Brazen Corporate Fascism: Check out what PG&E is trying to do in California

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AlterNet / By Yasha Levine

PG&E's Audacious Attempt to Enshrine Its Energy Monopoly In the California Constitution
The rich and corporate are abusing CA's initiative process to enforce their profits through the state's constitution.

May 18, 2010 |


Welcome to Gilded Age 2.0, a time when government has become an appendage to the super-rich, used by industrialists, financiers and corporate robber barons to monopolize the economy and strip regular citizens of power and money. One example of just how much corporate cash and oligarchical interests have corrupted America’ democratic institutions comes out of California, where a giant corporation is spending tens of millions of dollars to push through a law that would snuff out competition and enshrine its corporate monopoly in California's State Constitution.

It sounds outrageous, but it is perfectly legal here in the Golden State, where a form of “direct democracy”introduced 100 years ago allows voters to write laws straight into the state constitution. All that is required is a ballot initiative and a two-thirds majority vote by people. Ironically, direct democracy was introduced to the state by the Progressive Party as a direct response to the runaway corruption of the Gilded Age, a way to shift power away from corporate and moneyed interests that dominated the legislature and to give it back to the people. Hiram Johnson, California's progressive governor 1911 to 1917, said that it would "restore absolute sovereignty to the people" by allowing voters to trump elected politicians.

It's true, direct democracy gave California's citizens a way to bypass their representative government, but it also gave a way for the rich and corporate to write their wishes directly into the highest law of the land -- all they'd have to do is convince, cajole or dupe the people into voting their way.

And that is exactly what executives at Pacific Gas & Electric, a giant energy monopoly in California, decided to do. Over the past nine months, they've spent massive amounts of cash on political strategists, lobbyists, professional signature gatherers, astroturfers and political ad campaigns in the hopes of scaring and duping California residents into voting "yes" on Proposition 16 in the upcoming June 8 primary election. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/news/146894/pg%26e%27s_audacious_attempt_to_enshrine_its_energy_monopoly_in_the_california_constitution_/