Excerpt: "ALEC provides 'model bills' to state legislatures, all of which are previously seen by ALEC's corporate board. These model bills are aimed at taking the teeth out of government regulation, giving lavish tax breaks to the wealthy, and using the resulting budget deficits to privatize institutions like schools and prisons."
House Speaker John Boehner at the White House, 11/30/11. (photo: Getty Images)
ALEC: Democracy's Arch-Nemesis
18 July 11
Reader Supported News | Perspective
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n an 1864 letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Abraham Lincoln warned, "... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
In the buildup to the bloodiest war of the 20th century, Benito Mussolini said, "Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power." He is one of history's most reviled characters for good reason.
Now, corporations like Koch Industries are funneling money into the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a shadowy partnership between Republican legislators and corporate lobbyists. Essentially, ALEC's purpose is to pass laws that enrich corporate profits and investor returns by starving the government of revenue, rigging elections and union-busting.
Unlike the strictly bipartisan National Council of State Legislatures, ALEC's membership is rabidly partisan, with 103 Republicans and 1 Democrat. 98% of ALEC's funding comes from corporations, whereas NCSL is funded almost entirely through legislative dues. And though NCSL shares its views and advice on certain policy, it doesn't write legislation and forbids corporate influence on its activities.
ALEC provides "model bills" to state legislatures, all of which are previously seen by ALEC's corporate board. These model bills are aimed at taking the teeth out of government regulation, giving lavish tax breaks to the wealthy, and using the resulting budget deficits to privatize institutions like schools and prisons. These bills are introduced in multiple statehouses with no required disclosure about an outside group of corporate lobbyists originally crafting the legislation. Some of ALEC's notable alumni include Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Governor Scott Walker.
Some of ALEC's model budget bills would repeal capital gains taxes and estate taxes, fattening the pockets of millionaire hedge-fund managers and trust-fund brats while putting public goods and services under the knife. ALEC's 1995 "Sound Federal Fiscal Policy Resolution" falsely antagonizes higher taxes as the source of higher deficits (instead of the aforementioned tax breaks for the wealthy). This would steer lawmakers toward needless budget cuts that systematically starve the states of jobs and tax dollars, blow massive holes in the budget and create whopping revenue shortfalls.
ALEC's "Legislative Budget Audit Commission Act" would establish a panel in the event of one of these pre-packaged revenue shortfalls, tasked with specifically recommend privatizing or eliminating state agencies, and to present these proposals on January 15. Effectively, this bill would steer all initial legislative business, using revenue shortages as an excuse to eliminate public programs and public workers' rights to organize under the guise of "government efficiency."
By creating a unique legal grey area between lobbying for laws and writing laws, ALEC has enabled the plundering of our state coffers, leaving our tax dollars and public services at the mercy of corporate executives who aren't held accountable by the democratic process. ALEC is big business' tool to circumvent democracy, letting those with the most money write their own laws.
We should heed both Lincoln's and Mussolini's words, and not be afraid to point out fascism when we see it. ALEC's work is an affront to democracy, and its legislation must be soundly rejected in all statehouses if Lincoln's vision of the Republic is to prevail.
Carl Gibson, 24, of Lexington, Kentucky, is a spokesman and organizer for US Uncut, a nonviolent, creative direct-action movement to stop budget cuts by getting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. He graduated from Morehead State University in 2009 with a B.A. in Journalism before starting the first US Uncut group in Jackson, Mississippi, in February of 2011. Since then, over 20,000 US Uncut activists have carried out more than 300 actions in over 100 cities nationwide.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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It is time to start samizdat - not difficult in Internet age.
USA became TOTALITARIAN system.
It has become obvious to a casual observer that our clandestine agencies, military leaders, and most politicians require "spin" to whitewash various acts of malfeasance. Why? They aren't held accountable anyway, so why bother to cover-up anything? It is a result of wanting to "appear" as being pure and not a criminal. Actuality be damned. Appearance is everything ... substance is unimportant.
It is important that history records that our gubmint didn't screw the pooch on 9/11 and everybody did exactly what they were supposed to do and what we citizens are paying them to do. Those clever Saudis merely out-smarted us and that is what caused 9/11. But we are smarter now and that is why you cannot know the secrets we have put into place to preclude any such future events. We will keep you safe. We intercept all of your email to keep you "safe". We'll even open your snail mail to keep you "safe". And we listen to your telephone calls to keep you "safe". And we took away some of your constitutional rights to keep you safe. Now you did stock up on duct tape, right? Pigs.
And, yes, if Bradley Manning has had a part in letting us see "Collateral murder by helicopter" in Iraq, he has done a very unpatriotic thing and should not only be prosecuted but should be persecuted before he is prosecuted. In the very spirit of the Mad Queen of Hearts, we hear Obama squealing: "Sentence first, verdict later!" What a fraud the man is! Anyone who defends him should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who promotes his renomination will deserve the ruin it would promote.
Link TV is showing "Apology" as I write.
When people say that the first question (if they are conservative) is what policies did Obama change or eliminate as compared to the Bush Administration. They can not come up with anything.
If they are liberal I ask the who would they choose to be the leader of the United States? And to that there is silence.
Many are disappointed with Obama because they didn't know that he was slightly right of center to begin with. I had hoped that he would have pulled a little more to the left but am not terribly surprised he has not.
But compared to the list of idiots on the Republican side, he is a far more sane proposition. Personally, I LIKE clean air and clean water. I prefer that CDC remains to do its work. However, I would like to see a reduction in our military - we are not the policemen of the world (and if we are, we've really done a bad job of it).
is it not obvious that the most uncomplicated way to explain this catastrophic failure of government in the exercise of its responsibilitie s is that there was a stand-down order in place? Reading FAA and other intergovernment al communications of 9/11, I find indications of this order everywhere.
Some find it comforting to say "only a conspiracy theorist would say such a thing." Let me suggest that what such people are left with is more extreme than the theory they dismiss out of hand. They must belief some great arcane force--the Wicked Witch of the
West perhaps--cast a spell over the entire government of the United States and made all routine functions of government impossible to perform as 9/11 came.
After all, the Commies-Sociali sts-French-Radi cal Islamists-Brown People-AntiChri sts-East Coast Elitist Democrats-quich e eating Boston Red Sox-et al. are of the "East" and only we purehearts are of the "West."