In this state, we’ve come to expect ballot initiatives sponsored by business interests to be, essentially, frauds. But it’s hard to conceive how one could be more fraudulent than Proposition 32. If there was any doubt left that the initiative process has been totally corrupted by big business and the wealthy, this should put it to rest for all time… “It looks temptingly like reform,” says Trudy Schafer, program director for the League of Women Voters of California. “But it’s not.” … “When corporations can just write a check from their general treasury, the idea that this is a meaningful restriction is ridiculous,” says Richard L. Hasen, an election and campaign law expert at UC Irvine. The share of corporate political spending coming from employee payroll deductions “has got to be a drop in the bucket, and putting it in there is just a fig leaf.”

Read full article [here].
by Michael Hiltzik, The Los Angeles Times.

Posted: August 19th, 2012, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.