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Assemblymember Richard Bloom of Santa Monica introduced the “California Combating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israel Act” (AB 2844) to the California State Assembly last month. This bill seeks to block campaigns critical of the Israeli government’s illegal occupation of Palestine by withholding contracts with California state and local government agencies from companies that have withdrawn from doing business in Israel because of BDS campaigns. While the bill does not forbid BDS campaigns (that would violate our first amendment rights of free speech) it does interfere with BDS campaigns which are protected by the constitution.
AB 2844 may go before the Appropriations Committee as early as May 11th. It has already passed the Administrative and Judiciary committees over staff objections to the constitutionality of the bill. A coalition of 120 organizations is working to defeat the bill.
AB 2844 would impose a substantial burden and expense on state and local government:
- It would require the Attorney General’s Office (AG) to investigate and continually monitor the many thousands of companies that contract or with the state or local public agencies, to discover whether they start or stop engaging in activity the bill seeks to deter.
- The AG would have to maintain and publish a blacklist of such companies, notify those included, hear their appeals and defend the state in court if they sue — which is likely to happen, given how vague and confusing the criteria in AB 2844 are.
- Every state and local government agency that contracts with private business for any purpose would have to disqualify low bidders that appear on the AG blacklist.
- They would also have to seek out new partners when a contract with a blacklisted company ends – even if the company was performing well and its contract could have been renewed in a much simpler, less costly process.
- The state would have to cover all such expenses incurred by local agencies.
- The state would also have to pay for much more complex litigation when the constitutionality of AB 2844 is challenged.
Tom Daly (D- Anaheim)
david.miller@asm.ca.gov
916-319-2069
Ling-Ling Chang (R-Brea)
christopher.finarelli@asm.ca.gov
916-319-2055
Don Wagner (R-Tustin)
david.scheidt@asm.ca.gov
(916) 319-2068
As a lawyer, I look forward to them passing legislation this blatantly unconstitutional. It’s good for business — and I’d love to focus on this. But as a taxpayer, I find it infuriating.
Have they explained, Rashad, how one makes boycotting and divestment illegal? Would this make buying Israeli products mandatory? Would it make investing in Israeli companies mandatory, or would it just mean that once you had invested you’d better not sell?
I guess we may find out.
It wouldn’t make it mandatory, but if you’re an entity that choses to divest from companies that profit from the occupation, the State of California would no longer do businesses with you. Perhaps the Presbyterian Church?
Another example, Veolia, the French multinational transportation company that ran buses (Jewish-only) along the West Bank’s roads before the BDS campaign successfully demanded an end to Veolia’s complicity in the occupation. Last year, Veolia, which also contracted with the City of Los Angeles, announced it was selling off its investments in Israel. In this case Veolia may be targeted and lose the contract.
My point is that while it’s presumably clear if someone is supporting sanctions — a free speech act, of course — how do you even KNOW if someone is boycotting or divesting? I’ve sold stock because I want to sell stock, not out of some larger political principle. Would I have to hang on to some Israeli stock to prove that I wasn’t divesting? Would I have to buy some Israeli products to prove that I wasn’t boycotting? This bill is absurd.
Maybe you can add Allen’s press release to the bottom of the post so people can get a look at the mind of Travis Allen in action. It really is the lamest thing I have read in an awfully long time.
No, no.
Kang isn’t a carpetbagger because he lived in the district over a decade ago.
That’s worse.
No way. What imbecile said that?
Oh, you know, Dan ChielTRUMPsky. King of all that is righteous, defender of truth and justice, polisher of magnificent turds everywhere!
He’s also the master of words. All of them. Give that creep man baby fingers and you’ve got yourself a righteous clone.
Come to think of it, has anyone seen Dan’s hands lately?
Really? How funny. That’s exactly what Cunningham said about The Ackerwoman in 2009, and look how that turned out.
BTW, don’t challenge Lil’ Clumski’s manhood or you will get pushed around like the little asthmatic dude in the wheelchair at 5 AM boot camp.
I’m superior! I’m superior! Look at me! Validate me! Like me, like me!
What a bunch of fascist BS.
This idiot is bragging about his authorship of this crap:
http://ocpoliticsblog.com/2016/04/13/asm-travis-allens-bill-in-support-of-israel-passes-out-of-committee/
I’m not sure, based on your comment, whether “fascist,” “idiot,” and “crap” are aimed at Travis Allen or at Rashad. I hope that it’s a criticism of the bill. If you favor it, I’m surprised.
Here’s the press release you cite:
Accusing those companies who favor a boycott, etc., of “playing politics” is Orwellian and it criminalizes speech, given that simply the act of not BUYING a product from Israel is not remotely actionable, so it’s the expression of support that disqualifies a company from receiving state contracts. This has no place in the state code.
I apologize for calling Assemblyman Travis Allen an idiot. I was upset.
He is an asshat. He also came out in favor of STRs as some sort of “technology” driven industry. He obviously likes sniffing out cheap wins, but he seems to be tone deaf.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Can’t tell which side of the debate you’re on either. No need to reply; just being honest.
I’ve been uncomfortable with the BDS movement, because there *are* people within it who I consider bigoted against Jews. But I’ve started noting that it seems to be the only thing that Israeli leaders seem to fear. As such, it bears consideration — though I’d take a different approach to implementing it than I presume Rashad.would. (For me, it would be simply about changing Israeli policy using the tools available, meaning that partial measures could be useful.
I’m on the side that says this is unnecessary and ridiculous.
Unsurprisingly. Good.
Wow how would one go about patrolling this to ensure compliance?
“it would be simply about changing Israeli policy using the tools available, meaning that partial measures could be useful.”
I think somebody emptied out your tool shed.
Presumably intended for me, not Paul.
Well, they haven’t emptied it out yet. If this passed, it would be the strongest motivator I could imagine to embrace the BDS movement, because it would show just how far we as a society had gone off of the deep end.
The pro-Israel lobby has a stranglehold on Congress and they are not going to let go. Apparently they want California’s Legislature by the throat, too.
This will pass, I predict, even though idiotic and unenforceable.
Fortunately, the overreach is so blatant and obnoxious no court will uphold this.
*We need to ask Travis….what he thinks of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank. Just wondering. How about bulldozing all their Settlements in Gaza before they left? How about restricting movement within Gaza and the West Bank by Palestinians? Just wondering.
*Forgot – Two state solution? Yeah or Nay?
At least this means that people who complain about the outsized clout of the pro-Israel lobby even in state governments will have a pretty dramatic Exhibit A to trot out. This is so shameless that I’m surprised that it didn’t emanate from the Clinton campaign.
For once we all seem to be in agreement. The Age of Miracles hasn’t passed.
I would very much like OJB to inquire of out Congressional and State office candidates whether they support or oppose this effort.
Please start with Kang, Newman and Chang.
Diamond- I am not sure of the meaning of your last post. Does Hillary complain about the outsized clout of the pro-Israel lobby or are you mixing this up to slight our next president? It seems…well, small.
No, I think he’s saying Hill’ is bought-and-paid-for by the neocon, pro-Israel lobby (among other lobbies who have bough and paid for her).
Her AIPAC appearance was monstrous, even by AIPAC-appearance standards. Believe me, Hillary does not complain about the outsized clout of the pro-Likud-and-beyond lobby. (I don’t consider them the “pro-Israel” lobby for much the same reason as why I don’t consider Trump the “pro-America” candidate.)
I often wonder whether the liberal parties in Israel actually like having LIkud in power once in a while to do the dirty work so they can keep their own hands clean, Palestinian and Lebanon-wise.
In any case the lobby exists in Washington – propping up the “Israel Amen Corner,” as Pat Buchanan called it – whether Likud is in power or not; so there’s a distinction without much of a difference to me.
No, the liberal parties don’t like it. And they didn’t like the right-wing extremists’ assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, either.
The distinction does make a difference, my goyische colleague.
Travis Allen really is an asshat, a smooth car-salesman type whom I know well, as he’s been my assemblyman for several years now. He won by beating a fella – Troy Edgar – who seemed like an even sleazier car-salesman type; lately I’ve wondered if we made the wrong choice.
Travis is a smooth and loyal salesman for every klepto scheme in HB, shilling tirelessly for Poseidon and quietly supporting toll lanes on our freeways while steering every speech and conversation to how he helped save FIRE PITS. (Squirrel!)
Rashad, it’s hard to have much hope in Tom Daly, Don Wagner, and Ling Ling Chang doing anything that is both right and brave. (Though I could be wrong about Ling Ling – she WAS the only OC Republican to back the worthy DISCLOSE Act for more openness on the funders of initiatives. I still have to ask her why she did that, I hope it wasn’t just an accident.)
Nice to see all of us agree on this rotten bill, although I wouldn’t have called it “unnecessary and ridiculous” as Ryan did, but “un-American and unconstitutional.”
From “Jewish Voice for Peace,” just this second:
Dear Vern,
Here’s a quick lesson in policy process I just learned: do you know what a “suspense file” is? In the California legislature, it means a bill hasn’t been moved forward by committee yet – but also it’s not quite dead.
That’s where AB 2844, the anti-free speech, anti-BDS bill JVP and partners have been fighting for the last two months, sits today. And it means we have a real chance of defeating the thing entirely.
But we need to make sure the decision-makers know how many Californians support the right to boycott — whether to protest Israeli human rights violations or any other injustice.
Click here to contact Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez and ask that she prevent AB 2844 from moving forward as Chair of the Appropriations Committee: https://org.salsalabs.com/o/301/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=8417&okay=true Our app will connect you automatically and even provide a sample script!
As part of a coalition of dozens of organizations, JVP members have been working around-the-clock for months: we’ve sent thousands of messages to legislators, met with them in districts around the state, and published op-eds and letters to the editor to get our message out there.
And we helped bring 70 activists to Sacramento last Tuesday to meet face-to-face with legislators, including members of the Jewish Caucus, the first time they’ve heard from a group of organized Jews on this issue that carrying water for the Israeli government doesn’t mean they’re representing our community’s values.
Legislators and their staff keep telling us: they are counting how many messages they get on each side of this issue. And we can see that our work has already made an impact — the bill was amended to remove some of the most obvious violations of free speech, even as it remains an unconstitutional attempt to limit protected speech.
But, the bill is still alive, and if it passes it will still be a costly, unconstitutional measure that chills free speech and targets our global, grassroots movement of justice for Palestinians.
We know our opposition is large and well-funded, so we need to show that we’ve got people power on our side — can you take action now and tell legislators to stop AB 2844?
California is always a political bellwether for the entire country, and this legislation is part of a nationwide push to stifle our movement for justice in Palestine. If we can win here, it will echo across the country, and undercut the chances that parallel legislation will pass in other states.
A single call to a legislator is worth as much as many more signatures on a petition – so you can really make a big difference in the next 60 seconds if you click here and pick up the phone.
Let’s use that strength to send a clear message to CA legislators: defend our free speech, and our right to boycott, by opposing AB 2844!
https://org.salsalabs.com/o/301/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=8417&okay=true