Wisconsin state Sen. Alberta Not-so-Darling is facing recall because she put the interests of big corporations ahead of Wisconsin's middle class. Not-so-D doesn't even have to think about HOW to do it. She just lets ALEC pull her puppet strings. And then she gets money from big corporations! It's like magic!
The Center for Media and Democracy, which publishes the http://www.alexexposed.com/ website, reveals just one of Darling's pay-for-play gambits: sneaking a provision into law that lowers taxes on fruit-flavored chewing tobacco.
At the end of May, as the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee (JFC) worked day after day and late into the night voting on changes and amendments to the state budget bill, Joint Finance Co-Chair Alberta Darling (R-River Falls) quietly slipped a small provision into the massive budget bill that has received little attention.
Her motion would change the way moist snuff and other smokeless tobacco products are taxed from a valuation based on volume to one based on weight. The measure not only provides a big tax break for companies like Altria/Phillip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, it aids Big Tobacco in their latest outreach effort to kids.And guess what happened after that? Darling got a $1,000 campaign contribution from Altria/Phillip Morris's political action committee.
Darling cares so much for Wisconsin's children that voted to slash funding for public schools. You wouldn't know about her anti-children agenda, though, if you watched the ad sponsored by the cleverly misnamed American Federation for Children (AFC). The AFC is a front group promoting for-profit schools. It gets a lot of funding and support from loony Amway billionaires who want to destroy public education.
Darling was considered a formidable candidate, but Teamster-endorsed candidate Sandy Pasch just closed a nine-point gap to pull neck-and-neck with her.
