Last week, Speak Out California launched its newsletter as our way to thank you for your interest and commitment to ensuring our state pursues its progressive agenda and that we succeed in bringing our vision to the people of California. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s here, and you can go straight to the action alert as well. We hope you’ll sign up to receive each edition and urge your like-minded friends and colleagues to do so as well.
The battle lines in the political world have never been more clearly drawn than they are today. With the tragic success of the neoconservative, big corporate take-over in many parts of the country, we in California know that now is the time for progressives to take action and re-assert our vision of democracy, fairness and justice for the rest of the country to see and emulate. With the legislature in its last month of session, there are many key progressive bills that give us the opportunity to lead yet again, in bringing forth meaningful and powerful change for our state and nation.
In our newsletter we call it the Housebreaking of Big Corporations. We’ve identified half a dozen important measures that we believe will help clean up the messes big corporations have made in their pursuit of nothing other than profit—creating greenhouse gases (energy companies and manufacturers) to death and destruction (firearm manufacturers and dealers) to healthcare reform and protecting the integrity of elections themselves. (For the explanations of these six bills, check out the action alert for a brief summary of each).

While other measures might have more media appeal, like the suddently revived term-limits/redistricting initiative, we believe there are several key bills that need to be passed and put before the Governor for signature. There are several reasons for this: Not only is it good for California to enact these as sound public policy, but Governor Humpty-Dumpty is being rebuilt by his Bush-like handlers to sound less like the Right-wing bully that brought us “girlie men” and spent $50 Million for an unpopular and worthless special election designed to promote a big-business takeover of our state and more like the concerned Californian who wants to enact meaningful legislation to curb global warming and provide access to healthcare for its people.
Given that this is an election year, we need to force this Governor to come clean on just who he’s working for. Certainly, by all the campaign contributions he’s receiving, we know he’s the best friend big corporations have had in California in decades. So if he’s truly committed to the people who he is supposed to serve, he needs to sign this kind of legislation. Of course for those of us who don’t believe he’s changed his stripes (just his tune, and then only until November) this is our best chance at getting real substantive bills to his desk.
We’ll keep monitoring their progress for you. In the meantime, we need your voices to be heard. With just a few weeks to go in the Legislative year, it’s time to Speak Out, California!