“Masquerading As A Charity”: ALEC Exposed In Wisconsin, The Hijacking Of A State
Today, the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) released a new report that details the exclusive network of corporate lobbyists and special interest groups that influence the Wisconsin legislature through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
“This report reveals details of the extraordinary influence of ALEC and its agenda on the Wisconsin legislature and our laws over the past 16 months,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. “This corporate-backed agenda undermines the rights of Wisconsin families while advancing the agenda of huge corporations and special interest groups.”
Six weeks ago, corporate members of ALEC started jumping ship when it became known that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground Law” — linked to the Trayvon Martin shooting — spread to over two dozen states via ALEC. So far, 14 corporate members and 45 legislators from other states have quit the organization.
“We document how global corporations are buying influence with Wisconsin legislators through potentially illegal gifts called ALEC ‘scholarships,'” said CMD Law Fellow Brendan Fischer, the report’s author. “ALEC’s corporate members are not only giving Wisconsin legislators thousands of dollars of campaign contributions, they are also buying flights and hotel rooms. These gifts undermine Wisconsin’s reputation for clean government and the strict ethics rules designed to protect the voices of Wisconsin residents in our state’s democracy.”
CMD asked the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board in March to determine whether ALEC member legislators receiving gifts of flights and hotel rooms from ALEC’s corporate members violates state ethics and lobbying laws. Now, CMD and Common Cause in Wisconsin are asking Wisconsin’s Attorney General to look into ALEC’s lobbying activities.
“It is time for the Attorney General to determine that ALEC is primarily a corporate lobbying group masquerading as a charity,” said Common Cause in Wisconsin Executive Director Jay Heck. “ALEC’s corporate members fund the organization to access and influence state legislators, and it is unacceptable to get a tax deduction for doing so.”
Here are some of the key findings from the new report:
- 32 bills or budget provisions reflecting ALEC model legislation were introduced in Wisconsin’s 2011-2012 legislative session;
- 21 of these bills or budget provisions have passed, and two were vetoed;
- More than $276,000 in campaign contributions were made to ALEC legislators in Wisconsin from ALEC corporations since 2008;
- More than $406,000 in campaign contributions were made to ALEC alumnus Governor Walker from ALEC corporations over the same time period for his state campaign account;
- At least 49 current Wisconsin legislators are known ALEC members, including the leaders of both the House and Senate as well as other legislators holding key posts in the state. Additionally, the Governor, the Secretary of the Department of Administration, and the Chairman of the Public Service Commission are ALEC alumni; and
- At least 17 current legislators have received thousands of dollars of gifts cumulatively from ALEC corporations in the past few years, in the form of flights and hotel rooms filtered through the ALEC “scholarship fund” (complete “scholarship” information is not available).
ALEC describes itself as the largest “independent member association of state legislators” in the country, but over 98 percent of its nearly $7 million in annual revenue comes from corporations and sources other than legislative dues, which are $50 a year. Representatives from America’s largest corporations, including Koch Industries, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Reynolds, and Altria/Phillip Morris fund ALEC and sit on its private sector governing board.
By: Sara Jerving, PR Watch, Center For Media and Democracy, May 17, 2012
“The Conservative Doctrinaire” And The Sheer Inhumanity Of Mitt Romney
“Now later he decided to run for governor of Michigan, and so you can imagine that having closed the factory and moved all the production to Wisconsin was a very sensitive issue to him, for his campaign,” explained Romney, who described a subsequent campaign parade in which the school band marching with his father knew how to play Wisconsin’s fight song, but not Michigan’s.“Every time they would start playing ‘On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin,’ my dad’s political people would jump up and down and try to get them to stop, because they didn’t want people in Michigan to be reminded that my dad had moved production to Wisconsin,” said Romney, laughing.
Thus ended an anecdote Mitt Romney shared with supporters in Wisconsin via a campaign conference call in an attempt to demonstrate that he had some sort of connection with their state. Now, this was far from the first time that the former governor of Massachusetts has said things that reinforce the idea that he is an absurdly wealthy hedge fund tycoon who has no compassion whatsoever for any social set lower than his NASCAR- and major league franchise-owning friends. He has previously let us know, for instance, that corporations are people, that he likes to fire people who provide services to him, and that his passion for sports seems to depend entirely on how the owners he knows will be affected. Romney’s other gaffes show a certain level of cluelessness about the average voter, or at the very least a total inability to relate to them in a way that they can understand. But this quote, as well as the values that underlie it, are far more dangerous, and emblematic of the conservative movement as a whole.
Without a doubt, not even Mitt Romney could be considered gauche enough to have shared this anecdote were he still competing for the primary votes of Republicans in Michigan, but with that win and those delegates safely in the bag, he had absolutely no trouble laughing about how his family eliminated the jobs of perhaps those same voters he was courting not too long ago. But not only does Romney have no shame about sharing this story in public, he did so gleefully in an attempt to show some sort of relationship to the state he is currently campaigning for. In Romney’s mind, after all, the voters of Wisconsin should be happy because they got a factory and jobs, regardless of whether it came at the expense of destroyed hopes and dreams on the other side of Lake Michigan.
Unlike his other gaffes, it’s not just that Romney was too tone-deaf to understand how his comments could sound off-putting to voters. Instead, he actively expected this anecdote to appeal positively to Republican primary voters in Wisconsin. The unfortunate part is, he may be right.
In the same way that Wisconsin’s gain was Michigan’s loss regarding the American Motors factory owned by George Romney, the conservative mentality regarding most aspects of politics, economics and civil rights is by default antagonistic and competitive, and uses the logic of a zero-sum game whereby any party’s gain must necessarily be another party’s loss. If the government provides economic support such as jobless benefits or stimulus, it must necessarily have hurt the economic prospects of those who were still on their feet, irrespective of the benefits of reintroducing that money back into the economy. If the LGBT community gains the fundamental civil right of marriage, it must, by necessity and definition, have impinged on the civil rights of heterosexuals, even if nobody can precisely articulate exactly why. If women are granted access to the medications they need to lead a happy and healthy existence, it can only have come at the expense of the the right of religious freedom, which has now been deemed by conservatives to include the right to impose one’s religious values on one’s employees. If millions of people are successfully added to the insurance rolls, then that must, by logical default, have resulted in death panels or denial of care to other, more deserving people. In the conservative mind, after all, there is only so much of any one thing to go around: consequently, someone must win, and someone must lose.
Mitt Romney is inhumane, and cannot be allowed to assume the presidency. He is not inhumane because he sees no problem with strapping his dog to the roof of his car, or because he is comically inept at small talk. He is not inhumane because he likes to talk about his friendships with sports team owners, or even because he hired a lobbyist in an effort to secure the permitting process for a car elevator in his dream mansion in San Diego. He isn’t even inhumane because he used his position at Bain Capital to destroy jobs, hopes and dreams for his own economic benefit. Most of all, Mitt Romney is inhumane because he, like the conservative movement that surrounds him, does not believe that all Americans can enjoy increased freedoms and economic prosperity, to say nothing of understanding the conditions and policies that would achieve this end.
Ultimately, this is why Barack Obama will be re-elected, and conservatism will fail. Conservative Teen Magazine notwithstanding, younger generations tend to take a more cooperative, collaborative view of the world, and will turn out to the candidates and political parties that embrace this vision. As the conservative movement continues to embrace the doctrinaire plutocracy embodied by Mitt Romney, it will ultimately wither away in all but the reddest areas—right alongside the elderly white Fox News demographic to which it appeals.
By:Dante Atkins, Daily Kos, April 1, 2012
“Creating A Whole New Meaning” In Utah: The Difference Between Contraception And Mainlining Heroin
Utah Governor Gary Herbert vetoed an abstinence-only sex ed bill, prompting the measure’s co-sponsor to go on the offensive.
Last week, I mentioned two state legislatures had passed abstinence-only sex education bills. While Wisconsin’s governor was already supportive of the measure, in Utah, Governor Gary Herbert was less certain. The measure would have banned any discussion of contraception, or for that matter, homosexuality. The current law in Utah already requires parents to “opt-in” if the course includes discussion of contraceptives, but this measure would have actually removed even the option for students to learn about more than simply abstinence. It had passed overwhelmingly in both chambers, despite protests and opposition from the state PTA and teachers’ groups.
Late Friday, after protests, phone calls, and significant pressure from both sides, Herbert announced he had vetoed the measure. In his statement, he said he was unwilling to say “the State knows better than Utah’s parents,” noting a majority of parents choose to have their children learn about contraception. Herbert described himself as pushing “the reset button” on the conversation around sex-ed in the state.
But given the national rhetoric around sex right now, I’m not so sure a simply flourish of his pen will put the genie back in the bottle. Senate co-sponsor Margaret Dayton told the Salt Lake Tribune that “teaching children about contraception is comparable to telling kids not to do drugs, then showing them how to ‘mainline’ heroin.”
The national conversation around sex has shifted radically. Dayton is not alone in seeing sex as akin to one of the most dangerous street drugs around. A dangerous and corrupting activity that puts our youth at risk. Meanwhile, non-radical conservatives generally see sex as a healthy and normal activity, at least among adults, and teaching teenagers to use contraception means teaching them to be responsible. There’s such a major rift between the two sides right now, it’s hard to see what kind of conversation can be had.
Of course, a poll in Utah showed 58 percent of residents favored sex-ed that included contraceptives. So maybe they don’t need to have a conversation in the first place.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, March 19, 2012
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