Please share this with your classes and/or forward to your student email lists. It’s important that our students know what’s at stake with Prop. 32. (Yes, it’s OK to discuss in class, just be sure to cover your required course material for the day.)
On it’s face, Proposition 32 sounds like campaign finance reform. When you read the details, you see it’s not what it seems.
What Prop. 32 proponents would like you to believe is “reform” is really just a way for them to take the voice of unions, students, and working people out of politics, and leave corporations, big oil, billionaires, and Wall St. completely in charge without any opposition.
Prop. 32 would ban any money collected via payroll deduction from being used in political campaigns. What’s unfair about that is unions are the only group that collect its money this way. Chevron doesn’t collect its money for politics via payroll deduction of its employees, it collects it when you pay $5.00 for a gallon of gas!
An Arizona group called “Americans for Responsible Leadership” just gave $11 million to the campaign against Proposition 30 (the Governor’s tax initiative) and in favor of Proposition 32. It’s a shadowy 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that provides no information on its donors. The money could be from a corporation, an individual or a political party. By passing it through this nonprofit organization, the money is laundered and the true source is concealed.
In contrast, the largest donor to the campaign in support of Proposition 30 is the California Teachers Association which has given around $6.2 million. That may sound like a lot of money, however, that’s only $19 per member. Only through the system of current voluntary payroll deduction was it possible to amass the money that is paying for a lot of those ads you see on television right now in support of Prop 30 so we can avoid further cuts to education.
If Prop. 32 passes, organizations like “Americans for Responsible Leadership” will dominate the political landscape, with no opposing viewpoints being able to be heard.
It’s no wonder that the organizations that are funding Prop. 32 are the exact same organizations who will be exempt from the restrictions of Prop. 32 if it were to pass.
For more information on Proposition 32, please visit http://www.stopspecialexemptions.org/ or http://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2012/general/pdf/32-title-summ-analysis.pdf
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
In Unity,
Jim
Jim Mahler, President
AFT Guild, Local 1931
San Diego & Grossmont-Cuyamaca
Community Colleges
aftjim@pacbell.net