Category Archives: Peoples Lobby

“Ordinay People…” Why on Nader’s Top Ten

Ordinary People Doing the Extraordinary, The Story of Edwin and Joyce Koupal, Founders of People’s Lobby.  By Dwayne Hunn and Doris Ober.      Ralph Nader’s take on the book was…

The Year’s (2009) Ten Best Books

Read, Then Act

By RALPH NADER

This husband-wife team “just ordinary people,” in their words, started out powerless and in over a decade, largely in the seventies, built Initiative power to qualify reforms on the California ballot for the popular vote.  A story for the ages that strips away excuses steeped in a sense of powerlessness.  This small but invigorating paperback  can be obtained from The People’s Lobby ( www.peopleslobby.us ) for $13.00, shipping included in that price. Check to People’s Lobby, c/o Marlene Hunn 1817 California St., Unit 201, San Francisco , CA 94109, 415-673-0369.

You may call 415-673-0369 to order the book.

Print and mail this form or insert your own order form and where the book(s) should be sent with $13. per book.

Beyond a purchase, why not consider setting up a…

  • Talk about the book.
  • Tell fun stories about working with Ed and Joyce Koupal and how their People’s Lobby (PLI) revived the grassroots initiative process, including how they pulled Nader through PLI’s doors.
  • Discuss reforms being called for on the initiative process.
  • Explain how People’s Lobby’s (PLI) launched the drive to establish a national initiative process and held three days of Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on Senate Joint Resolution 67 to do so.
  • Dissect the failed National Initiative for Democracy Campaign of 2002.
  • Reveal how 2008 presidential candidate and former U. S. Senator Mike Gravel milked PLI of over $450,000 dollars (not including the promissory note interest signed off on and written by Gravel).
  • Show some Power Point slides that touch on the above
  • Answer your questions about PLI’s present day activities.
  • Maybe opine on why Nader admired the Koupals so much.

Why might this book be of interest to you or your friends?  Because:

  • People’s Lobby was the grassroots initiative factory that used NON-PAID volunteers to qualify two Clean Environment Initiatives.
  • Prepared California and its Assembly to usher in an era of environmentalism by failing to pass two Clean Environment Initiatives into law.
  • Established California’s Fair Political Practices Commission by passing California’s Political Reform Act with 70% of the vote.
  • Beat BIG CORPORATE AND PR money in doing so.
  • Directed the 18 state Western Bloc Nuclear Moratorium Campaign, which in many ways demonstrated a national initiative process and educated the nation on the dangers of nuclear power.
  • Held three days of Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on implementing a National Initiative Process (leading to Senate Joint Res. 67 of 1977).
  • Funded and field-directed the Maine 2002 National Initiative for Democracy Campaign kickoff.
  • Sponsors today’s American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals and Fair Tax Bracket Reinstitution Act Proposal (FTBRA).

So, consider bringing together some  people to gain insights into what Ralph Nader calls,

“This small but invigorating paperback….”

“A story for the ages that strips away excuses steeped in a sense of powerlessness. “

Learn how the Koupals’ People’s Lobby:

Used to lecture (and tick-off) not only Nader but also Jerry Brown and other political luminaries (Reagan, Roberti, Lowenstein…) and institutional powers such as PG&E, Southern California Edison, nuclear, oil, auto…who instituted special training programs on how to handle Edwin Koupal.

And is working today to implement its citizen-initiated:

American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals and Fair Tax Bracket Reinstitution Act Proposal (FTBRA) to revitalize America’s character, economy, and standing in the world.

 

Sue Nelson remembers

Nelson interview.  Contact suggested by Jan Tucker:  Sue Nelson. She knew the Lobby and Faith Keating from having stuff printed at People’s Lobby  for Save the Santa Monica Mountains environmental group..  Interview with Sue Nelson by Dwayne Hunn 10-26-01

Joyce and the  Koupals were important to me…  I worked with Saving Santa Monica Mountains organization.  Didn’t really work with the Koupals.  They printed our literature to Save the Mountains ….  They were such really wonderful people, way ahead of their time…

I was not person who participated in day to day Lobby work. I went and had them do newsletters; we’d sit and talk about politics, of Clean Environment Initiative.  Roger Diamond (lobby attorney) now doing well, living in Palisades, supporting it….  I remember that we held in great disdain Dorothy Green of Common Cause…  Green became anathema of mine… We did great work, and she (Green) was set up as diversion by (Mayor) Bradley.  She was set up to be a diversion….

I had long conversations with Ed about problems that they had..  Lobby’s Bike for Life was way a head of their time.. (Koupals) were working class environmentalists.. I began in 63… Met them at end of 60’s or early 70, don’t remember. Was attracted to their politics as opposed to arrogance of Sierra Club and others.  Nancy Pearlman, for example, was duplicitous….

They  (Koupals) were genuinely grassroots people….

(Supervisor) Baxter Ward was very important character in all this because he brought in first transportation referendum which eventually became blue  line and metro link.. Those things had nothing to do with Sierra Club.  The Lobby was genuinely environmental without phoniness.

He (Ed) was definitely in the tradition , even though I was from Republican family, of like the Townsend people, Upton Sinclair…..

I actually wore a Landon button to school as a kid. My parents were young and my father came here to get work.  Everyone lost their money and family all came here to get work. We were a wonderful Irish family and I got to love my neighbors and I turned out to be very political….  My aunt turned very right wing but they took me up to see FDR and I became aware of different economic movements from my family..

I saw the Friends of Santa Monica victory coming from the grassroots. It (the Lobby) had its own movement; it was outside money, it was really fresh. Joyce and Ed and I were sharing with each other. We – Ed, Joyce and I shared this anger at people who were trying to block us.  These forces were set in motion to stop us..

Not surprised that Faith and (Joyce) she had falling out.  I didn’t think she (Faith) was a very open person. Never was close to her.

As far as I am concerned they (the Koupals) were my mentors in grassroots work… Ed and Joyce epitomized grassroots environmentalist movement . They were my monitors…

Nader has lined himself with right wing environmental groups…

Larry Moss became paid director of Sierra Club..

So many were bought out and didn’t know what they were doing.  Too many became elitists and not grassroots.  Koupals remained grassroots.

What Lobby was doing was really advanced social change.  They were after issues that changes the politics of everything about them….  They were out there changing peoples’ way of doing things.

More about Sue Nelson at: http://articles.latimes.com/2003/may/22/local/me-nelson22

John Forester remembers

John Forester phone interview 10-23-01 with Dwayne Hunn

Initiative America was not People’s Lobby effort. It was Roger and I ‘s effort… We did it on our own…

I don’t object to Initiative American being off-shot of People’s Lobby or People’s Lobby’s project. When Ed died Joyce and Faith tried to continue keeping the People’s Lobby organization going, and we just kept doing the national initiative as we thought Ed would want us to do..

The focus of Initiative America was to get the National Initiative on national agenda.. It was the logical step after the Western Block campaign.  Western Bloc was 100% Ed’s.  Roger (Telschow) and I and Ed (Maske) did the groundwork for the Western Bloc…We were the Lobby staff going around the country doing the states.  Western Bloc could have been called People’s Lobby.  For all practical purposes, we were People’s Lobby staff members outside of California….

Remember getting first check of $99.  with $1 withheld for social security… I bought a $45 pair of boots and saved the rest because People’s Lobby’s, or the people where we worked, fed and housed me.  I thought I was doing real well, and that what seemed like lot of money…  And the Lobby gave me blue van…

In the beginning I was dropped off in Oregon at Doug Phil’s house..    Two weeks after graduated from college.  Ed drove me to Oregon and left me in Oregon. Ed said organize the state and get it on the ballot… To me it was “Wow, I’ve got a key job with People’s Lobby and this is significant to work this closely with Ed. It was an honor. It was a dream job for a kid out of college just to be on the road.    Every person who met me had a room for me to stay in and fed me. And Roger went up and did Washington state.

After I got Oregon rolling, there was then a conference in Colorado.  Ed was driving with Ed Maske, or Roger – I can’t really remember who was with him for sure, and we met in Colorado.  That’s where, I think, the blue van was given to me, and so I drove to Oklahoma and Ohio.

Remember how Ed loved numbers.  Well, I used Ed’s love of numbers to try to do that campaign.  I tried to use his Fanatic Fifty idea…  called it the Oklahoma 100 — dividing number of people to the number of signatures needed to get it on ballot…  Had to find 3-4 people in each town and ask them to get the numbers.

Then did Missouri after Oklahoma …  In the show me state, we used the slogan “Show me Safe Power.”  We didn’t push the anti-nuclear but we stood for safe power….  We wanted it to be safe and insured, the way other businesses conduct themselves in the state… We were different from the anti-nuclear power groups….

There wasn’t a single nuclear power plant built after People’s Lobby’s, after we got the signatures…  We made an apparent national difference.. We always assumed our signature gathering effort was a contributing factor in what utility companies were or were not doing ….. Sure, we were educating nation like you say, but we thought it was more powerful than just education.. We inserted initiative into the media.  We gave citizen the power to present their issues to the public.  We always thought that since there is so much money, so much cost in building nuclear power plants that by creating the uncertainty with the initiative of the utilities being able to do nuclear plants, that some utilities probably factored that in to their decision making.  They’d look at our initiative and say maybe we should wait. We were a factor in their decision making process over whether they would order another nuclear plant.

People’s Lobby’s elections happened and all lost, (but we still stopped the construction of nuclear plants).

We joined up in Ohio, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio’s biggest county.  We met Pat Quinn in Ohio, where we helped him do an open primary.  We collected 33% of the voters in Cuyahoga County as signers on our initiative…  Roger an I figure we collected about a million signatures personally through all the initiative campaigns.. We had3 tables side be side at Cuyahoga Fair and every table had three people waiting in line. We had four issues on ballot at same time with one petition, with one signature… One was for RUCAG – ”Sing her for lower utility rates..”  Another for a  life line rate structure and to establish consumer watchdog utility groups – right when the energy crisis was going through the roof…

Then Ed was ill… It was the end of campaign, and we were on our own. We went back to see Ed in hospital.  It was sad.  Then we went back on campaign trail and all the initiatives lost…

We went back to continue doing the Western Bloc campaign for the  76 ballot….  Western Bloc included Mass and Maine, but I don’t think we got Mass on ballot, not sure…

Then our jobs were over and we were supposed to go back to LA to return the van.  Roger and I drove it back to LA, but in Ohio we were operating on our own, that ‘s what Roger and I were thinking.  We were asking ourselves, what did we want to do and what would have Ed done at this point.  We were 25 years old and with no job… We went to DC to check in with national groups. Instead of west, we went east to NY and DC, I think we also went to Key West, to see New Orleans and Florida.  Made some neat contacts in DC and then drove to LA.  Somewhere in here the Lobby stopped payment and boy were we pissed.  Don’t even remember why they stopped paying us. So we returned to LA.

I went home and Roger and I were communicating by phone and he said, ‘We have no money.”   And by now we didn’t believe you needed money to accomplish People’s  Lobbyish things.  The Consumer Federation of American had a symposium in DC and he was there and we wanted to form an organization.

Ultimately, we formed a national organization and call it Initiative America.  We created a logo that had  Mobil’s red, white an blue colors and a great name… People’s Lobby would have created this if Ed had been around.  Faith and Joyce had nothing to do it.  But it was  done by People’s Lobby staffers working for themselves, that was Ed Koupal reincarnated… We were going to keep doing what Ed had us doing but it was all now our work…  Roger went to Consumer Federation and said you ought to have Forester come and speak on initiatives.  Consumer Federation had a tight budget and could only pay for ticket out there and we’d pay for the ticket back..  We thought it was funny since we had no intention of flying back, and they funded the start of Initiative America by flying us out there.  Then we started working furiously on Initiative America at that point.  We met Bill Harrington who had moved to DC, and we liked Harrington’s address 1346 Independence Avenue. We thought that address sounded impressive, so we used it as our office address.

We knocked on Senator Abourezk’s door and met Kevin Murphy his aide. Staff at Abourezk’s office thought Initiative America was great idea… Then we developed this two-shift program to give us access to a real office.  At 5:00 Abourezk’s staff would go home and we would use his office after his staff left.  We’d get on phone and call all across the country. Get support from across the country and get others to get other country support.

Focus number two was to help the states who didn’t have the initiative process to get the initiative.  We kept it squeaky clean by just working process. Initiative DC was formed at the same time to get initiative , referendum and recall into the DC charter….  In time, we did amend home rule in DC, so they now have initiative, referendum and recall.  We wrote it and lobbied it through Congress, It had to be ratified by Congress and we got it passed,  in 78, I think.  So 18 months after hitting DC we amended their home rule charter…

Abourezk was on the Senate’s Constitutional Committee.  No proposed amendment to US Constitution ever got hearings faster than we did.  The Bill was proposed and we got hearings faster than anyone else ever did.  Two guys got an amendment to US Constitution sponsored, then got hearings and the hearing were well attended. That was in record short time from when Roger and I arrived in DC.  Two guys, no organization, no connections. We did that knowing what we could do with political bravado, which was instilled by Ed … His instinct was instilled in us for the rest of our lives… He made you think big and if someone said it couldn’t be done — you knew it could be done. We had a great time.

Then we started Initiative News Service which Dave Schmidt worked on, intended to be national clearing house for initiatives and we got lots of  people paying it, especially corporate entities who wanted to stay on top of legislation.  Literally called them and said citizens are also creating legislation, and they signed up for initiative news service. Initiative America, Initiative DC and Initiative Press (where do you think we got that idea from?) Since Roger had a natural affinity for mechanics,  we started a print shop.  We stole the model from  People’s Lobby.. We bought a press for $800. and found one on the street for free…. (Now they’re in same building we started in — Shoal’s Diner, a cheap place to eat.)  the free one came from an evicted print shop,  and Roger and I picked up a free printing press,,,

We got the school bus and put the printing press in it. Later from printing presses we bought a house and put printing press in it.

We got the school bus to drive around and educate the country on the initiative and put printing press in it to make our money, First print job was for National Organization of Women.  They order millions of 3X7 cards in favor of equal rights amendment, . and we got the job to print all their millions of cards to help them get their proposed constitutional amendment.. We made lot of money because we had zero overhead.. We had no idea how to bid so we’d call regular printers, get their lowest bid, and take 10% of their lowest price. We got jobs without knowing how to print.  We ran an extension cord into friends’ apartments to get the power to print the cards…

We wanted paper delivered to us on credit to a wheeled school bus and we had no credit..  Somehow we convinced suppliers that it was ok.  We convinced banks to lend us money to buy a house when we had none. Convinced Senators to introduce legislation when we were no body.  That’s how we funded our activities.  We became printers.  Roger figured out how to make print presses work. We ran what we called the world’s smallest conglomerate.  Printing, news, lobbying division which was basically People’s Lobby’s people — was exactly what Ed would do if he were 24.  It was People’s Lobby  model,  but when Ed died there was no Lobby, so we just did it like we thought he would do it….

Me: “Did you know that Faith Keating was compiling a report on changing the Lobby into a Common Cause type organization with moneyed funding base and ‘professional’ staffers and that Joyce was livid against that and defending Lobby workers like yourself as being the workhorse ‘pros’ who made the Lobby what it was?”  (Dwayne’s question to John)

No, I didn’t know that was going on.  DC is just full of non-profits like that .. That was the conventional wisdom way of doing non-profits, but it was not the  Koupal’s hobby and Koupal’s guerrillas way.. We were not doing it the traditional way.  We were doing it in the Koupal’s guerrilaist way.

It thrills me no end that Joyce was fighting  for us.. When Ed died it never occurred to us to work with PEOPLE’S LOBBY anymore because the Lobby was grieving into Ed’s loss… grieving over who should be the leader?  We had no interest in that. We are in DC and are the national organization. In fact, we invited them to the hearings.  Joyce was viewed in some way as an adversary since she didn’t want to allow the Senate to override.  Congress can change own legislation, courts can veto.  We merely wanted to have power to legislate…  We viewed that as meaningless, we didn’t care about the override argument.

We got everybody there (to 1977 Senate Judiciary Hearings)….  Roger and I were a little defensive because we know what we had done… We kind of felt like kids who were about to be scolded by the parents (Joyce Koupal) based on what we had done……  Truly didn’t care, we just had this agenda….

We calculated that in a certain period of time that we got more press than Common Cause.  We really felt that we were getting an unbelievable amount of press.

But then it ended.  Both of us were 30.  we were at the point where to carry it over would take a lot more energy. After doing this for 3-4 years we just closed shop, because at that point it would have required full time lobbying staff… We needed money.  We were more or less getting a life.  We were very realistic and recognized we had already gotten the most bang for the buck up to this stage.  The results to efforts ratios would have to turn on its head.  We’d have to work a lot to get a little done. Schmidt went with the newsletter… Roger kept the print shop and we basically checked out.  We left political action for the next generation.  We were proud that we took it further than others did… Proud we took it to Washington…. At age of 30 we both wanted to get on with our lives.  We didn’t’ t want to work for another organization.  Now both of us were pretty well working for ourselves…

Now I’m very active in trying to get voting rights for DC, On the board of Committee for Capitol City… Trying to have Maryland and City of DC merge.  Have DC become home grown city of Maryland.  In our proposal there would be voting rights for DC citizens by being part of Maryland.

(On my resume) I list myself as having a long term interest in voting rights,  without mentioning PEOPLE’S LOBBY and Initiative America.   We (in DC) are the only Americans who have taxation without representation.  Congress has exclusive representation …. Congress ordered the DC board of election not to count votes on marijuana initiative.. or spend money on that issue.. yet the people put the issue there.

After 15 years (of relative political inactivity) I’m getting back into politics a little.

Ed used to say  don’t talk about problems, fix the problem…. Identify the problem and identify the solution….   Capital city groups want to put itself out of business. Solve the problems by getting voting rights and put us out of business…  The other proposed solution is statehood for DC.  We decided union with Maryland was the better solution…. better to be a city rather than a state. Looking at the  big picture it shouldn’t be a state it should be a city…   Appeals to PEOPLE’S LOBBY spirit that perfect solution is to be a city in Maryland… As a city, I will get service and have  Senator and also participate in Maryland…. City hood within state of Maryland.  Our next campaign to have Maryland acquire DC as City….

People’s Lobby got to DC….We were the People’s Lobby staff members….   Roger came to the Lobby from NORCAL PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) …  I was the Lobby’s San Luis Obispo County Board member and both of us didn’t have jobs. Everything we did in Western Bloc was 100% for Ed…

Then after he passed away and he wasn’t there to tell us if it was a good or bad idea. Then we weren’t on salary.  If Ed were around it would have been People’s Lobby Initiative America and would have been staff members of People’s Lobby.  If Ed were alive he would have done Initiative America… We were doing what we thought he would have asked us to be done….

ME: IF HE would have had a radio form heaven, I said. You would have been listening to what he told you to do,

‘Exactly, yes.” John replied…

All the ideas of Initiative America originated with Ed’s concepts from what Ed had done for People’s Lobby.  After Ed passed away it wasn’t People’s Lobby’s.  It  was us doing it and with no conflict with the Lobby.

Western Bloc could have been called People’s Lobby for all practical purposes….    We were PEOPLE’S LOBBY staff members outside of  California doing the Western Bloc campaign.

Diana Fleetwood O’Brien remembers

Diana Fleetwood O’Brien remembers Ed & Joyce:

I don’t really have anything worthy of being in the book. But I’ll tell you what I remember. I have a fond memory of sitting next to Ed at a meeting, and him passing me a note. I don’t remember what it said, but I responded by cribbing something out of National Lampoon and wrote back, “Phuc Yieu.” He looked very amused and wrote back in the same vein. Then for the rest of that meeting we amused ourselves insulting each other with fake Vietnamese obscenities. I know you had to be there, but Ed was always such a hoot. And I think you are conveying that quite well in your treatment.

Also, a few little additions, on pg. 6, I also worked with and knew the Koupals in the early days, in 1972 & 3. Dwayne regularly trucked in his high school students to do Lobby work and I was one of those. I’ve gathered many a signature and remember Ed’s signature-gathering orientation. I remember he said as the momentum got rolling to hand the person a pen; that once the pen was in their hand the signature was pretty much in the bag. I remember gathering signatures one day with him and Joyce at a Gemco. I got sent to the snack bar for coffee and was having trouble carrying it. Ed advised me not to look at it, and I found out that’s the trick to carrying drinks. I was 17.

I also did typing at the Lobby headquarters on Western, and I recall Ed had a TV on downstairs during the Watergate hearings. A handful of us heard it live when Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the White House tapes. I remember Ed saying, “Do you want to know what a sick Republican looks like? That’s a sick Republican.” I can’t remember who that was though, maybe Lowell Weicker. Was he a Republican?

I recall hearing Ed and Joyce saying that during the Recall Ronald Reagan days their house had been shot at. Does anyone else remember that?

Also, I remember Ed used to call Evelle Younger “Evil Younger.” That was Ed. And Ed appeared at some debate or talk show or something with Pete Schabarum, who mispronounced Koupal in some way. When it was Ed’s turn, he called Pete Schabarum “Mr. Shooboomboom.” Really, no one ever got the upper hand of Ed in a public appearance.

 

Let’s Micro-Energize

ON THE GRID OR OFF THE GRID 

Let’s Micro-Energize

Our energy should encourage small, close-to-home sources

San Francisco Chronicle

Sunday, February 25, 2001

Dwayne Hunn

WHEN THE GREAT Depression drained the nation, its people supported the building of our largest public power company – Tennessee Valley Authority’s massive 28,501-megawatt string of dams and power plants. The people traded stripped mountain sides for coal. The people embraced energy-conserving Daylight Savings Time and kept the home fires burning low – while conserving and recycling everything from paper to rags to cooking grease. Everyone worked long and hard, hoping good times would return, while producing a mountain of war-winning industrial stuff.

Today, the nation is more peopled than then, more depleted of easily dug, drilled or dammed energy sources, and more environmentally concerned, wealthy and technologically stuffed.

Today, the average home uses 1.5 kilowatts of power, the average business, 10 kilowatts. Today, we build nuclear power plants that generate a million times more juice than a single home needs. Today, many homes could generate enough power for their own needs – and that is where our energy should go.

To address the state’s energy shortage, our Get-Your-Volts Guv must return to the energy pioneers’ principles:

— Generate and co-generate locally: Thomas Edison envisioned a dispersed energy system where individual businesses generated their own power. By 1890, Edison had installed more than 1,700 small-scale electricity-generating plants.

Early in the 20th century, more than half of the electricity generated in the United States was generated by industrial facilities producing their own power, reusing waste heat and selling excess power to nearby customers.

— Technology breeds independence: By the 1920s, thanks to transformer and alternating and direct current technological breakthroughs, our nation had moved toward centralized, interconnected power traveling over long distances. Today, that system leaves once powerful California staggering. Yet, ironically, breakthroughs in photovoltaic “transformer” technology can provide us with clean, ample and independent power. Joe Sixpack’s south-facing roof can generate most of his power needs.

— Move to appropriately sized generators: Between the 1980s and 1998, the average generating capacity of a newly built U.S. power plant shrank from 600 megawatts to 21 megawatts. Gray Davis (as point man for states facing similar energy dilemmas) will be pressured to speed-build some big new power plants. However, if he follows the national trend in power-plant construction, he will allow not TVA-sized generators but small and dispersed plants, and indeed, has already allocated $30 million in incentives to get small plants online by July. Small is becoming both cost effective and beautiful.

California’s current major power sources are typical of many states (see chart at right). Davis needs to lead California, and ultimately the nation, toward energy sustainability by encouraging the use of the lightly used renewable energy resources (wind, solar, small hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass and micro-turbine generated power, which make up some 12 percent of California’s current energy mix. Doing so may also conserve blowing gigawatts of hot air between competing interest groups.

How? By:

— Continuing to educate Californians about energy alternatives and conservation, even in moderately-climed California, where per capita energy use ranks us 47th among states.

— Providing and better publicizing more tax, business and research incentives to develop and use solar, wind, micro-turbine, fuel cell or other appropriate energy sources. Doing so will allow these cutting-edge energy businesses to invest more brain power and capital in developing better, cheaper products that more citizens will buy.

— Continuing to simplify the process that allows residences and businesses to sell their excess solar, wind and other micro-generated power into the utilities’ power grid.

— Innovating beyond the current subsidized energy programs for low-income residents. By partnering with businesses to fund a program that uses California Conservation Corps members in disadvantaged neighborhoods to assemble photovoltaic generating systems and/or solar water pre-heaters for residences and businesses with south-facing rooftops.

— Using his bully pulpit to drive home the advantages of a micro-energized society.

Citizens can help by practicing energy conservation and by:

— Pushing for governmental policies at local, state and federal levels that provide incentives for every home, business and new residential or commercial development to have efficient insulation, thermal pane (and open-able) windows, and to incorporate solar, microturbine, wind or other energy-generating systems.

— Involving yourself in the issue. Don’t imitate the ignorant frog who, when placed in warming water, loses the energy to jump out before he’s boiled.

— Demanding that your future is more reliant on simple, close-to-home sources of energy. This means fighting the idea that huge power plants stringing costly transformers everywhere is the best way to stay juiced.

— Investing, as a small investor, in good micropower ventures. You’ll be in good company – check out where aeronautical companies, auto companies, Bill Gates and mega power suppliers, such as Enron, who quietly recognize the future, are investing.

Tomorrow’s California should reflect tomorrow’s nation – millions of photovoltaic-covered southern rooftops; windmills sprouting on farms, prairies and passes; refrigerator-sized micro-energy generators quietly whistling in places like Silicon Valley; trains and buses fuel-cell powered and charged by photovoltaics; hydro-energy collectors capturing the energy of waves and currents surging through deep ocean caverns, such as those below the Golden Gate Bridge.

When politicians mouth let there be a thousand points of light, that people should be responsible for their own, that America does not want Big Government dictating, that creative Americans will find away, that people want the freedom to choose and that they trust the people. Tell them, “Live the words. Implement policies that make it easier to creatively, responsibly and cost effectively generate our own points of light.”

MICRO POWER SOURCES

— Wind power, with its fiberglass technologies, advanced electronics and aerodynamics, is the world’s fastest-growing energy source, increasing 24 percent annually worldwide through the 1990s. Germany currently supplies 2 percent of its own total energy needs with wind power; Denmark, 7 percent. Wind turbines are now directly competitive with new gas-fired plants in some regions of the United States, according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy.

— Solar / photovoltaic power is the world’s second-fastest growing energy source. Advances in technology have made rooftop solar collectors and photovoltaic generators economical: In 1980, the world price for a watt of photovoltaic power was $22 and about 30 megawatts were shipped. By 1999, the price had dropped to $3.50 a watt and 1,200 megawatts went to market. These small systems, marketed by firms like BP Solarex, Astropower and Kyocera, typically generate two to five kilowatts each.

— Microturbines, which generate less than 10 megawatts, but can be installed in commercial and residential buildings. A number of firms are bringing microturbines to market.

— Fuel cells, electromagnetic devices that combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and water, are coming. The past decade has yielded designs that could lead to far lower costs. Thanks to a joint project of Mazda, DaimlerChrysler and the Nippon Mitsubishi Oil Co. and the Japanese government, test runs of fuel cell vehicles began this month on Japan’s roads.

Source: Dwayne Hunn

Mill Valley land development consultant Dwayne Hunn has guided solar projects through the development process and worked with Jerry Brown’s California Conservation Corps and on the People’s Lobby Clean Environment Initiative.

Ballot Boxing

Raising the nation’s public policy IQ…Adding the National Initiative to Democracy’s Toolbox.
Ballot Boxing

By John Maggs, National Journal

© National Journal Group Inc.

Friday, June 30, 2000

If you’re looking for an interesting place to spend Election Day this year, consider watching the returns in Arizona. The state has backed a Democrat for President exactly once since 1948. Even this far out from Election Day, hardly anyone says that George W. Bush can lose this GOP stronghold, especially with Sen. John McCain of Arizona on his side. Well-known Democrats have shied away from taking on Sen. Jon Kyl, the state’s popular first-term Republican, and politicians from both parties are forgoing challenges to House members, since redistricting after the 2000 census will add two House seats. The only competitive House race will be for the seat of Tucson Republican Jim Kolbe, but most expect him to win — he’s weathered rougher moments, such as his 1996 revelation that he is gay.  Ballot initiatives to bypass gridlocked lawmakers are becoming increasingly popular. But to David Broder & Co., plebiscites subvert the role of legislators as democracy’s true traffic cops.

Oh yes, and voters in Arizona this fall will probably get to decide whether to abolish all state and local income taxes, decriminalize most drugs, end bilingual education, and perhaps legalize prostitution. Arizona is one of 24 states that allows lawmaking through ballot initiative. This method of “direct democracy” has come to play a major role in Arizona and often overshadows the Legislature’s activities and the governor’s policies. As usual, the lineup of possible ballot questions is generating a lot more interest than the lineup of politicians. If Arizona’s ballot agenda for 2000 sounds radical, most political observers consider this a slow year for initiatives. In 1998, Arizona voters approved a sweeping campaign finance reform, took a stab at legalizing marijuana for medical purposes, and approved an initiative opposed bitterly by environmentalists that prevents the legislature from imposing limits on suburban sprawl.

Elsewhere this election year, voters will weigh initiatives on many of the most controversial issues of the moment — gun control, school choice, genetically modified foods, and preserving “open spaces,” to name just a few. Indeed, over the past 20 years or so, there has been an undeniable boom in state ballot initiatives and referenda. (An initiative is placed on the ballot by a petition of citizens, and a referendum is generally put on the ballot by the legislature.) Most people connect this boom to California’s Proposition 13, a 1978 tax-cutting initiative that spawned many imitators. Since then, initiatives have become more numerous, ambitious, diverse, and far-reaching. And they have become more successful — in the 1990s, initiatives passed about 25 percent more often than they did in previous decades. (See the chart) Polls show that the public overwhelmingly supports the idea of initiatives. Depending on how survey questions are phrased, between two-thirds and three-fourths of respondents want the option to vote directly on laws, a proportion that is about the same in states that permit initiatives as in those that do not.

Despite its popular approval, a powerful backlash is building against ballot initiatives. Propelled by two successful books and the warnings of a number of historians and political commentators, an expanding group of critics argues that initiatives are causing unpredictable and unaccountable changes in society, crippling state legislatures, and undermining the very structure of representative government in the United States.

David vs. the Gilded Goliaths

The event that has most fed this backlash was the publication in April of Democracy Derailed, by Washington Post columnist David S. Broder. Broder became interested in initiatives in 1997 while doing what he is famous for — chewing up a lot of shoe leather while traveling the country to investigate how big trends affect little people. After a swing through Oregon and California to look into recent initiatives there, Broder came away unsettled. In the book’s first chapter, “A Republic Subverted,” Broder writes:

“A new form of government is spreading in the United States. It is alien to the spirit of the Constitution and its careful system of checks and balances. Though derived from a reform favored by Populists and Progressives as a cure for special-interest influence, this method has become the favored tool of millionaires and interest groups that use their wealth to achieve their own policy goals — a lucrative business for a new set of political entrepreneurs.

“Exploiting the public’s disdain for politics and distrust of politicians, it is now the most uncontrolled and unexamined arena of power politics. It has given the United States something that seems unthinkable — not a government of laws, but laws without government.”

Broder’s subtitle is Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money, and this is the crux of his warning. Using well-known examples, such as California’s recent initiative on bilingual education and the initiatives in a dozen states to legalize marijuana, Broder argues that millionaires and moneyed interests have come to dominate the initiative process, and can dictate outcomes. Because initiatives bypass the time-consuming steps normally associated with legislation, they advance ideas and proposals without, in Broder’s words, the “complex matrix of procedures designed to require the creation of consensus before the enactment of laws.”

As a result, many quirky ideas (in Broder’s view), such as banning bilingual education, are helped onto the ballot by millionaires such as Ron Unz, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who accomplished this feat in California. Wealthy interests then spend their millions on media campaigns that, Broder says, are less deliberative than the legislative process, and thus less illuminating for voters. Broder uncovers a growing industry of political-initiative companies that he alleges are helping to pump up demand for initiatives, which are now a $250-million-a-year business. Part of that business is paying signature-gatherers a commission for each name they get on a petition. Jim Kolbe said he was approached recently by one of these paid petitioners in Arizona. “He said he was getting $1.25 per signature, that he was doing it for bar money,” said Kolbe. “I’m not sure that this was the kind of citizen’s process that people intended.”

Democracy Derailed has sold well for its genre, but this doesn’t begin to gauge its impact. In scores of excerpts, reviews, adulatory articles by fellow columnists, and television and radio interviews, Broder’s thesis, helped by his prominence as the dean of political commentators, has reached a wider audience. Also aiding the Broder cause is another book that makes much the same argument about the impact of initiatives, this time in California. Paradise Lost by Peter Schrag, the former editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee, argues that Proposition 13 and other initiatives have played a dominant role in the erosion of California’s schools, infrastructure, and quality of life since the 1970s. Much worse than the reduction in property taxes enacted by Proposition 13 were the restrictions the measure put on future tax increases. Schrag says that this played a central role in the deterioration of public education in the state. And the curbs on property taxes have spurred local jurisdictions to encourage unwise commercial development in order to pump up sales taxes. This new development, in turn, is contributing to sprawl.

Subsequent initiatives, Schrag says, have further hamstrung local governments from raising taxes to fund education, infrastructure, and social programs. In an interview, Schrag said that California’s yawning inequalities of wealth and income have been reinforced by the initiative process, which gives a dwindling majority of upper- and middle-class whites a veto over expanding government meant to help the growing number of poor Hispanics, blacks, and Asian-Americans. In this way, initiatives tend to strip away minority rights, which are an essential goal of representative government, Schrag argues.

Broder’s and Schrag’s disquiet over ballot initiatives seems to be shared widely in the political establishment. Many people who are critical of money’s rising importance in politics second Broder’s view that money has also perverted the initiative process; even some defenders of money in politics feel that way. Bradley Smith, newly sworn in as a member of the Federal Election Commission, favors scrapping most restrictions on political funding for elections but is sympathetic with those who think that big money has taken over initiative campaigns. Kolbe, who hasn’t read the Broder book but does have more than 20 years of experience in Arizona politics, says that he is worried about how “money has taken over” initiatives in his state.

“There definitely is a place for ballot initiatives,” said Kolbe, who served in the state legislature before coming to Washington. “That said, there is a great danger in overuse. All you need nowadays is a lot of money. That’s not good.”

Origin Of Species

Initiatives might seem like a throwback to the early days of American democracy, but they are a relatively modern invention. Imported from Switzerland about 100 years ago, their adoption here was the work of two political movements — populism, a farmer-worker campaign against corporate interests that began in the late 1800s, and progressivism, which came in the early 20th century and was driven mainly by middle-class voters who wanted to curb corruption.

Broder forcefully argues that the direct democracy represented by initiatives was considered and rejected by the framers of the Constitution as a threat to minority rights and stable government. He quotes Fisher Ames, a delegate from Massachusetts to the Constitutional Convention, as writing that direct democracy “would be very burdensome, subject to factions and violence; decisions would often be made by surprise, in the precipitance of passion…. It would be a government not of laws, but of men.”

Broder’s most voluble defender, however, is James Madison, a dominant force at the convention and a future President. Under “pure democracy” without a legislature, “there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

In making his case for how money dominates initiative campaigns, Broder relies on a series of examples from the West Coast. California Indian tribes spent $66 million to win a ballot measure on expanding casino gambling in the state, while gambling interests from neighboring Nevada spent $25 million trying in vain to defeat the measure. Ward Connerly, owner of a consulting firm, gathered money from conservative organizations to finance a successful initiative banning affirmative action in California state government. Ron Unz, the high-tech millionaire, provided $650,000 of the $976,000 spent to win an end to bilingual education in the state. And Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, in Washington state, footed all of the $10 million tab for an initiative to get partial public funding of a new stadium for the football team he owns, the Seattle Seahawks.

Considering how important the argument is to his book, it is surprising that Broder ignores the academic analysis of money’s role in initiative campaigns. In fact, almost all of the work by political scientists undermines his thesis. Broder makes a nod to the academicians by citing one leading researcher who rejects “the allegation that economic interest groups buy policy outcomes through the direct legislative process.” But he dismisses this in favor of his more anecdotal approach: “That conclusion does not jibe with what I observed — or what I was told by practitioners in the initiative industry.”

Much of the most important work in assessing the importance of money in initiative campaigns was done by Daniel Lowenstein, a law professor at the University of California (Los Angeles). As summarized by another researcher in this area, Elisabeth Gerber: “Money matters when it is spent to kill an initiative. And money is necessary to get an initiative on the ballot. But it is not sufficient to win — even when there is a big advantage in spending vs. the no side.”

For Shaun Bowler, a researcher of ballot initiatives who teaches at the University of California (Riverside), this is a crucial distinction:  Initiatives are a more conservative method of lawmaking than Broder and others allege. “Keep in mind that initiatives are all about choosing between some change and the status quo,” said Bowler. And until the 1998 elections, the status quo won most of the time, with the success rate of voter-sponsored initiatives averaging about 40 percent. This principle applies to one example featured prominently in Broder’s book – the “paycheck protection” initiative in California, in which business interests from inside and outside the state tried to force unions to obtain written permission from their members before using dues for political purposes. Unions, in the end, spent twice what business spent and were able to defeat the measure. “To me, this only shows that it is a lot easier to stop initiatives with money than to pass them,” Bowler said.

In her book The Populist Paradox, Gerber studied 161 initiatives in eight states over six years, and analyzed the role of money in those efforts. Her conclusion:

“It is a mistake to equate money with influence in the context of direct legislation. Without a doubt, organized interests, especially business interests, now play a greater financial role in the direct legislation process than at any time in history. Big spending, however, does not imply big influence. To pass initiatives and referendums, interest groups must be able to mobilize an electoral majority. As wealthy interests such as the insurance industry, trial lawyer associations, and tobacco companies have recently demonstrated after expensive defeats at the ballot box, if voters do not like what initiative proponents are selling, not even vast amounts of campaign spending can get them to vote for a new policy.”

Money Is A Many-Sided Thing

Gerber’s central conclusion is that “the relationship between money and influence is far more complex and more limited than many observers believe.”  For example, in the Indian gambling initiative cited by Broder, was the outcome influenced more by the fact that Indians spent twice as much as the opponents of the measure, or because the opposition came from interests outside the state? Or were voters motivated by a sense of guilt about the past treatment of Indians? Gerber cites another example: an effort by the tobacco industry to push through a California initiative that would have replaced tough, local anti-smoking ordinances with a looser, statewide standard. Although initial support for the initiative was high, once it became known that the primary sponsor was Philip Morris Cos., opposition surged and it was rejected by a wide margin. “Philip Morris spent much more than the anti-smoking side, but in the end it didn’t matter,” Gerber said in an interview.

Gerber’s research backs up these examples. She found that when funding came primarily from “economic interests” (business and professional groups), the initiatives passed 31 percent of the time; when funding came from “citizen interests” (which include rich individuals such as Ron Unz), initiatives passed 50 percent of the time. The experts call this “statistically significant.” For those worried that big business will come to dominate the initiative process, there is no indication so far that this is happening.

Broder says he is familiar with Gerber’s research, and suggests that he didn’t take it more seriously because he thought her category of “citizen interests” (including people like Unz) was too broad. Broder wants to group Unz with “economic interests,” because his influence as a citizen is much larger than that wielded by citizens with less money. But where to draw the line? Influence in politics always varies widely from citizen to citizen.  What if it were revealed that most of the funding for an initiative came from 100 well-heeled people? Would they still be citizens, Gerber asks? “We know that money matters in all kinds of politics,” she said. Broder seems to long for a process where everyone has roughly the same amount of influence, but such an egalitarian process has never existed, Gerber said.

In focusing their criticisms on the role of money in the initiative process, Broder and his fellow analysts fail to show that money has been any less corrupting on the alternative they prefer — representative legislatures.  This is certainly not the opinion of most Americans, who, polls say, overwhelmingly favor radical campaign finance reform; or the millions of people who voted for John McCain this spring, and consistently register their disapproval with the way that moneyed interests influence events in Congress. “I think there is a naiveté about this position that money has taken over initiatives,” said Bowler. “Where hasn’t it taken over?”

Broder is also sure that initiatives tend to involve much less deliberation than the legislative process, and thus they yield less well considered results. “It doesn’t always work that way, but I think it does most of the time,” said Broder, in an interview. “There is discussion, there are hearings.” Again, Bowler sees this as “a little too much of a generalization.” On the one hand, “there is an idealization” of the way that legislatures make laws “that doesn’t fit with reality. I think Broder’s got a little bit of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” If legislatures were more effective at thoroughly debating the great issues of the day, then that might help raise the abysmal ratings of their job performance, he said.

Kolbe echoes Broder’s complaint about how little deliberation goes into initiatives. “They are all sound bites. You don’t have a candidate there saying, ‘This is what I stand for.’ You have media and spin. The voters are completely reliant on this” because the legalistic wording of the initiatives themselves is usually so hard to understand, he said.

But Gerber says that this is an oversimplification of the often-complex role that initiatives play in fostering debate. As an example, she cited California’s Proposition 187, which restricted education and social services for illegal aliens. “Polls showed that Prop. 187 was not the law that a majority of voters wanted, but it passed anyway because a majority felt that something had to be done.” As the law went through the courts, and was briefly defended by California’s new Democratic governor, there was a debate about what should be the proper policy toward illegal immigrants “that there would never have been otherwise,” she said.

For supporters of ballot initiatives, it is this latter point that is ignored by the critics. As one of those critics, Jim Kolbe, pointed out, “There is definitely an important place for ballot initiatives. They are an important escape valve to allow citizens to press for an idea when they are faced with recalcitrant legislatures. And that is often the case.”

Bypassing Legislatures

When Broder cites initiatives as a threat to the power of legislatures, he is exactly right — they are almost always the tool of some interest that believes it cannot get a positive result though the legislature. Broder’s assumption is that this end run is illegitimate, but this argument “puts too much faith in the effectiveness of legislatures,” Gerber said. For example, Broder laments the fact that Unz and his money were able to get bilingual education on the ballot in California, but does not address the fact that “in this case, and many others, there are many controversial issues that legislatures just don’t want to deal with,” Gerber said.

One state legislator who is unafraid of the challenge that initiatives pose to representative government is state Sen. Chris Cummiskey of Arizona. “The growth in the use of the initiative in Arizona is due to the inactivity of the legislature,” said Cummiskey, a Democrat. “The public has been dissatisfied, and they have been forced to compel us to act.” Like Gerber, Cummiskey says that initiatives play a catalytic role in a complex process that involves the legislature. “With tobacco, taxes, education and growth, these are all matters that the legislature has been forced to deal with” because of pressure exerted by the initiatives process, he said.

Often this fact can be buried in what seems like the kind of big-money power play that initiative critics deplore. Cummiskey described an initiative to be voted on this fall that would commit almost all of the state’s share of the tobacco settlement to fund health care. “Now this was entirely financed by the hospital companies. Some point to that as anathema to democracy, but the fact was that the Legislature was doing nothing, and couldn’t come up with a plan.” With the pressure of this deadline the legislation is now beginning to move, he said.

There is a tendency among the initiative critics to disagree with the results of the most far-reaching votes. Schrag clearly sees every tax-limiting initiative in California as another crack in the foundation of the state and does not have much patience for those who felt in 1978 that government was growing uncontrollably. Broder abhors term limits, disagrees with the way Proposition 13 restricts tax increases, and makes clear that he believes the ban on bilingual education was an improper abridgement of the rights of a minority by the majority of Californians. In all cases though, Broder’s sympathies lie with legislators. He describes a California court fight over a term limit initiative: “The only people who had no voice in the outcome were the elected officials of the state. They were mere spectators on the sidelines, waiting for the verdict.” There is little recognition in this phrase for the deep dissatisfaction that voters have registered about their elected representatives. He seems not to have considered the possibility that the performance of legislatures might warrant a restriction, or a bypass, of their powers.

Broder exalts James Madison’s side of the framing of the Constitution, but most historians portray a dynamic tension between Madison’s views of representative government and Thomas Jefferson’s view that “I know of no safer depository of the ultimate power of society but the people themselves.” The Jeffersonian ideal of participatory democracy has influenced the United States from the start, beginning with the Constitution’s provision for a popular vote to rewrite that document, if need be, in a Constitutional Convention. Later, the ideal of greater participation and access led to important amendments to that original document, including the direct election of Senators and the indirect popular election of the President. “I think that’s a weak part of [Broder’s argument],” said Bowler. “If he’s saying, ‘Look, the framers didn’t think of it,’ then we never would have had a Civil Rights Act.”

While Broder laments the way that state initiatives have chipped away at the power of legislatures, he reserves his sternest warning for the potential they have for transforming federal government. In his final pages, he notes the popularity of Ross Perot’s 1992 proposal for “electronic democracy,” and the power of the Internet for making that idea a reality. Will the runaway popularity of initiatives in the 50 states lead to the thing that Broder fears most — a national initiative process, and a subsequent alteration in the system of checks and balances enshrined in the Constitution?

Notwithstanding Broder’s sense of alarm, it is hard to find any groundswell of support for national initiatives and referenda. In fact, populists and progressives have been trying to advance the initiative process in Washington just as long as they have in the states, with absolutely no success. In his book Congress & the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial, Donald R. Wolfensberger, the director of The Congress Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said that while “eighteen states adopted the initiative and referendum between 1895 and 1918,” momentum at the national level never developed. The first proposal for a constitutional amendment to allow for a national initiative came from Sen. William Peffer, a Populist Party member from Kansas who sported a white flowing beard and who was once described by reformer Theodore Roosevelt as “a well-meaning, pin-headed, anarchistic crank.” The last lawmaker to propose a national initiative amendment was a second-term Missouri congressman named Richard A. Gephardt, who decided in 1980 that congressional leadership was out of touch with the people. Twenty years later, now Minority Leader Gephardt has no plans to revive that constitutional amendment, said a spokeswoman.

Considering all of the gee-whiz excitement lately about the Internet, Broder seems to be one of the few people today who can even remember Ross Perot’s plan for “cyberdemocracy.” Part of the final chapter of Democracy Derailed is occupied with a May 1999 conference in Washington of initiative supporters, who spun out their visions for national plebiscites. The biggest name at the conference was lame-duck Gov. Kirk Fordice of Mississippi, who described the audience as “the greatest collection of mavericks in the world.” Broder faithfully reports how ragtag this band of anti-nuclear activists, libertarians, and assistant professors was, but doesn’t make it sound like they were about to succeed at shaking the foundations of the Republic.

Maybe there’s a reason that initiatives grow more popular at the state level but don’t get much traction in Washington. Perhaps initiatives are part of a much broader trend of devolving power to the states. The federal government has always struggled with the task of fashioning a uniform approach to controversial issues that would be acceptable in most parts of a very diverse Republic. Congress ducks controversial issues such as bilingual education, gun control, and drug legalization, in part, because of the impossibility of ever creating a consensus on the issues. Broder is right to point out that creating consensus is one of the great achievements of representative democracy, and that the initiatives process can run roughshod over this goal. But when legislatures will not or cannot tackle important issues (including the limiting of their own powers) it seems inevitable that some alternative form of government will try to fill the void.

James MacGregor Burns, a historian and scholar of leadership, shares Broder’s concern that ballot initiatives are an unaccountable method of making “laws without government.” But he concedes that the rise of

initiatives is a reflection of how the strength of leadership in our lawmaking institutions has suffered recently. “It is true that if there were more effective leadership, then there wouldn’t be as much interest in ballot initiatives,” Burns said. “But there is a vicious circle here,” in which initiatives can further undermine leadership, he added. “I worry about how to stop that cycle.”

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visit our websites at http://www.iandrinstitute.org and

http://www.ballotwatch.org

Response to Denver Post

Response to Denver Post March 26, 2000 column by Bill McAllister

Broder:  Initiative process bypasses Constitution

From Dwayne Hunn  4-28-00

Sent letter/guest opinion response:

California, like Colorado, has seen much of its significant legislation crafted through the direct democracy hands of “The people.”  In Bill McAllister’s March 26 column “Broder:  Initiative process bypasses Constitution,” McAllister points out that author and columnist David Broder “trashes the initiative process as practiced in Colorado and especially California.”  Broder refers to the initiative as “a radical departure from the Constitution’s system of checks and balances” and laments that it has become a playground of special interests.

I expect Broder has not been a ‘man of the streets, a working-Joe Sixpack’ for a long time.  If he were, he might learn that for the involved-Joe the initiative is one of the nation’s most important checks and balances.  For Broder, whose profession introduces him to corporate execs and politicians, the initiative process form of law making may seem too rambunctious compared to those laws formed in committee rooms along lobbyist trodden marbled hallways.  Broder recognizes and fears “special interest money” in initiative campaigns, does he recognize and fear it along marbled halls?

In 1974 Californians, thanks to the leadership of Peoples Lobby, passed what was among the toughest campaign reform law in the nation and established the Fair Political Practices Commission.   Politicians wouldn’t reform so a band of volunteers, joined by Common Cause and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, did it to them.  In 1978, after 16 years of low-budget trying, Howard Jarvis, who like hundreds of other groups over the years attended People’s Lobby’s initiative training sessions, convinced Californians to pass Proposition 13, which he described as the second American Tax Revolt.

Yes, Broder is right.  Today it is harder to find volunteer driven initiative campaigns.  Now professional initiative factories charge $1.00 + per signature and retain PR firms producing “slick television campaigns” that Broder fears.  Haven’t candidates, political action committees and corporations “slick campaigning”  us for decades?   Where in America’s political world does money not play a big and bigger role every year?   If money were a reason to cut down the initiative process then we should have buzz sawed most of our groveling-for-campaign-contribution representatives long ago.

The initiative process has often been the involved voters’ last check and balance to peacefully accomplish “significant” changes in the political process.  Even responses like this may not be printed in our check and balancing large papers because — why?  Maybe because they are owned by corporate, increasingly linked special interests who prefer the tidy view of Broder’s concept of representative government unhindered by direct democracy pressures from the people.

In the 70’s a few involved citizens warned  our leaders against building a reliance on nuclear power.  Moneyed interests trotted out experts to lecture the people on how little they knew and how it was best to leave these decisions to well educated representatives in Washington.  In 1976 Ralph Nader urged People’s Lobby to spearhead the 16 state Western Bloc Nuclear Moratorium initiative campaigns.  Those volunteer, activists-lead campaigns lost to much better financed special interest campaigns but, in defeat, Americans learned more than their representative form of government had told them about nuclear power.  From 1978 no new nuclear construction license permits were issued through October 1999.   Would such have happened as quickly without the initiative process?  Would the controlling railroad interests in California’s legislature have been driven out without Governor Hiram Johnson giving Californians the tools of Direct Democracy in 1911?  NO!

Broder pans Philadelphia II’s national initiative proposal as “ a system that promises laws without government.”  Yet it does not replace representative government.   The proposed national initiative process relies on debate, discussion, time and the votes of the people.   It is not “instant gratification,” as Broder portrays.

Our Constitutional powers emanated from the people.  So why shouldn’t Broder support giving the people another tool of democracy?  Americans have always been good at using tools to tinker and improve life.  So why not look at Philadelphia II’s Direct Democracy proposal as another tool that we can fashion to make the nation better?  http://peopleslobby.tripod.com/dirdeminit.htm

 “Final responsibility rests with the people.    Therefore never is final authority delegated. “

People’s Lobby’s motto has applied to Americans since our Constitution and applies here.

Dwayne Hunn, Phd., worked as a volunteer for People’s Lobby and is presently a board member.  Philadelphia II’s Direct Democracy Initiative can be reached at www.peopleslobby.us
From: Dwayne Hunn

To: Letters to Editor, letters@denverpost.com and bmcallister@denverpost.com

 

Response to Broder’s “Snake…”

Response to David Broder’s:   Dangerous Initiatives: A Snake in the Grass Roots,  April 27,  2000

David Broder’s “Dangerous Initiatives: A Snake in the Grassroots” implies his disdain for state initiatives and the budding national initiative process movement, dubbed Philadelphia II. Broder has concluded that if a national initiative process were established 1) money, 2) whimsical political urges and the 3) complexity of law making would subject Americans to “a system without government.”

  1. Money. Over the last century we accepted the definition of corporations as people and political expenditures as free speech (Buckley v Valeo 1976). Consequently, money will continue buying power and planting perceptions in every venue of life.  Hopefully, the nation will build on the majority opinion expressed below from the Nixon v. Shrink Missouri PAC (Supreme Court 1/24/2000) and soon take a few more steps toward controlling today’s excessive campaign expenditures:

“To the extent that large contributions are given to secure a political quid pro quo from current and potential office holders, the integrity of our system of representative democracy is undermined….

“Of almost equal concern as the danger of actual quid pro quo arrangements is the impact of the appearance of corruption stemming from public awareness of the opportunities for abuse inherent in a regime of large individual financial contributions…

“Congress could legitimately conclude that the avoidance of the appearance of improper influence ‘is also critical … if confidence in the system of representative Government is not to be eroded to a disastrous extent.’ ”

Such Court decisions will help Philadelphia II’s proposed National Direct Democracy Initiative process restore some integrity to campaigning, since its Section M proposes:

“It is the intent of this law that only persons are entitled to contribute funds or property in support of, or in opposition to, an initiative.  Contributions from corporations, industry groups, labor unions, political action committees (PACs), and associations are specifically prohibited.” (http://peopleslobby.tripod.com/dirdeminit.htm)

Laws, however, are not a cure-all.  Money will always find a means to influence laws, parties, representatives, perceptions — and initiatives.  Where does money not influence our lives?  The initiative process, however, is designed for “We the people..,” which means it offers itself for the moneyed as well as for the blue-jeaned activists.

In 1972 California People’s Lobby with $9,000 and about 50 dedicated volunteers qualified the Clean Environment Initiative, which then served as a precursor to the nuclear moratorium movement.  In 1974 it led the triumvirate of Common Cause and gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown to gain a 70% vote for the Political Reform Act, which enacted the nation’s toughest campaign reform laws and established California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.  In 1976, urged on by Ralph Nader, it spearheaded the 16 states Western Bloc Nuclear Moratorium campaign.  The Western Bloc campaign is the closest this nation has come to a national initiative campaign.   Although over the next half dozen years all the initiatives lost to much better-financed corporate campaigns, Americans learned about nuclear power so that after 1978 no new nuclear construction license permits were issued through October 1999.  In 1977 Peoples Lobby assembled the 1977 Senate Judiciary Hearings on its proposed National Initiative process.  Those substantial political impacts were achieved using initiative tools under the leadership of an ex-used car dealer and his wife and volunteers who ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and boiled potatoes.

If real or perceived influence-buying money were a reason to do away with the initiative process, then we should have axed an astronomical percentage of our lawmakers long ago.  The way one controls money, connections, power – all those sometimes-corrupting influences – is the same way democracy grows in emerging nations.  You grow it by giving people empowering tools.  You give the people more and better teachers, schools, journalists, newspapers, and electoral opportunities and responsibilities.   The result is not just more jobs, health and wealth but a smarter populace whose constantly improving critical and analytical thinking skills insures the nation’s continued economic growth and good health.

  1. Whimsical American voters? In the 24 states that have the initiative process thousands of initiatives failed to get enough voters’ signatures to even make it to the ballot. From 1898-1998 those states saw 1,902 make it onto the ballot.  Of those, the people chose to pass 787 of them, or 41%.  In debating, learning and voting on those issues, citizens expressed their constitutionally guaranteed right to peacefully endorse or change facets of their governance.  The arduous initiative process and electoral debate guaranteed that their decisions were not whimsical.  In the process, involved Americans learned not only about their government but how they, the people, can change it with their own hands — just as their forefathers did.  And they can do it without throwing stuff in the streets or blowing up buildings.
  2. Too complex?  Probably 500,000 pages of legislation pass every session of Congress.  They are loop holed and pork barreled.  Congressional representatives are so busy going to meetings, hearings, lobbyists’ parties, addressing constituents petty and real concerns that they spend a lot less time studying the laws they pass and their effects than does the average initiative voter.    It’s a good bet average voters have as much or more common sense to dissect complexities as many of those being paid to represent them.

“At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, no voice was raised in support of direct democracy,” Broder has claimed.  Wait a minute!    Has Mr. Broder missed the point of that unconventional meeting?  Weren’t we then stuck under a government that was powerful, moneyed, whimsically taxing, and whose laws, to our simple forefathers, were complex?  Our forefathers didn’t have any legal authority to call a meeting and set up a government, did they?  Nonetheless, they unconventionally met and pulled together some primary principles that defined who they, and thank God, we, would be. In the course of spirited discussions, they fashioned principles around words such as: “We the people empower those to direct our affairs. We the people can dispose of those who wrongly employ that power.  Therefore, we the people can do anything in between employing and dethroning.  Furthermore, we the people don’t believe that because you wear fine clothes, have money, power, influence and say you are smarter than we are that you can run our lives better than we can ourselves.”

Mr. Broder, our forefathers used their initiative based on these first principles to directly democratize our Constitution that stands today.  By doing so they supported and lived “direct democracy.”  They supported it so deeply they put their lives on the line to pass it  to us.  As Founding Father Madison said, “The people” have the power to “just do it!”  We, “The people,” retain that power today – with or without spiffy athletic shoes.

Our People’s Lobby logo restates what has kept America’s democracy great, “Final responsibility rests with the people. Therefore, never is final authority delegated.”   Therefore one shouldn’t weaken the initiative process but consider well-reasoned approaches to spreading such an empowering tool to all Americans.  Americans like building a better mousetrap.  Give them the tools and additional responsibilities and they tinker and improve things. By plugging an educated and technologically attuned peoples’ direct democracy tool into our representative powered political grid, we strengthen our nation’s grass roots.

Dwayne Hunn, Phd., worked as a volunteer for People’s Lobby and is presently a board member.  Philadelphia II’s Direct Democracy Initiative can be reached at www.peopleslobby.net

To: letterstoed@washpost.com

From: Dwayne Hunn

Dangerous Initiatives: A Snake in the Grass Roots

By David S. Broder    Sunday, March 26, 2000; Washington Post

An alternative form of government—the ballot initiative—is spreading in the United States. Despite its popular appeal and reformist roots, this method of lawmaking is alien to the spirit of the Constitution and its carefully crafted set of checks and balances. Left unchecked, the initiative could challenge or even subvert the system that has served the nation so well for more than 200 years.

Though derived from a century-old idea favored by the Populist and Progressive movements as a weapon against special-interest influence, the initiative has become a favored tool of interest groups and millionaires with their own political and personal agendas. These players—often not even residents of the states whose laws and constitutions they seek to rewrite—have learned that the initiative is a more efficient way of achieving their ends than the cumbersome and often time-consuming process of supporting candidates for public office and then lobbying them to pass legislation.

In hundreds of municipalities and half the states—particularly in the West—the initiative has become a rival force to City Hall and the State House. (The District of Columbia allows voters to enact laws by initiative, but the states of Maryland and Virginia do not.) In a single year, 1998, voters across the country bypassed their elected representatives to end affirmative action, raise the minimum wage, ban billboards, permit patients to obtain prescriptions for marijuana, restrict campaign spending and contributions, expand casino gambling, outlaw many forms of hunting, prohibit some abortions and allow adopted children to obtain the names of their biological parents. Of 66 statewide initiatives that year, 39 became law. Simply put, the initiative’s growing popularity has given us something that once seemed unthinkable—not a government of laws, but laws without government.

This new fondness for the initiative—at least in the portion of the country where it has become part of the political fabric—is itself evidence of the increasing alienation of Americans from our system of representative government. Americans have always had a healthy skepticism about the people in public office: The writers of the Constitution began with the assumption that power is a dangerous intoxicant and that those who wield it must be checked by clear delineation of their authority.

But what we have today goes well beyond skepticism. In nearly every state I visited while researching this phenomenon, the initiative was viewed as sacrosanct, and the legislature was held in disrepute. One expression of that disdain is the term-limits movement, which swept the country in the past two decades, usually by the mechanism of initiative campaigns.

It is the clearest expression of the revolt against representative government. In effect, it is a command: “Clear out of there, you bums. None of you is worth saving. We’ll take over the job of writing the laws ourselves.” But who is the “we”? Based on my reporting, it is clear that the initiative process has largely discarded its grass-roots origins. It is no longer merely the province of idealistic volunteers who gather signatures to place legislation of their own devising on the ballot. Billionaire Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, spent more than $8 million in support of a referendum on a new football stadium for the Seattle Seahawks. Allen, who was negotiating to buy the team, even paid the $4 million cost of running the June 1997 special election—in which Washington state voters narrowly agreed to provide public financing for part of the $425 million stadium bill.

Like so many other aspects of American politics, the initiative process has become big business. Lawyers, campaign consultants and signature-gathering firms see each election cycle as an opportunity to make money on initiatives that, in many cases, only a handful of people are pushing.  Records from the 1998 election cycle—not even one of the busiest in recent years—show that more than $250 million was raised and spent in this largely uncontrolled and unexamined arena of politics.

This is a far cry from the dream of direct democracy cherished by the 19th-century reformers who imported the initiative concept from Switzerland in the hope that it might cleanse the corrupt politics of their day. They would be the first to throw up their hands in disgust at what their noble experiment has produced.

The founders of the American republic were almost as distrustful of pure democracy as they were resentful of royal decrees. Direct democracy might work in a small, compact society, they argued, but it would be impractical in a nation the size of the United States. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, no voice was raised in support of direct democracy.

A century later, with the rise of industrial America and rampant corruption in the nation’s legislatures, political reformers began to question the work of the founders. Largely rural protest groups from the Midwest, South and West came together at the first convention of the Populist Party, in Omaha in 1892. The Populists denounced both Republicans and Democrats as corrupt accomplices of the railroad barons, the banks that set ruinous interest rates, and the industrial magnates and monopolists who profited from the labor of others while paying meager wages.

Both the Populists and Progressives—a middle-class reform movement bent on rooting out dishonesty in government—saw the initiative process as a salve for the body politic’s wounds. An influential pamphlet, “Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum,” appeared in 1893. In it, J.W. Sullivan argued that as citizens took on the responsibility of writing the laws themselves, “each would consequently acquire education in his role and develop a lively interest in the public affairs in part under his own management.”

Into this feisty mix of reformers came William Simon U’Ren, a central figure in the history of the American initiative process. In the 1880s, U’Ren apprenticed himself to a lawyer in Denver and became active in politics. He later told Lincoln Steffens, the muckraking journalist, that he was appalled when the Republican bosses of Denver gave him what we would now call “street money” to buy votes.  In the 1890s, having moved to Oregon in search of a healthier climate, U’Ren helped form the Direct Legislation League. He launched a propaganda campaign, distributing almost half a million pamphlets and hundreds of copies of Sullivan’s book in support of a constitutional convention that would enshrine initiative and referendum in Oregon’s charter. The proposal failed narrowly in the 1895 session of the legislature, in part because the Portland Oregonian labeled it “one of the craziest of all the crazy fads of Populism” and “a theory of fiddlesticks borrowed from a petty foreign state.”

Eventually, U’Ren lined up enough support for a constitutional amendment to pass easily in 1899. It received the required second endorsement from the legislature two years later, with only one dissenting vote. The voters overwhelmingly ratified the amendment in 1902 and it withstood a legal challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

U’Ren’s handiwork is evident today in his adopted state. The official voters’ pamphlet for the 1996 Oregon ballot—containing explanations for 16 citizen-sponsored initiatives and six others referred by the legislature—ran 248 pages.

It also included paid ads from supporters and opponents.

Money does not always prevail in modern-day initiative fights, but it is almost always a major—even a dominant—factor. In the fall of 1997, more than 200 petitions were circulating for statewide initiatives that sponsors hoped to place on ballots the following year. The vast majority did not make it. The single obstacle that eliminated most of them was the ready cash needed to hire the companies that wage initiative campaigns. In 1998, the most expensive initiative campaign was the battle over a measure legalizing casino-style gambling on Indian lands in California. The Nevada casinos, fearful of the competition, shelled out $25,756,828 trying  to defeat the proposition. The tribes outdid them, spending $66,257,088 to win. The $92 million total was a new record for California.

But of all the ventures into initiative politics that year, perhaps the most successful was engineered by three wealthy men who shared the conviction that the federal “war on drugs” was a dreadful mistake. They banded together to support medical marijuana initiatives in five Western states. The best known of them was billionaire financier George Soros of New York, who had made his fortune in currency trading. He and his political partners—Phoenix businessman John Sperling and Cleveland businessman Peter B. Lewis—personally contributed more than 75 percent of the $1.5 million spent on behalf of a successful medical marijuana initiative in just one of the states, Arizona. The issue isn’t whether medical marijuana laws are good or bad. As Arizona state Rep. Mike Gardner complained to me, “The initiative was part of our constitution when we became a state, because it was supposed to offer people a way of overriding special interest groups. But it’s turned 180 degrees, and now the special interest groups use the initiative for their own purposes. Why should a New York millionaire be writing the laws of Arizona?”

When I relayed Gardner’s question to Soros, he replied: “I live in one place, but I consider myself a citizen of the world. I have foundations in 30 countries, and I believe certain universal principles apply everywhere—including Arizona.”

It won’t be long before the twin forces of technology and public opinion coalesce in a political movement for a national initiative—allowing the public to substitute the simplicity of majority rule for what must seem to many Americans the arcane, out-of-date model of the Constitution. In fact, such a debate is already underway, based on what I heard at a May 1999 forum sponsored by the Initiative and Referendum Institute here in Washington.

  1. Dane Waters, the institute’s president, cut his political teeth on the term-limits movement, and the group’s membership includes firms in the initiative industry. But Waters strove to keep the forum intellectually honest, inviting critics as well as supporters of the initiative process. There was no doubt about the leanings of most of those in attendance. The keynote speaker was Kirk Fordice, then governor of Mississippi, who was cheered when he saluted the audience as “the greatest collection of mavericks in the world. The goal that unites us is to return a portion of the considerable power of government to individual citizens . . . and take control from the hands of professional politicians and bureaucrats.” Fordice, a Republican, noted that his state was the most recent to adopt the initiative, in 1992. Since then, he lamented, “only one initiative has made it onto the ballot,” a term-limits measure that voters rejected.“Thank God for California and those raggedy-looking California kids who came in and gathered the signatures,” he said. “Now the [Mississippi] legislature is trying to say we can’t have them come in, and we’re taking it to court.”

Then came Mike Gravel, former Democratic senator from Alaska and head of an organization called Philadelphia II, which calls for essentially creating a new Constitution based on direct democracy. Gravel’s plan—simplicity itself—is to take a national poll, and if 50 percent of the people want to vote on an issue, it goes on the next general election ballot. Then Congress would have to hold hearings on the issue and mark up a bill for submission to the voters. Once an issue gets on the ballot, only individuals could contribute to the campaign for passing or defeating it.  When I began researching the initiative process, I was agnostic about it.  But now that I’ve heard the arguments and seen the initiative industry in action, the choice is easy. I would choose James Madison and the Constitution’s checks and balances over the seductive simplicity of Gravel’s up-or-down initiative vote. We should be able to learn from experience, and our experience with direct democracy during the last two decades is that wealthy individuals and special interests—the very targets of the Populists and Progressives a century ago—have learned all too well how to subvert the initiative process to their own purposes. Admittedly, representative government has acquired a dubious reputation today. But as citizens, the remedy isn’t to avoid our elected representatives. The best weapon against the ineffective, the weak and the corrupt is in our hands each Election Day.

Ben White, The Post’s political researcher, assisted David Broder in the research for his book on the initiative process.

David Broder is The Washington Post’s senior political writer. This article is adapted from his new book, “Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money” (Harcourt).

 

Nixon v. Shrink 2000

In Nixon v. Shrink (1/24/2000)  a Missouri Governmental PAC and a candidate for the Republican nominee for state auditor sought to enjoin the enforcement of the state’s contribution limitation statue on the grounds that it violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.  The campaign contribution limits ranged from $250 to $1,000 depending on office and constituency size and was adjusted for inflation in even numbered years since January 1995.

Arguments and reference to Buckley v. Valeo were numerous.   Buckley supported limiting individual contributions to any single candidate to $1,000. per election.  Buckley, however, struck down the law that called for a $1,000 annual ceiling on independent expenditures linked to specific candidates.  The Court found violations of the First Amendment in the expenditure regulations, but held the contribution restrictions constitutional.

The Court in reviewing Nixon found that “there is little reason to doubt that sometimes large contributions will work actual corruption of our political systems, and no reason to question the existence of a corresponding suspicion among voters.”

Continuing, the Court said: “Here, as in Buckley, ‘[t]here is no indication . . . that the contribution limitations imposed by the [law] would have any dramatic[ally] adverse effect on the funding of campaigns and political associations,’ and thus no showing that ‘the limitations prevented the candidates and political committees from amassing the resources necessary for effective advocacy.’ 424 U.S., at 21. The District Court found here that in the period since the Missouri limits became effective, ‘candidates for state elected office [have been] quite able to raise funds sufficient to run effective campaigns,’ 5 F. Supp. 2d, at 740, and that ‘candidates for political office in the state are still able to amass impressive campaign war chests.’”

Therefore, the Court found that the Buckley decision governs in the Nixon v. Shrink case.  In other words, the contribution limitations in Missouri are constitutional.  The Court also recognized that the perception that large money contributions receives a quid pro quo in our political system and that could undermine the integrity of and our political system itself.   In the Court’s words, “Congress could legitimately conclude that the avoidance of the appearance of improper influence ‘is also critical … if confidence in the system of representative Government is not to be eroded to a disastrous extent.’”

For a syllabus, full version or edited decision of Nixon v. Shrink go to:

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-963.ZO.html