Why I Went to Work for Arianna

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Solution: rely more on stable, predictable property taxes. We could increase property taxes on commercial interests and wealthy landowners, without hurting lower-income homeowners. But that would require fighting the corporations and the wealthy, who abuse Prop 13 protections intended to help smaller homeowners.

We could fix the political system. Three simple reforms -- publicly financed campaigns, ranked-choice voting (IRV) and same-day voter registration -- would dramatically undercut big money and boost third-party efforts. But that would mean fighting the fat cats and corporate PACs who like the present system.

We could fix our priorities. We could amend the constitution, requiring that we spend more on colleges than prisons. According to criminal justice groups like Critical Resistance and Books Not Bars, we could chop $1 billion from the state's prison budget, without lowering public safety. And a progressive governor could appoint a Board of Corrections that wanted to rehabilitate prisoners, not just build more prisons. But that would mean taking on the almighty prison guards' union.

We could save our environment. A progressive governor could simply boot all the polluters and despoilers off California's environmental protection agencies. Then actual environmentalists could work there -- imagine that! And he or she could endorse the new "Apollo Project," helping to creating tens of thousands of new jobs in the clean energy sector. But that would mean challenging the big oil and the pollution-based energy companies that such a move would undermine.

In other words, every serious solution would require a major confrontation with the state's incarcerators, polluters, and power-abusing corporations. And yet -- as we have seen -- those forces operate largely inside the California Democratic Party, not against it. (And the GOP is just as compromised -- and full of bigots, besides.)

So only someone from outside either party can propose (and fight for) the solutions we really need. Only a tough, independent candidate for governor could go to Sacramento, stand up to the entrenched interests and truly clean house.

So mid-way through the summer, I set out to recruit such a candidate. I chose independent columnist Arianna Huffington. Once a right-wing gadfly, she has moved steadily left over the past several years. She has consistently championed populist issues: campaign finance reform, ending the failed drug war, opposing the widening gap between rich and poor.

On TV and in her writings, she has exposed corporate abuses of power and opposed Bush's war. I knew that -- if she ran -- she would be able to attract enough money and media attention to press the tough issues.

So I helped launch RunAriannaRun.com to draft her into the race. When thousands of people sent her e-mails encouraging her to run, Arianna agreed to jump in.

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