BP flees, but ALEC still wreaks havoc on workers

Just when ALEC was starting to succeed in killing states' renewable energy standards, one of its biggest fossil-fuels members decided to stop paying membership dues. On Monday, oil-and-gas giant BP announced it was parting company with ALEC.

ALEC, if you haven't been paying attention, is a corporate escort service that finds willing politicians to, ahem, 'influence' on behalf of polluters, union-busters, privatizers, monopolists and purveyors of dangerous products. For companies that pretend to care about the environment, workers or consumers, exposure as an ALEC member can be pretty embarrassing.

A campaign to expose ALEC's members, of which the Teamsters has long been part, helped force more than 100 organizations to quit. The total market capitalization of the companies that left ALEC in recent years is more than $7.25 trillion.

One company isn't likely to leave ALEC any time soon: Koch Industries, the company the Koch brothers inherited from their father. The Kochs have bankrolled ALEC over the years to weaken unions, lower wages and discourage clean energy. Their motives are purely mercenary and not 'conservative.' Koch Industries, which employs unionized workers and refines and distributes non-renewable energy sources, wants to lower costs and expand its markets.

ALEC had little success fighting state programs to encourage renewable energy -- until recently. In 2013, ALEC's flunkies in state legislatures filed 37 bills to discourage state renewable energy standards. ALEC failed in all 37, and four states even increased their standards.

That changed last year, when ALEC managed to freeze Ohio's renewable energy standard. This year, ALEC actually prevailed upon West Virginia lawmakers to repeal that state's standard for clean energy.

Perhaps BP's departure will end ALEC's string of successes against renewable energy standards. It probably won't have much impact on ALEC's anti-worker, anti-regulatory agenda.

Prevailing wage laws are in ALEC's sights this year. As the legislative sessions reach an end, ALEC has successfully weakened prevailing wage laws in Nevada and West Virginia. Bills to repeal prevailing wage laws are moving through legislatures in Michigan, Missouri, Indiana and Wisconsin. As our friends at the Center for Media and Democracy note,

Prevailing wage repeal, according to Marquette University Law Professor Paul Secunda, "is just another way in the building industry to get cheap labor."... 

Studies have consistently found that prevailing wage laws do not increase government contracting costs, and repeal of prevailing wage laws does not save taxpayer money, primarily because higher-wage construction workers are much more productive.

The worst thing ALEC did this year was to ram a right-to-work bill through Wisconsin's Legislature. ALEC didn't just provide goodies (like free vacations and access to campaign cash) to GOP lawmakers who fought for it. ALEC actually wrote the right-to-work bill and paid for lobbyists to testify for it.

As one a sign held by one Wisconsin protester read,

Unless your name is ALEC, you no longer have a voice in this state. 

Wisconsin lawmakers crashes ALEC secret confab

Chris Taylor, a Wisconsin state representative, crashed the latest ALEC confab in Dallas (the one that drew hundreds of protesters). Taylor is a Democrat, but ALEC couldn't kick her out of the meeting for fear of losing its 501(c)3 status. (ALEC is nothing like a charity, but that's a whole separate story.)

The state lawmakers who take advantage of ALEC's corporate dating service introduce more than 1,000 corporate-written bills  every year. About 20 percent become law. ALEC bills seek to roll back workers' rights, privatize education and prisons, impose harsher prison sentences so more people will go to private prisons and make it harder for Democrats to vote.

She went on The Ed Show the other night to talk about why she infiltrated ALEC. "People need to know where these policies are coming from," she said. "(They're) rolling through their state legislatures...They're designed to maximize corporate profits, they're not for the people, in fact so many of these policies hurt the people."

"People should be very, very alarmed about what is happening that their state leg are advancing policies that don't help them, that advance the interests of out-of-state corporations," she said.

Taylor kept a diary about her trip into the heart of darkness and published it in The Progressive. On Day 2, she noted how backward the corporations are that are trying to control state lawmakers in order to make money off taxpayers. "ALEC is the ultimate guardian of the past."

They looked and acted like the guardians of the past, in a desperate struggle to protect their current wealth and privilege by reverting to the past when corporations could do as corporations pleased... 

ALEC wants to go back to a time when people were excluded from participating in elections by replacing poll taxes with voter ID laws.... 

ALEC also wants to go back to a time of separate but unequal educational systems, draining public schools of resources that are re-allocated to private voucher and unaccountable charter schools. Interestingly, the charter movement has abandoned its claim that charter schools can do a better job with less money than traditional public schools. 

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools now plans to return to states including Wisconsin with new ALEC model bills requiring charter funding parity with traditional public schools, expanding which entities are able to authorize new charter schools, and exempting these schools from all state requirements. 

ALEC wants to go back to a time when there was no public safety net, and people experiencing hard times were left to fend for themselves or seek help from a church or charity. In the Medicaid realm, ALEC’s new model policy would make it almost impossible for anyone to qualify for Medicaid. Another model policy requires legislative approval for Medicaid expansions, but not for Medicaid restrictions.

We hope she's right with her conclusion:

I do not think most Americans want to go back to a time when workers had no rights, when corporations could pollute our water and skies at their whim, and when eligible people were excluded from the ballot box, and children, the sick, and the vulnerable were cared for, or not, depending on the whims of their neighbors. ALEC represents the past. But most people want to move forward.

Hidden camera catches ALEC lobbyists plying AZ lawmakers with $70 steaks

A hidden news camera caught ALEC lobbyists wining and dining Arizona state lawmakers behind closed doors at a restaurant that serves $70 steaks.

It didn't look good for ALEC to be holding an expensive backroom party for 17 state lawmakers, especially since ALEC claims it's a charity that doesn't do much lobbying.

As we all know by now, ALEC is a corporate lobby that tries to lower wages, eradicate public education, eliminate environmental protections, weaken unions, make workplaces more dangerous and empower corporations.

"Are they buying access to your state leaders?" CBS 5 asks rhetorically. And then answers its own question, calling the story "an exclusive look at how one of the countries' most controversial nonprofit organizations influences state leaders."

The camera "spots state lawmaker after state lawmaker, along with lobbyists and power brokers heading into a backroom -- a closed-door dinner with an open bar at a restaurant with $70 steaks."

You can watch the video here.

Rep. Debbie Lesko, ALEC's state chairman, said ALEC is "no different than any other organization." (We love that she said she "talked about what ALEC offers."

Well, yeah, it is. ALEC lobbyists get access to lawmakers that environmental activists and union members don't.

And CBS 5 reporter Morgan Loew checked and found four ALEC bills before the Arizona Legislature. The voting records of the 17 lawmakers at the ALEC party showed none of them voted against ALEC bills.

Teamsters praise State of the Unions, a diagnosis and guide to labor’s recovery

Why are America’s labor unions under such a relentless assault by enemies who not long ago told us unions were irrelevant? What are the stakes in labor’s recent and ongoing battles for survival – and is its survival even possible?

These and many other vital questions are confronted head on in Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Philip Dine’s State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence.

In his updated edition, Dine, a longtime labor journalist and son of a Teamster milk truck driver, brings to life the dire conditions facing today’s labor movement and examines the issues that have thrust unions back into mainstream discussion. While never hiding his solidarity with labor’s cause, Dine’s journalistic scrutiny spares neither side in the war over America’s union movement. He takes on the right-wing crusade against labor as well as labor’s own deficiencies.

State of the Unions shines a light on unions’ opponents – political, corporate and ideological – and captures the ingredients for today’s war on workers:

The fights that have gripped the public, affected our politics, and catapulted labor into the limelight result from a perfect storm – one that has joined motive with opportunity. Labor’s adversaries have long harbored a desire to destroy the union movement – but recent economic and political developments have provided the impetus for a full-scale effort to do just that.

Funny anecdotes are interwoven with Dine’s insights as a reporter embedded with labor. His latest edition reflects on the 2011 Wisconsin labor uprising which touched off an era of anti-union aggression and labor’s pushback.

Dine looks at other state-level assaults waged by business groups and right-wing lawmakers, too. Politicians like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker – underwritten by the Koch brothers and ALEC – are not motivated by a desire to extract concessions from unions or to simply slash budgets, he writes. Their aim is to destroy labor as a political and economic force altogether.

State of the Unions also takes a broad look at labor’s political strategies. Dine doesn’t shy away from critiquing labor’s often reflexive allegiance to the Democratic Party. He argues that labor would do well if it campaigned more around its own issues rather than politicians who often take unions for granted:

There is a strong push by many in labor to focus less on ringing doorbells or spending money to elect politicians and more on explaining their own issues and positions to the public in efforts that will outlast the campaign – something labor should have been doing all along.

But Dine’s book also shows the kind of political muscle that labor still has – and its ability to exert influence on its own terms.

Messaging is key to Dine’s assessment of labor. He devotes an entire chapter to the 1990 strike at Delta Pride, a catfish facility in Mississippi employing some 900 poor black women. The struggle brought labor and civil rights together in one of the biggest labor victories in the South. It galvanized community support with a boycott hitting key markets of the company. Media coverage in one remote labor-friendly city with Mississippi roots spurred favorable local coverage in a town where Delta Pride had powerful allies. The union, UFCW, targeted local press while the moral authority of the strikers as “cotton pickers-turned-catfish processors” won public sympathy. Dine concludes:

The catfish workers’ campaign shows that labor can not only win in the most difficult workplace situations but also that its actions can have profound and lasting impact. It also suggests that the chances of success can be increased when labor develops an innovative strategy…instead of going through the motions and relying on time-worn approaches.

Labor’s role in other events are examined in State of the Unions, including the prevailing wage fight in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia. But the importance of labor’s ability to tell its story is central to all of these, according to Dine:

Labor’s failure to deliver its message means that its enemies get to define what unions are. Trade unionists should help reporters comprehend the links between the growing gap separating rich and poor and the assault on the right to organize…This involves labor doing several things it doesn’t sufficiently do now...

Labor’s corporate enemies often make themselves far more accessible to the press, giving them the edge in shaping public opinion.

Many more pages are devoted to the dramatic transformation and democratization of certain unions, especially the Teamsters. Because unions struggle to effectively tell these stories, stigmas from bygone eras still color public perceptions – and they are readily exploited by labor’s foes.

State of the Unions is filled with insights on labor’s ongoing dilemmas, from its internal divisions about how to move forward to its diminished influence on policies that affect its ability to recruit members (and vice versa!). These are not academic questions. They are urgent matters with real-life consequences for America’s middle class.

As Dine argues,

As a society, the challenges we now face, ranging from economic inequality to the future of public services, will be directly affected by what happens to labor. For it remains the only mass force capable of countering the rise of corporate dominance and the transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to the affluent…Labor’s struggles will have much to say about what type of society we evolve into.

State of the Unions is essential reading for anyone who cares about the labor movement, working families and the American economy as a whole.

Woot! 2 more corporations leave ALEC!

Two more corporations, XCel Energy and Endo Health, have decided to wash the stink of ALEC off their reputations and resigned their membership. That makes 72 corporations that have cut ties to the group that lobbies to destroy the middle class.

You'd think politicians would get the idea and start distancing themselves from ALEC and its odious policies -- you know, because so many politicians are owned by corporations. There's one politician in Missouri, though, who not only keeps his membership but tells the truth about ALEC's agenda: To lower wages!

His name is Ed Emery, and he's a state senator and ALEC state co-chair. Progress Missouri tells us he actually admitted right-to-work-for-less lowers wages:

ALEC Co-Chair and State Senator Ed Emery finally admitted yesterday what proponents of so-called 'right to work' laws have long been trying to hide from the public, that the legislation would result in lower wages for the middle-class.

Here's what he actually said:

One of the things that will be advocated by the unions is look at all these right to work states, average wages all go down. Sure they go down.

Watch it here.

Now, about those companies that left ALEC: The Center for Media and Democracy tells us Xcel just revealed it hasn't been an ALEC member since 2011.

The spokesperson attempted to distance the company from ALEC, complaining, "if you’ve been affiliated once, then they’ll brand you for life."

And Endo responded to investor pressure to cut ties to ALEC:

According to a statement released by Trillium Asset Management, "In 2012, Trillium filed a shareholder proposal at Endo on behalf of our clients, including the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, pressing the company on lobbying spending disclosure and its affiliation with ALEC. . . . Endo has recently informed Trillium that it is no longer a member of ALEC and has stopped providing any financial support to the organization." 

Trillium said 'the broader social importance of this is in alignment with shareholder interests.'

Top 10 Things That ALEC Wishes Never Happened

The corporate dating service for state lawmakers known as ALEC must be pretty upset with the attention it got this weekend. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. Local Newspapers Hold Their Local Legislators Accountable. The editorial boards ofThe Patriot News (Harrisburg, PA) and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch helps expose ALEC and its proposed oath for state lawmakers. 

· The Patriot News, Controversial ALEC is a group legislators should think twice about joining
· St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lawmakers should only take one loyalty oath, and it shouldn't be to ALEC 

2. ALEC Responds and Fails. Bill Meierling, ALEC’s director of public affairs, gives a laughable response to recent criticism with a Letter to the Editor in The Washington Post.  

3. The New York Times Calls Out ALEC’s Corporate Influence. Alex Hertel-Fernandez takes on ALEC in a New York Times blog: “ALEC has tremendous influence in state legislatures. Here’s why.” 

4. ALEC Makes It On TV. MSNBC covered the ALEC controversies over the weekend with Lee Fang of The Nation and Dana Milbank of The Washington Post. This was one of three stories MSNBC aired on ALEC in the last week.
· MSNBC: ALEC & ‘Stand Your Ground’ backlash
· MSNBC Maddow: Leak: Right-wing group loses big over gun law
· MSNBC: Is ALEC Falling on Hard Times? Interview w Dana Milbank (WaPo) & Lee Fang (The Nation) 

5. College Students Take On ALEC. The campus papers of the University of WI-Madison and the University of MN-Twin Cities help expose ALEC:
· The Badger Herald, One third Wisconsin legislators involved in ALEC
· Minnesota Daily, Tackling the ALEC problem 

6. Huffington Post Publishes New Exposé On ALEC and Health Care. Read the Center for Public Integrity’s Wendell Potter’s piece: “Big Corporations Abandoning Conservative Group That Pushes Changes in State Laws” 

7. ALEC’s Anti-Education Agenda Exposed. The Huffington Post helps exposes ALEC’s link to APSCU and attacks on public education: “For-profit College Group, Linked to ALEC, Keeps Working to Harm Students and Taxpayers” 

8. AFL-CIO: SPN’s Top 12 Ways To Kill Working Families in 2014. The AFL-CIO names the top 12 ways SPN “stink tanks” could assault the rights of working families in 2014. 

9. New Video Pokes Fun At ALEC Oath and Corporate Influence. Alliance for Better Utah released an animated video of an ALEC legislator taking an oath to ALEC. 

10. Documents Reveal ALEC Created SPN. Steve Horn of De Smog Blog publishes new research that shows ALEC was actually behind the creation of the State Policy Network (SPN).

ALEC lies again, tries to hold on to shrinking membership

Yesterday we told you about leaked internal documents that show the secretive lobbying group ALEC is bleeding members and money. Well, it’s also been lying to the public in an effort to hide its likely tax code violations.

ALEC lying? What a shocker!

But unlike its lies about how great right-to-work-for-less laws are and why suppressing workers’ voting rights is such a swell idea, ALEC’s lies about its tax status suggest the corporate legislative clearinghouse is in real trouble.

Documents released by the Guardian yesterday reveal that ALEC has formed the “Jeffersonian Project,” a new 501(c)(4) group established to shield ALEC from IRS investigations into its current 501(c)(3) charitable status.

But that’s not what ALEC told reporters just before it created the “Jeffersonian Project.” PR Watch reports:

In December of last year, ALEC spokesperson Kaitlyn Buss told Bloomberg News "we have no current plans to operate a 501(c)(4) in the near future.”

When Buss said "the near future" and "current plans," she apparently meant "next week."

Just eight days after the Bloomberg story ran, ALEC formed the 501(c)(4) "Jeffersonian Project," according to a certificate of incorporation obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy. (ALEC also failed to mention to Bloomberg that it had incorporated another 501(c)(4), "ALEC NOW" in July of 2012; that entity was dissolved earlier this year.)

ALEC hopes the more flexible lobbying ability of the "Jeffersonian Project" will "provide greater legal protection" and "lessen ethics concerns."

But as our friends at the Center for Media and Democracy point out, this desire sounds like ALEC's admission of what we've known all along: ALEC lobbies way too much to be called a "charity."

ALEC's charitable status had allowed its corporate members to write-off their ALEC membership dues -- which are essentially lobbying expenses -- as tax-deductible charitable contributions.

"In forming a 501(c)(4) arm, it appears that ALEC is on notice that it's not going to get away with abusing our nation's charitable tax laws much longer," said [Steve] Spaulding, [Staff Counsel at Common Cause].

Yesterday's leaked documents also show that ALEC has been lying to its own legislative members about the group's dwindling number of corporate backers. But hey, at least they're considering a "loyalty" pledge to keep ALEC lawmakers subservient to that shrinking body of corporate masters. Yep, the Guardian documents reveal:

[There] is a plan to have the legislators who serve as ALEC State Chairs sign a pledge of "loyalty" and agree to "put the interests of [ALEC] first." This proposal underscored concerns that some ALEC politicians have been putting the interests of ALEC (and its corporate backers) ahead of their constituents, and ahead of their commitment to upholding their state constitution.  

This week ALEC is having its "State & Nation Policy Summit" in Washington, DC. Given all the news about ALEC's lies to cover up IRS trouble and its schemes to survive amid lost members and money, we can't imagine the meetings are going too well.

So workers and activists plan to liven things up tomorrow by crashing the summit with a rally and march against ALEC.

Its been precisely the work of activists and workers that have helped weaken ALEC's war against workers and democracy. So let's keep it up!

ALEC is losing members and financing, worried about IRS

Leaked documents today reveal the secretive lobbying group ALEC is losing members and financial support as the public becomes aware of its goal to empower corporations and destroy the middle class.

For years, the Koch-funded organization has acted as a corporate dating service, funding lavish vacations for state lawmakers and introducing them to corporate donors with deep pockets. In exchange, lawmakers introduced legislation to weaken workers' rights, lower the middle-class standard of living, eradicate public education, promote tobacco use, eliminate environmental and consumer protections and suppress voting.

Today the Guardian reported ALEC is hemorrhaging members. 

...the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which shapes and promotes legislation at state level across the US, has identified more than 40 lapsed corporate members it wants to attract back into the fold under a scheme referred to in its documents as the "Prodigal Son Project".

(And Gawker helpfully points it it misspelled 'prodigal' in the original document.)

And then there's this: 

The Guardian has learned that by Alec's own reckoning the network has lost almost 400 state legislators from its membership over the past two years, as well as more than 60 corporations that form the core of its funding. In the first six months of this year it suffered a hole in its budget of more than a third of its projected income. 

The reference to the Prodigal Son Project is just one of many revelations contained in a batch of internal Alec documents that have been obtained by the Guardian. The documents, prepared for its most recent annual board meeting in Chicago in August, cast light on the inner workings of the group.

(Read the documents here.)

In addition to financial problems and falling membership, legal trouble is on the horizon for ALEC. The corporate lobbying group pretends it isn't a lobbying group and therefore claims it is tax exempt. Those claims have been challenged by Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy. The two groups filed a whistleblower complaint with the IRS earlier this year. ThinkProgress tells us ALEC is worried.

ALEC is creating a new lobbying wing in 2014 that will act separately from the rest of the organization. This new wing, called the “Jeffersonian Project,” will “provide greater legal protection or lessen ethics concerns,” the documents say. This means ALEC is trying to create an organization without a tax-exempt status so it doesn’t get in trouble for lobbying for the passage of bills. The documents show that ALEC would still like the Jeffersonian Project tightly linked, though. “No action can be taken by the Jeffersonian Project unless it is supported by a current ALEC policy,” the documents read. The project is also spun more positively with the board saying it “will be a new revenue source.”

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of greedy billionaires.

ALEC front man indicted for corruption in Georgia

Remember when loony Georgia state lawmakers tried to make it a felony not just to picket, but to conspire to picket? Fortunately that attack on basic rightswas defeated by our brothers and sisters at Local 728 in Atlanta, along with the Tea Party, faith leaders, community groups and other labor unions.

Well, Sen. Don Balfour was one of the leaders of that attack. He's a front man for ALEC, the corporate dating service for state lawmakers. 

Or used to be. Now he's been indicted on 18 counts of corruption, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Jim Galloway writes:

A Fulton County grand jury has indicted state Sen. Don Balfour, R-Snellville, on 18 counts associated with alleged misuse of his legislative expense account, the Attorney General's office said Friday.

He also accepted money from ALEC:

The American Legislative Exchange Council awarded “scholarships” totaling $4,792 to Balfour from 2005 to 2009, records show. Corporate donors — including petroleum, pharmaceutical, utility, tobacco and health-care interests — funded the scholarships, which were meant to cover the costs of airfare and lodging to attend ALEC functions. The donations generally are not disclosed as lobbyist gifts, since ALEC does not have a registered lobbyist in Georgia.

It's unclear whether accepting those gifts (or lying about them) was part of the indictment.

That bill to criminalize picketing, by the way, was an ALEC bill. Jobs With Justice reported last year:

Georgia State Senator Don Balfour recently proposed legislation (SB 469) aimed at destroying labor unions, debilitating effective dissent and criminalizing planned peaceful direct action....The bill shares characteristics of model legislation from ALEC, an out-of-state, secretive, corporate-funded council that hands state legislators laws designed to benefit CEOs.

Let's just say we hope justice is served.

Private prison rap sheet: Violence, abuse, death

Teamsters are fighting private prison companies that try to take over the government's job of punishing inmates -- and do it for obscene profit. In Florida, for example, Teamsters from Local 2011 persuaded lawmakers that it was a very bad idea to turn a third of the state's prisons over to Boca Raton-based GEO Group. Yesterday, Teamsters denounced private prison companies that negotiate contracts linking inmate population to profit. The union represents 30,000 correctional officers.

Our friends at the Center for Media and Democracy -- the ones who exposed ALEC, the corporate dating service for lawmakers -- are now exposing the predatory corporations that are trying to take over our government. They're doing a 12-part series at "OutsourcingAmericaExposed.org" in which they're outing the worst corporate outsources. Today CMD reveals the horrors of prisons run by GEO Group.

Among their findings:

• CEO George C. Zoley's compensation was an eye-popping $22,315,704 from 2008-2012, almost all paid for by U.S. taxpayers;
• Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against GEO Group, many of which were settled before trial. The suits range from allegation of inmate death and abuse, excessive force, medical neglect as well as allegations of employment discrimination;
• An audit by the state of Texas found in 1999 that GEO Group (then known as Wackenhut) barely kept the minimum number of guards required in its contract to run a jail in Travis County. The company was fined $625,000 for chronic staffing shortages; 
• GEO Group was sued by inmates at East Mississippi Correctional Facility for "barbaric and horrific conditions." The facility, designated for special needs and psychiatric problems, denies patients the most rudimentary mental health services and many committed suicide; 
• GEO Group settled a lawsuit that charged its Walnut Grove Correctional Facility (WGYCF) juvenile prison in Mississippi perpetuated violence and corruption. A U.S. Department of Justice investigation found 'deliberate indifference’ in failing to protect youths from harm in seven major areas, including sexual misconduct between guards and inmates and use of excessive force by guards;

Horrified yet? If not, read the whole thing here.

Anti-ALEC Moral Monday protests spread

(UPDATES final graf to CORRECT large Chicago protest is Thursday, sted Wednesday).

An enormous Moral Monday rally in Asheville, N.C., drew about 10,000 people yesterday to protest passage of pro-corporate ALEC legislation in Raleigh even as demonstrators in Oakland and Chicago took up the Moral Monday cause.



A tremendous crowd took in event in Asheville, N.C.

At the county courthouse in Asheville, North Carolinians expressed their anger with Gov. Pat McCrory and the Legislature, which rolled back progress in education, voting rights and social and economic equality. During the legislative session, which just ended, lawmakers slashed unemployment benefits, Medicaid and education spending while cutting taxes to big business.

In Chicago, clergy, unions and community organizers took over the Palmer House Hilton lobby during the first Moral Monday protest outside of North Carolina. They demanded the hotel rescind its invitation to ALEC, which is gathering for a conference there. Police arrested six protesters.

The Carolina Mercury reported:

Oakland protesters held the first of a series of monthly ‘Moral Monday’ peace and justice rallies.

Called “Mountain Moral Monday” by organizers, the Asheville event rivaled the final Raleigh rally held last week. Yesterday’s protest was the first to be held away from the state capital and will be followed by additional events in all of North Carolina’s congressional districts. Teachers again were out in full force at the Asheville event to raise their objections to policies that strike down tenure, end salary increases for those with master’s degrees and caused the firing of thousands of classroom assistants. Angela Patane said it is important to raise attention about what is happening to education in North Carolina and was glad to see others agreed:

I was amazed by the turnout. I wasn’t expecting that many people, so I was really happy to see so many thousands of people.

Retired teacher Sue Bartlett said she too felt the need to stand up for what’s right:

We’re concerned about the children, concerned about health care, concerned about our environment.

The next Moral Monday rally in North Carolina has tentatively been scheduled for Aug. 19 in Charlotte.

There will be another large protest against ALEC in Chicago Thursday. ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council, has been exposed over the past few years as an anti-worker tool of big corporation. ALEC gatherings have been dogged with large protests over the past few years, and tomorrow's may be the largest yet.

Taxpayer-funded ALEC trip for Kansas lawmakers

Kansas lawmakers who advocate small government are taking a taxpayer-funded ALEC trip Aug. 7-9 in Chicago. There they'll be wined, dined, flattered, enriched financially and handed a draft bill to empower corporations at democracy's expense.

Tim Carpenter at the Topeka Capital-Journal broke the story five days ago:

More than two-dozen Kansas legislators, including top Republican leaders of the House and Senate, plan to participate at the national convention in Chicago of an organization dedicated to layering a corporate agenda into politics at state Capitols, officials said Friday. 

House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, and Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, are national board members of the conservative, Republican-oriented American Legislative Exchange Council and scheduled to lead the Kansas delegation from Aug. 7-9. 

State policy allows a subsidy of registration fees for each legislator in attendance, which would be a minimum of $475. Other travel, hotel and meal costs can be covered by taxpayers only if the lawmaker serves in a leadership role in ALEC, said Jeff Russell, director of Legislative Administrative Services.

Oh, the irony.

The Hutchinson News calls it "comically ironic."  

And in a scathing editorial, The Hutchinson News excoriates the Kansas hypocrites:

...a group of self proclaimed budget hawks apparently missed the memo that government spending is the root of all evil, and that even the smallest government expenditure is a misuse of hard-earned taxpayer dollars. 

According to the legislative administrative service, in fiscal year 2012 legislators received $150,666 for convention-related travel expenses. In fiscal year 2013, lawmakers received total reimbursement of $119,528 for such travel – and the upcoming year totals more than $4,875 so far, with the filing deadline not ending until June 30, 2014. 

Kansas lawmakers are certainly free to attend whatever conferences they think will help them become better legislators. But it’s a special type of hypocrisy when a group of legislators who brand themselves as budget watchdogs and small government conservatives eagerly line up for a taxpayer handout to help pay for a voluntary networking weekend in Chicago.

ALEC isn't really about small government. ALEC just wants one thing to be small: constraints on corporate plunder of the public trough. No one should be surprised that self-serving hypocrites are taking part in the looting by taking a taxpayer-funded ALEC trip.

ALEC's stench has wafted all the way across the Atlantic, where the Irish blog Vestibule caught wind of these taxpayer-funded ALEC trips. Vestibule wrote a hilarious send-up of these ALEC "conferences" a few years ago, which we will share with you below:

Now, imagine if you will that you are a Republican lawmaker in a state whose legislature is controlled by your party.  You are approached by persons you admire, with an invitation to attend a conference under the aegis of ALEC.  And let us situate that gathering at some plush and exclusive enclave- Palm Springs, for example. 

There you and your spouse will be met and looked after (families are distinctly welcome)  by business leaders whose names ring with the reassurance of real power- Fortune 500 executives and their staffs. 

You will socialise- play golf on exquisitely maintained courses, dine on the most blissful fare, and exchange neatly patented views with the very men and women who concocted them. You will be flattered and cajoled.  You will be welcomed into circles you have always aspired to enter- assuming you were not born there, a condition of privilege discreetly enjoyed by many state office-holders.  Finally, you will be showered with political support in the form of crucial campaign donations and endorsements. 

And really, all you have to do is attend a two-hour meeting with friendly representatives of, let's say, the commercial prison industry. 

At this meeting you will be presented with a handsome, well-written, entirely serviceable piece of legislation.  It may contain the word "reform" in its title.  (Again, think Humpty Dumpty)
The matter at hand could involve a perfectly reasonable tightening of immigration law.  Or the justified imposition of harsher, more restrictive criminal sentences.  The bill may mandate the laudable establishment of profit-making industries in a state penitentiary system, or the withdrawal of wasteful educational services to undeserving prisoners. 

But whatever the avowed goal of the prefabricated legislation, you may be sure its passage will result in enhanced revenue and power for those companies which drafted the law.

Spot on.

ALEC wants Wisconsin lawmakers to bail out private bondsmen

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a way of trying to "solve" problems where none exist. Right now in Wisconsin, the group is dipping its fetid toe into the issue of bail bonding. It's supporting an effort to have the state move away from its publicly-run system to one that relies on private bail bondsmen.

Why does ALEC care, you may ask? Surely it has nothing to do with its 20-year relationship with the private bail bond industry, right? Wrong. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) is carrying ALEC's water on the issue after a similar effort in the state failed two years ago. The end goal is more dollars for private bail bondsmen.

The big losers with this legislation are everyone else.  First, there are the impoverished low-level offenders who will not be able to afford even minimal bail amounts. Under the current system, they pay 10 percent of the bail amount to be let free before their court date, but receive that money back if they show up. Under a private system, however, they will not be reimbursed. So while they might be able to borrow their bail amount from someone for a short period of time, they may not be able to get someone to permanently cover those costs.

There is also the issue of the taxpayer. More jail time means more dollars needed to cover the housing and food costs of those behind bars. And it may even result in needing to have more cells built to house them. Bruce Murphy of Urban Milwaukee fills us in:

The return of commercial bail bonds, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm has stated, “will primarily benefit out-of-state interests, the large bail-bond corporations” motivated “purely by financial interests” at the expense of public safety.

Chisholm said that bail bond agents often set up payment plans with high interest rates that “resemble the predatory practices of the cash loan industry” and trap low-income individuals into a cycle of debt.

If the bill passes it will increase the taxpayers costs for imprisonment, says Rep. Fred Kessler (D-Milwaukee), a former judge who championed the reform bill of 1979. “Wisconsin saw a 5-6 percent decrease in its jail population” after the private bail-bond system was banned in 1979, he told the media, “and will likely see a 5-6 percent increase if the practice comes back.”

But ALEC's interest in the private bail bond industry does not stop there. They've authored model legislation on expanding the list of offenses for which someone arrested must pay a bail bondsmen, eliminating pre-trial release agencies so states are more dependent on private bail bondsmen, and by allowing debts owed to state by bail bond companies to expire. That's a pretty cozy bed ALEC is in with those folks! ALEC is also a long-time supporter of prison privatization and has a close relationship with those corporate interests as well.

So let's tally it up for the people of Wisconsin. More costs? Less safety? More poor people behind bars in a system that increasingly resembles archaic debtors' prisons? Sounds like a winner! Wisconsin, you are better than this. Let your state lawmakers know they should say no to ALEC and the private bail bond industry.

ALEC's latest attack in Mo. deceives and silences workers

Look carefully at the "paycheck protection" bills passed this week by the Missouri Legislature. You'll see ALEC's fingerprints slathered all over them. These bills are part of the Koch group’s continuing effort to muscle the working class out of politics and government.

The passage of SB 29 and HB 64 threatens to destroy workers' ability to donate to candidates and causes as a group. Employers would be unaffected.  If the bills are enacted, unions couldn't make political donations. But guess who could: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its powerful friends such as the Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

The legislation is part of ALEC's continuing effort to shift policymaking away from the people and put it in the hands of employers, according to an Economic Policy Institute report released this week,  Gordon Lafer, a University of Oregon professor who authored the report, said this about the legislation:

The argument advanced in Missouri and elsewhere is that it will save workers money … and expand workers’ rights. Neither of these bills extend new rights to employees that Missouri law already doesn’t allow.

Professor Lafer said the arguments for this legislation are baseless. For example, the bills state that union workers shouldn’t have to pay dues to support political candidates they oppose. However, union workers already can opt out of paying a portion of their dues allocated for political spending. Meanwhile, corporations can use monies they receive to lobby for whatever cause or candidate they support.

The measures also would require workers to fill out paperwork each year affirming their approval to have part of their dues used for political purposes. Unions, in turn, would have to devote sparse resources toward making sure their members comply with the burdensome law.

Professor Lafer said the legislation would create two different sets of laws, one for workers and another for employers. He said:

It is important to note that ALEC and the Chamber and other organizations have opposed similar obligations being placed on corporations.

Our brothers and sisters in Missouri should contact the office of Gov. Jay Nixon and tell him to veto this deceptive legislation.

SD lawmakers ding taxpayers for ALEC travel?

South Dakota state lawmakers who use ALEC's corporate escort service voted to increase the Legislature's travel budget by a half-million dollars. We presume they did it so they can take more lavish vacations with ALEC members.

This is telling: They passed the hike in their travel budget on the last day of the regular Legislative session with little discussion.

Sen. Larry Lucas thinks that's disgraceful. He wrote a terrific op-ed in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, arguing schools, not travel, deserve funding.

Now the executive board of the Legislature, which I serve on, is being asked to amend its out-of-state travel policy so some lawmakers can become frequent fliers. This comes at a time when the state is shifting the cost of education onto property taxpayers and hurting the quality of classrooms from border to border. 

Should we spend a half-million more dollars for legislators to travel to national meetings? Is not the current policy of one out-of-state paid trip per year for each legislator adequate? Expanding travel seems contrary to the conservative budgets we pass in South Dakota year after year. A colleague of mine figured that this travel and training money represents an increase of nearly $5,000 per legislator compared to an increase of only $180 per student in K-12 education funding. 

Legislators meeting with legislators from other states is not bad. We pay annual dues to the National Council of State Legislatures and the Council of State Governments to allow for this along with other services such as legislative research and state-to-state comparisons. This allows for each of the 50 states to be independent, strong units of government. But expanding legislator travel probably will allow legislators to also use tax dollars to attend meetings of organizations that are funded and backed by partisan advocacy groups such as the ultra-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. Doing so will make it much easier for private corporations to influence our legislative agendas.

He makes a point that's all-too-overlooked these days:

An effective democracy must be free from corporate control and influence, not indebted to wealthy business interests.

We hope that boat hasn't sailed already.

Woot! Another corporation dumps ALEC!

Now it's 44.

More good news on the vast anti-worker conspiracy front: We learned late yesterday that Bristol-Myers Squibb is the latest to quit its membership in ALEC, the billionaire-backed escort service for corporations and state lawmakers.

By our count, the global biopharmaceutical company is the 44th corporation to leave ALEC in the past two years. We presume it's because tBMS realized they couldn't be linked to ALEC and make any claims about integrity or sustainability in their corporate mission statement. ALEC's agenda has been exposed over the past two years, and it's pretty much the opposite of integrity and sustainability. And it sure isn't about consumer safety, something that's kind of important when you're buying drugs.

The Unitarian-Universalist Association found out the news:

The Unitarian Universalist Association filed a shareholder resolution with Bristol-Myers Squibb seeking expanded disclosure of the company’s lobbying activities, both direct and indirect. After a constructive dialogue the company agreed to changes in its disclosure of lobbying oversight and expenditures, and the resolution was withdrawn. We commend the company for its openness and commitment to put significant information on its website. In addition, in the course of our conversation, the company reported that Bristol-Myers Squibb had been a member of ALEC but let their membership lapse at the end of 2012. We appreciate this clarification from the company on the status of its ALEC membership.

Two days ago, we learned Wellpoint, the for-profit managed care company, dumped ALEC.

Woot! Another corporation dumps ALEC

This time it's Wellpoint.  Undoubtedly the health care company is embarrassed to be associated with ALEC, the escort service that matches corporations with state lawmakers.

You can't claim "integrity" as one of your core values when you're supporting ALEC. ALEC's agenda includes lowering wages, weakening workers' rights, eradicating public education, lifting consumer protections, disenfranchising voters and empowering billionaires.

Here's Wellpoint's statement about its departure from ALEC:

WellPoint, Inc. last attended an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in the Summer of 2011.  Our representative participated in the Health and Human Services Task Force discussion around a resolution calling on the states to oppose setting up their own exchanges.  Our perspective was (and is) that states should establish their own exchange mechanisms.  We lost the debate that day and ALEC passed a resolution calling on the states to not enact their own exchanges.  We have not attended an ALEC meeting since, nor have we contributed any financial support to the organization. We have no current plans to support ALEC or attend any of their meetings.

Meet the ex-con doing the Kochs' dirty work in Wisco

Corrupt former politicians are running a Wisconsin branch of the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers' vast anti-worker network. That branch office, the MacIver Institute, is the Kochs' Wisconsin lobbyist masquerading as a think tank.

The Center for Media and Democracy is shining a light on the odious apparatchiks at the Institute.  Two of them were actually banned from politics. That doesn't stop them from trying to wipe out Wisconsin's middle class from behind the scenes.

The MacIver Institute is supporting Job-killer Gov. Scott Walker's latest effort to sell Wisconsin cheap to every corporate plunderer that can put money in his campaign fund. It's a mining bill that Charles Pierce describes as: 

...an environmental catastrophe, a staggering economic giveaway, and a deliberate and obvious offense against the idea of a political commonwealth.

If that sounds like the work of corrupt former politicians out for a buck, well, it is. The Center for Media and Democracy tells us the MacIver Institute's press releases are secretly written by Scott Jensen. Jensen used to be Wisconsin Assembly Speaker. Then he ran into trouble.

Jensen was criminally charged with a felony for spending taxpayer dollars on an illegal campaign machine. Jensen fought the charges for years and finally pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor of using his office for financial gain. The Associated Press reported in 2010,

Jensen agreed to pay $5,000 in forfeitures for the civil violation and another $67,147 to cover prosecutors' expenses. He remains convicted of the misdemeanor ethics charge. The Wisconsin Constitution prohibits anyone convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor involving a violation of public trust from running for office.

MacIver's president, Mark Block, is another corrupt pol. He was charged with violating election law back in the '90s. In 1997, he paid a $15,000 fine and was banned from Wisconsin political activity for three years.

You also won't be surprised to learn MacIver's director of communications is a former staffer at ALEC, the dating service for state lawmakers and corporations backed by the Koch brothers.

The Kochs, by the way, aren't the only ones trying to impoverish Wisconsin's working families. The MacIver Institute receives money from a nasty anti-worker lobbying group masquerading as a charity -- the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. Harry Bradley, along with the Koch brothers' father, founded the racist John Birch Society. 

The MacIver Institute pretends to promote something called a "free market." That's code for public oligarchy. The mining bill is a shining example, write Pierce. 

(The Legislature)...gave away public lands to this company while arranging that the political entity known as the state of Wisconsin, and therefore the people they ostensibly represent, would be unable to protect themselves from the damage the company will do.

Lovely people.

Here's the billionaire trying to destroy North Carolina

Every state seems to have an anti-worker billionaire hell-bent on driving working families into the poorhouse. Colorado has its Coors family. Michigan has Dick DeVos. North Carolina has the uniquely powerful Art Pope.

And guess what. He's close to the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers.

Pope is a plutocrat-politician who wants to eradicate public education, destroy workers' rights and enhance corporate monopoly power.

Like the Kochs, Pope runs a shadowy network of "charitable" foundations to spread mean-spirited corporate propaganda disguised as "free market" theory. They include The John Locke Foundation, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the Pope Foundation.

He was a state chair of the Kochs' phony tea party group, Americans for Prosperity. He tried to buy influence at UNC-Chapel Hill and succeeded at North Carolina State, where he sponsors lectures that promote his loony economic theories.

Five things tell you what you need to know about Art Pope:

• He wants to enshrine No Rights At Work in the state constitution.
• He funds racist and slanderous attacks on his political opponents, such as the campaign ad describing a 61-year-old married mother of three as a hooker.
• He was born rich but thinks his wealth resulted from his talent and hard work.
• He had to step down as chairman of the Kochs' phony tea party group so he could become the state's budget director. (Yup, he's North Carolina's budget director. Think about it.)
• He's an ALEC alum.

Sourcewatch tells us:

Marc Farinella, an adviser to North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue, commented that "The Republican agenda in North Carolina is really Art Pope’s agenda. He sets it, he funds it, and he directs the efforts to achieve it. The candidates are just fronting for him. There are so many people in North Carolina beholden to Art Pope—it undermines the democratic process.”

For a full description of Pope's assault on North Carolina, read Jane Mayer's excellent article "State for Sale" here.

Now the Kochs want their own utopia in Detroit

The billionaires' pipe dream in Detroit. 

Here's the latest from treasonous billionaires whose greed knows no bounds. They want real estate developers to buy a Detroit park called Belle Isle so they can secede from U.S. laws. Only they wouldn't have to actually secede from the country -- they'd just call themselves a "U.S. commonwealth."

The Commonwealth of Belle Isle would be home to the finance and insurance industry.

At first blush, the proposal seems absolutely loony. It suggests the South never had to fight the Civil War after all. The confederacy could have just found some real estate developer to buy its 11 states from the North.

But look who's pushing the idea: The ALEC-linked Mackinac Center. Founded by the insurance industry in 1987, The Mackinac receives funding from an interlocking network of front groups supported by billionaires such as the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers, Dick DeVos and all the usual suspects.

What's significant about The Mackinac Center is that it coined the idea of the Overton Window. Sourcewatch explains:

... it is designed to provide a spectrum which visualizes policies acceptable to the public with the various ends of the spectrum representing 'unthinkable' policies and the middle representing a policy that would be widely well received by the public. ... The Center advocates action by think tanks and other non-political figures which would "shift the window", bringing policies that would once be thought of as radical or unthinkable into the realm of possibility, allowing legislators to enact them. 

That may explain why The Detroit News bothered to report on the preposterous Belle Isle proposal on Sunday. The News, after all, is owned by the union-busting Dean Singleton. Perhaps he wants to expand the Overton Window to inclue exemption from taxes and laws for the finance industry.

Here's how the Detroit News spun the story:

As the broken city thinks big and radically about its future, a developer is stepping forward with a revolutionary idea: Sell the city's Belle Isle park for $1 billion to private investors who will transform it into a free-market utopia. 

The 982-acre island would then be developed into a U.S. commonwealth or city-state of 35,000 people with its own laws, customs and currency. 

City officials are likely to reject the plan. But on Jan. 21, supporters including Mackinac Center for Public Policy senior economist David Littmann, retired Chrysler President Hal Sperlich and Clark Durant, co-founder of Detroit's Cornerstone Schools, will present the Commonwealth of Belle Isle plan to a select group of movers and shakers at the tony Detroit Athletic Club.

One thing is certain: If the Commonwealth of Belle Isle came into existence, it would be no utopia for workers.