Corporations Using Ballot Inititives To Gut Regulations, Consumer Protections

Los Angeles Times:

The phenomenon of corporations buying their way onto the California election ballot is fast reaching epidemic proportions. If the multimillion-dollar initiative campaigns by Mercury Insurance and Pacific Gas & Electric weren't enough -- the first on behalf of an initiative to gut the state's insurance consumer-protection law, the second to immunize private utilities from public competition -- here comes Venoco Inc.

The Denver-based independent oil company wants to give itself unique exemptions from local health, safety and environmental regulations in its California home away from home, Carpinteria.

Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[corwin]

07:51 AM on 02/22/2010

Diffidently, I point out, corporations can't vote. And, these propositions are,in fact, direct democracy California's governing classes have done well for themselves ("Hi,there, Public Employees) and
have employed dozens of questionable academic disciplines ,but the Cold Equations are forcing choices. (Something, I might add Democrats don't do well.) Here's a tip. If you don't like a proposal, marshall arguments against it . Beats whining.

[Nijel]

04:56 AM on 02/22/2010

How can we save California??? :(

[unbozo]

05:40 PM on 02/21/2010

Yet another reason to require 2/3 majority on ballot initiatives.

[mamacat]

06:30 AM on 02/22/2010

Sounds good, but what do we do with the ballot initiatives that have already been put into law?

[JessWonderin]

01:10 PM on 02/21/2010

Let the GAMES BEGIN . .

We will now be at the mercy of highly paid and WELL FUNDED corporate attempts to expidite our rush to serfdom.

. . . now with the Supremes latest Hit the "$wan $ong For Democracy". we will soon make "regulations" a quaint concept like "buggy-whips" or "corporate responsibility" . . . .

[JScott]

02:55 AM on 02/21/2010

Yup the recent Supreme Court decision didn't help.

The initiative process needs reform so that all propositions are CLEARLY AND SIMPLY worded and not subject to whomever crackpot/corporation with $ etc. can put something on the ballot.

[SurrealPumpkin]

10:01 PM on 02/20/2010

Summary of the Initiative:
http://www.carpinteria.ca.us/PDFs/Paredon%20Initiative%20Executive%20Summary.pdf

Citizens Group: http://www.carpinteria.ca.us/PDFs/Paredon%20Initiative%20Executive%20Summary.pdf

[mamacat]

09:38 PM on 02/20/2010

So what else is new?
The most famous proposition of them all, Prop 13, benefited big corporations (especially the railroads, the oil companies, and big agribusinesses) immensely more than it did homeowners. Sort of like the Bush tax cuts - it's the super-rich who got the tax cuts, the rest of us just got the shaft.
If Prop 13 had been written so that giant corporations paid their fair share, instead of shifting the Property tax burden onto those who bought property after 1979, California's budget problems wouldn't be nearly so bad as they are.
Unfortunately, a voting public which is too uneducated to understand evolution or global warming is putty in the hands of corporate propaganda specialists.

[USBrit]

06:56 AM on 02/21/2010

Your last sentence is a very nice summary of the situation. What tends to happen is the fat cats arrange things so they get the benefits of operating in a safe society, they bit by bit move the costs of maintaining that safe society away from themselves and on to the poorly informed middle classes - each time of course giving some of the middle classes some small scraps from their tables so they will continue to be the willing voting dogs under the master's table - and the net result is we move closer and closer to being the world's greatest banana republic. Prime example - the Tea Party express with Dickie Armey at the front of that one.

[live4art]

08:36 PM on 02/20/2010

Here it is, the United States of Corporations.
What became of We The People.
The oil companies are the worst.