Category Archives: Library

Buckley v. Valeo 1976

In Buckley v. Valeo 1976 the Court was asked to determine the constitutionality of the Federal   Election Campaign Act of 1971 (Act), as amended in 1974,which: (a) limits political contributions to candidates for federal elective office by an individual or a group to $1,000 and by a political committee to $5,000 to any single candidate per election, with an over-all annual limitation of $25,000 by an individual contributor; (b) limits expenditures by individuals or groups “relative to a clearly identified candidate” to $1,000 per candidate per election…; (c) requires political committees to keep detailed records of contributions and expenditures, including the name and address of each individual contributing in excess of $10, and his occupation and principal place of business if his contribution exceeds $100, and to file quarterly reports…; and (d) creates the eight-member Commission as the administering agency with record keeping, disclosure, and investigatory functions and extensive rulemaking, adjudicatory, and enforcement powers,… Subtitle H of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (IRC), as amended in 1974, provides for public financing of Presidential nominating conventions and general election and primary campaigns from general revenues and allocates such funding to conventions and general election campaigns by establishing three categories:…

In Buckley v.Valeo a key question the Court asked itself was whether the proposed contribution limits were so low as to impede the ability of candidates to “amass the resources necessary for effective advocacy.”

The Court decided that  the contribution limits, disclosure and record keeping provision under the FECA of 1971 were constitutional.  The expenditure limitations, however, violated the First Amendment rights of protected political expression.

The Supreme Court’s 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision to have granted political campaign money a right equivalent to freedom of speech.  Some holdings from that case:

. The Act’s contribution provisions are constitutional, but the expenditure provisions violate the First Amendment. Pp. 12-59 .

(a) The contribution provisions, along with those covering disclosure, are appropriate legislative weapons against the reality or appearance of improper influence stemming from the dependence of candidates on large campaign contributions, and the ceilings imposed accordingly serve the basic governmental interest in safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process without directly impinging upon the rights of individual citizens and candidates to engage in political debate and discussion. Pp. 23-38 .

(b) The First Amendment requires the invalidation of the Act’s independent expenditure ceiling, its limitation on a candidate’s expenditures from his own personal funds, and its ceilings on over-all campaign expenditures, since those provisions place substantial and direct restrictions on the ability of candidates, citizens, and associations to engage in protected political expression, restrictions that the First Amendment cannot tolerate. Pp. 39-59 .

For a syllabus, full version or edited decision of  Buckley v. Valeo go to:

http://www2.law.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/foliocgi.exe/historic/query=[Group+424+U.S.+1:]([Level+Case+Citation:]|[Group+citemenu:])/doc/{@1}/hit_headings/words=4/hits_only?

 

 

Western Bloc

Raising the nation’s public policy IQ…Adding the National Initiative to Democracy’s Toolbox.
Western Bloc Safe Power Campaign   

From draft book on the Koupal’s People’s Lobby by Dwayne Hunn.

Most of us held Nader in revered status, but Ed, before he met Nader, had often knocked him at Board meetings saying, “He just wastes a lot of energy putting words in the papers.  If he wants to make real changes in this nation. he ought to get on the national initiative band wagon…”

In November of 1974 Nader was about to host anti-nuclear activists from across the country for his Critical Mass Energy conference in Washington D.C.

After the Lobby-driven 70% ballot victory with the Political Reform Act in 1974, and because the Lobby had been one of the pioneers in the anti-nuclear movement with the Lobby’s 1972 Clean Environment Initiative, Ed and Joyce were invited to the conference. A rumor that drifted among Lobby mules at that time was that Nader’s staff wanted to shield Ralph from the “crazy” Ed Koupal. Shielding doesn’t work too well when you put Ed in front of audience where he initiates the tune and brings the crowd cheering his way.

They (Ed and Joyce) brought with then, besides their usual threadbare clothes, news of a California initiative petition for a statewide law that would stop nuclear power cold — possibly even result in its eventual complete shutdown in the nation’s most populous state. California environmentalists, with the official backing of the increasingly anti-nuclear Sierra Club, had launched their petition drive that same month. The goal of the effort was to put the proposal on the June 1976 statewide primary ballot.[1] For the Koupals, however, the goal was to turn a statewide initiative into a multi-state initiative, thereby  demonstrating the possibility of an entire section of the country voting on the same proposition —— a prototype national initiative.

Over a thousand citizens from at least 40 states attended the conference including more than one nuclear industry spy. When Ed recognized one industrial spy as having been his opponent in numerous debates over the 1972 Environment Initiative, he greeted the man, Hal Stroube, with typical bravado. Koupal told him he looked like a basket case who should be in a hospital, and perhaps he got that way from hanging around too many nuclear plants. According to Joyce, Stroube beat a hasty retreat and was not seen again at the conference.[2]

Ed’s talk and conference workshops on how to do the Lobby’s table method of collecting signatures went over so well that activists from Washington, Oregon, Colorado and several other states asked for help in organizing anti-nuke initiative campaigns.  Nader agreed to help finance the organizing trips through some of those states.

Over the next months Ed would take some all day and all night drives through those states and convince Lobby mules Telschow, Forester and Masche to serve as state campaign organizers.  The Lobby could only pay Telschow and Forester $99 per month and Masche, with a wife and two children $300. per month.  By the time the three returned for a 1975 Lobby Board meeting, they learned that they were to be:

spearheading a national movement known as the Western Bloc. The original goal of anti-nuclear initiatives in three states had been expanded to include fourteen western states, which would, in theory, create a solid “Bloc” of opposition to nuclear power covering nearly half the land area of the continental United States. The nation’s first national initiative drive had begun.[3]

By 1975 the nation’s best known car safety and consumer advocate started appearing at the Lobby’s door to hang out with one of California’s better used car salesmen and music makers. Nader made several visits to the Lobby and got to know Ed and Joyce, learning “what made the Lobby tick.”  He often questioned them on their special relationship and seemed intrigued as to how they made their intense political reforming work within a family and husband and wife context.

Nader was becoming enthused with the national initiative idea and saw it as a tool to address environmental and big money issues in politics. As Sonia put it, “Ralph wanted Ed to succeed with the national initiative idea because he saw it as a means to take care of environmental and big money issues…. Ed came out of a meeting with Nader and ”was jacked saying, ‘we’re going to Critical Mass and we’re going to talk about the national initiative.’”

Critical Mass 1975 was another huge conference drawing activists from all corners of the country. During the Conference a candlelight march went to the Capitol steps in honor of Karen Silkwood, a nuclear plant worker who mysteriously died in November of 1974 in a car accident shortly before she was to meet with reporters over nuclear plant safety issues.[4] Ed’s mantra, “If you want to change the country, you’ve got to be able to make and thereby change the  laws it runs on…”  now made sense to a crowd hungry to control the spread of what they considered to be dangerous nuclear power plants.

While the Lobby was gearing up for nuclear fission games, the murky and muddied political enemies it had made in Sacramento were not about to let it concentrate without dishing out some headaches.  The Lobby’s clean and hard hitting reputation caused more and more people to treat it as the peoples’ ombudsman where they could send information that caused more and more headaches for many less than enlightened lobbyists and politicians.[5]  The muddied politicians wanted to get even.  Since they had trouble sullying the Lobby name, they did what they thought was the next best thing.  They tried taking Peoples Lobby’s name.

What was angering the politicians?  Not only was People’s Lobby continuing to attack politicians who veered off course, but it was also attacking the recently installed officers of the Fair Political Practices Committee, the committee People’s Lobby had established to enforce the laws established by the Political Reform Act of 1974.  Now, not only the vested interests but the politicians and bureaucrats involved with enforcing the Political Reform Act and its laws were upset with People’s Lobby.

What was People’s Lobby charged with?  Not paying taxes.  The non-profit People’s Lobby’s corporate status was not suspended for not paying taxes.  The corporate status was suspended for not filing mundane governmental forms that thousands of corporations forget to file each year.

What were some of the government’s abuses of power against People’s Lobby?  The Franchise Tax Board wrote an unprecedented, seemingly personally crafted letter meant to cripple People’s Lobby.  This unprecedented letter was unprecedentedly hand delivered to the Agricultural and Services Secretary Rose Bird, Controller Ken Cory and Governor Jerry Brown.  No letter or delivery process remotely resembling this was ever done to the over 25,000 corporations who face suspension each year for failing to file their corporate papers on time.[6]

Peoples Lobby, like thousands of other corporations, forgot to file the fee. Consequently a bar, then named the Brass Rail[7],  that lobbyists and politicians would frequent by walking for three minutes out the Capitol’s side door and into the Sacramento Mall, paid the filing fee and took  the Lobby’s name.  In return, the Lobby paid the filling fee on a dozen corporations, including the then famous Helena Rubenstein Corporation.

The result of this attempt to intimidate People’s Lobby?  In a short period of time, the state backed off as the Helena Rubenstein  Corporation, or Credit Bureau of Sacramento County and at least ten others were ready to give up their functioning names to the Lobby.

Those cosmetic shenanigans meant little to Ed as he stepped onto the Critical Mass stage to inspire the crowd to fight the Western Bloc campaign, and begin what he saw as a scrimmage prior to a National Initiative Campaign.

Footnotes at page end.

Statement By Edwin A. Koupal, Jr.

at Critical Mass 75

November 17, 1975

I would like to take some time this morning to explain to all of you and to the Members of Congress here today what we as citizens have learned about the power of politics and the politics of power in the past year since CRITICAL MASS 74.

Behind you is a map of the United States. The sections of the map in red represent the Western Bloc states—states that have the initiative process and are involved right now in signature gathering or writing initiatives. This amounts to over two-thirds of the land mass of America. That’s political power!

The Western Bloc initiative petitions are precincted petitions of registered voters, people who voted at least in the most recent election in each state, people who put you members of Congress in office; people who hire you to represent them in Washington, D.C. Ours are signatures of over 1 and 1/2 million people all across America. That’s a provocative statement! And our signatures are committing various states across America to the ballot box on this all important issue of nuclear power.

The reason that we’re doing this is quite obvious. First, our political establishment in America obviously broke down on this issue, and, as many times has happened in America, the people are ahead of their elected officials.

We’ve seen the danger of atomic power. We tried to tell our elected officials before we got involved in this situation about the danger, and we did it in spite of the normal political frustrations that. so many times abound. We picketed and we boycotted and we leafletted and we appeared before committees and commissions and testified and did all of the political exercises and went through all of the frustrations that are demanded of people here in America. But the ultimate question, the one that really counts, is “do we really get what we want in the statute books?” Because in America, we are a land of law, and we deal best from the statute books. That is what really controls our society: the law.

But thankfully, in twenty-two states in America, we have a process of self government. WE the people believe that self-government far exceeds good government. Self-government is a process through which we can work around your honorable body of representative government, and bodies like yours all across America in various state capitals, when you are not responsive to the people’s needs. That is, we can write our own laws, we can go out and gather signatures, and we can go out directly to the electorate, which eventually leads us directly to the statute books with a peoples’ law. We can guide America the way we want it, without our hired hands getting involved.

.Now, to give you Members of Congress an idea of what you’re confronted with here in Washington: you have a national campaign coming up. Wouldn’t it be nice if we gave America some nice leadership on her 200 year birthday?  But wouldn’t it be even better if we gave America a 200 year gift of safe power and a better social existence?

In California, more than a million signatures have been gathered on the nuclear issue. California has qualified a safe power ballot proposition. It will be voted on during the primaries and that’s going to give some national politicians some fits because they’ve got to speak to California. There’s a geographic reality about California:  we’re bigger in area than the nation of Japan. One out of every ten persons in the United States is a Californian. We’re eleventh in gross national product for the whole planet and sixth. in budget. When the national politicians come out there and want the Californian’s vote, we’re going to want to know how they feel about the most important issue on our ballot in June, and that deals with safe power.

Oregon has qualified a safe power ballot proposition. Of course, Oregon has always led the nation in areas of safe environment and better living for people on earth.

Washington state will start gathering their signatures in January because of a kink in the law. It’s nice that the political spectrum in America has given us the right of self—government, but there are always certain little kinks to try to keep it away from us. It’s one of those things where we’ve really got it, but we really don’t have it, unless we work really, really hard in order to do it. Washington state is one of those situations.

Some of the states that are now gathering signatures on safe power initiatives include:

•   Montana. It’s over half qualified and they have until July to gather another 15,000 signatures. I think that if they ‘really got it cranked up, they could do that on a weekend and still go to church on Sunday morning.

•   North and South Dakota will be gathering their signatures in a few weeks.

•   Colorado needs 65,000 signatures. It was reported this morning that they have 35,000. Hooray for Colorado!

•   Not to forget Oklahoma. Oklahoma will be starting the latter part of December. That’s the home of Karen Silkwood, with ole’ Kerr-McGee sitting right in the middle of it. They’ve got all kinds of reasons to move on it. We’re going to get them now in Oklahoma, aren’t we!

•   Missouri’s writing its document now, along with Arkansas and Michigan.

•   Maine is gathering signatures. It will qualify – – no doubt about that. It’s a beautiful state and we’ll get it on there.

•   Iowa and Kansas. They have self- government there, but it’s not the initiative process; they only have the right of recall. I’d prefer to call it vote of confidence, or – – if you will – –  way to fire your elected employees when we, as employers, find that they are not responsible or responsive to our needs and requirements. So in Iowa and Kansas, there is a great move to find the elected officials who are not too responsive to the people’s needs in this all-important area.

Let me give you a little background on these signature gathering campaigns and the Western Bloc. This whole thing started about a year ago, after the last Critical Mass conference, Ralph Nader and myself sat down and said, “now what can we do?” We realized that at that point we really had to get to the statute books in order to really make the changes. Why don’t we try a couple of states – – Washington, Oregon and Colorado, for example – – and see what we can do?

As we got into these states – – to give you an idea of  the overwhelming necessity for you to begin to realize what’s really going on out there – – people from other states with the initiative process begged to have our organizers come in and train them to gather signatures and qualify initiatives; show them how to become a part of this massive Western Bloc movement.

We will soon have somewhere between 1 3/4 and 2 million signatures of qualified voters. That’s political power. That’s what hires you people. That’s what makes you tick. No more picketing and boycotting, no more fooling around with leaflets, no more testifying before committees. You see, that’s over now, because we’re going through the very process that built America and made America strong, and that’s the ballot box.

One more thing in closing. I want to point out that the Western Bloc – – as an organizer and a worker – – setting these states into motion, is spending less than $17,000 to do this. That shows that the people want it. You see, when people are on the move, money is insignificant. When you have to buy a candidate or sell a Ford – – or sell a Johnson or sell a Nixon – – it takes millions of dollars. But when you have an issue, it takes people. People will win!

Initiative campaigns that are people based have a wonderful synergy.  Grassroots campaigns rejuvenate the political bloodstream of America.  They force debate, discussion, thought and creativity.  In the end they educate vast numbers of American much beyond what their too often tight lipped and tightly vested representatives want them to learn.

When all the polls closed of what totaled 18 safe power,  anti-nuclear initiatives, none passed.  But suddenly American knew so much about this proclaimed  “source of power that would be too cheap to meter…blah, blah..” that few people wanted it in their backyards.  Suddenly big utilities who spent millions and millions to stop the initiatives from passing, stopped applying for nuclear construction permits.

The Lobby’s National Initiative scrimmage woke up the nation on nuclear power’s dangers.

[1]  This became Proposition 15, the Nuclear Power Plants Initiative which qualified for the ballot but was  rejected at the polls in 1976

[2]   From a David Schmidt letter to Joyce Koupal seeking editing comments prior to publication of his book, Citizen Lawmakers.  (Might be around page 33 of that letter.)

[3] Ibid. Schmidt letter to Joyce Koupal..

[4] The 19__? (get date) movie ‘Silkwood’ was made based on her life.

[5] Some examples of information coming to Lobby.  Source ‘Sonia remebers’ on People’s Lobby website. “Roberti and (Ed) he used to have long discussions about politics in general and how long a person could be effective.  It’s kind of interesting because every time I think of David Roberti I think of how long he’s lasted in the political system.  And one of Ed’s and Roberti’s favorite conversations was that you couldn’t last long because you get co-opted. You know, how long can an organiza­tion last.  Ed used to have this great line about the lung asso­ciation, ‘You know for years and years it was called the tubercu­losis association.  But they found a way to cure tuberculosis, but the organization had to live on so they called it the lung asso­ciation because no one will ever cure lung.’

“He was always very supportive of David Roberti and David always gave him inside information.  I know they talked on the phone.  He would call the office.  It was really quite a really terrific bunch of people that would call the office.  I remember Gann (Paul) used to come through and Ed would give him a bad time. And the Gray Panthers would come through and they’d always flock toward Ed and he’d always give him his two cent… They’d have a little bullshit session…

[6] People’s Lobby Newsletter of September-October 1975

[7]  Ibid. Schmidt letter to Joyce Koupal..

How to win elections

MAY 23, 1975                                                              HARPER’S WEEKLY

 How to Win an Election and Influence People: Buy a Printing Press

In the nation’s interest

 In 1969 People’s Lobby was a handful of long-haired idealists fighting pollution and its politics. By 1972 they had become the first grass roots organization to get a proposition on California’s ballot. They qualified the Clean Environment Initiative after spending $9,000 for’ publicity. Although the prestigious and well-funded ad agency of Whitaker and Baxter eventually shattered their hopes of passing a law that would lower the lead content of gas, ban nuclear power plant construction and elimi­nate conflicts of interest from reg­ulatory boards, People’s Lobby has reason to be proud of its ac­complishments thus far.

Winning for the common good against a corroding system comes only after much hard work from sac­rificing people. Today, however, when the stakes are great and the other side has the money, it takes much more than just good people to win. It takes the nuts and bolts of machinery and a pyramid of technology that good people can work from. As Joyce Koupal, former People’s Lobby Director and pre­sent Director of Stamp Out Smog, points out:

We learned from studying suc­cessful revolutionary, groups that the basis of the group has always bee,: a printing press. Citizen action groups must learn and are learning that les­son. The printed word is the basis of success. You must get your message out, convince people to support you or you lose …. If you can get the initial $1,000 and another $500 to get it off the ground, a printing press will pay for itself in the next three mailers.

 The lobby got its start in printing in 1970 when a discarded-as-broken mimeograph machine, from Los Angeles mayoral candidate Thomas Bradley’s losing campaign, was given to them. Cleaned up it ran for four years, and brought profes­sionalism and victories and heavier responsibilities to the Lobby

In 1972 the Lobby purchased a1250 Multigraph press for $900. In the first month of the Clean Environment Act campaign, the press  paid for itself in just what was saved from not going to commercial printers. Ensuing months of savings and doing cut-rate commercial work for groups, politicians and businesses allowed the Lobby to buy a World War II vintage Harris press for the 100,000 copy runs and a 1450 Mul­tigraph for smaller jobs. The com­bined cost was less than $2,000.

By 1974 the Political Reform Initiative, nurtured by People’s Lobby in the wake of their 1972 defeat, became the toughest campaign law in the nation, winning with a record 70 per cent of the California vote.  In a rematch with the giant advertising industry and vested interests, a grassroots organization employing sophisticated printing techniques, joined by gubernatorial candidate Brown and Common Cause. won big.

A grassroots organization that thinks beyond the next election would do well to invest in a printing printing press.. It saves money and provides the technical capability from which fast professional campaigns must be run. In addition to a printing press, an efficient group needs a dark room, enlarger, burn plate, verityper, typepositor, lay-out and paste-up boards, collator, book bin­der, stamper, Addressograph, TMX machine, switchboard that handles multi-party calls on one line and a dozen phones.

Unfortunately, in most campaigns votes are won by slickness. But campaigns do come where.voters will be ready to listen. If, in those campaigns, a group can move fast and look professional in what it says and shows, it becomes a winner, and power and respect flow more easily for future political skirmishes. Print­ing technology allows that. To quote Joyce Koupal again:

We can do really fancy things in color that other groups can’t afford to do because we have our own presses. We do better stuff and our material is read because it really looks nice. That’s the key to everything-to have stuff people will read Our message gets across and we reach more people than other groups with the same amount of money invested.

 In specifics that means a  professional-looking newsletter sent to the Lobby’s 20,000 members costs $300 compared to commercial costs of $600-$1000. It also means that the Lobby can publish its own books and get them in the right hands to bring recognition and money to the Lobby. Other public interest groups have learned from  the Lobby’s success. Don Ross, sometimes called Nader’s alter ego, afer vis:ting the Lobby, returned to purchase presses for his New York Public Interest Research Group.  Nader is talking of doing the same in Washington.
Too much to undertake? Yes, for most. But if you have a band of enthusiastic activists, you don’t need much more. Mick, the Lobby’s printer, was a chemistry major who knew nothing about printing. He .” poked around and found an old press, met a friendly printer, picked      his brains, worked long, hard hours         and sought advice when he got stuck. Today he’s a journeyman
moving with the best in his craft.
For you activists following in the tradition of that great American lover and activist, Ben Franklin, the suggestion is get a… printing press,  not a bed …

Dwayne Hunn . San Francisco, Calif.

Critical Mass Conference

Critical Mass and the National Initiative.

Nearly 2,000 activists from across the country descended on Washington D.C. in November 1974. Most came at their own ex­pense. Some came as representatives of powerful utilities and had. to pay $100. to attend  Ralph Nader’s dream child, The Critical Mass Conference, seemed to be a success.

What was the purpose of the conference? To Nader it was to a

  1. Focus media attention on the swelling mass movement

against nuclear power.

  1. Expand the education process on nuclear power’s

dangers.

  1. Exchange ideas on alternative sources of power —

solar, wind, etc.

For two of Nader’s friends and fellow political crusaders of increasing stature, however, the conference became a forum for more.

Ed Koupal, Executive Director of People’s Lobby, and his wife Joyce, formerly of People’s Lobby and now director of Stamp Out Smog, were invited by Nader to speak to the confer­ence on the initiative process. People’s Lobby, having been the prime mover behind California’s successful Proposition 9, the Political Reform Initiative that still has organized labor, big business, politicians and lobbyists in a twitter, can claim more experience with the initiative process than any group in the nation.

Little did the Koupals realize that their experience was to make a national impact at the conference and, finally, with Ralph Nader.

That impact began during Nader’s thirty minute keynote speech in which 2 of the 3 people he paid tribute to were named Koupal. The Koupals were instant celebrities. Their workshops on the initiative process were jammed. And their initiative ideas seemed to offer the first positive tools to activists loaded with facts and dangers but few successes.

An example: A noted academic, speaking to his workshop on the dangers of radiation, continued raising his voice and thus interfering with Koupal’s neighboring workshop session. Koupal, with lungs like a bull, was not to be outdone. Finally, the academic appeared and asked Koupal to keep his voice down, “It interferes with my important teaching session,” said the professor.

“Important,” retorted Koupal. “All you are doing is talking about the dangers of atomic power plants. Stuff we all know. We’re learning how to get a 100,000 signatures and stop those plants from being built. That makes these people 100,000 times as important as you.”

A cheer went up from Koupal’s class. Then everyone in the professor’s class came to hear Koupal.

The importance of the initiative process is just dawning on some of those people. It has finally fully dawned on Ralph Nader, and he is ready to put it on many more people.

Those who have worked with Nader know he is barraged daily with exciting ideas, and that he attests belief in many of them. He does not, however, help carry many of those ideas, since he already has so many that are pressing and necessary.

The People’s Lobby goal of a national campaign for a con­stitutional amendment to institute the national initiative, to coincide with the 76 presidential elections and a nuclear moratorium, has hit Nader’s elusive ‘push button.’ Nader has tabulated the costs and benefits and decided to add the national initiative to his list of crusades.

After their times together on the Mike Douglas Show, in Washington D.C., and in California, the Koupals have finally elicited a pledge of financial aid from Nader to help make the 27th .Amendment — A National Initiative and Recall  —  a reality. Nader has made sure, however, that the Koupals raise their share. He has informed his booking agent to get the Koupals honorariums and out on the campaign trail.

Harper’s Weekly Staff

Submission 12-8-74 From Dwayne Hunn

 

Diamond v Bland 1974

On October 30, 1969 the sheriff of San Bernardino County ordered volunteer signature gatherer William Duxler to leave Inland Shopping Center.  People’s Lobby Attorney Roger Jon Diamond filed suit 11/5/69 and the case was appealed to the California Supreme Court where it was heard on 11/3/70.  On  12/6/70 the State Supreme Ct reversed lower court by ruling “PL did have  right to go on to shopping centers to collect signatures. The Diamond v Bland I, 1970 landmark ruling said

In Diamond v Bland II (April 25, 1974) the 1970 Diamond I (shopping center petitioners right to gather signatures ) was dissolved based on an opposite US Supreme Court 1972 Lloyd v Tanner decision.  California Supreme Court overturned Diamond v Bland 1970 (I) based on U.S. Supreme Court Lloyd decision which held that  petition gatherers couldn’t go onto shopping center grounds if their petitioning action is unrelated to the shopping center’s use.

US Supreme Court in Lloyd Corp v Tanner (6-22-72) found that owners of shopping center in Oregon had the right to prohibit distribution of handbills unrelated to the operation of the shopping center.  We (the California Supreme Court) conclude that Lloyd is indistinguishable from the instant case and, accordingly , reappraise out Diamond decision in the light of principles established in Lloyd.

Lloyd’s argument was that there were “alternative, effective channels of communication, for the customers and employees of the  center may be solicited on any public sidewalk, parks and streets adjacent to the Center and in the communities in which such persons reside.” 11CAl 3d p 335

Roger Diamond on Peoples Lobby video (available for sale) explaining Diamond v. Bland.

“Basically, the issue was do shopping center as private property owners have the right to exclude anybody they want to from their privately owned shopping centers.  The Supreme Court ruled that the shopping center,  even though private property was the functional equivalent of the old town square; and therefore they could not exclude people.  We got  on the shopping center and got our initiative qualified for the 1972 ballot, which was the Clean Environment Act 2, after losing  Clean Environment Act 1 in 1970, which was the initiative that started the law suit.  By the time it got to the Supreme Court we were into the second initiative…

“This was a private property v freedom of speech issue… We won on the ground that the first amendment gives us right of access.  Now it gets real complicated after that  and we have a 30 minute show (video) here.  The bottom line is the way the  law now is California allows access  to shopping centers but the US Supreme Court said in other cases that the first amendment doesn’t do that.  States are free to interpret their own constitutions more liberally than the way the federal Supreme Court interprets the Federal Constitnution.  So people do have the right of access to shopping centers if they are in states such as California which allows it which was our victory.”

Roger Diamond speaking on Peoples Lobby video 1994.

Click here to read  a summary of the Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner 1972 :

Click here to read  the full Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner 1972 case:

h

Prop 15 A-Plant safety

An Initiative for A-Plant Safety

San Francisco Chronicle 3-12-74
 A coalition of environmental and consumer or­ganizations launched a petition campaign yesterday to qualify a nuclear power plant safety initiative for California’s November ballot.

The group, banded together as Californians for safe Nuclear Energy, said  it’s goal is to make certain that nuclear p1ants operating now and in the future in Cal­ifornia, meet “reasonable safety standards.”

Plans to gather 500,000 sig­nature for the ballot measures were announced. at the coalition’s newly opened of­fice here at 2 Rowland street in North ‘Beach and in Los Angeles.

Alvin Duskin. San Francisco businessman an d chairman of the coalition, told a news conference at the local headquarters that the atomic Energy Commis­sion “has botched its job of regulating the nuclear pow­er industry.

“There are serious disagreements at the highest level of the scientific com­munity on safety. Until these conflicts are resolved, we should slow down nucle­ar operations.”

Attorney William M. Brinton, another spokesman for the citizens’ group, said enactment of the initiative would not mean a morato­rium on the building of nuclear plants in California. “New facilities would still be allowed, but they would have to meet standards set by the state legislatures” he said.

The measure would re­quire full compensation — instead of only partial pay­ment as is now required, un­der federal law — for all personal injuries, property damage and economic losses resulting from a nuclear accident.

Among organizations in­volved in the effort to qualify the measure for the ballot are the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, California Citizen Action Group, Zero Pop­ulation Growth and several shoreline preservation groups.

Courts have ruled that nuclear safety itself is an ex­clusive federal responsibili­ty, so the coalition has based its campaign on seeking a law establishing the princi­ple that California land can be used for atomic power plants only if “reasonable standards of safety” are maintained in their con­struction and operation.

 

 

Edison Speakers Taught Defend Company Views

 Los Angeles Times November 8, 1973

 Edison Speakers Taught to Defend Company Views

Faced with the energy crisis and challenges from environmentalists— a major utility company has in­creased its verbal voltage in a coun­terattack.

In a program believed to be unique in the United States, the – Southern California Edison Co. is training speakers at. its Rosemead regional headquarters for verbal combat, with environmentalists.

“A few years ago said Ronald C. Gossling, head of the company’s speakers’ bureau. “We found it easy to send speakers to college campuses, service and women’s clubs but then a change took place when the environmental ethic took hold.

“Students, environmentalists and others wanted to hear our side and we just. weren’t used to it.”

But the great ernbarrassment that triggered the idea of verbal combat came a little over two years ago, Gossling said. A student organiza­tion on a California- campus had in­vited Edison to send a representa­tive to a panel discussion with Ed­ward Koupal, president of the People’s  Lobby.

“We knew Koupal was very effective,” said Gossling, “so we sent out the best man we had. He was highly qualified and gave beautiful technical answers to non technical ques­tions. Among a group of liberal arts students it just didn’t work. Koupal clobbered him.”

In that instant, Gossling recalls, “the Edison Co. was embarrassed and the real issues never saw the light of day.”

As head of the speakers’ bureau, Gossling said he. went home from the panel discussion discouraged. But out of the experience, he said, he got the idea of developing a different kind of company speaker who could meet environmen­talists on their own ground.

When he broached the idea to management, Gossling said, executives were skeptical but decided to take a chance on a pilot program provided the costs were kept down.

Gossling said the – pro­gram was started with 15 volunteers from the com­pany instead of recruiting from outside which would have meant higher costs.

“The first speakers were trained at lunch time and. at night or during periods when they could be ex­cused by their bosses when work was slack,” Gossling said.

The only outside help was from paid professional speech coaches who were brought in several times a year.

Results of the program have been beyond expectations, Gossling said. Com­pany speakers have gone from campus to campus, around the service clubs, appeared at seminars and on television and radio talk shows “and they have proved more than a match for their opposition.”

The program is unique in that most companies tradition­ally have taken a “no comment” approach when con­tacted on controversial issues.

“Alternatively,” says  Gossling, “they will greet inquiries with silence or speakers who are to­tally unprepared for the verbal barrages they can be subjected to today.

“It used to be that we would spend money only in speaking to our allies,” Gossling said, “but this program is meant to pre­pare our speakers for dia­logue with people opposed to us. We want the energy prob1e~ms and the pollution issues clearly understood.”

Seminars within the company are. simulations. of real encounters. Trainee speakers alternate from being proponents of an issue to devil’s advocates.

“We throw them the toughest questions we can think of,” Gossling said.

The original 15-member team is engaged in train­ing other speakers with the company’s blessing, Gossling said.

Gossling, who said he re­ceived a fantastic response when he gave a talk on his company’s program at a national convention, as a result is joining a New York consulting firm which will  offer his ser­vices to other major utility companies interested in setting up similar pro­grams.

“The reason such programs are necessary to­day,” Gossling asserts, “is that the public has become a part of the decision-making process in a way that it never had before.”

The success of proposi­tions such as the Coastal Initiative (Proposition 20) to preserve the coastline in California Gossling cited as evidence of the sweep­ing changes that compa­nies, particularly in the utility field, are being confronted with.

Koupa & PL: PGE’s strongest nuke opponent

San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune

  September 12, 1973

Ed Koupal and the People’s Lobby

Who’s the strongest opponent of nuclear power in California?

“The Sierra Club” was the unanimous response of a score of construction workers from the Diablo Canyon project, bellied up to a beer bar in Avila Beach on a weekday afternoon.

“Nonsense,” said the PG&E public relations man in San Francisco. “The Sierra Club—at least the Santa Lucia chapter in San Luis Obispo—may have hurt us a little on siting the transmission lines from Diablo. But the real enemy of nuclear power in California is an ex­-used car salesman named Ed Koupal. He’s massive. He runs the People’s Lobby down in L.A.”

Ed Koupal is lying, shirtless, on the bed in a motel room In Morro Bay. It is a Sunday afternoon in late August. His wife Joyce is seated in one of the two chairs. Sprawled all over the floor of the small room and out onto a second floor balcony are a dozen young people, the People’s Lobby shock troops the Koupals call “the elephants and the mules” of  their  20,000-member organization.

“We’re not against nuclear power,” says Koupal.  “We’re against unsafe power.”

People’s Lobby was founded in 1970. It cut its political teeth on Prop. 9 (the Clean En­vironment Act), which it says went down to a 3.6 million to 2.1 million defeat statewide because a five-year moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants was Included as an after thought—”like the caboose on a freight train.”

The Koupals and their young cohorts, mostly college students from Los Angeles, San Jose and Sacramento, are in Morro Bay to talk about the strategy of their next initiative campaigns and about the economic realities of running a statewide political organization full time.

They hope to qualify three measures for the November 1974 ballot; one on cleaning up the environment, one on cleaning up the state govern­ment, and a third called “The Energy Act.”

The last is all about nuclear power, but it deliberately steers clear of the moratorium angle, the Koupals explain.

“Nuclear power is con­troversial,” says Joyce Koupal, ‘‘and you can’t qualify initiatives with controversy.”

(Qualification  will mean gathering about 500,000 petition signatures in order to come up with 325,000 valid ones.) This is where the elephants (who never forget what they’ve been told) and the mules (who do all the work) come in. The petition drive is under way.

They’ve already been busy. In the room are 20-vear-olds who have been active in the tight against a PG&E-proposed nuclear power plant at Davenport, near Santa Cruz; others who’ve been keeping an eye on the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District’s Nuclear plant under construction near Rio Seco; still others who have crowded into bearing rooms to urge the state Public Utilities Commission to halt the projected tripling of the size of the 430,000-kilowatt nuclear plant at San Onofre, operated since 1968 by Southern California Edison and San Diego Light and Power Co.

–      “1 think nuclear power is a dead industry, at least in California,” says Ed Koupal. “When a former used car salesman (10 years peddling Chrysler products) like me can go up against a nuclear physicist and stop him cold with nothing but the plain truth, I’m scared for the future of that industry.

“The only physics I ever had was Ex-Lax”

People’s Lobby, the Koupals say, is supported by the sale of memberships ($10 for non~ students, $5 for students an­nually), the “Bike for Life” marathons and, most recently, by two “instant” job printing shops in Los Angeles and San Jose and a bike shop in Los Angeles.

(The Morro Bay meeting has a communal air: the printers and the bike people are there to talk about profits. There’s a general feeling of getting together to slay dragons. The fiery breath of PG&E’s Morro Bay steam plant comes in for comment. Says Koupal: “They release so much from those stacks it made it rain here last night.”)

“PG&E and Edison are ab­solutely paranoid about Ed,” says Joyce Koupal proudly, talking of his appearances on talk shows like Mike Douglas’s and a segment of the recent three-hour National Broad­casting Company special on the energy crisis. “They tape him every time he’s on.”

Koupal, fussing with papers in a briefcase, wants to get back to what he sees as the fundamental issue.

“We’re not against nuclear power,” he repeals. “We’re pro-safety. If the Atomic Energy Commission and PG&E and the rest of them can prove to us that it’s safe, we’ll take out newspaper ads in whatever papers they select to let the world know that we’re buying their deal.

“We just want them to prove that there’s no risk in the emergency core cooling systems of the reactors, that atomic garbage won’t poison the un­derground water for our children and their children’s children and that the industry is able to insure itself.

“Is that so much to ask?”

Lloyd v Tanner 1972

Reading the Diamond v Bland cases gives a summary understanding and adds perspective to the Lloyd case.

U.S. Supreme Court

LLOYD CORP. v. TANNER, 407 U.S. 551 (1972)

407 U.S. 551

LLOYD CORP., LTD. v. TANNER ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

No. 71-492.

Argued April 18, 1972
Decided June 22, 1972

Respondents sought to distribute handbills in the interior mall area of petitioner’s large privately owned shopping center. Petitioner had a strict no-handbilling rule. Petitioner’s security guards requested respondents under threat of arrest to stop the handbilling, suggesting that they could resume their activities on the public streets and sidewalks adjacent to but outside the center, which respondents did. Respondents, claiming that petitioner’s action violated their First Amendment rights, thereafter brought this action for injunctive and declaratory relief. The District Court, stressing that the center is “open to the general public” and “the functional equivalent of a public business district,” and relying on Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 , and Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, 391 U.S. 308 , held that petitioner’s policy of prohibiting handbilling within the mall violated respondents’ First Amendment rights. The Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: There has been no dedication of petitioner’s privately owned and operated shopping center to public use so as to entitle respondents to exercise First Amendment rights therein that are unrelated to the center’s operations; and petitioner’s property did not lose its private character and its right to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment merely because the public is generally invited to use it for the purpose of doing business with petitioner’s tenants. The facts in this case are significantly different from those in Marsh, supra, which involved a company town with “all the attributes” of a municipality, and Logan Valley, supra, which involved labor picketing designed to convey a message to patrons of a particular store, so located in the center of a large private enclave as to preclude other reasonable access to store patrons. Under the circumstances present in this case, where the handbilling was unrelated to any activity within the center and where respondents had adequate alternative means of communication, the courts below erred in holding those decisions controlling. Pp. 556-570.

Majority opinion:

The argument reaches too far. The Constitution by no means requires such an attenuated doctrine of dedication of private property to public use. The closest decision in theory, Marsh v. Alabama, supra, involved the assumption by a private enterprise of all of the attributes of a state-created municipality and the exercise by that enterprise of semi-official municipal functions as a delegate of the State. 13 In effect, the owner of the company town was performing the full spectrum of municipal powers and stood in the shoes of the State. In the instant case there is no comparable assumption or exercise of municipal functions or power.

Nor does property lose its private character merely because the public is generally invited to use it for designated purposes. Few would argue that a free-standing store, with abutting parking space for customers, assumes significant public attributes merely because the public is invited to shop there. Nor is size alone the controlling factor. The essentially private character of a store and its privately owned abutting property does not change by virtue of being large or clustered with other stores in a modern shopping center. This is not to say that no differences may exist with respect to government regulation [407 U.S. 551, 570]   or rights of citizens arising by virtue of the size and diversity of activities carried on within a privately owned facility serving the public. There will be, for example, problems with respect to public health and safety which vary in degree and in the appropriate government response, depending upon the size and character of a shopping center, an office building, a sports arena, or other large facility serving the public for commercial purposes. We do say that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of private property owners, as well as the First Amendment rights of all citizens, must be respected and protected. The Framers of the Constitution certainly did not think these fundamental rights of a free society are incompatible with each other. There may be situations where accommodations between them, and the drawing of lines to assure due protection of both, are not easy. But on the facts presented in this case, the answer is clear.

We hold that there has been no such dedication of Lloyd’s privately owned and operated shopping center to public use as to entitle respondents to exercise therein the asserted First Amendment rights. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment and remand the case to the Court of Appeals with directions to vacate the injunction.

It is so ordered.

  1. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, and MR. JUSTICE STEWART join, dissenting.

The District Court observed that Lloyd Center invites schools to hold football rallies, presidential candidates to give speeches, and service organizations to hold Veterans Day ceremonies on its premises. The court also observed that the Center permits the Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, and the American Legion to solicit funds in the Mall. Thus, the court concluded that the Center was already open to First Amendment activities, and that respondents could not constitutionally be excluded from distributing leaflets solely because Lloyd Center was not enamored of the form or substance of their speech. The Court of Appeals affirmed, taking the position that it was not extending either Logan Valley or Marsh. In other words, the District Court found that Lloyd Center had deliberately chosen to open its private property to a broad range of expression and that having done so it could not constitutionally exclude respondents, and the Court of Appeals affirmed this finding.

Petitioner apparently concedes that if the lower courts are correct, respondents should prevail. Brief for Petitioner 19. This concession is, in fact, mandated by our decision in Logan Valley, in which we specifically held that members of the public may exercise their First Amendment rights on the premises of a shopping center that is the functional equivalent of a business district if their activity is “generally consonant with the use to which the property is actually put.” 391 U.S., at 320 . If the property of Lloyd Center is generally open to First Amendment activity, respondents cannot be excluded. [407 U.S. 551, 579]

In his dissenting opinion in Logan Valley, 391 U.S., at 339 , Mr. JUSTICE WHITE said that the rationale of that case would require affirmance of a case like the instant one. Mr. JUSTICE WHITE, at that time, was convinced that our decision in Logan Valley, incorrect though he thought it to be, required that all peaceful and non-disruptive speech be permitted on private property that was the functional equivalent of a public business district.