Disclosure Decision Will Make It More Difficult to Hide Funding for Anti-Pension Initiative

You may recall the brouhaha that developed around secret funding by a group that opposed Proposition 30 (the governor's tax initiative) and supported Prop 32 (an anti-union initiative).  It became an issue late in that election.  Large fines have now been levied by the California Fair Political Practices Commission.  While this development may seem like old political news, it will be relevant for whatever groups are pushing the anti-pension initiative about which we have been posting and which covers UC.  It will be more difficult - but not impossible - to continue to hide behind the friendly faces of a few California mayors, the stance taken so far.  Of course, some donors don't care their names are known.  But apparently some do, since care was taken to launder the contributions in the anti-30/pro-32 campaign.

You can read more details and see a TV newscast about this episode at http://www.news10.net/capitol/article/261647/525/State-levies-16-million-fine-over-2012-mystery-campaign-cash

The Koch connection is highlighted at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/25/5850222/dan-morain.html

A press release from the FPPC is at: http://www.fppc.ca.gov/releasespdf/2013-10-24.pdf

UPDATE: The New Yorker picks up the story at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2013/10/the-koch-brothers-in-california.html

The related FPPC press conference can be seen at the link below: [starts at minute 6:30]

Which Way LA? Takes Up Chancellor's Racism Report

KCRW's radio program, "Which Way LA?," with Warren Olney had a segment yesterday on the chancellor's report on racism which was circulated recently.

You can hear that segment at the link below (first 17 minutes):

What can we say? Or Sing?

UC Davis will pay $38,055 in a workers’ compensation settlement to John Pike, the former university police lieutenant who was internationally scorned in November 2011 for pepper-spraying students at close range during an Occupy-style tuition protest on campus. According to paperwork filed with the state’s Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board, the damages cover injuries to Pike’s “psyche.”...

Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/23/5846956/uc-davis-pays-claim-to-pepper.html

This story may not be music to your ears but consider:

The Anti-Pension Initiative: What Can UC Do?

The State Worker blog of the Sacramento Bee carries a piece on what the political campaign against the anti-pension/anti-retiree health care initiative will likely look like.  Excerpt:

Chuck Reed’s public-employee pension initiative is a long way from making it to a statewide vote – money being the biggest hurdle – but labor unions have already started blasting the proposal.

The San Jose mayor’s measure would, among other things, change the California Constitution to explicitly allow state and local governments in a fiscal emergency to cut future retirement costs by lowering current employees’ benefits prospectively but leave accrued benefits untouched. Right now, court rulings appear to give government workers an ironclad right to the pension promised on their first day of work.

The unions say that Reed’s proposal will speed government pensions down the same road to near-oblivion that private-sector pensions have traveled. Here are some ways they’ll fight it: 

Kill it in the crib. Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat with strong union backing, assigns ballot measures’ titles and summaries. Last year she essentially killed efforts to put a different pension initiative on the 2012 ballot with summary statements that were “either provably false or grossly misleading,” the measure’s proponents said at the time.That, in turn, waylaid raising the $2 million or so for signature collection needed to put the proposal on the ballot. Unions would love Reed’s measure to get the same treatment.

Remember the real audience. Only a handful of people have checkbooks big enough and political leanings strong enough to underwrite Reed’s campaign. Convince them it’s a lost cause and the thing will never get off the ground. Pour money into social media and maybe a traveling campaign of “real people” to talk about how Reed’s measure would affect them. Make potential backers think twice.

Hammer out-of-state money and Wall Street. “Opponents want the guy with the big checkbook in Texas to be the face of the measure,” said Dan Schnur of USC’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. He was referring to a Houston nonprofit with ties to a former Enron executive that last summer gave $200,000 to the mayor’s hometown chamber of commerce for pension reform research. Unions have blasted the donation. Wall Street tycoons who brought down the economy make good targets, too.

Talk up cops, firefighters and teachers. Make them the victims of Reed’s proposal. ...

Organize...

Full story at http://www.sacbee.com/2013/10/24/5846884/the-unions-playbook-for-public.html

Missing from the strategy is one element UC can contribute: FACTS.  There are major, major budgetary implications of the recently-filed proposition that would affect UC.  That story needs to get out.  There are fiscal implications for school districts, localities, and the state.  Proponents think it's all about saving money.  In fact, getting to full funding of pensions and retiree health in the period specified in the initiative, even if these programs are stripped down, could have major cost increasing impacts.  That story needs to be told.

And still more on the pension cabalistas...

From Salon.com:  [excerpt]  10-23-13

Less than a year ago, the Wall Street Journal alerted its national readership to what was happening in the tiny state of Rhode Island. In a story headlined “Small State Gets Big Pension Push,” the paper noted that the state’s “rollback of public-employee retirement benefits has turned (it) into a national battleground over pensions.” With the help of billionaire former Enron trader John Arnold and his partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts, conservative ideologues and Wall Street profiteers who engineered Rhode Island’s big pension cuts were looking to export those “reforms” to other states. Now, after two huge revelations in the last few days, we know more about what that means in practice — we know the kind of corruption and damage the “reforms” mean for taxpayers and retirees, and we know what kind of new muscle is behind the effort to bring that corruption and destruction to other states...

The full article is at http://www.salon.com/2013/10/23/wall_streets_favorite_democrat_wants_your_pension/

As we continue to point out on this blog, the forces behind the newly-filed anti-pension/anti-retiree health care initiative that covers UC consist of more than a handful of California mayors who are the public front for the effort.  There is a Regents meeting coming up in November.  Will there be discussion of this matter?  Anyone telling UC president Napolitano she has a "problem"? Will there be some charts and graphs introduced by the president explaining what the initiative, applied to UC, will mean to the university budget?  The impact on CURRENT employees and the campuses will be dramatic.  The governor has been attending Regents meetings.  Anyone talking to him?  If he starts doing the math on what this means for UC, CalPERS, and CalSTRS, he might be in for a shock.  Anyone at the Dept. of Finance telling him?  Is the Legislative Analyst talking to the legislature? 

More on the pension initiative "coordination"

Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker, founders of Campaigns, Inc.

You probably have never heard of the couple above, Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter, who founded what some regard as the first modern political advertising firm - Campaigns, Inc. - right here in California in the early 1930s.  You may not have heard of the great "EPIC" campaign of 1934 - their first big target.  (They ran the opposition.)  I will leave it to you to read up on the history of all of that which you can find in http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/24/120924fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all  However, a key tactic they developed was distributing information favoring their clients to small newspapers that were always looking for material.  From the link above:

...They ran a newspaper wire service, the California Feature Service, which sent a political clipsheet every week, to fifteen hundred “thought leaders,” and cartoons, editorials, and articles to three hundred newspapers. Rural newspapers were so desperate for copy that many printed whatever the California Feature Service sent them, including documents that were basically press releases disguised as editorials endorsing whatever political position Campaigns, Inc., was being paid to advocate. The trick was to send out clippings so sly that a tired editor might not notice that they were written by an advertising outfit. One California newspaper editor used to play a game with his staff, while reading the stuff. It was called “Where’s the Plug?” Whitaker and Baxter weren’t just inventing new techniques; they were writing a rule book. Never lobby; woo voters instead. “Our conception of practical politics is that if you have a sound enough case to convince the folks back home, you don’t have to buttonhole the Senator,” Baxter explained. Make it personal...

Got the idea?  Now that you do, here is a link to an item that appeared recently in the "Marin Voice," said to be written by "a member of the Citizens for Sustainable Pension Plans, a Marin-based public pension reform group."

http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_24357793/marin-voice-giving-voters-say-public-pensions

In short, Whitaker and Baxter are alive and well in the 21st century.  We have noted in previous postings that the recently-filed pension initiative - that sweeps in UC - seems to be part of a well-coordinated effort that goes well beyond a few mayors who are the public face of it.

UCLA will appeal eviction from VA baseball stadium

UCLA ROTC cadet in 1930s

From the Westwood-Century City Patch:

UCLA will appeal a federal judge's ruling that effectively locks the university out of Jackie Robinson Stadium—which is on Veterans Administration land in West Los Angeles —where Bruin baseball has been played for decades, it was announced Tuesday...

If appeals fail, the university may have to vacate the stadium after the 2014 season... U.S. District Judge S. James Otero ruled in August that by not using the land to provide health care for vets, the VA is in violation of federal law. Otero issued a written ruling Monday rejecting efforts to persuade him to overturn his decision...

Full story at http://centurycity.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/judges-ruling-may-prevent-ucla-from-playing-baseball-at-jackie-robinson-stadium