Paying for No

COMMENT: At the beginning of October, Rainforest Action Network launched its No New Coal campaign against the rush to new coal-fired generation facilities in the United States. As well as targeting the coal companies and the electricity generation utilities and merchant power companies, RAN is aiming its criticism at big banks – the corporations which lend the money, reap profits, but in the main stay outside of the line of fire.
http://tinyurl.com/2vbflh

Here’s a great article from the Oregonian about these measures

Paying for No

The old political rule to "follow the money" never makes more sense than in ballot measure campaigns, since ballot measures never grant interviews.

And it's never easier than in this year's campaigns against Measures 49 and 50, where the money is coming from very clear places: timber companies against Measure 49 and tobacco companies against Measure 50.

Of course, you do have to follow the money a little distance. That way, you get to what the campaigns are about, instead of what the ads say the campaigns are about.

Monday's campaign finance reports show tobacco companies spending $6.6 million to fight Measure 50 and Stimson Lumber of Portland chipping in $200,000 to the campaign against Measure 49, the Legislature's rewriting of the land-use rollback Measure 37. Stimson, it turns out, is also the state's largest claimant under Measure 37, to drop land-use rules on at least 57,000 acres of its holdings.

As Eric Mortenson reported in The Oregonian Tuesday, two other timber and wood products companies came up with $100,000 apiece for the campaign, with a forest's worth of other timber and wood products companies contributing. As the ads declare their support of the principles of private property, there's a faint whir of chain saws humming in the background.

For the No on 49 campaign, there's a connection between cutting trees and cutting the checks.

In this case, it's not likely to dominate the debate; supporters of Measure 49, environmentalists and environmental organizations, are up to now outspending the opponents. But there's still a big difference between what No on 49 sounds like and what No on 49 spends like.

Out front, this is an effort of small oppressed property owners, wanting only to build a couple of houses on property they've owned for decades. The Web site for stop49.com shows a tormented young couple, not a frustrated timber company.

But apparently, from the campaign's contribution reports, the tormented young couple are agonizing about the status of their 57,000 acres.

Opposing Measure 50, a cigarette tax increase to extend health coverage for Oregon kids, the campaign is ostensibly led by a group called Oregonians Against a Blank Check. No one has actually met an Oregonian against a blank check; the organization is organized and funded by Reynolds American, a group that might more accurately be called North Carolinians Against Making It More Expensive to Smoke.

The campaign, of course, doesn't feature those folks. Instead, its inescapable TV ad shows another tormented couple -- a little older than the couple tormented by Measure 49 -- who are stunned that Measure 50 amends the Oregon Constitution.

Overcome by this, the tormented male finally growls that he's not going to let people mess with the Constitution, and his helpmate nods sorrowfully.

It's touching to find North Carolinians so committed to the timeless permanence of the Oregon Constitution. It means that they, like most Oregonians, have never actually looked at it.

The Oregon Constitution, which goes on for 50 closely printed pages and includes anything the people of the state have thought about and changed their mind about in the last 150 years, has been amended 24 times just since 1999.

Fortunately, when it was proposed in 2004 to remove motor homes from the provisions dealing with taxes and fees on motor vehicles, nobody growled that we shouldn't mess with our constitution.

But of course, that's not Reynolds American's concern about Measure 50 at all, any more than Stimson Lumber is worried about Oregonians' rights to build a second house on 40 acres.

Following the money consistently leads you to what campaigns are actually about, going behind the terribly concerned-looking hired models to the goal that the people financing the campaigns actually have in mind.

Sometimes, following the money leads you to thousands of acres of rural Oregon being legally prepared for subdivision.

And sometimes, it leads you to North Carolina.

David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or davidsarasohn@news.oregonian.com.