Corporate power grabs on the California ballot: What do we learn?

[cory777]

Source: LA Times

We may finally have discovered a remedy for corporate executives with more greed than brains: Let them invest corporate funds by the millions in California ballot initiatives, then vote the things down.

Isn't that the lesson of Tuesday's balloting on Propositions 16 and 17, those majestically cynical initiatives sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Mercury Insurance Group?

To recap for the 82% of eligible voters statewide who didn't bother to vote last week, Proposition 16 was an initiative concocted by PG&E, the state's biggest private utility, to hamstring the public power agencies that are its chief competitors — pretty much its only competitors. Of the $46 million in cash contributions raised to pass the initiative, $46 million, or 100%, came from PG&E.

Proposition 17 was an initiative concocted by Mercury to undermine the insurance consumer protection system put into place by Proposition 103 of 1988. Of the $13.56 million in cash raised to promote Prop. 17, $13.5 million came from Mercury, whose founder and chairman, George Joseph, has turned the punching of holes in Prop. 103 into a personal obsession. That spending may make Mercury a cheapskate by PG&E standards, but by any rational standard of democratic process, the scale of it was obscene.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20100613,0,770126.column?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+%28L.A.+Times+-+Business%29

[DBoon]

1. I loved this quote from the article:

"One lesson of the Proposition 16 and 17 campaigns may be that PG&E and Mercury, as regulated companies, have been treated far too indulgently by government overseers. The regulators plainly have allowed both companies to overcharge their customers so much that the excess cash has been burning a hole in their pockets."