Let’s Rain Down A Storm Of Protest And Blow ALEC Out Of The States

Limited Government · Free Markets · Federalism

By Dennis S  02/25/2012

The author of this article had tried to get an answer from South Carolina's Governor, Republican Nikki R. Haley about the American Legislative Exchange Council. 

Let me emphasize that this corporate-run organization is the most powerful political force in America. They convene several national meetings of legislators and corporate leaders every year. ALEC oft-times picks up the meals and lodging tabs for the more powerful of the state senators and representatives who attend. They also pay mysterious ‘fees’ for vague services under headings like ‘educational’. At the Task Force meetings or summits or whatever they chose to call them, ALEC herds your elected officials, corporate heavyweights and the occasional ‘foundation’ seeking special favors, into little rooms that we used to call back rooms. Together, with no input from constituents, they hammer out the basics of the model legislation that will be taken back to the legislator’s General Assemblies and often voted into law.

ALEC model legislation dominates most state legislatures. Unlike the precious state’s rights whinnys we hear snorted by the right-wing, there is no such thing as an isolated state legislative monolith. There is a collection of states that are under the aegis of a shadow government of the U.S. with arguably more power as a collective entity than the federal government. Think Vatican here. There are individual Catholic churches throughout the world, but the final and definitive word comes from Rome.

ALEC is Rome.

The ALEC corporate roster, always heavily represented at the gatherings just described, is the who’s who of the corporate world. Serving on the ALEC Corporate Board are 2 of the 3 wealthiest publicly traded companies in the world; the wealthiest privately held company in the world, the 3 top health care companies in the U.S. and 4 of the top 10 pharmaceuticals, including number 1 Johnson & Johnson.

With the invaluable aid of ALEC insiders, a brave whistle blower and the extraordinary research of the Center for Media and Democracy, a list of corporations, trade organizations, law firms and non-profits has emerged for your viewing pleasure. Enter alec exposed wiki in your search engine. The first entry will be the comprehensive report that I’ve been referencing. PR Watch, Source Watch and Common Cause are contributors to this exposure as well. You find no end of other investigative sites targeting ALEC on the Internet.

Well over 350 corporations have claimed ALEC membership over the years. Their numbers include the leaders of every business segment; technology, energy, service industries, health care, pharmaceuticals, insurance, education, food and drink, retail, communications– you name the sector and you’ll find Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Exxon-Mobil, Pfizer, Duke Energy, the Koch brothers, AT & T, State Farm – all the big boys, with one hand extended to ALEC and the other in the taxpayer’s pocket.

The non-profits named as members are a joke. You’ll find the most extreme right-wing foundations, think tanks and institutes on the planet…to wit: the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation and the Heartland Institute; it is humanly impossible to be more anti-environment than Heartland. Then there’s the Jeb Bush Foundation for Excellence in Education that I’ve already written about. The Cato Institute is also a proud member.

While I’m on the subject of tax reform and crazies, Americans for Tax Reform is another ALEC member. ATR is headed by Grover Norquist, most famous for his quote (paraphrasing, because there are dozens of versions) that he wanted to…”shrink government down to a size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” This guy is a little creepy. Who thinks of drowning anything in a bathtub? And how about the National Taxpayers Union, anther one of those starve government outfits with certified political crazies, Steve Forbes and J. Kenneth Blackwell on their board.

Considering their laughable non-partisan claim, the ALEC non-profit membership nakedly flaunts partisanship with the inclusion of the National Right to Work Committee in their ranks. Then there’s the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. This climate-denying outfit founded by a father and his two sons actually thinks global warming will be DAMN GOOD for mankind. Private school and voucher interests are well represented and there’s one group that gives certifiable official lie to any claim that ALEC is non-partisan. Get this title – The Republican Legislative Campaign Committee dedicated to electing more Republicans to State Legislatures. Sure, there are a few blue dog dems, but they’re like the poor kid with his nose pressed against the window of a candy store…just a whiff and no more.

The last of the 93 non-profits I’ll talk about is the Family Research Council, a deeply religious Obama and homosexual-hating far right cheerleader for theocratic government. FRC is holding a ‘values voters’ summit in September where they’ll tell the goobers who to vote for. The remainder of the non-profits are equally ‘non-partisan’.

There are also a number of Trade Group members. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce being perhaps the most prominent. There are other heavy hitting trade groups representing health plans, the petroleum industry, nuclear, cable and telecommunications, tort reform, banks & manufacturers, among many other special interests groups. Am I detecting a trend here?

What to do about this power cult?  In an upcoming feature, I’ll include an FOIA request I recently made to the representative who serves as one of the state chairpersons for ALEC South Craolina. You can use that as a model to send to whomever holds the same post in your state. The usually secretive ALEC actually lists the names of their state leaders on their website, www.alec.org. When you get to the site, click ‘about’ on the task bar under the name ALEC. At the bottom of that menu, you’ll find the ‘state chairmen’ prompt.

If you get no response from your FOIA, call the local media and your state Democratic Party chairman. Email your friends about ALEC and tell them to email their friends. Drop a line to the “Letter to the Editor’. Tell the local democratic state rep and senator candidates to make it a campaign issue.

A storm of protest is the best way to flush out the stench of this anti-American embarrassment to democracy. Let’s all crank up a citizen Nor’easter and blow this bunch out of our legislatures.

Elderly teacher and sex ed, plus Utah's non-sex ed classes

The Utah legislature is ready to pass a law, that first mandated absolutely no sex education shall be taught and prohibited teacher from answering any human reproductive questions by students. However, they have amended it to leave the choice up to the school district about teaching sex education or not. BUT with that said, if a district chooses to teach sex education, it can only teach abstinence only and prohibited from talking about condoms, STDs, birth control, pregnancy or anything else related to human sexuality and the reproductive organs, other than identifying them in the body in human anatomy class.

But even human anatomy class was a touch and go debate, but decided it was OK to include them since the textbooks talked about the reproductive organs and showed them in the drawings in the textbooks, so it would be impossible to have the publisher remove the subject of reproduction just for Utah's schools.

This is of course why Rick Santorum is advocating home schooling and small local private schools who can select what they teach the kids and exclude anything that may offend the parents, like science, human anatomy, sex ed, social science, political science, civics, history and replacing all of that deleted courses with religious teachings from the Christian Bible.

Of course their attitude is ignorance is the best education, that goes for science as well, as in trying to include intelligent design as a science when teaching evolution and mandating that the kids be taught that the US is NOT a democracy, but a compound constitutional republic, whatever that is.

So in light of this ignorance and the sex education debate, here is a little joke to give you a laugh.

An elderly, single, third grade teacher was informed she would have
to teach sex education.

She was quite upset and refused the assignment. She didn't think she
would actually be able to talk about the subject. Eventually, she
changed her mind as the alternative was to be fired.

On the first day of school she drew a woman's body on the blackboard,
pointed to the chest and asked the class "Does anyone know what
this is called?"

Jane, who was sitting in the first row, raised her hand and answered
"It's called a 'breast' and my mommy has two of them!"

"Very good," said the teacher. Then she drew a male body on the
board, pointed to the groin, and asked "Does anyone know what
this is called?"

This time Billy raised his hand. "I know what it is! It's called a
'penis' and my daddy has two of them."

"That's the right name," said the teacher, but I don't think your
daddy has two of them."

"Yes he does!" said Billy. "He has a little one that he uses to pee,
and big one he brushes mommy's teeth with!"

4 New Hamphire Laws that are in the TWILIGHT ZONE!

GOP Lawmakers Pass Bill Making Public School Curriculum Optional

By Marie Diamond on Jan 5, 2012 at 9:20 am

As the country shifts its attention from the Iowa caucus to the upcoming primary in New Hampshire, the state’s Republican legislators are busy passing some of the most radically conservative laws in the country. Today the GOP-controlled Senate passed HB 542, which allows parents to pull their children out of any school lesson that the parent objects to, forcing the school to design an alternative lesson. Their House colleagues approved the measure earlier last year.
The measure is so extreme that even the conservative Union-Leader editorial board denounced it in July:

House Bill 542 would have amended state law to “Require school districts to adopt a policy allowing an exception to specific course material based on a parent’s or legal guardian’s determination that the material is objectionable.” Though that sounds appealing at first blush, it is so broad that it would make public education essentially an a la carte menu.
It is true that public schools are too inflexible and don’t allow enough choice. They would benefit greatly from the competition that comes from charter schools and vouchers. But this bill put the burden on each public school to create a curriculum catered to each family’s individual tastes. Schools would have to provide alternatives to any instruction a family opposed, and a family could oppose anything for any reason. That is neither workable, nor sensible.

The bill will now go to Gov. John Lynch’s (D) desk. Lynch, who vetoed an earlier version of the same bill, is expected to nix it once again. He pointed out in his last veto message that the bill failed to clearly define what material would be objectionable — allowing any parent to withdraw their child for almost any reason.

New Hampshire’s Democratic Party immediately condemned the move, calling it “an unprecedented attack” on “New Hampshire children’s right to a quality education.” “In fact it will end education in New Hampshire as we know it, allowing children to be removed from any lessons their parents choose, algebra, English language arts, health education, American history, the civil or women’s rights movement, science, absolutely anything,” they said.

The party chair pointed out that the bill places an enormous financial burden on cash-strapped towns and cities by requiring school districts to create a unique curriculum for each and every student.

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New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bills That Prevent Police From Protecting Domestic Abuse Victims

By Marie Diamond on Jan 26, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policy for handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime. That’s an exceedingly dangerous change. Consider the following scenario, one outlined for lawmakers by retired Henniker police chief Tim Russell:
An officer is called to a home where she sees clear evidence that an assault has occurred. The furniture is overturned, the children are sobbing, and the face of the woman of the house is bruised and bleeding. It’s obvious who the assailant was, but the officer arrived after the assault occurred. It’s a small department, and no one else on the force is available to keep the peace until the officer finds a judge or justice of the peace to issue a warrant. The officer leaves, and the abuser renews his attack with even more ferocity, punishing his victim for having called for help. [...]

It’s impossible to say how many lives the policy, in place since the 1970s, has saved or how many injuries it’s prevented. If they adopt House Bill 1581, lawmakers might find out, but the price paid could be extraordinarily high.

The other bill Republicans have proposed, HB 1608, limits judges’ ability to order the arrest of someone who has violated a domestic violence restraining order by contacting or abusing the person named in the order. It would also prevent judges from ordering defendants to surrender their weapons or block them from buying guns.

Police say the bill stops them from intervening to protect victims. For instance, they would be stripped of their power to arrest someone who is threatening to use violence against a victim or child. It’s unclear why New Hampshire Republicans have set their sights on repealing protections for abuse victims when promised to focus on economic priorities.

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New Hampshire GOP Bill Mandates That New Laws Find Their Origin In 1215 English Magna Carta

By Marie Diamond on Jan 4, 2012 at 3:10 pm

New Hampshire Republicans are taking textual originalism to a whole new level: three lawmakers have proposed a bill that requires that all legislation find its origin not in the U.S. constitution, but an English document crafted in 1215.

When the legislature reconvenes this month, Republicans want their colleagues to justify many new bills with a direct quote from the 800-year-old Magna Carta:

House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.

“All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived,” is the bill’s one sentence.

The Magna Carta, while famed as the first major declaration of rights under English monarchy, is a bit outdated in its actual prose.

The Magna Carta is indisputably an important historical document, with ideas about liberty that inspired America’s founders. But as the Concord Monitor points out, the substance of the document is fixated on the tedium of feudal times, and has little if any relevance to modern American life.

New Hampshire lawmakers might have trouble applying passages like, “We shall straightway return the son of Llewelin and all the Welsh hostages,” or, “If anyone who has borrowed a sum of money from Jews dies before the debt has been repaid, his heir shall pay no interest on the debt for so long as he remains under age.”

One of the bill’s sponsors admitted that he wasn’t terribly familiar with the actual text, and mainly saw the measure as an homage. New Hampshire Democratic Party spokesman Ray Buckley said he was “mostly speechless” when he heard about the bill. “I appreciate all the hard work the Republican legislators are putting into the effort to make them look like extremists,” he said. “Saves us the trouble.”

Conservatives have long prided themselves on being constitutional “purists” who want to strip government down to the basic form they say was laid out in the country’s founding document. But requiring textual justification from another country’s founding document, which has no legal history or authority in the U.S., is a curious extension of that principle.

As the country’s focus shifts from the Iowa caucus to the more influential New Hampshire primary, it’s worth noting that the state’s Republicans apparently trying to repeal not just the 20th century “welfare state,” or even the 20th century, but the modern era entirely.

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New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bill To Eliminate Workers’ Lunch Breaks

By Pat Garofalo on Feb 8, 2012 at 3:00 pm

  

New Hampshire’s GOP legislature has come up with all manner of absurd bills recently, including a proposal making public school curriculum optional, another to prevent police from protecting domestic abuse victims, and even a measure mandating that new laws be based on the Magna Carta. Some of the Granite State’s GOP lawmakers have even proposed doing away with the law that requires employers to give their workers time off for lunch, under the rationale that all employers will simply grant lunch breaks out of the goodness of their hearts:

“This is an unneeded law,” [Republican state Representative Kyle Jones] said. “If I was to deny one of my employees a break, I would be in a very bad position with the company’s human resources representative. If you consider that this is a very easy law to follow in that everyone already does it, then why do we need it? Our constituents have already proven that they have enough common sense to do this on their own.”

The bill’s sponsor, state representative J.R. Hoell, argued that companies failing to provide lunch breaks would be shamed over social media, thus rendering the law unnecessary. “If they are not letting people have lunch, they could put it out though the news media, though social media. I don’t think that abusive behavior would continue, the way communications are today,” he said.

Of course, not every employer can be counted to to follow even the easiest of requirements to look after workers’ health and rights. Back in 2005, Walmart was forced to pay $172 million for denying workers their lunch breaks. Pyramid Breweries Inc. settled a case in 2008 for $1.5 million. Just a few months ago, California ordered Embassy Suites to pay workers tens of thousands of dollars for forcing them to skip breaks.

“The fact that in 2012, I would be even sitting in front of the Labor Committee talking about eliminating the lunch hour is outrageous,” said Mark MacKenzie, New Hampshire’s state AFL-CIO representative.

“People should at least be able to be given the opportunity to eat.” Fortunately, the bill does not seem too appealing to most of the New Hampshire legislature, and the state House’s labor committee adjourned yesterday without voting on it.