Mark Bucher’s Anti-Union Measure Moves Forward – Includes A Sneaky Little Trick

Mark Bucher
Mark Bucher

Two time ballot box looser Mark Bucher’s anti-union political participation ballot initiative has moved forward with 920,000 signatures submitted for verification. This initiative is a repeat of two previous initiatives submitted by Bucher. In 1998 Butcher’s Proposition 226 failed to garner enough votes and in 2005, Proposition 75 failed as well.

Like his previous two failures, this proposed initiative would prohibit unions from using any funds collected from employee payroll checks for political purposes, effectively killing the ability of unions to raise the funds necessary to fight in the political arena. The difference this time is a clever ruse aimed at getting people to think that by voting for the initiative they are taking corporate money out of politics.

The initiative proposes to prohibit both unions and corporations from contributing to candidates or committees that contribute to candidates. Your average voter would see this as taking corporate and union money out of the political game. And there is the Bucher Ruse. The initiative will allow corporations, which do not rely on payroll deducted dues for their support, to spend unlimited amounts of money on independent expenditure campaigns for or against candidates.

The submitted signatures now move forward to the verification process. 504,760 of the 920,000 submitted signatures need to be valid in order for the initiative to make it to the ballot.

Martin Wisckol over at the OC Register has more on the story here.

This just goes to show you that right-wing nut-job Republicans, will by hook or crook, do whatever is necessary to silence their opposition in order to get their way.

7 Comments

  1. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like the initiative will also allow unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on independent expenditure campaigns for or against candidates.

  2. “The initiative will allow corporations .. to spend unlimited amounts of money on independent expenditure campaigns for or against candidates.”

    Chris – Won’t unions then also be able to spend unlimited amounts of money on the same type of IEs?

  3. Bucher continues to show the hypocrisy that exists in the conservative movement. They posture about liberty and freedom while working to inhibit both in groups they don’t like.

    Sadly, the only people who will win are the consultants.

    • Santa Ana will go bankrupt and will help to pass Mark Bucher’s November 2012 ballot proposition, “Stop Special Interest Money Now Act,”
      (Read the Oct 21st article “Santa Ana General Fund Dips to Less Than $1 per Resident”.)

  4. God knows I don’t feel comfortable about special interest funding in any shape or form, but I remember reading somewhere that corporate funding for political influence outnumbers union funding by a ratio of 15 to 1. With that in mind, it would appear to me that Mr. Bucher is more concerned about his own interests than about the interests of the good taxpayers of this great state of ours. Just an observation.

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