With three elections scheduled for 2008 in California, we've seen a tidal wave of initiative offerings announced and plunked into the expensive signature gathering process. Most of these measures come from cash-abundant corporations and their front groups trying to impose their will on the public. They include ideas designed to balloon corporate profits to the detriment of the environment, public health or individual rights (over-reaching eminent domain actions), advance the interests of the wealthy corporate accountability dodgers, repackage measures that have been tried and rejected in the past (such as anti-reproductive choice initiatives that incessantly appear), and programs that benefit special interest groups, but not the public. Many of them are funded by out-of-state groups or mega-millionaires who want to impose their personal philosophies on California, often as "test cases" for future efforts in the rest of the country. Or, in the case of the most recent initiative proposal by the Republican Party, to steal the next Presidential election by trying to divide up California's electoral votes.
One such unwanted effort comes from the big-business front group called the Civil Justice Association of California or "CJAC". Earlier this summer it announced it was proposing a ballot measure that would virtually eliminate class action lawsuits in California. The goal is to deny individuals harmed by the unlawful behavior of big corporations the right to come together to sue in order to end the behavior and be made whole from the wrongful conduct.
Obviously, big corporations, like Wal-Mart, want to be able to stiff their workers if they can get away with it, but under current law they can be brought into court and made to pay for the wages and benefits they promise their employees. (Wal-Mart is currently defending just such a case).Certainly not a radical notion, but in this pro-business, consumer and worker-be-damned atmosphere, it isn't surprising that the corporate-controlled CJAC would try to thwart the little guy's right to access the court system for protection and justice. What CJAC and its big bosses didn't realize was that the surprise was going to be on them.
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