(crossposted on the BetterCA blog, My Left Wing and Calitics)
The San Fransico Chronicle has obtained an email sent to tech industry leaders who are joining Arnold on a trip to China. In that message they are wink wink, nudge nudge told not to reimburse the organization sponsoring the trip, but pay for their own flights and costs, AND drop $50k in the coffers of the California State Protocol Foundation, which incidentally doesn’t have report contributions. They are intentionally laundering money that pays for the Governor’s trips overseas, and Arnold’s people say: “Sorry we can’t control what our friends do.”
High-tech leaders who may accompany Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on a November visit to China are being encouraged to avoid paying directly for the trip and instead make hefty donations to a nonprofit committee supporting the governor because the “contributions are not required to be reported,” according to an e-mail obtained by The Chronicle.
The arrogance is really quite astounding:
“The money that comes in can be used for anything. … It can be used for foreign trips,” Dicke [CFO for the Protocol Foundation] said. “The donors expect confidentiality. … We’re not required to disclose them, so we don’t.”
They are right; the letter of the law says that big business can contribute unlimited amounts of funds to organizations that then pay for the Governor to fly around the world. But that is a far cry from the claims of independence from special interest groups like the Protocol Foundation that the Governor has tried to build his reputation on and far from what has been done in the past.
Why do these donors expect confidentiality? What do they have to hide from? Why would they not want the public to know they are funneling money to the Governor? Finally, why do they expect it when Gray Davis’s supporters did not?
Garry South, who was senior adviser to former Gov. Gray Davis, confirmed that Schwarzenegger’s Democratic predecessor also had a “host committee” — but he noted there was a key difference.
“Under Gov. Davis, a voluntary decision was made to report who gave money to that host committee,” South said. “We decided it was not worth shielding these people from exposure — that we had to release and report it.”
South, now an adviser to Controller Steve Westly, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, said the TechNet’s solicitation crossed the line because it was “literally out there telling companies to launder contributions.”
“This is the pattern and practice of this administration — to try and hide as much of the money as you can,” he said.
The plethora of pro-buisness groups that have sprung up since the Schwarzenegger administration took office is another example of the message I noted earlier: “Say one thing, do another.” It is up to you to send a message in return: “This is unacceptable and we will reject you and your big business supporters.”
