The California Nurses Union, sponsor of Prop. 89, the Clean Money ballot initiative, has just released a jammin' new music video, "About Time for 89"
http://www.cleanmoneyelections.org/...
Prop. 89 webmaster Colette Washington rocks to a soulful hiphop beat, with a powerful smokey voice and lyrics that cut to the chase:
Political corruption is on the rise
Donations are comin' in super-size
Californians need a little bit of love
But we can't get in to the "Big Boys Club"
A handheld camera shows the kind of enthusiastic crowds of Californians that defeated Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's special election power grab last year.
Why do we need Prop. 89? More on the flip
According to the LA Times' Mother's Milk
feature ("money is the mother's milk of politics" -- Jesse "Big Daddy" Unruh, California Assembly leader), we're up to a total of $388,470,111 in political contributions so far in California this year, with $12 million more flowing into the trough yesterday. Certainly, we'll break the $400 million mark.
California is definitely headed toward The. Most. Expensive. Election. Ever.
Politicians say that big money contributions from special interest donors don't affect their votes, it just buys donors "access." Well, excuse me, it's US who should have "access," the citizens and voters who are paying taxes to pay the salaries of these elected representatives.
You'll hear about how, yes, reform is needed, but Prop. 89 isn't the way to do it. We hear this from the big money donors who don't want to give up their "access." Some people say the California Nurses Union has an "ulterior motive" in passing Prop. 89, because it would restrict the kind of big money out-of-state contributions from pharmaceutical companies and other status quo interests who have derailed previous attempts, via ballot initiative, to get Americans the health care they need -- and that they want.
Me, I trust the California Nurses Union, and the other public interest groups who have endorsed Prop. 89 -- groups like the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, the Consumer Federation of California, and the California branch of the American Association of Retired People -- much more than I trust the usual suspects opposing it -- those favorably positioned as "players" now due to their big donations, who don't want to give up their clout.
Please, watch this jammin' video, and if you like what you hear, send it around to every voter you know. It's on YouTube, so you can use their easy "share with your friends" feature. I'm sending it to the local public radio station, too -- there's also an mp3 of the audio track you can download and share offline.
GO PROP. 89 !!
P.S.: three more links -- here's another YouTube video,
"What Big Money Buys in Sacramento," showing lobbyists swarming around the Capitol in the final week of the legislative session this summer. Here's the SF Bay Guardian's recent "Yes Yes Yes" endorsement of Prop. 89, and last but not least, here's the Prop 89 blog -- a great source of information and inspiration.