This proposition is one of two propositions that I consider to be critical and not only worthy of a single issue recall, but nearly critical that it passes. Let’s be honest, the entire government of California from top to bottom is controlled by special interests. Our elected officials can not become elected officials unless they submit to the special interests and accept their donations (that implicitely require voting in certain ways down the road). Even our proposition process is overrun with special interest money. Want proof: what’s the number one campaign in terms of revenue spent in this special election? If you guessed the “No on 75 campaign”, you’re right!

This must stop! and prop 75 will slow it down by making sure that union members actually support the campaigning of their unions. Public employee unions are by far the biggest special interests in this state with the most to lose from reform. Don’t buy their ads about how they’re all noble and good. They’re not. They’re a union. Teachers unions aren’t in business to make sure that kids get a good education. They’re in business to make sure that teachers get paid well. The same is true of nurses unions, they aren’t in business to protect patients but make sure nurses are paid well. Don’t get me wrong, I think nurses and teachers should get a good salary with good benefits. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that the unions crap about being solely well intentioned ‘only for the good of California’ organizations is 100% pure bullshit. There job is to protect their union members whether or not (the key point) it is in the best interest of California.

Furthermore, these unions have gone beyond their charter (protecting their union members) to do a great deal of political campaigning not directly related to their union members employment. It has angered Wendy and I to no end to see the CTA spending her money on campaigns for issues and candidates we deplore. Could we opt out of giving them that money? Yes, but it is fairly complicated AND (more importantly) requires that she quit the union and lose out on all the other benefits outside of collective bargaining (like life ensurance availability) that the union provides as well as being ostrocized for not being a member of the union. It’s not as simple as the unions will have you believe.

The unions argue that their members support them. If that’s true, they have nothing to worry about. If that’s the case, everyone will sign up for having the political campaign donations taken out of their paycheck and all that will be lost is a little bit of administrative time and money. But everyone knows that is NOT what is going to happen. No, what is going to happen is that large percentages of members will opt out and that percentage will only increase as the union asks for more and more money to campaign with. Unions will turn back into unions: entities that do collecive bargaining instead of political action committeee funded by public employees.

The number one complaint I hear about this bill is that it doesn’t affect corporations, only unions. That’s a good complaint. We need to reign them in too. However, unlike prop. 74 where it’s passing will take focus off the subject, prop. 75 passing will only ramp up the desire to see a another proposition (heck we may even see it out of the legislature) that will similarly reign in corporate spending. Prop. 75 can only help in this regard because if it fails, the effort to reign in big business will die too.

My endorsement: YES on prop. 75

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2005 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Politics, Politics - State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.