Special Interests

Re Michael Ramirez's Dec. 23 cartoon, "Have a merry Bradley-Gore Christmas": If Ramirez is going to become your right-wing hit artist, would it be possible to get somebody at the paper to, at least, check the facts before his Republican propaganda is published? This cartoon indicated that Al Gore and Bill Bradley have filled the stockings of the special interests and given the taxpayers the bill. The last time I looked, George W. Bush had raised over $67 million from these special interests.

SACRAMENTO - Jerry Brown told voters he was different - that only he, a septuagenarian government veteran with no aspirations to higher office, could fix the cycle of swelling budget deficits that has plagued California for more than a decade. But the release of Brown's updated budget plan Monday shows that he is being trapped by the same partisanship and dysfunction that hobbled his predecessors when they tried to repair the state's finances. "No governor, under the system we have in California, really has the ability to deal with the mess we've created," said Mark Paul, a former deputy state treasurer and the coauthor of a book about the state's financial quandary.

WASHINGTON - As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to squelch the role of special interests in financing the party conventions - so he barred corporations and lobbyists from contributing money to this year's national convention in Charlotte, N.C. But even as Democrats tout the three-day event in September as a populist gathering, organizers have found ways to skirt the rules and give corporations and lobbyists a presence at the nominating convention....

Sometimes an old movie line says it best. Such a line came to mind when I read the Assembly speaker's assertion that political money doesn't influence legislative voting. "I know people love to try to create that impression," Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) was quoted as saying in a Times article Sunday about AT&T's wide-ranging lobbying operation. "But the reality is, that's not the way things happen. People give money because of whatever reasons motivate them, and we evaluate legislation regardless.

As the Senate scrambles to scale back a $140-billion recession relief bill, the poor, the elderly and the unemployed are bearing the brunt of the squeeze. But NASCAR track developers, movie producers and other special interests are likely to escape unscathed. Those businesses stand to gain $32 billion in tax breaks as part of the bill, which has been stalled for weeks because of rising complaints about deficit spending. In the hunt for ways to cut costs, neither party has proposed curbing the panoply of narrow tax preferences, which Congress has routinely extended each year.

The issues and the special interests that pursued them in last month's primary election are familiar: Big oil, tobacco and insurance companies seeking armor against litigation and taxes; trial lawyers looking for more opportunities to sue; the state Chamber of Commerce working against proposals its members deem costly. But even battle-hardened veterans of special-interest wars were alarmed by how some of California's most influential groups flooded a few small campaigns with money in an effort to achieve their goals.

Reporting from Sacramento -- With temperatures dropping in Sacramento, some state lawmakers are migrating to the sunny beaches of Hawaii this week for a conference at a luxury resort, subsidized and attended by special interests that lobby the Legislature. About 15 lawmakers are scheduled to attend the annual gathering in Maui, where they will stay at the Fairmont Kea Lani hotel on the tab of the Independent Voter Project, a nonprofit policy group largely funded by business and labor interests.

The article, "Most City Incumbents Opt Out of Spending Limits" (Nov. 29), quoted a campaign consultant as saying about public campaign funds that "it just didn't feel right." I am upset that evidently he does feel right about taking money from corporations and special interests that will be expecting favors at taxpayer expense. To paraphrase the governor: The money comes in and the favors go out. The campaign consultant goes on to say, "There is no question he can raise the money he needs for the race."

This post has been updated. See below. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to name a group that opposes government oversight of health  insurance premiums " Californians Against Higher Healthcare Costs . " Especially when the group includes the trade associations for doctors and hospitals, two sets of Californians who've contributed mightily to the high cost of healthcare. But it takes at least twice that amount of nerve, plus no small amount of irony, for the group to put out a press release accusing the other side of being funded by "special interests that will directly benefit from its passage.

WASHINGTON - As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to squelch the role of special interests in financing the party conventions - so he barred corporations and lobbyists from contributing money to this year's national convention in Charlotte, N.C. But even as Democrats tout the three-day event in September as a populist gathering, organizers have found ways to skirt the rules and give corporations and lobbyists a presence at the nominating convention....

Mitt Romney hit rival Rick Santorum on Thursday for his debate performance the prior night, saying his explanations for why he voted in opposition to his principles showed he was a creature of Washington who sided with special interests rather than the American people. "We saw in this case Sen. Santorum explain most of the night why he did or voted for things he disagreed with, and he talked about this as being taking one for the team. I wonder which team he was taking it for," Romney said, speaking to a trade group of builders and contractors.

Reporting from Sacramento -- With temperatures dropping in Sacramento, some state lawmakers are migrating to the sunny beaches of Hawaii this week for a conference at a luxury resort, subsidized and attended by special interests that lobby the Legislature. About 15 lawmakers are scheduled to attend the annual gathering in Maui, where they will stay at the Fairmont Kea Lani hotel on the tab of the Independent Voter Project, a nonprofit policy group largely funded by business and labor interests.

Reporting from Sacramento -- Democrats in the Legislature are trying to make it harder for Californians to pass their own laws at the ballot box, saying the state's century-old initiative process has been hijacked by the special interests it was created to fight and has perpetuated Sacramento's financial woes. In the waning weeks of this year's lawmaking session, legislators will push bills to raise filing fees, place new restrictions on signature gatherers and compel greater public disclosure of campaign contributors.

An organization funded in part by a labor group, the California Building and Construction Trades Council, recently aired radio spots warning voters that they could become victims of identity theft if they signed initiative petitions. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor is staffing a call center to document sightings of anti-union petitioners. It's the next big thing for the initiative industry. The campaign begins now, in front of the supermarket, mall or post office, to frighten voters into ignoring petitions they might otherwise sign.

Los Angeles officials could be forced to scale back a law intended to level the playing field in elections in which wealthy candidates spend large sums of their own money. Candidates for city office who agree to a limit on their campaign spending are currently eligible to receive public money, securing a dollar in taxpayer funds for every dollar they raise from private individuals. Those so-called matching funds provide a financial boost to candidates who run against politicians who tap their own fortunes to finance their campaigns, are backed by well-financed special interests, or both.

Among the many proposals to raise taxes and cut and reallocate government spending to regain our country's economic health, one of the most sensitive is decreasing the tax deductibility of charitable contributions. The independent Congressional Budget Office recently reviewed 11 options for revising the income tax treatment of charitable giving, and it grouped them into four categories. All establish a floor below which contributions would not be deductible. One proposal retained tax deductibility only for donations exceeding $1,000 per couple or, alternatively, 2% of a person's adjusted gross income.