to gut unions and enhance the clout of the Republican Party. But this particular effort is far less precise than his previous campaigns. For instance, his decision to leave the term “corporation” undefined in the ballot language will clearly invite a host of lawsuits should the measure pass. Do LLCs count as corporations? How about non-profits?

Not to mention that Prop. 32’s proposed restrictions on union and corporate donations to individual candidates seem to conflict with the recent Supreme Court Citizens United ruling.

Hiltachk is no sloppy legal mind. One has to assume these conspicuous holes are intentional. Could it be that Prop. 32 was designed so that only a part of it could stand up to a constitutional challenge? Say, for instance, the one thing backers of Prop. 32 have historically been interested in-the end of union workers’ automatic payroll deductions?

“Prop. 32 has a separability clause,” says Alan Crowley, a labor lawyer with the legal firm Weinberg, Roger and Rosenfeld. “In theory, if a law is challenged, the parts that aren’t ruled illegal could go forward. Hypothetically that might be enforced.”

If this scenario unfolds, Prop. 32 will have the effect its backers no doubt intended-to give corporations and wealthy donors unchallenged control of state politics.

Marriage Equality

Proposition 32′s Anti-Gay Warriors

4 Comments

This is an article written by Matthew Fleischer for Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for regular in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

Brothers David and Charles Koch, and other libertarian billionaire backers of Proposition 32, including Charles Munger Jr., like to wrap themselves in the toga of individual freedom. However, despite their supposed ideological fervor for personal liberties, they have allied themselves with some of the nation’s most vociferously anti-gay religious activists – all for a campaign to outlaw the use of automatic payroll deductions from union members and corporations for political purposes. Although it is not widely seen as a “gay issue,” Prop. 32’s passage could have far-reaching consequences for California’s gays and lesbians.

“If we lose organized labor as a funded political ally in California, the LGBT movement is in big trouble,” says Courage Campaign founder and LGBT activist Rick Jacobs.  “Would you rather have Howard Ahmanson thinking about your rights in the workplace, or organized labor? That’s what this is about. Mark my words, people like the Kochs and Ahmanson are not thinking about how LGBT people are welcome in the workplace and not discriminated against.”

Howard Ahmanson, the Prop. 32 supporter to whom Jacobs refers, is a wealthy heir who once told the Orange County Register his political aspirations for the country embraced “the total integration of biblical law into our lives.”

In 2008 Ahmanson was one of the leading backers of the successful Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California where, briefly, it had been legal. He donated nearly $1.4 million to fight against marriage equality. That sum is even greater than the $1 million he donated to the American Anglican Council, a religious advocacy organization, in the early aughts-ostensibly to help undermine the tide of tolerance growing in the church towards LGBT participation. The Episcopal Church, which falls under the Anglican umbrella and to which Ahmanson belongs, was the first major Protestant denomination to allow the ordination of openly gay bishops.

It’s telling that for a bill advertised as a campaign finance reform measure, Prop. 32 wouldn’t have put the slightest dent in Prop. 8’s funding, had Prop. 32 been law in 2008. It would have, though, prevented more than $2 million in union donations from flowing to the marriage equality side.

Ahmanson isn’t the only Prop. 32 backer looking to stifle LGBT rights in California. Despite his fundamentalist politics, he may not even be the most anti-gay. That honor likely belongs to real estate investment magnate Larry T. Smith, who thus far has given $255,000 to Prop. 32.

A strong supporter of Prop. 8, Smith was recently among the fiercest critics of SB 1172-the California legislative effort to ban gay-to-straight conversion therapy for minors – which passed in September.

Smith fundamentally rejects the notion that parents forcing their underage children to endure conversion therapy could be psychologically harmful. On the contrary, he feels it’s a “parental right.”

“It in fact appears most of the evidence supports the thesis or the concept that that lifestyle is the result of early childhood experiences,” Smith told the Christian news site Onenewsnow.com. “If early childhood experiences tend to motivate a person in that particular direction, then it would seem reasonable … that proper therapy would help them get out of that particular lifestyle, which I don’t care where you stand – there’s no question that it’s unhealthy.”

In other words, there’s no question that being LGBT is “unhealthy” and a lifestyle choice, and that all you need is some behavior modification at a young age and everything will be good-like curing bedwetting.

Smith isn’t merely opining. He’s the billionaire founder of the religious-right political action committee Family Action-which, with the help of fellow Prop. 32 backer and Family Action board member Mark W. Bucher, helped qualify and pass Proposition 22, a 2000 law amending California’s Family Code to effectively ban same-sex marriage.

For more than a decade, the Family Action PAC has routinely funneled money to anti-gay conservative politicians across the state of California, including Orange County State Assemblyman Allan Mansoor, whom Smith recently praised as “an effective voice for conservative values.”

Mansoor caught the attention of LGBT activists when he ran for a Costa Mesa city council seat in 2002 by posting homophobic comments and articles on the message boards of the website Concerned Costa Mesa Citizens. He also supports the claim that homosexual men commit acts of sexual child molestation at a disproportionately high rate.

Recently, Smith came out as an opponent of this year’s Assembly Joint Resolution 43 – otherwise known as the LGBTQ Bill of Rights. Proposed by Bell Gardens Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, the resolution urged Congress and President Obama to extend California’s robust LBGT civil rights protections against bullying, harassment in the workplace, and discrimination in pay, loan opportunities, housing, hiring and family leave, to gay and lesbians across the country.

“The California Legislature spends their time on trivia instead of dealing with the major problems that the state has,” Smith complained of AJR 43 to Onenewsnow.com. “And it also tells you how the special interests control the California Legislature.”

Smith’s definition of gay rights as a “special interest” should tell LGBT-rights supporters all they need to know about Prop. 32-whose website explicitly advocates “taking back California by reducing the influence of Special Interests across the board.”

LGBT activist Robin Tyler, an original plaintiff in the California Marriage Equality case and a member of the first lesbian couple to be legally married in California, sees Prop. 32 in the same vein as Prop. 8, and thinks its passage would have disastrous effects on the marriage equality movement in California.

“Prop. 32 is another glaring example of why Californians are being fooled into thinking that if they voted for stopping ‘special interests,’ they will be voting in their own favor,” she says. “Like Prop. 8, which misled the public who voted ‘Yes’ into thinking they were protecting their children, Prop. 32 once again misleads the public into thinking they are protecting themselves.”

Reached by phone, Larry T. Smith had “no comment at this time” on Tyler’s remarks or anything having to do with Prop. 32.

Should Prop. 32 pass, Smith, Ahmanson and their compatriots will undoubtedly continue pushing their religious, anti-gay agenda on the state of California and beyond.

“This is not just about California,” says the Courage Campaign’s Jacobs. “Labor communities have been very supportive of LGBT rights in the workplace and in the political space. They are reliable allies. If 32 passes, California’s 2.5 million unionized workers won’t be able to contribute their money for political purposes out of state either. The next time there’s a fight in Washington over the Defense of Marriage Act, for instance, labor has less capacity to join us. California is a donor state. The whole chain is interrupted.”

Uncategorized

Disconnected From Reality: Prop. 32′s AT&T Ad

3 Comments

This is a video and article from Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for regular in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

Newspapers across California are calling out Proposition 32-a ballot measure that would outlaw using automatic payroll deductions from union members and corporations for political purposes. Editorial writers and columnists charge the initiative is dishonest for positioning itself as an anti-corporate campaign finance effort – even as supporters of the initiative have recently taken to union-bashing to frame their arguments. However, for a period of several months over the summer, Prop. 32 backers did their best to fool Californians with a disingenuous Occupy Wall Street-inspired “fight the power” advertising campaign. Let’s take a look at some vintage Trojan Horse political advertising.

0 minutes 05 seconds – Nice special effects. Michael Bay is impressed.

0:16 – Does that briefcase combination read “666”? Perhaps the flow of “special interest” money into politics is a deal with the devil. Only problem: The devil is wearing a wedding band. Given that such Christian conservative Proposition 8 backers as Howard Ahmanson and Larry T. Smith are among the primary bankrollers of Prop. 32, we’ll guess that, in this case, the devil must be gay-married!

More…

0:19 – Here’s a funny story: Billionaire Thomas Siebel, the man credited with paying for this advertisement, runs a technology company called C3, which has Condoleeza Rice and former Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham on its board of directors. So, yes, politicians do quite literally work for special interests-the interests behind Prop. 32.

0:26 – Charles Munger Jr. is personally spending more than $60,200 per day to pass Prop. 32.

0:32 – Prop. 32 backers love to demonize AT&T’s political spending. Probably because AT&T, (unlike, say, the Koch brothers, who toss comparable amounts of money around the political realm, almost exclusively to Republicans) actually support state Democrats in California. The Los Angeles Times story in question opens with a description of a fundraiser that raised $1 million for the California Democratic Party.

0:56 – Not going to stand up for AT&T on this one. However, it’s worth noting that the Koch brother-owned gypsum, pulp paper product and packaging company, Georgia-Pacific, is in the midst of lobbying to gut the regulations of California’s Green Chemistry Initiative-a 2008 law protecting California citizens from exposure to toxic industrial chemicals. Georgia-Pacific is an LLC (limited liability company), that, thanks to loopholes in Prop. 32’s language, won’t be hampered in the slightest by the initiative’s proposed restrictions. The Kochs have so far donated $4 million to support 32.

1:04 – We called AT&T to see if the company was for or against Prop. 32. Interestingly, the company’s Director of Communications, Lane Kasselman, told us AT&T has “no position” on the measure. Which seems kind of counterintuitive – if, as this ad suggests, the bill stands to completely cut off their access to channels of power in Sacramento. Wonder why is AT&T staying so neutral? Perhaps because 32 is a sham and won’t restrict its political influence in the slightest.

1:21 – Only individuals will be allowed to donate…plus LLCs, PACs, Super Pacs, 501(c)(6) corporate trade associations, politically motivated non-profits and corporations that don’t use automatic payroll deductions, which is all of them…You get the picture.

1:26 – “Special interest” count: Seven.

1:27 – Eight.

1:34 – Nine (16 if you include screen titles).

1:44 – Fade to black already. Whoever made this ad is the same kid in high school who had to triple-space and use size 14 font to finish his five-page papers.

1:50 – “Supported by small business owners, farmers, educators and taxpayers.” And by that we mean large corporations, chemical companies, management consultants and billionaires who don’t want to pay their taxes.

California, Economy, Election 2012, Environment, San Diego

Brian Bilbray and Carl DeMaio: San Diego’s Republican Shapeshifters

If there’s one thing that’s been particularly consistent to campaigns of the far right in San Diego this fall, it’s the unusually desperate attempts to hide the real agenda from voters. It’s one that should be cause for optimism as long as voters pay attention, and betrays an almost impressive self-awareness from the top of the GOP that the party’s agenda has drifted well outside the mainstream.

From the special exemptions of Prop 32 to Brian Bilbray’s teetering re-election bid to Carl DeMaio’s bizarre mayoral campaign, extreme conservatives are doing everything they can to hide their record and who they are.

For the backers of Proposition 32, the deception was part of the design from the very beginning. They surveyed the political landscape and found that, unsurprisingly, nobody wants millionaires and corporations to be able to buy off our political process. Rather than abandon a wildly unpopular idea, they came up with a different plan: fake it.  

Cross-posted from San Diego Free Press

That’s Prop 32, from the same white knights of campaign finance reform who broke the system to begin with by using the Citizens United case to overthrow existing regulations on special interest money. This year, they simply took it a step further, called the plan reform and packed in enough special exemptions to create a system that only works for corporations and millionaires.

It makes sense because everyone wants campaign finance reform. But the reason they want campaign finance reform is specifically because of what Prop 32’s backers have done and continue to do.

The hundreds of millions of unregulated, unlimited political cash flowing into SuperPACs exists specifically because of Prop 32’s backers, and now its being funded by the Koch Brothers and other super-rich conservatives that saw Citizens United as the starting pistol to buy off democracy. Prop 32’s hoping to trick voters. Will they see through it?

At the same time, there’s Brian Bilbray. He has cobbled together a decades-long career of faking moderation when election time comes around, but the reality just doesn’t match the myth he’s built for himself when push comes to shove. Bilbray wants to cast himself as an environmentalist, but mustered just a 17% score on the League of Conservation Voters 2011 scorecard. And it was Bilbray’s early work trying to gut the Clean Water Act that once inspired Donna Frye to become a clean water activist.

He’s done his best to avoid the ramifications of the national GOP’s war on women, right on through to Todd Akin’s ‘legitimate rape’ comments. But the reality of his record remains, including a pitiful 8% score from Planned Parenthood’s scorecard. Brian Bilbray may not want to be lumped in with the war on women, but if that’s what he’s hoping for, maybe he shouldn’t have signed up for it in the first place.

All of that could maybe be overlooked if Bilbray had taken up the mantle of the millions of Americans devastated when the economy fell apart near the end of the Bush administration. But while Bilbray will certainly have populist talking points on the stump, it’s worth remembering that he voted for the Paul Ryan plan to dismantle Medicare and destroy Social Security in response to increased economic security.

And Bilbray’s plan for economic recovery? One part rewarding tax-evading corporate interests, one part Let them eat a Yacht Race! Not exactly your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.

For Carl DeMaio, the attempt to whitewash nearly twenty years as a professional politician has been even more depraved than elsewhere. After coming up with the likes of Newt Gingrich, Virginia Thomas, the Jack Abramoff crew, and the Koch Brothers, it seems to have dawned on Carl that the city of San Diego, well… really doesn’t like that at all.

During his tenure on the council, DeMaio has received the lowest cumulative score on the annual Environmental Quality Report Card. And despite being appointed since joining the council, DeMaio hasn’t appeared in the minutes of a single meeting of the San Dieguito River Valley Regional Open Space Joint Powers Authority since January 2011.

Reality didn’t matter to DeMaio though when he took a week out to declare himself an environmentalist. He didn’t get very far with that, so he moved on to a plan to encourage biking by investing in more roads. Doesn’t make sense? It isn’t supposed to. It’s just supposed to distract from his career-long record on the wrong side of these issues.

Word on the street is, DeMaio spent some time recently trying for an endorsement from the Victory Fund, which led to an unexpected declaration from Carl that he was pro-choice. It has to be considered unexpected since it was certainly news to Planned Parenthood. Why? Because despite the clear reasons that choice matters at the local level, DeMaio has always refused to fill out Planned Parenthood’s questionnaire. And today, if you’re looking for pro-choice candidates in November, you sure aren’t going to find Carl DeMaio on the list.

There are still more examples. He runs as a fiscal conservative while voting against hundreds of millions in taxpayer savings and getting the BS treatment from Mayor Jerry Sanders. He tried out medical marijuana but that fell flat once anyone read past Carl’s own statement.

He took a quick stab at being for the middle class and affordable housing over the summer, trying to pass off support from a landlord group as support for tenants. The claims were called “preposterous,” and the former CEO of the San Diego Housing Commission said in no uncertain terms that “Carl DeMaio is not an advocate for more affordable housing.”

Heck, DeMaio has even tried reaching out to the Latino community while trumpeting an endorsement from Pete Wilson, the father of Proposition 187. And after casting the only vote on the council in support of Arizona’s SB1070, his Latino outreach has featured a plan to have local police enforce federal immigration law.

The most amazing part is the special brand of doublethink that DeMaio has going on in all this. He isn’t just making up an entirely new self for the general election, he’s doing it while criticizing others for the same thing. Like last week at the KPBS mayoral debate:

“The U-T CEO mentioned that he got support from labor, and yet labor has not supported it, that he got support from business groups, but very few groups that are out there have supported the plan,” DeMaio said. “And so I just think that the email probably was making some claims that are not grounded in reality.”

Now, it wouldn’t be shocking to discover the UT making claims that are not grounded in reality. But compare that to DeMaio’s recent record. He’s an affordable housing advocate unless you ask affordable housing advocates. He’s an environmentalist unless you ask environmentalists. He’s a medical marijuana advocate unless you ask medical marijuana advocates. He’s pro-choice unless you ask Planned Parenthood. He’s a friend to the Latino community except for wanting them to be harassed by the police. He’s a fiscal conservative except for imposing a billion dollar tax increase without a vote of the public.

But when Doug Manchester and John Lynch — the very same duo who helped DeMaio defeat essentially the same tax increase in 2005 — don’t poll well, then maybe reality has come loose.

Does it work? Maybe not with anyone who has the time and interest to dig into the substance. But those who never catch more than headlines because they have lives full of working to make ends meet, struggling with health care bills, working into retirement thanks to Wall Street, trying to figure out what to do after a foreclosure… they understandably won’t ever have that time.

And that’s the whole idea. Keep up the game of whack-a-mole long enough that voters never get a chance to examine the truth.

It’s said that great writers steal outright, so here’s a heartfelt tip of the cap to the inimitable Ann Richards before saying: Poor Carl.

He’s never once had a job that asked him to appeal to a majority, or even anyone resembling moderates. So now that he’s stuck in a general election, he’s like Columbus discovering America. He’s found the environment. He’s found the middle class and working people. He’s found women. He’s found the sick and suffering. He’s found Latinos.

Poor Carl. He can’t help it. San Diego just doesn’t want what he’s been selling his whole life.

I’m proud to work for San Diegans for Bob Filner for Mayor 2012

Uncategorized

How Gloria Romero Became the Face of Proposition 32

1 Comment

This is an article written by Matthew Fleischer for Frying Pan News. Check Frying Pan News for regular in-depth coverage of Prop 32, its funders, and how it will impact working Californians.

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” Gloria Romero tells me on the phone. “It’s flowing to both sides. Government isn’t about drawing lines. It’s not about saying you’re on that side and you can’t come over.”

Her voice is friendly, somewhat placid, but it’s clear Romero is not thrilled with having to answer questions about her political alliance with the Koch brothers and other wealthy supporters of Proposition 32, and she conspicuously avoids bringing up their names. When pressed about the Kochs and the money behind behind Prop. 32, falls back upon her experience in Sacramento.

“I have sat in the belly of the beast,” she says. “I have seen the realities of money and its influence.”

With Election Day still one month away, the battle to pass Prop. 32 has seen its share of political shockers, including the sudden injection of $4 million of Koch brother money to the Yes on 32 campaign, along with millions more from Charles Munger Jr. But nothing has been more surprising than the decision of Romero, a former California State Senate Democratic majority leader, to serve as the measure’s frontwoman.

A liberal Latina firebrand from East Los Angeles, Romero was Occupy Wall Street before that movement existed. In 1990, as a member of the Latino Community Justice Center and a professor at Cal State Los Angeles, she co-authored an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in support of striking Century City janitors who had been beaten by police. She used the cred acquired from that op-ed and several others to win a hotly contested run for the California Assembly in 1998, largely by decrying Prop. 32′s progenitor, Proposition 226-the first ‘paycheck protection’ initiative.

In 2001, she was elected to the State Senate – largely with the grateful backing of labor. In 2007 she received a 97 percent rating by Capitol Weekly for her positions on progressive issues. Now she’s seen as carrying water for the Kochs and anti-gay culture warriors like Howard Ahmanson and Larry T. Smith. Romero, however, casts Prop. 32 in terms of uplifting historical pageantry.

“We’re saying as Democrats we want to form a more perfect union,” she says. “It’s a civil rights movement and our schools are the ticket out of poverty.”

Despite her rightward ideological swing, Romero isn’t backing the entire Koch agenda. Instead, she’s become Prop. 32’s human face on behalf of the seemingly progressive political action committee (PAC) Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), where she serves as director of the organization’s California operation. An examination of DFER’s backers, however, shows that right-wing billionaires aren’t her only Prop. 32 bedfellows.

New York University Research Professor of Education Diane Ravitch, who has followed the lobbying efforts of DFER since its inception in 2005, is blunt about Romero: “She’s working for Wall Street hedge fund managers. That’s where her interest lies.”

Indeed, DFER is the brainchild of Whitney Tilson, founder of the hedge-fund firm T2 Partners – an LLC that, like other hedge fund contributors to DFER, is conveniently exempted from Prop. 32′s proposed donation restrictions. In a 2010 New York Times interview about charter schools, Tilson suggested that privatized education was a potentially lucrative investment target for Wall Street.

“[H]edge funds are always looking for ways to turn a small amount of capital into a large amount of capital,” he said of his interest in the charter school movement.

And, in a 2010 documentary, A Right Denied, Tilson suggested that DFER was created because of Walmart patriarch John Walton’s support of vouchers and “school choice.”

In the film, Tilson recalled a meeting he had with Walton at the Harvard Club:

“We told John Walton, ‘Thank you, you’ve inspired us to do this and we’re going to create an organization with quite a similar mission to what you’re doing…You’re our friend. We’re doing something you would support, but we can’t take a penny of your money.’ Because the moment we take any Walmart money – that’s ‘anti-union,’ etcetera, etcetera – then it becomes a partisan issue again.”

Democrats for Education Reform takes pains to avoid such overt financial ties to right-wing backers like Walton. Tracing its finances isn’t easy, though. According to Form 410 documents that DFER filed with the Secretary of State’s office, it qualified as a political action committee in the state of California on November 21, 2011-meaning it had either raised or spent $1,000 for political purposes.

According to California Fair Political Practices Commission spokesperson Tara Stock, when a committee “qualifies,” it is supposed to file Form 460 finance disclosure documents.

“Once a committee hits $25,000 they are required to file electronically,” she explains. “Before that, they file on paper. From what it looks like, I don’t see that they have done either.”

Despite qualifying as a committee, DFER missed two necessary deadlines to file their 460 financial forms on January 31 and July 31 of this year. This lack of disclosure makes it impossible to tell where its money is coming from and where it’s going in the state.

Romero insists DFER’s activity in California is above board: “We’ve made no contributions in California at this time. We are not actively fundraising. We don’t even have an open bank account. The bulk of our work in California is done under our non-profit Education Reform Now.”

Interestingly, Despite Tilson’s protestations to the contrary, Education Reform Now has no problem accepting Walmart cash. In 2011, the non-profit lobbying wing of DFER received $1.1 million from the Walton Family Foundation.

That same year, Education Reform Now spent more than $36,000 on lobbying expenses to eliminate teacher protections in California and make it easier to privatize schools. In the organization’s filings, Romero is listed as the “responsible officer” behind these activities. Furthermore, that same year, she was given a warning by the FPPC for personally lobbying for these same measures extra-legally.

More recently, Education Reform Now spent $1 million on ad buys pushing Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s talking points in September’s Chicago teachers’ strike.

Romero denies that her support for Prop. 32 is a move to foist a privatization agenda upon California’s schools.

“Do Democrats for Education Reform and myself support charters? Absolutely. Do I think 32 will help put more charters into place? No.”

However, as it turns out, this wouldn’t be the first time Romero has fronted for a conservative agenda in the state of California. Romero authored California’s 2008 “Parent Trigger” law, which allows parents in low-performance schools to vote on whether to hand over their administration to a private charter company.

“I call it the ‘parent tricker,” says Ravitch. “It tricks parents into handing control of their school to a corporation. It’s the equivalent of a group of people on a public bus who are unsatisfied with their ride, so they take it over and give it to a private company. Public schools belong to the community, not to the current crop of parents.”

Ravitch credits the Parent Trigger concept as originating from the neoconservative think tank American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), noting the issue has become part of ALEC’s “model legislation” that the group is lobbying for in multiple states.

Romero disputes the ALEC connection.

“When I wrote this law,” she says, “I didn’t know who ALEC was, quite frankly. Whoever picks it up and supports it, I respect that. The U.S. Conference of Democratic Mayors also supports the law.”

Ravitch says Prop. 32 shares much in common with the Parent Trigger. “I would see Prop. 32 in the context of the privatization movement. They want to kill off the unions because they are the guardians of public education.”

Romero did not win labor backing for her unsuccessful 2010 run for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, but did garner support from charter school advocates. Some political observers believe her embrace of Prop. 32 is payback for the endorsement snub, although Romero denies being anti-union.  And despite blistering criticism of Prop. 32’s corporate loopholes and anti-union agenda from the editorial boards of California’s papers of record, she maintains that the measure is purely about campaign finance reform.

“I was against previous paycheck protection measures in California because it only targeted one side. Now that it goes after both sides, I feel comfortable putting my name behind it. This will change the culture of Sacramento.”

That seems unlikely. Even Prop. 32′s supporters argue the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling makes it impossible to remove money from politics. What Prop. 32 will fundamentally alter is the balance of power in Sacramento.

One thing that will undoubtedly change, regardless of the outcome of the election, is Romero’s reputation as a stalwart progressive.