O'Brien Kisses ALEC's Ring

"Petulant" is such a perfect word h/t (0.00 / 0)

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by: Lucy Edwards @ Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 10:47:50 AM UTC

Let's see if I can translate this correctly, (4.00 / 6)

1.

free-market health care,

death to women, children, elderly, and poor.

2.

tax fairness,

No taxes for millionaires, corporations, or other "job creators", only for property owners.

3.

tort reform

No suing anybody in  the first part of #2, above. 100% get-out-of-jail-free card for them.

4.

and a limited, more transparent government

Limited to managing women's bodies and everyone's bedroom activities, transparent because it's so thin it seems to disappear.

Did I miss anything?

Oh, yeah. ALEC is not an out-of-state activist organization, otherwise he'd be agin it.

November 2012
Hope for a return to sanity.

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by: GreyMike @ Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 13:49:46 PM UTC

transparency (0.00 / 0)

Thanks to you and Blue Hampshire, and thanks to Arnie's wonderful new show, my grave concerns about NH media are subsiding a bit. That media missed so much of the story, for too long. And now they're going to have a hard time keeping up with you both.

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by: victoriap @ Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 18:00:28 PM UTC

He's travelin' along, singing their song... (0.00 / 0)

"When men on the corp-board
Get up and tell me where to go
And I've just had some kind of meltdown
And my mind is moving slow
I'll ask ALEC
I think they'll know..."

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by: cmnh @ Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 18:04:08 PM UTC

check out this post and ALEC press release sent out yesterday...public pressure and exposure may be working! (4.00 / 1)

ALEC Announces It Will No Longer Focus on Social Issues
Posted: April 17, 2012

ALEC has sent out a press release announcing a very significant change in its organizational structure and goals. The headline: ALEC Sharpens Focus on Jobs, Free Markets and Growth - Announces the End of the Task Force that Dealt with Non-Economic Issues. Here's the gist:

   "We are refocusing our commitment to free-market, limited government and pro-growth principles, and have made changes internally to reflect this renewed focus.

   "We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy. The remaining budgetary and economic issues will be reassigned....

   "Our free-market, limited government, pro-growth policies are the reason ALEC enjoys the support of legislators on both sides of the aisle and in all 50 states. ALEC members are interested in solutions that put the American economy back on track. This is our mission, and it is what distinguishes us."

Except those really aren't the reasons ALEC was founded. The brains behind ALEC were Paul Weyrich, who also founded the Heritage Foundation and joined with Jerry Falwell to found Moral Majority, and other right wing legislators focused on social issues like Henry Hyde.

   One of the first to envision fusing the conservative movement with evangelicals, he and the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority as well. In fact, Weyrich coined the phrase the "moral majority". No believer in majority rule, he said: "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." His statement was a harbinger to ALEC's later very dogged voter suppression activities. "Recently Voter ID legislation based on ALEC's template was introduced in states across the country and passed in at least fourteen states," under the guise of preventing election fraud.

So voter suppression was part of the organization's charter, apparently....
http://skydancingblog.com/2012...

  please read the rest of this blog post

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by: political chowder @ Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 20:08:18 PM UTC

Just like when the teabaggers were campaigning... (4.00 / 2)

...and they pointedly lied about not focusing on social issues (which they focused on relentlessly right after the election). I don't believe for one single minute that ALEC is changing its focus at all. They're just changing their PR approach. It won't work. You can't unring the bell.

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by: DianeR @ Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 22:23:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

There is still enough (4.00 / 5)

REALLY bad ALEC legislation out there to go around, though.

Here is a fact that should help you to fight a little longer.
Things that don't actually kill you outright make you stronger.

Piet Hein, Grooks

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by: Lucy Weber @ Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 00:03:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Neither! (4.00 / 1)

My Grandmother, a very politically aware and active person, used to wear a pin that stated "The Moral Majority is neither."
This was back in the 70s and early 80s. It seems we fight against the very same people she was fighting, and their baton-carriers.

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by: Icicle @ Fri Apr 20, 2012 at 13:21:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The Speaker and ALEC (0.00 / 0)

As one who has been sounding the alarm about ALEC since last fall, I found the Speakers pontifications to be most interesting.  My first thought was one I learned from my grandmother.  "Better to be thought unenlightened (or any noun of choice) than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." What a strange parallel universe he lives in.  

"It is true that the law can't change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless."  Martin Luther King

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by: cyndychase @ Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 01:14:37 AM UTC

NYT article about ALEC (0.00 / 0)

I'm really glad this is getting more attention. Corporate-authored legislation will be the death of us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04...

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by: Icicle @ Mon Apr 23, 2012 at 03:19:18 AM UTC