NO ON PROP 32: Not What It Seems
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Prop 32 was deliberately written to look like campaign reform, but it is not. It gives more power to Wall Street and secretive SuperPACs, while middle class families pay the price.
Billionaire homophobes and school privatizers are behind drive to weaken California unions
There's a lot of big money behind California's Proposition 32, which should tell you right away how much to believe its backers' claims that the ballot initiative is about getting money out of politics. Most recently, Charles Munger, Jr., the son of the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, this week gave $9.9 million to a committee aimed at
simultaneously supporting Prop. 32 and defeating Gov. Jerry Brown's tax measure; Munger has now given a
total of $20 million to those two fights. Meanwhile, good-government groups like the
League of Women Voters are lining up against Prop. 32 along with the unions it explicitly targets.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/10/league-of-women-voters-stars-in-new-prop-32-ad.html
Prop. 32 eliminates a key union fundraising tool. Then it restricts direct contributions to candidates by unions and some kinds of corporations. That's meant to look like "getting special interest money out of politics," in the
hope that you won't notice that corporate big money could still put unlimited amounts of money into outside spending and Super PACs, while unions would have lost the ability to compete financially (to the small extent they currently do). California Republicans are hoping that if this passes, they'd
finally be able to start winning statewide elections.
Munger is not the only super-rich guy supporting Prop. 32. According to Frying Pan News, the go-to source for reporting on who's behind this initiative, other major donors include major supporters of Prop. 8 and of education privatization via vouchers.
For instance, Larry T. Smith, "a prominent proponent of 'gay-to-straight' conversion therapy for minors ... personally donated $50,000 to help support Prop. 8 and funneled even more money to the campaign through his political action group, the Family Action PAC." Fellow Prop. 32 donor Howard Ahmanson gave $1.4 million to Prop. 8, as well as giving "millions to both creationist and school-voucher causes." Also on the school vouchers front, Timothy C. Draper has given $100,000 to support Prop. 32:
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/07/1140524/-Billionaire-homophobes-and-school-privatizers-are-behind-drive-to-weaken-California-unions
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