Lackeys for out-of-state billionaires on Tuesday threatened to cut off Missouri lawmakers' funding if they don't pass the No Rights At Work bill pending in the Legislature.
Progress Missouri released a secret audio of a strategy session held in a government hearing room. Legislators were meeting with representatives of two groups pushing the anti-worker bill: the National Tax Limitation Committee and the West Michigan Policy Forum. The first group was founded by a California plutocrat and the tobacco industry, the second by
We Party Patriots shares the highlights of the one hour, 20 minute meeting. The recording makes it clear that the recent wave of No Rights At Work legislation was ordered up by a network of billionaires and CEOs through the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.
Tobacco industry flunkey Lew Uhler told lawmakers:
What you’re doing here, what you’re part of here, is a national movement, and you’re well positioned to keep this battle alive...Steve Hunter, former state legislator from Joplin says,
If you don’t take on the fights, and these guys that are giving money? I mean, this is just all basic 101. You’re going to start losing donors.Further proof that anti-worker legislation now being pushed through state legislatures has no popular support comes from the National Cancer Institute. The group just published a study showing the tea party is a creation of the
A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.
Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance.Let's hope Missouri lawmakers are too embarrassed to cravenly follow the gospel of billionaire greed and empowerment.
