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In 1912 when the California Statehouse was overrun with big moneyed interests, California Governor Hiram Johnson allowed the first initiatives to be placed on the ballot to encourage more citizen activism in State Government. Now, one hundred years later, the very process that was set up to help free the State from the clutches of wealthy interests has seemingly succumbed to those forces.

Four of the 11 ballot measures on the November 6th state ballot have been funded by extremely wealthy individuals, like George Joseph, Molly Munger, Chris Kelly and Tom Steyer. Money is flowing in from billionaires, millionaires and corporations around the country to support or oppose ballot measures in California, a state which has the eighth largest economy in the world.

Proposition 37, the GMO labeling initiative, has been extremely popular in the polls, and is opposed by the giant GMO promoter and pesticide manufacturer Monsanto as well as companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi Co and Nestle. The companies have raised about $41 million to beat Prop 37 and Food and Water Watch estimates that the No On 37 campaign has been spending about a million dollars a day to air ads resulting in the proposition slipping a couple of percentage points in popularity.

Just last week, $11 million dollars flooded in from a non-profit group called Americans for Responsible Leadership based in Arizona to a California group called the Small Business Action Committee to fund the “No on Prop 30 and Yes on Prop 32” campaigns. Prop 30 is Governor Jerry Brown’s initiative to help fund the state’s public school system and Prop 32 is the initiative which aims to stop automatic payroll deductions for union groups that enable unions to lobby the state legislature.

While politically motivated Super PAC donations must reveal their donors, a “social welfare” non-profit group like Americans for Responsible Leadership technically does not. But, The State Fair Political Practices Commission of California has filed a lawsuit against the group, to force them to reveal the names of their donors who many are speculating to be the infamous billionaire Koch Brothers.

GUESTS: Matt Fleischer is an LA-based journalist and editor. He has been a staff writer with the LA Weekly and was a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Jessica Parra-Fitch, an organizer with Food and Water Watch

Read Matt Fleischer’s work at www.fryingpannews.org and find out more about Food and Water Watch at www.foodandwaterwatch.org.