WIKI
End Poverty in California (EPIC) was a political campaign started in 1934 by socialist writer Upton Sinclair (best known as author of The Jungle). The movement formed the basis for Sinclair’s campaign for Governor of California in 1934. The plan called for a massive public works program, sweeping tax reform, and guaranteed pensions. It gained major popular support, with thousands joining End Poverty Leagues across the state. EPIC never came to fruition due to Sinclair’s defeat in the 1934 election, but is seen as an influence on New Deal programs enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Sinclair laid out his vision for EPIC in his 1933 book I, Governor of California, and How I ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future. Specifically, the plan called for state seizure of idle factories and farm land where the owner had failed to pay property taxes. The government would then hire the unemployed to work on the farms and at the factories. The farms would then operate as self-sufficient, worker-run co-ops. EPIC also called for the implementation of California’s first state income tax. The tax was to be progressive, with the wealthiest being taxed at 30%. The plan would also have increased inheritance taxes and instituted a 4% tax on stock transfers. EPIC also included government-provided pensions for the old, disabled, and widowed. To implement EPIC, Sinclair called for the creation of three new government agencies: the California Authority for Land (CAL), the California Authority for Production (CAP), and the California Authority for Money (CAM). CAL was to implement the plan for seizure and cultivation of unused farm lands. CAP was to do the same for idle factories. CAM meanwhile was to be used to finance CAL and CAP by issuing scrip to workers and issues bonds for the purchase of lands, factories, and machinery.
The heads of Hollywood’s major movie studios strongly opposed EPIC, largely due to Sinclair’s proposal to hand over idle movie studio lots to unemployed film workers to make movies of their own. The studio heads reacted by threatening to move film operations to Florida and deducting money from employee paychecks to finance the campaign of Sinclair’s Republican opponent for governor, Frank Merriam.
without the backing of Roosevelt, Sinclair fell behind Merriam in the polls. On November 6, 1934, Merriam defeated Sinclair with 1,138,629 (48.9%) to Sinclair’s 879,537 (37.8%). Even in defeat, Sinclair received twice as many votes as any previous Democratic candidate for governor. In addition, two dozen candidates running on the EPIC platform were elected to the state legislature, including Culbert Olson, who became Governor four years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_Poverty_in_California
WIKI
With the open support of President Roosevelt, Olson ran for governor of California in the 1938 general elections against conservative Republican and anti-labor incumbent Governor Frank Merriam. Merriam, known for suppressing the 1934 Longshore Strike and his conservative fiscal policies, was a highly unpopular candidate among progressives and unionists, with even conservative Republicans angered by his 1935 tax reforms. Merriam lost soundly to Olson. He was the first Democrat to win the governorship since James Budd’s election in 1894, breaking the 40-year Republican dynasty over the governorship.
Olson pointed at progressives and the Left for his inspiration, citing that “[t]hey point the way forward - toward the achievement of the aspiration of the people for an economy that will afford general employment, abundant production, equitable distribution, social security and old age retirement, which our country, with its ample resources, great facilities and the genius of its people, is capable of providing.”
Olson refused to say “so help me God” during his oath of office to state Supreme Court Justice William H. Waste. Olson remarked earlier to Justice Waste that “God couldn’t help me at all, and that there isn’t any such person.”
his proposal of compulsory universal health insurance for every Californian was defeated. The Legislature also defeated legislation to raise income, bank and corporate taxes
A long-time supporter of nearly every Roosevelt position on economics, politics and foreign policy, on March 6, 1942, he testified before a U.S. House committee on the danger of allowing Japanese Americans to remain free: “Because of the extreme difficulty in distinguishing between loyal Japanese Americans, and there are many who are loyal to this country, and those other Japanese whose loyalty is to the Mikado. I believe in the wholesale evacuation of the Japanese people from coastal California.”
By the 1942 general elections, Republicans were accusing Olson of blatant partisan politics during wartime, citing Olson’s often bitter divides with the State Legislature. The Republican Party nominated California Attorney General Earl Warren as the party’s nominee for the governorship. Warren, a centrist Republican, campaigned as a moderate voice that would appeal to both liberals and conservatives during a time of war, where California was considered as a possible front line, while accusing Olson of being an uncompromising, left-wing Democrat.
Olson lost to Warren by a large margin. In later years, Olson blamed “the active hostility of a certain privately owned power corporation and the Roman Catholic Church in California” for his defeat.
He regained the public spotlight again in the 1950s, when the Legislature voted to exempt Catholic schools from real estate taxes. Olson filed an amicus curiae brief to the state Supreme Court, asking the court to explain how the state’s exemption of a religious organization from civil taxes was constitutional.
He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution. As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culbert_Olson