There's a lot of big money behind California's Proposition 32, which should tell you right away how much to believe its backers' claims that the ballot initiative is about getting money out of politics. Most recently, Charles Munger, Jr., the son of the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, this week gave $9.9 million to a committee aimed at simultaneously supporting Prop. 32 and defeating Gov. Jerry Brown's tax measure; Munger has now given a total of $20 million to those two fights. Meanwhile, good-government groups like the League of Women Voters are lining up against Prop. 32 along with the unions it explicitly targets.

Prop. 32 eliminates a key union fundraising tool. Then it restricts direct contributions to candidates by unions and some kinds of corporations. That's meant to look like "getting special interest money out of politics," in the hope that you won't notice that corporate big money could still put unlimited amounts of money into outside spending and Super PACs, while unions would have lost the ability to compete financially (to the small extent they currently do). California Republicans are hoping that if this passes, they'd finally be able to start winning statewide elections.

Munger is not the only super-rich guy supporting Prop. 32. According to Frying Pan News, the go-to source for reporting on who's behind this initiative, other major donors include major supporters of Prop. 8 and of education privatization via vouchers.

For instance, Larry T. Smith, "a prominent proponent of 'gay-to-straight' conversion therapy for minors ... personally donated $50,000 to help support Prop. 8 and funneled even more money to the campaign through his political action group, the Family Action PAC." Fellow Prop. 32 donor Howard Ahmanson gave $1.4 million to Prop. 8, as well as giving "millions to both creationist and school-voucher causes." Also on the school vouchers front, Timothy C. Draper has given $100,000 to support Prop. 32:



In 2000 Draper was the brains and the piggybank behind Proposition 38—arguably the most extreme school voucher effort in recent American history. The measure would have drained California public school coffers to give students up to $4,000 in taxpayer-funded vouchers to pay for private schools. The bill included no means testing, so that children of privilege who were already attending California’s prep schools would be given an unneeded subsidy for their elite education.

Likewise, "Former Univision CEO Jerry Perenchio gave $1,040,000 to back Prop. 38 and to date has donated $250,000 to Prop. 32." He's also a big donor to Karl Rove's American Crossroads.

(Continue reading below the fold.)

