CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2012, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2012, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“PROP. 32 LOSS
SHOWS VOTERS WANT LEVEL PLAYING FIELD”
If there was one big reason why “paycheck protection,” on Tuesday’s ballot as Proposition 32, failed for
the third time in the last 16 years, it was this: The concept by itself is simply
unfair.
Like its predecessors in 1996 and
2005, Proposition 32 aimed to deprive labor unions of their voice in California
politics while not touching corporations or the billionaire political class
that has become increasingly active in recent years.
This time around, paycheck protection
tried to hide behind a bit of a fig leaf, but it just didn’t work. Even the
television commercials aired by the extremely well funded “yes” campaign had
holes in them wide enough to drive several trucks through, holes obvious to
anyone paying the slightest attention.
The fig leaf was this: Rather than
just banning unions from using member dues for political purposes unless
members sign off for it every year, as both previous paycheck protection bills
tried to do, this one also included a provision banning direct contributions
from both unions and corporations to political candidates.
So there was the surface appearance of
even-handedness. But reality is that most corporate and individual donations
don’t go to candidates anymore, anyhow. Especially since the 2010 Citizens
United decision of the U.S. Supreme Court – the one letting corporations spend
unlimited amounts on politics – most corporate campaign money has gone to
so-called “independent expenditure committees.” These are nominally beyond the
control of candidates, even though many prominent ones in the last few years
have been headed by immediate past aides of the politicians those so-called
“Super PACs” support.
The intent, then, was to deprive labor
unions of much of their political capital while letting corporations and the
ultra-rich keep pouring as much cash as they like into their own causes and
candidates.
The primary funding for the measure
came from billionaires, who also give large sums to Super PACs because state
and federal laws limit direct donations from individuals to candidates.
One way to equalize this would be to
put corporate shareholders – even those who own stock indirectly through mutual
funds or pension funds – on an equal footing with union members. Let both
classes of citizen (yes, some people fall into both classes) have the power to
withhold their money from political uses. If union members get the power to
restrict use of their dues, shareholders should be able to say no to political
spending by companies in which they invest, in proportion to the shares they
own.
So far, no one has attempted an
evenhanded initiative like this, one with the potential to dramatically reduce
political spending on all sides.
Proposition 32 backers, including the
state Chamber of Commerce, clearly knew this idea has great public appeal;
hence the design of the fig leaf they deployed this time.
But plenty of others saw through it
instantly. And the many TV commercials for 32 that were funded by the likes of
the Kansas oil-baron Koch brothers, producer Jerry Perenchio, billionaire heir
and physicist Charles Munger Jr. and venture capitalist Tim Draper were almost
laughably amateurish.
“No loopholes, no exceptions,” one ad
blared, over and over and over. But the loopholes were obvious to anyone who
looked beyond the mere text of the commercials. There was plenty of room for
corporations and the extremely wealthy to keep donating as and where they like.
Even labor unions could easily have found loopholes via tactics like creating
social action committees to spend the union dues money that now goes to
politics. Those committees could put out cause-oriented advertisements that
just might happen to favor causes and candidates favored by Big Labor.
This was a classic case of the sort of
lawmaking ineptitude and prevarication that gives ammunition to critics of the
initiative movement, folks who say there are always flaws and loopholes.
But this putative measure lost, like
about 83 percent of all initiatives historically do. Which means the voters
aren’t as dumb as some in politics think and the initiative process worked just
fine, as it generally does. They saw through this one despite the blizzard of
ads for it, and the only group that will ever profit from it all is political
consultants, who often get a percentage of every advertising dollar their
clients spend.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The
Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s
Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition.
For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
No comments:
Post a Comment