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Sacramento County, CA March 8, 2005 Election
Smart Voter

CURBING CORPORATE INFLUENCE

By Julie Padilla

Candidate for United States Representative; District 5

This information is provided by the candidate
I support fair elections and citizen access to government. Elections & Congress are dominated by corporate money and power. Julie speaks for the majority of working Americans, not the corporations. At present, as in the period from 1890 + 1929, the U.S. government is serving as a tool for preserving the power and the wealth of a small minority of the rich. The U.S. economy grew in the 1990's and stagnated since 2001. In recent years elections and the Congress has been dominated by corporate power and corporate money. The 2001 Bush Administration tax cuts for the wealthy, and, in the face of a massive federal deficit, the October 2004 reduction of corporate taxes by another 136 million dollars illustrate the corrupting influence of corporate power and donations in our political system.

Public outrage has grown over crooked corporate offices, the looting of pension funds. and the domination of our media by a few corporate voices. Yet the Congress has done too little to reform the system.

A rich person, or a corporation, can buy a million dollar home, airplanes, and resorts, but they should not be able to buy our government. We must limit corporate abuses and corporate penetration of our government. We must do so even within the Democratic Party.

To a significant degree a Congressperson has a responsibility to protect and defend our electoral system from this abuse. We must either learn how to control these corporations or they will use the government to control us. We need a political culture that does not equate corporate interests with the public interest. We should start by challenging the notion that corporations have the same constitutional rights as citizens. People are flesh and blood and corporations are not! The best way to confront this pro corporate administration is not through connections. It is not a matter of getting along with the Washington power brokers. In stead I will lift my voice. I will work to build an anti-corporate movement that stresses the interests of working and unemployed people.

The Bush Administration:
1. Installed as top officials more than 100 former lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee.
2. Let disgraced Enron CEO Ken Lay-help write its energy policy
3. Did nothing to prevent the minimum wage from falling to an inflation-adjusted fifty-year low.
4.Reduced the enforcement of corporate tax law-conducting fewer audits, imposing fewer penalties, pursuing fewer prosecutions and making virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes.
5.Increased tax audits for the working poor.

The Bush administration is the best friend of corporate America. And I don't want my party to become like the republican corporate party.

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ca/sac Created from information supplied by the candidate: February 12, 2005 09:18
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