Cashing In On Kids

Because if you can't make a profit off the little buggers, why bother "educating" them at all?

Think Progress:

School privatization laws crafted by corporate interests have been introduced in nearly every state in the first half of 2013, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. 43 states and the District of Columbia are considering school legislation developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the umbrella organization that pushes state laws catered to business interests on a myriad of topics.

CMD’s report, “Cashing In On Kids,” details 139 separate ALEC-designed bills promoting for-profit education in the states and D.C. this year alone. Three states have considered school voucher programs, and 10 have taken up another ALEC measure that funnels public dollars to private schools via tax credits. Three states have considered the “Virtual Schools Act,” which spends taxpayer money on an online education model “few educators think is appropriate for young children.” So-called “Parent Trigger” laws designed by ALEC and the conservative Heartland Institute have come up in 12 states.

School vouchers do not generally raise student achievement, according to a Center on Education Policy review of years of research. CEP noted that even though most of that research has been funded by the for-profit education industry, it fails to make a convincing case for the superiority of privatized education. If kids are not benefiting, who is?

“Cashing In On Kids” notes that Wisconsin taxpayers have sent nearly two billion dollars to for-profit, religious, and online schools since Milwaukee became the nation’s first school vouchers city in 1990. School voucher programs in Florida, Georgia, and Oklahoma have sent taxpayer money to schools that teach creationism. In Louisiana, almost none of the private schools receiving voucher funds have maintained the separate accounts for public dollars which the law requires, making it impossible to audit their use of the funds. Just two schools have been properly audited, and one of them relies on uncertified teachers and “plopping students in front of televisions to watch lessons on DVDs.”

For-profit school companies exercise substantial political influence, not only at the state level through ALEC but via federal campaign contributions. The Center for Responsive Politics reported on Monday that the Chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. John Kline (R-MN), got $116,000 from the for-profit education industry in the second quarter of 2013 alone. CRP data show the industry spent over $1.7 million in the 2012 elections, and over $7 million since 1989, on direct campaign contributions in congressional races. The industry spent more than $40 million lobbying Congress since the early 2000s. Restore Our Future, the super PAC dedicated to electing Mitt Romney during last year’s presidential election, collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from for-profit higher education companies.

 Four ALEC Kids-Are-Cash bills are ready to be introduced into the Kentucky General Assembly:

KY	Environmental Literacy Improvement Act	HB 269
KY	The Great Schools Tax Credit (Scholarship Tax Credit) Act	HB 66
KY	The Next Generation Charter Schools Act	HB 76
KY	The Special Needs Scholarship Program Act	HB 155

Ignore the lying titles: these are bills to destroy public education, privatize all schools and turn poor kids into ATMs for the Koch brothers.

But even ALEC's depredations are enough for some repugs.  From Wonkette:

http://wonkette.com/523024/lets-not-educate-our-kids-anymore-suggests-genius-utah-senator

As we are sure you know, those laboratories of democracy have been very busy lately forcing women to have children against their will. But one Republican state senator from Utah is quite a multi-tasker! Because he has also found time to call for an end to mandatory education, looking to the Victorian era of Dickensian workhouses as a model for the state to pattern itself after:

A Republican state senator in Utah is calling for the end of mandatory education in the state.

State Sen. Aaron Osmond (R-South Jordan) wrote on the state Senate blog Friday that mandatory education in the state has forced teachers and schools to take on parenting responsibilities. Prior to the mandate taking effect in 1890, he wrote, education was “an opportunity” and parents were more engaged.

Definitely, we should look to pre-1890, when the country was in the throes of a largely unregulated Industrial Revolution, when setting political, legal, and social standards for children today. So in addition to scrapping the mandatory education requirement of the 1890s, we should also get rid of the child labor laws that are a product of the 1890s, because why let children go to school when they could be learning the dignity of work instead?

Anyway, the solution to our current woes, says Osmond, is to move all decision-making to local communities. (Unless the local communities make a decision that the state doesn’t like, in which case, the governor can veto it, because “the state” is still a meaningful construct when it is useful to those in power.)

Osmond called on parents to decide whether or not their children should go to school, and asked for exploration into how much time children should be in school. He wrote that the state should not mandate 990 hours a year of education, and instead should let local school districts make the decision.

No way anything could go wrong there!

Last word to Wonkette commenter AngryBlakGuy:

...and in other news the state of Utah has closed all of its hospitals and instead will open FAITH HEALING clinics! As a side note: as a compromise with democrats, women will be able to "pray away" their pregnancies as an alternative to abortions!

How Conservatives Hide Government From Its Citizens

It'll start in the fall, as legislators pre-file bills for the General Assembly session in January. Bills with inocuous or even progressive-sounding names that hide provisions to break the social compact, eliminate jobs and create a lords-and-serfs economy.

And we won't even be able to find out how it happened.

Charlie Pierce:

The main point of the reign of Scott Walker, the twice-elected goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, has been to dismantle the laws and traditions of progressive government that originated in that very state, because if they can do this in Wisconsin, they can do it anywhere. (For example, in the newly insane state of North Carolina.) One of the most important of these Wisconsin reforms was one of the toughest open-records laws that any state had.

Except maybe not so much.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC, is being challenged for using Internet drop boxes and broad new assertions of privacy to shield from public view the discussions of elected officials and corporate leaders it brings together to write model legislation for state governments. In particular, the Arlington, Va.-based group has begun adding a disclaimer to documents it provides to state lawmakers contending that the material - including meeting agendas and policy proposals - isn't subject to the Wisconsin Open Records Law or similar laws in any state. Advocates for so-called sunshine laws said they couldn't see how Wisconsin lawmakers could legally withhold ALEC materials from public view. "A stamp by a private non-governmental group saying the records that it shares with lawmakers are not subject to open records laws should carry no weight," said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. "Absolutely none."

The evidence is that ALEC understands this basic principle as well.

Leah Vukmir, a Republican state senator from Wauwatosa, also serves as the group's national treasurer. She attended an ALEC conference in Oklahoma City in May. The center made a records request of Vukmir about a month before the conference, when ALEC typically distributes conference materials, and another request after she returned, said the Madison-based group's general counsel, Brendan Fischer. Vukmir's spokesman, Jason Booth, said he would have a comment next week. It's not clear why Vukmir hasn't turned over any meeting agendas or materials related to proposals that ALEC representatives discussed, including one sponsored by Vukmir that was passed unanimously, Fischer said. "They are a very secretive organization," Fischer said. "Their meetings are closed to the public, closed to the press, and the only way we've been able to get any information is through records requests."

Basically, ALEC is making the point that its work with legislators is not subject to the open-records law because it says that it's not. (Why ALEC has gone to such lengths to conceal what it's doing is an interesting question surely coming to a court near you.) The other point is that there is no Scott Walker, and ALEC. There is no Republican party, the conservative movement, and independent conservative organizations, think-tanks etc. It is all one movement with very defined goals. And if they can do it there, they can do it anywhere, and they're halfway home.

What ALEC-birthed monstrosity is your legislator getting ready to file?

Bills to Watch Out For

If we learned nothing else from the stealth passage of the Right to Freeload by the Michigan legislature, we learned that you cannot take your eyes off those motherfuckers for an instant.

The Kentucky General Assembly opens its 2013 session next week and you just know they're champing at the bit to show that when it comes to fucking over their constituents, Michigan lawmakers ain't got nothing on Kentucky's corrupt morons.

As Steve M writes:

So the GOP has plenty of agenda left. The agenda is making America either Republican or ungovernable. Parts of America are the former, and in D.C. the Republicans will settle for the latter -- for now.

Here are some Top 10 ALEC/Koch Brothers/freakazoid hits probably coming to Frankfort next week:

vaginal probe/forcing doctors to rape their patients

right to freeload

drug testing (non-corporate) welfare recipients

voter suppression

tax cuts for corporations but not for working families

vouchers/charter schools (your tax dollars for religious indoctrination)

"conscience" or "religious freedom" - allowing doctors and pharmacists to refuse to give you legal treatment and drugs you need because they don't like it.

gut Obamacare: various attempts to prevent Governor Beshear from expanding Medicaid and building an insurance exchange.

Look for them here.

Some Things to Keep in Mind During the NRA's Announcement Today

Besides the fact that everything the NRA says is a lie, including "and" and "the."

Think Progress:

Since 1982, the nation has experienced at least 62 mass murders in 30 states and in at least 49 cases, “the gunmen obtained the weapons legally, and the majority of those weapons used were semi-automatic.” 

One of them was the Heath High School shooting in Paducah, Kentucky in 1997.

A Mother Jones analysis of 61 mass murders over the last 30 years found that “in not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.” As one leading expert explained, “given that civilian shooters are less likely to hit their targets than police in these circumstances,” arming civilians could often lead to more chaos and deaths. 

Digby:

Oh, and one more thing:

The retail sale of machine guns has been barred by federal law since the gangster era, but at ALEC's "policy summit" in Scottsdale in December, 2011, the NRA successfully obtained the approval of the ALEC crime task force for a modified "model" bill that would ban cities from barring the sale of "machine guns," expressly. The Center for Media & Democracy documented this in its two-part special report on how the NRA's gun agenda has thrived while Koch Industries has helped lead ALEC through its seat on ALEC's corporate board and on its crime task force last year. (Koch continues to bankroll and back ALEC.)

ALEC also strongly opposed the 1994 "Assault Weapons Ban," which sought to prevent the U.S. sale of semi-automatic weapons, similar to the notorious AK-47 -- a rapid-fire style weapon that has been used in numerous mass murders in the U.S. That ban has since expired. ALEC also filed papers with the courts calling for city bans on guns to be struck down as unconstitutional. And, ALEC's move in January, 2012 to urge state legislators to prevent city officials from limiting access to machine guns comes in the wake of an earlier decision by new justices on the U.S. Supreme Court who struck down D.C.'s gun ban, in part at ALEC's request. 

The NRA's gun agenda helps protect and expand the market for the firearms sold by the weapons companies that bankroll its multi-million dollar lobbying and influence operations. Although ALEC's crime task force no longer officially exists, ALEC is doing nothing to undo the damage done through its many years of advancing the wish list of the gun industry through laws like SYG, pushing for guns on college campuses, and even opposing codes of conduct for gun makers and sellers.

Recent ALEC "Model" Bills on Guns"

• ALEC Resolution on McDonald vs. Chicago Exposed

• Campus Personal Protection Act Exposed

• Castle Doctrine Act Exposed

• Concealed Carry Outright Recognition Act Exposed

• Concealed Carry True Reciprocity Act Exposed

• Consistency in Firearms Regulation Act Exposed

• Criminal History Record Check for Firearm Sales Act Exposed

• Defense of Free Market and Public Safety Resolution Exposed

• Emergency Powers Firearm Owner Protection Act Exposed

• Resolution on Child Firearms Safety Exposed

• Resolution on Firearms Purchase Waiting Periods Exposed

• Resolution on Semicopy Exposed

• Resolution on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Exposed

• Youth Firearm Safety Resolution Exposed

At least some of those bills are likely to be introduced when the Kentucky General Assembly convenes the first week of January. Let's keep an eye out for them.

Go Charter - or the Kids Get It

You people are just not rejecting public schools in favor of corporate drone factories fast enough. Time for some Two-Minute Hate!

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

There is a frontal assault on public schools coming (Saturday), courtesy of Phil Anschutz, ALEC and Wal-Mart. ProPublica has the story:

The world’s largest private-sector employer and the country’s most prominent conservative entertainment company have teamed up to sponsor a fundraiser called “Teachers Rock.”

Backed by Walmart and Anschutz Film Group, the August 14 event will feature live performances from musicians like Josh Groban and appearances from actresses like Viola Davis; it will be broadcast August 18 as a CBS special with messages from actresses like Meryl Streep. And it will promote the upcoming feature film Won’t Back Down, Anschutz’s entry in the “education reform” wars.

Won’t Back Down is reportedly a highly sympathetic fictional portrayal of “parent trigger” laws, a major flashpoint in debates over education and collective bargaining. Under such laws, the submission of signatures from a majority of parents in a school triggers a “turnaround option,” which can mean the replacement of a unionized school with a non-union charter. Such laws have been passed in several states, but due to court challenges, the "trigger" process has never been fully implemented.

SNIP

The point of the movie is to get parents all excited about the ALEC-created "parent trigger" law, or what is more commonly referred to among teachers as the "parent tricker law." The "parent trigger" law is effective here in California, but efforts to actually pull that trigger have been turned back, at least so far.

The law allows parents to petition school boards to take over the school and then close it, turn it over to a charter management firm, or firing all of the staff. All three options are a way of scapegoating and shaming teachers. Oh, and nullification of the teachers' union contracts. Big surprise there.

SNIP

Post parent-trigger, the WalMart model for public education kicks in. Inexperienced teachers with no seat at the table and a corporate profit model make a school into something else, something that's not necessarily good for students or their parents. Worse yet, the so-called trigger is based upon test results that are not necessarily reflective of the school's performance or student achievement.

SNIP

At any rate, this parent trigger isn't being pulled by parents. It's being pulled by outside organizations like StudentsFirst and for-profit organizations who stand to profit.


SNIP

The movie, due to open September 28, is produced by 20th Century Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and Walden Media, owned by Philip Anschutz. Murdoch’s right-wing politics are well known. Anschutz is an oil-and-gas billionaire who co-produced the anti-teacher film, “Waiting for ‘Superman’.” He contributes to organizations that oppose gay rights and support teaching creationism in schools. Anschutz has also donated to Americans for Prosperity, founded by the Koch brothers, which opposes environmental regulations and union rights, and to the political career of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Because of how this event and the movie is being marketed, it's playing like a big parent empowerment movie that everyone should march out of with a song in their heart and triggers in their hand. It's soft-played from the privatization side, just like Paul Ryan's Medicare-murdering proposals. Using terms like "choice" and "voice", they soft-pedal the end of universal education and universal health care for seniors with equal alacrity.

Spread the word. They lie.

Don't be fooled by school "reform" that promises to bring corporate efficiency to education. Think Wall Street and Bain Capitol, and look to Louisiana, where the repug "public' education vision is coming true:

Casey Michael at TPM:

Only a month before nearly 120 Louisiana schools are set to welcome their first voucher students, the state has finally released a slate of standards that approved schools must meet in order to receive both students and concurrent state dollars. And while the standards, created by Superintendent John White and approved by the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) this week, are widely considered a step in the right direction, voucher opponents say the standards fall far short from the accountability they sought.

Where every public school in Louisiana is subjected to a standardized slate of testing, the voucher students — who will bring an average of $8,000 in tuition from “failing” public schools to many that are affiliated with religious denominations — will only need to face testing if their new school has taken an average of 10 students per grade, or if the schools have accepted at least 40 voucher students into the grades testing.

 SNIP

Opponents say the greatest weakness in the standards is not that 75 percent of the schools accepting voucher students aren’t subjected to any penalties, or that many of the schools in that 75-percent umbrella teach an amalgamation of Christianist creationism and anti-scientific methods — including rebuts to evolutionist theories and proof that the Loch Ness Monster still exists.

Rather, they say, the big problem lies in the fact that the students may be transferring, on the taxpayers’ dime, to a school that will score worse than the one from which they left. That is, a student can leave a public school if it scores a “C” or below on state standardized testing — but if the new private school scores the minimum of 50, the equivalent of a D-minus, it could still recruit new voucher students.

“There are still 19 schools that we know about that are blatantly teaching creationism … [and] we’re funding them with state money,” Zack Copplin, who monitors Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reforms, told TPM. “White says he’s waiting on state testing and things like that, and that’s absolutely absurd. We know that the these schools don’t meet the public schools standards that they’re supposed to be better than.”

Students in charter and voucher schools nationwide will learn less than a 16th-century serf, but they will make excellent obedient, underpaid and unquestioning corporate drones.

The Corporations Still Supporting ALEC

Sooner or later, the corporations that publicly rejected shoot-first, voter-suppression promoter ALEC will go quietly sneaking back, because ALEC helps them more than it hurts them.

But some corporations are shamelessly refusing to even pretend to reject ALEC, and now we know who they are.

Think Progress:

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been under fire lately after the 15 major corporations and organizations pulled their support for the conservative organization, which helps quietly implement corporate-backed legislation in statehouses across the country.

Now, the watchdog advocacy group group Common Cause has released a complete list of corporations on ALEC’s task forces.

Not surprisingly, four of the five major oil companies are members, as are many other energy companies. Some houshold names on the list include Johnson & Johson, State Farm insurance, and AT&T. There are lots of major online businesses, including AOL (the parent company of the Huffington Post), eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo, and Time Warner.

See the full list here.

More ALEC Abominations Sneaking Into Your State Legislature

No, the "Stand Your Ground" and "Only White Repugs Can Vote" motherfuckers haven't backed down and they haven't given up and if they lose every corporate sponsor they've still got enough Koch Brothers billions to keep them going for centuries.

So it's up to us to check every innocent-looking bill filed in our state legislatures for ALEC's filthy fingerprints.

Stephen Lacey and Jessica Goad at Think Progress:

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a “stealth business lobbyist” that helps corporations write state and federal legislation supporting their interests, has taken major heat for its backing of controversial laws.

More than a dozen companies — including Coca Cola and Procter & Gamble — have pulled out of the organization over the last month due to ALEC’s support of voter ID requirements and the Stand-Your-Ground law blamed by many for the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.

While the controversy around these laws has been widely reported, ALEC’s efforts to help corporate interests cut down climate legislation, renewable energy, and environmental protections are only now being heavily scrutinized. Funded by coal and oil companies, ALEC has made it a priority to stop any changes to the fossil-fueled status quo.

Below, we document the five of the worst anti-environmental initiatives being pushed by ALEC.

Stopping a Price on Carbon

SNIP

Stripping Targets for Renewable Energy

SNIP

Turning Over Public Lands to the States

SNIP

Watering Down Public Disclosure of Fracking Chemicals

SNIP

Preventing Regulation of Toxic Coal Ash

SNIP

ALEC is a strong force working behind the scenes to stop any meaningful action on climate and clean energy. This is just a small snapshot of the pro-polluter bills the organization has crafted over the years. With the largest, dirtiest energy companies funding ALEC, it’s clear who these “model” laws are designed to help.

Click here for details.

Only One Way to Really Stop ALEC

No, this was not a progressive victory and this war is far from over.

Color of Change, which led the boycott, calls ALEC’s move a “PR stunt“:

ALEC’s latest statement is nothing more than a PR stunt aimed at diverting attention from its agenda, which has done serious damage to our communities. To simply say they are stopping non-economic work does not provide justice to the millions of Americas whose lives are impacted by these dangerous and discriminatory laws courtesy of ALEC and its corporate backers. It’s clear that major corporations were in bed with an institution that has worked against basic American values such as the right to vote. Now that these companies are aware of what they’ve supported, what will they do about it? If ALEC’s corporate supporters will not hold the institution accountable for the damage it has caused nationwide, then the ColorOfChange community will hold them accountable.

You know goddamn good and well that ALEC is just going to keep doing the same shit under another name. So the real solution is to fight fire with fire. We need a progressive counterweight to ALEC.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

The campaign has garnered national attention, but I’ve been wondering where this game ends. The problem with ALEC is of corporate underwriting. Companies support the organization with funding, and Republican state legislators join up as members, sit down with these corporate interests, and share legislation that they model and bring back to their states. What’s getting these corporations into trouble is that they are having to answer for ALEC-modeled legislation well far afield of their core business, like anti-abortion laws or the pro-gun Stand Your Ground law. For consumer operations, this is just terrible branding; Democrats eat at Wendy’s and McDonald’s and drink Pepsi and Coke as well.

But the idea of a central clearinghouse for legislation, to support often part-time, underfunded and understaffed state legislators, is not an inherently evil one. In fact, progressives have been trying to create such a space for 40 years, pretty much since the creation of ALEC.

For example, the Progressive States Network is a group founded seven years ago whose mission is to “engage and build the capacity of state and national leaders to advance public policy solutions that uphold America’s promise to be a just and equitable democracy.” They are but one of several attempts in this space to help coordinate state legislative activities on the progressive side. “We see ourselves as connective tissue,” said Charles Monaco, director of communications and new media for PSN. The organization works closely with state-based groups as well as national policy shops, providing connections to policy research, campaign strategies and legislative initiatives to state legislators and their staffs. “If there’s a great immigration policy in one state, that’s the type of thing that should get traded across state lines,” Monaco said.

Unlike ALEC, state legislators are not formal members. In that sense, it differs from ALEC, which is strictly a pay-to-play operation. State lawmakers who join up with ALEC quite literally pay for access to corporate interests, who they know can support them in future campaigns if they carry their bills for them. That structure doesn’t exist on the progressive side.

“It’s a question we’ve been trying to answer for years in number of ways,” said Monaco of PSN. “We try to get state legislators to think of themselves as a national progressive movement.” But that doesn’t equal the lure of money to finance future elections.

And this is why it has been such a challenge to create a progressive version of ALEC.

Read the whole thing.

Why Are KY Democratic Legislators Still Members of ALEC?

I sincerely want to believe that good liberals like Kathy Stein and Tim Shaughnessy are members of ALEC only as moles, to keep an eye on what the enemy is up to. Because the alternative is unacceptable.

Down with Tyranny:

There probably isn't a more serious institutional threat to democracy in America than the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

It's basically a right-wing Republican organization working diligently to take away the rights of ordinary working people to implement the one-percent agenda. But there are a few reactionary Democrats who have been involved as well-- maybe 1%. The only congressional Democrats with ALEC ties I could find are Joe Manchin (WV), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Leonard Boswell (Blue Dog-IA), Ed Perlmutter (CO), Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA), and Kurt Shrader (Blue Dog-OR). And there are no Democratic governors toiling along with Jan Brewer (AZ), Terry Branstad (IA), John Kasich (OH), Bob McDonnell (VA) and Scott Walker (WI) to implement the ALEC agenda. The only Democrats on the ALEC board of directors are state Senator Steve Faris (AR) and ex-Rep. Dolores Mertz (IA).

Most states don't have any Democrats from their state legislatures in ALEC. Basically they're Republican political clubs. Many states will have one or two Democrats in a toiletful of Republicans. Like Wyoming, for example. There are 24 state reps and 11 senators who are ALEC members. Only one, state Sen. John Hastert, is a Democrat. And then there are a few states-- Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Texas-- with a half dozen or more Democrats have joined up. Interestingly, one Kentucky state Rep. Robert Damron, was a member and then quit last year saying he no longer attends ALEC meetings because ALEC has “become, in the last few years, so partisan... The last meeting I went to, they spent all their time bashing Democrats. I don’t particularly care for an organization that’s so partisan.” On the other hand, Gov. Rick Perry (who's gotten between two and three million dollars from ALEC) was a member back when he was a Democratic state rep. And there's extreme right former state Sen. Mike Oliverio, who the DCCC has been trying to elect to Congress, who was not just a member of ALEC-- the only one in the West Virginia legislature-- but also West Virginia's state chairman!

The important thing is to keep track of these freaks and make sure they don't infect the Democratic Party and more than they already have-- and to make sure they don't climb into positions of power the way Joe Manchin and Kurt Schrader have. So... among the hundreds of Republicans in state legislatures with ALEC ties here's the handful of right-wing Democrats who have gone over to the Dark Side:

Rep. Ruth Palumbo (KY)
Rep. Dorsey Ridley (KY)
Sen. Kathy Stein (KY)
Sen. Ray Jones, II (KY)
Sen. Julian Carroll (KY)
Sen. Joey Pendleton (KY)
Sen. Tim Shaughnessy (KY)
Sen. Walter Blevins, Jr (KY)
Sen. Gerald A. Neal (KY)
Sen. Denise Harper Angel (KY)

If they joined long ago, or in ignorance of ALEC's manifest threat to small-d American democracy, let them say so and resign now.

If they genuinely think being members of ALEC is appropriate for Democratic legislators, let them admit it and defend that position.

But as the biggest corporations in the country resign from ALEC and ALEC rejection sweeps the nation, it's time for Kentucky's ALEC members to explain themselves.

And Poor Kids Get Rat Poison

This is the corporate funder and organizer behind the Republican Party.

Marie Diamond and Scott Keyes at Think Progress:

As ThinkProgress has been reporting for some time, the corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been colluding with the billionaire Koch brothers to privatize government and eliminate environmental regulations that interfere with profits.

GOP legislators in many states have given ALEC free reign to write anti-health care reform and anti-environment legislation. Now, ALEC is fighting to kill Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules limiting the sale of rat poisons that pose a serious health threat to children and the ecosystem.

A top representative for the ultra-conservative group said kids eating rat poison is an “acceptable risk” that does not justify government intervention:

“There are certain levels of acceptable risk in society,” says Todd M. Wynn, director of the ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force, in an interview about the EPA rules with the Heartland Institute’s Heartlander website. “And parents play an important role by weighing the potential risks and benefits of using a product.”

“Unfortunately, EPA expands its reach into the American economy more and more each and every year,” Wynn said. “This year it will be d-Con, but next year another useful product will be burdened by additional regulations or banned outright from the market.” [...]

Aaron Colangelo, an attorney for the NRDC…told the Center for Media and Democracy that “there is not an undue economic burden associated with reformulating these products,” pointing out that the rest of the industry had complied with the new rules without adverse economic impact. Additionally, he said, “the health care costs for treating these kids certainly outweigh the economic costs of reformulation.”

Wynn’s startling admission illustrates the extent to which ALEC is willing to sacrifice the health of Americans to advance their radical agenda. For decades, at least 12,000-15,000 children a year have become ill after accidentally touching or ingesting rat poison that’s spread in pellet form. Poisoned children experience internal bleeding, bloody urine, bleeding gums, and blood coming from their ears. Poor and minority children are disproportionately affected.

Exposure often occurs in settings outside parents’ control, and giving companies the option of voluntary adopting changes has done nothing to help. After thirteen years of studies, hearings, reports and legal battles, “the EPA announced in 2008 rodenticide manufacturers would have three years to adopt limits on the sale of the products.”

For years, ALEC has successfully killed these kind of regulations on environmental toxins and pollutants on behalf of corporations. At their annual conference in New Orleans this year, ALEC distributed a pamphlet titled “The Many Benefits Of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment,” complete with pictures depicting happy wildlife and a healthy environment. Companies like Koch Industries, BP, WalMart, and others join forces to fund this little-known organization that works behind the scenes to fight the dirty battles that no corporation would want to be publicly associated with.

Regulations only help the non-rich; that's the real reason repugs want to get rid of them.

The Bullying Cowards of ALEC

All bullies are cowards, and you can smell their fear a mile away. They never stand and defend themselves, but hide behind thugs and mercenaries.

The bullying cowards don't come any more craven than the Koch Brothers and their evil creature, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars:

Wow, it's like they have something to hide...

Yesterday, at a conference in New Orleans, two ThinkProgress reporters were attacked by security guards for no apparent reason. Reporters Scott Keyes and Lee Fang were at the Marriott Hotel for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting, an event that brings together state lawmakers with corporate lobbyists to draft “model” legislation.

While [Keyes and Fang] stood by the second floor lobby of the conference hotel, security guards surrounded [them], demanding that [they] leave. As we were leaving, [the guards] approached [Keyes and Fang], violently pushed [them] and twisted [their] arms. A guard approached Fang from behind, tackling him and later bending his arm to take his camera. Keyes, faced similar treatment: two security guards roughed him up on the escalator, taking his video camera, and cutting Keyes’ hand as he attempted to leave the premises. As Keyes asked why he was being forced to leave, he was shoved from the back. Asked why they were being so belligerent, the security guards said they were acting on instructions from ALEC.

I tend to stay away from shadow government conspiracy theories, but this truly is a shadow organization--accountable to no one and with no need or desire for transparency--that is writing legislation that affects all of us throughout the country. And now, they're roughing up reporters who get too close? New world order, indeed.

Click for video.

Liberals are proud of what we do and eager to explain ourselves to anyone who asks and is willing to listen.