Tonight, we begin in the Pacific Northwest, where Howie Rich of New York City has apparently unleashed another whopping $1.3 million into Oregon to win passage of the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights there, while columnist Joel Connelly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has begun peeling back the layers of Rich's largesse for a "takings" initiative on the Washington state ballot. Connelly's got a bit of wild-west instinct in him, as we'll see. Meanwhile, blogger CeCe in Montana has dug up the link to last week's debate between Montanan-in-Action Trevis Butcher and Not in Montana's Eric Feaver, and she wants you to listen for yourself. But finally, from all the way back across the country, ensconced in the Deep South, columnist Cindi Ross Scoppe of The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, is hot on Rich's trail - but may not realize it!
First, there's nothing like writing a big check to wash away the ache of bad news. Kicked off the ballot by the Supremes of Nevada and Oklahoma, and prevented from getting to the ballot by "activist judges" in Missouri and a middling bureaucratic board in Michigan, TABOR has fared mighty poorly these past two weeks. But there's always Oregon, where voters will buy just about anything you put in front of `em, right? So if Oregon's where this ugly baby has a chance of being born, let's feed Mama, shall we? Steve Law of the Statesman Journal documents how well Howie Rich and his various house organs are plying Mama with chocolate.
"The organization U.S. Term Limits, which earlier provided most of the money to pay signature-gatherers and qualify Measure 45 for the November ballot, contributed nearly $1.3 million more after it made the ballot, according to campaign-finance reports filed Monday with the Oregon Elections Division. A sister group, Americans for Limited Government, chipped in $150,000 for the term-limits measure," Law writes here http://www.statesmanjournal.com/.... "Rich, who espouses libertarian views, is the president of New York City-based U.S. Term Limits and the board chairman of Americans for Limited Government, now in Chicago. Other campaign-finance reports filed Monday revealed Rich's group Americans for Limited Government put up $300,000 more to pass a spending-limitation initiative after it qualified for the ballot as Measure 48. The group earlier bankrolled paid signature-gathering for the measure."
Tell Mama who Howie is and who's helping him out, Steve.
"Rich is a wealthy donor to libertarian causes, and his groups do not divulge the source of their money," Law tells us.
Mm.
Maybe Joel Connelly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer can help Mama learn more about Howie Rich and his band of TABORites. Connelly's digging into Washington's I-933, a "takings" initiative that says if you think your little corner lot would be the perfect spot for a high-rise luxury condominium but the state or city zones your property for bungalows instead, you can sue the state or city for the amount that you WOULD HAVE gotten from turning your shack into a five-star tenement building. That's creative math, y'all.
The "takings" measure isn't his first focus, but it figures into the story that Connelly's covering here http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/... and he wonders where its money comes from. Well, guess who he finds behind yonder tree?
"A New York-based real estate mogul, Howard Rich, a director of the libertarian Cato Institute, has used fronts to fund similar initiatives across the West," he tells the denizens of the Emerald City. "Americans for Limited Government, based in Chicago, gave $200,000 to the I-933 signature drive. The same group gave $827,000 to an initiative in Arizona and $107,000 to an initiative in Nevada."
"A second group, Fund for Democracy, put $230,000 into an Idaho initiative and a whopping $1.5 million into an "anti-takings" initiative in California. And Rich has funneled $200,000 to a Montana initiative, he told the High Country News newspaper," he goes on. "Officially, of course, the Washington Farm Bureau is sponsoring I-933."
What does Connelly recommend to his readers in Washington? "...big background players [like] Howie Rich in New York...need to be smoked out."
Smoke `em out, says Joel Connelly. Joel, I want to introduce you to Cindi Ross Scoppe in just a minute, but hold on. While we're still in this corner of the country, let's drop in on CeCe in Montana, who didn't just listen to last Thursday's TABOR debate on Yellowstone Public Radio, she called in! And she got her first question asked on the air! Trouble is, the producers clipped her call without giving her a follow up, and Montanan-in-Action Trevis Butcher might have been grateful for that, since she's got her facts lined up.
More than most folks paying attention to this business, CeCe is excited, which you can tell from reading her post here http://cece-in-mt.blogspot.com/.
"About 45 minutes into the umm . . discussion (slaughter) I got pretty hyped up about Trevis's blatant lie that he was not required to report his contributors as the executive hee haww of Montanans in Action to the Commissioner of Political Practices. I called up a friend to tell him that Trevis admitted on the air to violating Montana law," she tells us.
I think a judge in Great Falls may come to that same conclusion this week, CeCe.
And CeCe offers a bit of guidance for those who get as wound up as she does: "I propose this, are you outraged by Montanans In Action actions, and Trevis Butcher's (executive whatever) flagrant disregard for the laws of Montana, and its people? Email Political Practices Commissioner Dennis Unsworth at dunsworth@mt.gov, give him a call at 406-444-2942 or write him a letter c/o Commissioner of Political Practices, P.O. Box 202401, Helena, MT 59620-2401; and demand action be taken on violators of the Constitution of the State of Montana and the laws of the State of Montana."
Best of all, CeCe found a link that lets you hear the evidence for yourself, constant reader. Catch it here: http://www.ypradio.org/....
Joel, thanks for holding on. Now, let's get to Columbia, South Carolina, and let me introduce you to Cindi Ross Scoppe, associate editor of The State. Scoppe published a column in today's edition that contrasts the position adopted by the leader of the state Chamber of Commerce nine months ago to the position he hold today. He calls it "strange bedfellows," but Scoppe rightly casts it as a cop-out "can't beat `em, join `em."
Our story begins at the stately State House with its Sherman-scarred walls, and in the lobby under the statue of a scary John C. Calhoun. Nine months ago, the state Chamber of Commerce's head lobbyist wouldn't be caught dead "alongside the heads of an anti-tax group who keeps company with the libertarian puppetmaste Grover Norquist and of a secretive group apparently funded by out-of-state radicals," but less than one month ago, there they are! Thick as chickpeas!
What's the difference? Back in January, Scoppe tells us, the chamber crowd gather together and "barely disguise their disdain for the populist property tax revolt that has the Legislature terrified, and they are confident that they can fight back attempts to upend a tax system that is relatively stable..."
But today, said lobbyist and said anti-tax heads are "having a news conference -- apparently coordinated by one of the coordinators of the wealthy homeowners who fought this year to make others pay their share of taxes -- to introduce their new `Coalition Against Unlimited Spending'."
O, Cindi. You're going to need a cuppa joe from Immaculate for this. I have news. You're closer than you think to knowing more about this than meets the eye. Google Stop Overspending Nebraska, Stop Overspending Missouri and Stop Overspending Michigan. Google Montanans in Action, Missourians in Charge and Oregonians in Action. These folks are of a piece, and if you check Governor Leadership's finance reports, you may find that ol' Governor Leadership may be all too happy to sell `em a parcel of South Carolina's Constitution.
I know, he's a different kind of governor, all right: a Libertarian in sheep's clothing, Cindi! It explains everything, like why he chafes against the heads of his own party. And why he brings pigs into the State House to make a mess on that loom-woven Oxford, Mississippi carpet! (By the way, that stunt ain't original. Laird Maxwell and Howie's pals in the Midwest have been riding a fake pig all over the place for a long time. But Sanford could give `em an idea with the horse-and-buggy business.)
Howie doesn't give money directly to many candidates - the legislative sponsor of his TABOR bill in Oklahoma springs to mind as a rare example - but not only has Sanford collected dollars from Rich (even more than your state law allows, if memory serves from a clip in your own paper), but Karen Floyd, Sanford's own anointed candidate for education secretary has too. Oooh, this does not bode well, Cindi.
"Coalition Against Unlimited Spending" sounds like a rehashed version of Stop Overspending Fill-in-the-Blank that they've been running in ballot-initiative states.
As for the chamber leaders and their change of heart, Scoppe got the head man on the phone here http://www.thestate.com/.... "We just feel that we've got to get our message heard in a louder fashion than before, and so we're looking for people who've got the same concerns we have," Hunter Howard tells her. O, Lord.
"Our concern here is ... just making sure we've got a competitive tax climate," he insists to Scoppe. "And if business is going to be the sole supporter of schools, or the sole local supporter, we've got to have some controls. The last thing we want is what we've got, and that is to be on the other side of educators and education."
You've got his number, Cindi. Tell us. "Mr. Howard implies that he had no option but to join with the enemies of public education to push for policies that would further hamstring not only the schools but cities and counties as well. That's not the case, though. The schools are every bit as upset about the new law as are the anti-tax and anti-government groups," she writes.
Cindi, in a handful of other states, the measure is being called a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, a "TABOR," or a Tax and Spending Control, a TASC, like the Nevada Supreme Court kicked off its ballot last week.
Ring the alarm, Cindi. As Joel Connelly has already discovered in Washington State, Howie Rich knows people in South Carolina, and he's got a bushel of magic beans to sell.
As for the crowd of hangers-on there in the lobby, be nice to them. They could one day become important people, and the fact that they once worked for Howie Rich or one of Rich's state-based organizations could be lucrative for them. It might even lead to love...
Witness one Lori Klein, who started out working as a fundraising consultant for Howie Rich's U.S. Term Limits for four years before moving to Phoenix in 1994. She's now the leader of the ballot campaign to enact AZ HOPE, another one of those initiatives being characterized as a property-rights issue, and this summer she married Laird Maxwell of Idaho, Howie Rich's wild-west pardner who essentially funnels large sums of money from New York through Montana to Nebraska and elsewhere. Check it out for yourself here http://idahoexaminertaxes.blogspot.com/.
O, there's a story here, Cindi. Ask Governor Leadership where he met Howie Rich. That'd be a great place to start.