Last year Hawaii's legislature passed a ground-breaking (for Hawaii) law to create a clean elections pilot project. Now, with the economy in tatters, legislators are hoping to get back into bed with corporations. It's really obscene. If you are easily offended by the wide stance politicians often take with regard to corporate contributions, don't read any further. If you'd like to help stop this abuse, there are links you can use to urge Hawaii's lawmakers reconsider their wayward behavior.
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Update: On Wednesday the Hawaii House voted to recommit the bill to the Judiciary committee, which means it is probably dead. Discussion on the motion mentioned this DailyKos article! Here's a video.
If you are under voting age in Hawaii or are easily offended, please do not read further. Some may consider what is going on at the Legislature to be obscene.
Y’know, people worked really hard over many years to get the pilot program going on the Big Island that sets up county clean elections (publicly funded elections). Last session it became law, and advocates were really excited. Yes! Hawaii was about to join the company of other states and municipalities that already had or were moving towards clean elections.
Getting corporate money out of politics is “the reform that makes other reforms possible.”
Well, with the economy in a tailspin, some legislators may be quaking with fear that the clean elections idea may spread (and it should, of course). They’re afraid that they’ll lose the love of their corporate buddies. They say they need these corporations’ money to have stronger elections (No kidding. See the first video here. It's like bringing one's beloved home to mom and pop for the first time. In the video, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee dances around and finally implores, "So, not all corporations are what you think, are like multi-nationals that donate to us, and not all corporations are, how should I say, here in the Capitol all the time.") (That's a whole other story. In Hawaii, until a couple of sessions ago, big corporations had “embedded lobbyists,” that is, corporate executives, working side-by-side with lawmakers in legislative offices as “interns.”)
The Big Island pilot project, which could of course be successful, could really hurt their game. So they have decided to take a wider stance on campaign contributions.
Since they're lawmakers, they've introduced some bills designed to give themselves endless pleasure. Public be damned, they insist on self-gratification first. Strong words? These bills benefit only legislators and their cozy relationships with lobbyists and big corporations. They hope for an orgy of corporate money by passing these bills. One started with a $25,000 cap on contributions from a corporate treasury to any corporate PAC (the current limit is $1000 total to all corporate PACS), but in a moment of “legislators gone wild” they blew off all limits. Anything goes, if that bill becomes law.
Getting in bed with corporations isn’t what we elect those folks for, you know. This is Hawaii, not Illinois, for goodness sake.
HB539 is the bill that the House Judiciary committee hopes will attract the corporate love. There are three more bad bills. They are fiendishly designed to prevent the Big Island clean elections pilot project from interfering with their game.
HB345 undoes the good work of tens of thousands of Hawaii citizens who finally got the clean elections pilot going on the Big Island. It would hide the project under the bed until 2014. This way they won’t have to deal with the success that is expected and which could threaten to spread good government up to the state level. Can’t let that happen.
HB216, introduced by Speaker Calvin Say himself, repeals equalizing fund provisions. Its companion in the Senate, SB94, does the same and was introduced by none other than Senate President Hanabusa. It’s pretty clear that Hawaii’s legislative leadership is out to destroy clean elections. Which leaves… what kind of elections? Yes, you got it.
Please get involved. There are good talking points and forms to take action on the Voter Owned Election site here. If you'd like to send a message to all Hawaii state House members, this one email address does it: reps@capitol.hawaii.gov. To send a message to all Senators, use this: sens@capitol.hawaii.gov .
Please help stop these bad bills. Let’s get our wayward lawmakers back on the honorable path.