Conservatives in elected office DO NOT SERVE THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S.A.

Via FB/Occupy Wall Street

Conservatives, especially by way of ALEC and other corrupt groups

Sunny Green : Playing the Angles

Happy Earth Day.

The need for energy drives global warming, as well as wars and pollution.

Clean, inexpensive, accessible energy would go a long way towards not only a healthier and cleaner planet, but towards global peace.

So, naturally conservatives HATE it, in any form, but most notably at the moment in the renewable energy of solar power.

The radical right - Grover Norquist, the Koch Brothers (of big oil fame) and the other fossil fuel special interests that OWN conservatives through the tentacles of ALEC - are attacking the expansion of solar energy.

Who else could hate clean, readily accessible, renewable solar energy? It goes back a long ways. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the roof of the White House when he was president. Ronald "Ray-gun", who only loved science and tech when it was weapon-izable - took them down.

They've come a LONG long way since the third quarter of the 20th century. NOW solar energy is becoming more high tech, more viable, MORE COMPETITIVE.


As Truth-out noted:

Solar, once almost universally regarded as a virtuous, if perhaps over-hyped, energy alternative, has now grown big enough to have enemies.
The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation's largest power companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy. The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the battle rapidly spreading to other states.
Alarmed environmentalists and their allies in the solar industry have fought back, battling the other side to a draw so far. Both sides say the fight is growing more intense as new states, including Ohio, South Carolina and Washington, enter the fray.
At the nub of the dispute are two policies found in dozens of states. One requires utilities to get a certain share of power from renewable sources. The other, known as net metering, guarantees homeowners or businesses with solar panels on their roofs the right to sell any excess electricity back into the power grid at attractive rates.
Net metering forms the linchpin of the solar-energy business model. Without it, firms say, solar power would be prohibitively expensive.
The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a membership group for conservative state lawmakers, recently drafted model legislation that targeted net metering. The group also helped launch efforts by conservative lawmakers in more than half a dozen states to repeal green energy mandates.
"State governments are starting to wake up," Christine Harbin Hanson, a spokeswoman for Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, said in an email. The organization has led the effort to overturn the mandate in Kansas, which requires that 20% of the state's electricity come from renewable sources.
"These green energy mandates are bad policy," said Hanson, adding that the group was hopeful Kansas would be the first of many dominoes to fall.
The group's campaign in that state compared the green energy mandate to Obamacare, featuring ominous images of Kathleen Sebelius, the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services, who was Kansas' governor when the state adopted the requirement.

Kansas, home of Koch Industries, failed to push through anti-solar legislation. But they spent a LOT of money trying. A grass roots movement thwarted them - a REAL grass movement, not one of the Koch funded astro-turfed versions of populism.

But Oklahoma DID pass that kind of anti-solar legislation described above, and the governor signed it. Not surprising really; Oklahoma is a backward very red state pretty much owned and operated by the fossil fuel industry.

We have a battle to fight; the benefits of winning it are huge, even life itself on this planet. The enemy is conservatives, the enemy is big oil, the enemy is the fossil fuel industry.

Or maybe we should just abbreviate that to 'the dinosaurs and the old fossils' who hate and fear change, and who are stuck years in the past, even millennia.

And let us not forget the fools, including this one below, who made the incredibly stupid and factually inaccurate statements below, a little over a year ago. He is as big if not a bigger shame to the state than Michele Bachmann.

NO. WRONG. BAD. STUPID.
And sadly - OURS.

Montgomery Jensen Loses, Twice

This was a bad week to be Monty Jensen, Crow Wing County, MN.
Why?  Because Monty Jensen and his band of Tea Partier-ish conservatives have been involved in a prolonged effort to disenfranchise vulnerable adults and other disabled voters in Minnesota, but have failed, repeatedly and decisively.  This week, they failed not once, but twice, landing on the front page of the Strib for their second sound defeat.
Disabled voters are a demographic that lean strongly for Democrats, because as a party the Democrats have tended to be supportive of their needs and abilities, while conservatives have not. As a result, disabled voters are among the targeted demographic for voter suppression. From the official Democratic web site, to be specific (my emphasis in larger type - DG):
Democrats have a long and proud history of fighting for voting rights that continues to this day. One of the most important rights of American citizens is the right to vote—the right to have a say in who our leaders are and how our government should work. But the path to full voting rights for all American citizens was long and often challenging, and for far too many people, obstacles to voting remain even today.

The expansion of voting rights did not happen overnight; it was the product of a continued struggle by many people over many years. To this day, many voters still face difficulties at the polls, from registering to casting a ballot to having their votes counted. Those particularly vulnerable are minority, young, elderly, poor, and disabled voters, as well as military members and veterans. And in many parts of the country, voters are underserved by a lack of polling places, outdated voting machines, and unnecessarily complicated laws.

The voting process by disabled  voters is safe.  There is no support for the 'maybe, might be, coulda woulda but-what-if' abuse of the voting process by disabled voters, or their caregivers, (either union or non-union). Nothing about this really has anything to do with valid objections to disabled citizens voting, EXCEPT for discouraging and disenfranchising voters who tend to vote for Democratic candidates.

If there was one thing more than any others, that have convinced me that conservatives with strong influence in the Republican, Tea Party, and to an extent Libertarian parties, are corrupt, it is the harming of fellow citizens exercising their right to vote, as much or even more than the blatant corruption by special interests like ALEC.
Who IS Monty Jensen?
He's a member of a small extreme far right group loosely associated with the tea party that is trying to gain attention for themselves by making false claims of voter fraud in outstate Minnesota.

On Tuesday he lost his primary bid for office in Crow Wing County, coming in last (unless you count the write in).

Crow Wing County Board District 1
16 of 16 precincts
Monty Jensen - 243
W - Paul Koering - 346
W - Philip Trusty - 433
Doug Kern - 245
Marv Begin (write-in)

It did not sound like what you could call a 'hard fought' campaign, at least not for the winners, given this quote from the guy who came in second:

Roused from sleep, Koering said he was surprised at the results but welcomed them.
“I never campaigned or knocked on one door or spent one penny,” Koering said. “This kind of surprises me. I guess the people still think Paul Koering can do a little good. That’s wonderful.”

On Friday, his bogus law suit, yet one more right wing effort at voter suppression - well, technically two more attempts at voter suppression in one suit, got bounced out of federal court, an utter failure on all counts.
From the front page of the  August 18 2012 STrib:
Registering at polls affirmed
U.S. judge dismissed suit that challenged two statewide election practices. A federal judge dismissed a wide-ranging legal challenge to Minnesota's election day registration system and to the status of voters under court-ordered guardianship

Article by: JIM RAGSDALE , Star Tribune

Minnesota's popular system of election day voter registration, used by more than 540,000 voters in the 2008 presidential election, survived a federal court challenge that could have limited its use in November's presidential and statewide election.
U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank on Friday dismissed a wide-ranging lawsuit filed by the Minnesota Voters Alliance, state Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, and others that challenged both election day registration and voting rights for disabled people who are under court-ordered guardianships.
"This decision today means that the half-million Minnesotans who were relying on election day registration to update their registration, or because they just turned 18, this means they will be able to vote smoothly," said Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a defendant in the suit.
Erick Kaardal, attorney for the plaintiffs, who argued that the election day registration allows votes to be counted before the voters' eligibility can be confirmed, said he will immediately appeal.
"We think we could still be in play for the November 2012 election," he said.
A second issue in the suit involves voting by severely disabled people whose affairs are controlled by legal guardians.

I would disagree with the description used her by reporter Ragsdale here of severely; there are very high functioning people who for some reason need the assistance of a guardian or conservator, who have retained their voting rights in court.

Frank dismissed the claim, which had set off alarms among disability advocates.

 Having read the decision by Judge Frank, which you can read here, I don't think there is a prayer of solid legal grounds to prevail on appeal. The suit failed utterly in every possible way - and properly so. More on that bogus complaint about voting by people with disabilities below...

Boosting turnout

Minnesota's spot at or near the top in voter turnout is largely due to the four-decades-old system of election day registration, which Ritchie said can add 5 to 9 percent in election turnout.

 Minnesota's spot at or near the top in voter turnout is largely due to the four-decades-old system of election day registration, which Ritchie said can add 5 to 9 percent in election turnout.
The Minnesota Voters Alliance, a small activist group, and other plaintiffs argued that those registering on election day -- 542,257 of 2.9 million total votes in 2008 -- cannot be vetted as thoroughly as those registering weeks or months before the election.

A better description of The Minnesota Voters Alliance is a small group of right wing extremist crackpots of the conspiracy theories and tin foil hat wearing variety, and public pests bent on voter suppression tactics to win elections for the right, because they can't win in a fair election that allows ALL legal voters to participate. Instead they try to engage in voter suppression against any group they believe might vote Democratic in an election they might lose. It represents NOT a concern for honest elections - we have demonstrated repeatedly and legally that we have those - but rather an ugly tactic and strategy to interfere with the targeted voting of others from opposition parties.

Pointing to recent close elections, including Al Franken's 312-vote victory over Norm Coleman in the 2008 U.S. Senate race, the plaintiffs said same-day registration votes could make a difference.

This is the essence of their unhappiness.
Despite the recount, despite the months and months the court case over the Franken/Coleman election dragged on examining the voting ad nauseum, they didn't LIKE the outcome.
They have no valid complaint with the election, other than they didn't like the result, so they grasp at non-existent voter fraud. Every scrutiny of the election ballots concludes the same thing - an honest but close election. But this is a myth, a hoax, an utterly fraudulent conspiracy theory the extremist fringe right holds to with the same death grip as the die-hard birthers, that the election was stolen by a Democratic voter fraud conspiracy. And they don't mind making false statements to try to advance the claim - or in some cases a few bucks off their gullible fact-averse fellow right wing nuts.

But the judge said "to establish a constitutional violation based on voter irregularities, election officials must have engaged in invidious discrimination or intentional misconduct," which was not alleged in the complaint. And he said the lawsuit was "based on the erroneous premise that election officials must verify voters' eligibility before their votes are counted."
Under Minnesota election statutes, the judge said, voters themselves certify their own eligibility to vote, or risk prosecution if they lie.
On the guardianship issue, Frank rejected the argument that it is a violation of the state Constitution to presume that all those under guardianship have the right to vote. The Legislature defines what guardianship means, the judge said, adding: "Absent a specific determination by a court that the individual lacks the capacity to vote, full voting rights are preserved under Minnesota law."
"This decision means that the voice of people with disabilities can still be heard at their polling places in this election year," Steve Larson of the Arc Minnesota, an advocacy group for people with developmental disabilities, said in a statement.
Looking toward appeal Kaardal and Andy Cilek, president of the voters' alliance, said they looked forward to fighting the issue through the appeals process. "What we have is the court failed to address the constitutional issues in our complaint," Cilek said. Kaardal added: "It's the first step in a long process of federal court review of our claims regarding election day registration."
With Thursday's decision, attention now turns to cases pending before the Minnesota Supreme Court involving a proposed photo ID constitutional amendment. Ritchie sees both the lawsuit and the proposed amendment as part of a campaign to eliminate election day registration, which he said is supported by conservative organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC. The Minnesota Supreme Court has been asked to determine whether the photo ID amendment can remain on the ballot in its current form, and also what the proper titles should be for both it and a proposed amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage. Those decisions are expected within weeks.

Monty Jensen has some kind of problem with disabled people; last month he opposed a new state group home to replace a state hospital facility that was closing.  The group home would house mentally and physically disabled.  Monty joined in with the pitchfork and torches crowd having hysterics that the group home was going to house both the disabled and sex offenders.
Yeah, like THOSE populations are ever housed together in a residential facility, much less one placed near an established day care operation.  The fear of the disabled as being different, and other, and therefore scary appeals to the lowest common denominator.
Given Jensen LIED about the circumstances of his claim to see vulnerable adults being manipulated while voting.
First, he lied about 'just happening to see them while stopping by for an early voting ballot'.  The truth is he and his organization were uncredentialed voter challengers.  There is a procedure for properly being a poll watcher, who is credentialed for voter challenges; their group didn't, and apparently couldn't get those credentials.  But they hung out anyway around the county auditor's offices.
Then Jensen lied about WHEN he saw the voting he claims was illegal taking place.  He made a very specific claim about his observation in Youtube videos.  The problem is........those voters were not in the building at that time, and hadn't been for quite a while.  You can't see people who aren't there - unless you are Monty Jensen.
It bothered me how it was that Jensen singled out these particular voters on the second to the last day before the general election voting.  A possible answer is in his little group of crazies, to which the treating mental health professional who cares for those individuals belongs.
This is not a new theme; it has been advanced by former Sec. State Mary Kiffmeyer, currently one of the key political players with conservatives, especially conservatives legislators, on behalf of ALEC special interest groups.  ALEC is behind a lot of voter suppression efforts, including voter ID, restricted voting hours, and efforts to eliminate same day voting registration.  They also seek to replace our current system with provisional ballots, which in practice are often not counted, even when they are legitimate votes.  In conjunction with this theme of exploited disabled voters, the right wing extremists out for voter fraud like to bash unions, specifically union care givers.  Local blogosphere stooges play along, promoting the notion that people who care for patients in other care facilities are secretly using them to cast absentee ballots. 

This was the first hint I picked up on that this was another hoax that the right was trying to spread, as a voter suppression strategy.  I've learned to sniff for the stink of a lie when I see stupid and implausible, easily verified or repudiated claims, that are advanced by people who insist on remaining anonymous while they make unsupported and false accusations. When they throw in a little gratuitous union bashing, the stench of mendacity gets even stronger.
Monty Jensen included extensive rants in his videos and in at least some of his interviews, claiming that Unions were behind wholesale hauling of vulnerable adults by nurses and other care giver unions to polling places, as part of a Democratic Conspiracy to STEAL ELECTIONS.  In that instance, he failed to do his conspiracy homework - the facility was not unionized at all. It was another lie, but lies characterize this entire disabled voter scam the tin foil hat political crazies are pulling.
The upshot of Jensen's efforts was that a sheriff's department independent investigation revealed no attempt to coerce or persuade or in any way improperly influence the voting of disabled people.  Unless otherwise informed by a guardian or the court of ineligibility, a person who is a care giver is REQUIRED to transport, and if requested, to assist a disabled person in voting.  Because the group hoe in this case has exclusively high level performing residents, a number of their clientele regularly vote in elections and take pride in doing so.  Interviews investigating the claims of voter influence were pursued by local media, both print and broadcast, without finding any basis for the claims - including speaking with the disabled people who wanted to be on record about how important voting was to them.
That was not sufficient. One of the individuals who it turned out COULD legally vote, was coerced into testifying to untrue statements to advance the claims of the crazy political fringe group.  In private, he told the County Attorney that what he had stated publicly was not true, that he was not coerced into voting and that his choices were his own, but that his parent MADE HIM SAY THOSE THINGS.  And he broke down and cried over it, in obvious distress by having been so exploited by Monty Jensen and his associates in a false claim.
If anyone is guilty of exploiting vulnerable adults, it is Monty Jensen and his associates.  He apparently harbors ill will towards disabled people, and wants to prevent them living in area communities.  He panders to the lowest common denominators of fear and ignorance.  He is factually inaccurate, and he does not mind wasting a lot of county and state and federal money to try to engage in voter suppression.
But Jensen keeps losing, as well he should. 

He is a stain on the right, although out towards the fringe (or unraveled).  Those who engage in the same lies and fear mongering over voter fraud.  He will not prevail in his su it; it appears to be legally flawed.  The only real question remaining is how much of the taxpayer's money he will waste before he fails for the last time, and maybe whether or not he will be caught in perjury or not.  Because when someone lies as often as Jensen appears to have done, you have to wonder if - or more likely when -THAT is going to happen.

Why ALEC is BAD, AND Why Right Wing False Assumptions / One-Size-Hurts-All Solutions Are Disastrous,/

This piece in the Op/Ed section on Monday, June 18 2012, of the New York Times sums up so much of what is wrong with Right Wing-nut legislative solutions and Right Wing-nut Ideology.

It assumes that the ideology and the solution fits the problem; it presumes that the people imposing the solutions don't actually need to know a damn thing about the problem they are attempting to address - badly.  And most of all, it imposes solutions which are the OPPOSITE of Freedom and Liberty, and representative government where people elect those who govern.  The right relies on theory that has NO substantive facts from experience to back it up, and that theory is badly flawed and not widely supported by the mainstream of economics where this sort of theory is peer reviewed and critiqued by people who know and understand economics.

We have elected representatives who will NOT balance budgets appropriately, or address issues.  We have right wingers who want to resolve financial problems by taking from those who can least give it, and by refusing --- despite overwhelming support and desire for taxation of the upper income brackets -- under any circumstances.

Their claims that the wealthy are the job creators is hideously flawed; if that were true, the right having redistributed the overwhelming majority of our national wealth TO the richest few percent, would have created UNPRECEDENTED quantities of jobs.

Instead, we have had, applying this business formula, caused unprecedented job LOSS in this country, financial ruin, and jobs outsourced overseas at slave labor prices.  The right has exported misery, while succeeding ONLY in growing misery, and loss and failure at home.

They have, as a result, destabilized and greatly weakened this nation.  They have done harm that if not entirely irreparable, will take decades, and possibly generations to repair.

The right is NOT making us MORE FREE, the right is NOT making us STRONGER OR MORE SECURE, the right is NOT making us MORE COMPETITIVE in a global economy.  Most of all the right is NOT making us a more inclusive and equitable, or just, society under law. 

The policies and ideology of the right are intrusive, they are oppressive, they are contrary to the fundamental philosophy of our Founding Fathers and their foundational documents.  The right is engaging in the same kind of heavy handed oppressive actions that prompted the American Revolution, and the role the right is playing is that of King George III's government.

The Right is GROSSLY CORRUPT, the Right is OWNED BY SPECIAL INTEREST.  Make no mistake, those special interests will make huge profits at the expense of receivership and bankruptcies, and the selling off of assets, where alternatives would have actually served the people of the state, not the special interest vultures.  ALEC pulls the puppet strings of the conservative legislators, who appear either to be in collusion, or too stupid to know or care what it is they are doing, so long as they get their cut of the action from ALEC in the form of direct and indirect payoffs.

From the NYTimes:

When ALEC Takes Over Your Town


By JOE NOCERA  Published: June 18, 2012
(Emphasis where added is mine - DG)
The Rhode Island State Legislature finally adjourned its 2012 session around 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It had been a brutal last few days.

In May, the State Senate had approved a supplemental property tax increase of 13.8 percent, to be imposed on the residents of Woonsocket, a struggling city with a $10 million deficit. But when the bill moved to the House of Representatives, two conservative Woonsocket representatives refused to go along, and no amount of late-night negotiating could change their minds. Everyone finally gave up and went home.

The state has named a budget commission to grapple with Woonsocket’s money woes. Ultimately, though, a receiver may have to be appointed — which is to say, a person not beholden to the voters, who would nonetheless have the power to abrogate union contracts and do whatever else he or she deems necessary to erase the deficit. Incredibly, the two Woonsocket legislators have pushed for a receiver, despite the pain that it would likely bring their city.

Or maybe it’s not so incredible. It turns out that one of them, Jon Brien, is also on the national board of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Although ALEC is probably best known for its support of the Stand Your Ground law in Florida, the conservative group has a very clear agenda for dealing with state budgets. It wants to shrink them. Although Brien has denied that he is applying the ALEC philosophy to his small city, it looks, in fact, as if that’s exactly what he is doing. It’s not pretty.

Woonsocket’s problems stem from the decision of Rhode Island’s previous governor, a Republican named Don Carcieri, to balance the state’s budget by cutting state aid to the cities. All of Rhode Island’s poorer cities had become dependent on that aid, so when the economy soured, they essentially ran out of money. Providence had to renegotiate the retirement benefits of its municipal workers. Central Falls actually sought bankruptcy court protection — and a receiver was put in charge of its finances. As for Woonsocket, its current difficulties came to light last fall when the school district revealed a huge, unanticipated budget shortfall.

The two Woonsocket legislators quickly decided to apply Rahm Emanuel’s famous maxim about never letting a crisis go to waste. The fact that their town had a big budget deficit meant that if they played their cards right, they could do a lot more than just fix the schools’ problem. They could actually shrink the town government!

And how does one go about doing that? By refusing to go along with tax increases and forcing the city to the edge of bankruptcy, thus raising the possibility of bringing in a receiver. “You never move faster than when you have a piano hanging over your head,” Brien told me. “The receiver is that piano.”
He went on to say that the municipal unions — police, firefighters, teachers — “have been given pensions and benefits the city can no longer afford” but have no incentive to renegotiate. But a receiver, with the wave of a magic wand, can instantly cut their pensions, and there isn’t a thing they can do about it. When I asked Brien how bad the pension problem was in Woonsocket, he told me he didn’t know. “I’m a state legislator,” he said. “I don’t get into that level of municipal finance.”

Here’s the rub. Pensions are not the core problem in Woonsocket. Yes, Woonsocket has a pension shortfall, but it is more manageable than many other places and has almost nothing to do with the current crisis. “The meme in Rhode Island is that if there is a problem, you can trace it back to the public employees,” says Bob Plain, a journalist who runs the Web site RIFuture.org. In Providence, the pensions, with annual cost of living adjustment of up to 6 percent, were, indeed, a huge problem. (Note: My brother used to work for Angel Taveras, the city’s mayor.) But that’s just not true in Woonsocket.

Yet, in Central Falls, the receiver took an ax to retiree benefits, cutting them by 55 percent, meaning that many retirees are now getting pensions of under $20,000. The receiver has also laid off city workers, closed the city’s library and shuttered a popular community center. This is the future Woonsocket now faces, thanks to its own legislators.

Shrinking government sounds appealing. We all have our favorite examples of silly regulations and bloated bureaucracies. But struggling municipalities like Woonsocket don’t have a lot of fat; cutting means reducing or eliminating programs that citizens depend on. And, in any case, in a democracy, the decision of what — and whether — to cut should rest with elected officials who are responsible to voters, not to an unelected receiver using bankruptcy law to unilaterally make cuts.

That may be the ALEC solution, but it shouldn’t be ours.

Related News
Conservative Nonprofit Acts as a Stealth Business Lobbyist (April 22, 2012)



Related in Opinion
Paul Krugman: Lobbyists, Guns and Money (March 26, 2012).
Editorial: The Big Money Behind State Laws (February 13, 2012)

Another Corp-o-Rat Quits ALEC!!!!

It appeared not that long ago that ALEC was presenting a monolithic front to the world, one of power and secrecy and money - a lot of money, used to buy influence from Republicans and other conservatives.

That monolithic facade has been crumbling faster than anyone could have expected; the Corp-o-rats are leaving the sinking conservative special interest buying government ship in the face of bright light and public disapproval. 

While the right tries to style this as some sort of bad public pressure, it is the epitome, the personification of democracy, of people power not corporate power.  It is more than anything public outrage at special interest co-option and corruption of our government.

The World Bank uses the definition of corruption - the abuse of public office for private gain.  The ONLY reason that corp-o-rat members participated in ALEC was that it gave them some form of gain, some kind of unfair and illicit, possibly illegal, advantage.  That the right wing values-spouting politicians comprise nearly all of the legislative members of ALEC - and nearly all of the few who were Democrats left a long time ago - one has to ask the question of the right. 

Is all that spouting of values because they don't actually have any?

If I had time to photoshop this image,
I could have some fun putting the two heads
of the Koch Brothers on it in a similar style,
and adding the name ALEC to the ship

Sadly, while an increasing number of companies quit ALEC, there are a few left behind who won't give up the ship, notably the Kochtopuss representing the Koch Industries / Koch Brothers who have so far adamantly resisted abandoning ALEC.  Personally, I think the rats are probably just jumping ship from ALEC to a new, secret, just as shady and shadowy entity from which to engage in illegal lobbying like conduct to continue to corrupt and loot government, and by extension all of us.

In case you have forgotten what ALEC is, or how it operates, here is a handy diagram:

What corp-o-rat will be the next to go?

Wonderful news from ThinkProgress:

BREAKING: Johnson & Johnson Drops ALEC

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Jun 12, 2012 at 5:43 pm

Johnson and Johnson has been facing mounting pressure following a push from Color of Change and other progressive groups to leave the conservative agenda-setting group.

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson announced today that they are dropping their membership from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
ALEC is responsible for crafting voter suppression legislation that has been used in state houses across the country, and the “Stand Your Ground” law that originally protected Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Johnson and Johnson is the latest in a huge wave of groups leaving ALEC.
Other groups that have dropped ALEC include: Walmart, Amazon.com, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft, Wendy’s, Mars, Inc., Arizona Public Service, the National Board for Professional Teaching StandardsScantron, The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Kaplan, Procter & Gamble, Yum! Brands, five Pennsylvania legislators, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Reed Elsevier, American Traffic Solutions, Intuit, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

WalMart Leaves ALEC!!!!!!

Five minutes of fireworks give or take celebrates this unexpected development appropriately. And after the fireworks the serious article from the Daily Finance about this new move by Wal Mart gives the details.   I knew they sold a lot of guns; I didn't know they were the biggest seller of guns in the entire United States.  That's gonna bite for the NRA. 

Play on, then read on!

Looks to me like that conservative / culture war agenda is significantly unpopular!

Walmart Ending Membership in Conservative Group

By Reuters

Posted 10:15AM 05/31/12 Posted under: Company News, Coca-Cola Company, Kraft Foods, Wal-Mart Stores, McDonald's, Procter & Gamble

By Jessica Wohl

ROGERS, Ark. -- Walmart Stores (WMT), the world's No. 1 retailer and the biggest seller of firearms in the United States, is dropping out of a U.S. conservative advocacy group that has been a lightning rod over voting and gun laws.
Walmart said late Wednesday it is suspending membership in the American Legislative Council (ALEC), which the retailer joined in 1993.
ALEC sparked controversy recently because of its involvement in voting laws and in "stand your ground" gun laws, including the one under scrutiny in the Florida killing of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February.
A coalition of liberal advocates targeted the group for its support of the self-defense laws.
ALEC, which serves as a forum for corporations and mostly Republican state lawmakers and lobbyists to discuss model legislation, has been criticized by liberals for promoting laws that require photo identification to vote.
ColorOfChange, a liberal advocacy group for black Americans, has said the voting laws put the poor and minorities at a disadvantage.
In April, ALEC said it was abandoning the committee that worked on "public safety and elections" to focus on the economy. Despite the change, Walmart decided it was no longer focused on the same issues as the council.

Arrrrrrrrrrrghh!

********************

With even the biggest corp-o-rats abandoning the ship, how long will Koch Industries, the evil Pirate Murdoch and his minions, and the NRA gun industry stooges cling to the decks?  How many more of the legislators will see the writing on the wall, flashing in neon, punctuated by alarm bells and sirens, leading them to bail on ALEC as well?

Corrupt Media Mogul linked to both ALEC and blackmail of British Members of Parliament

Rupert Murdoch in his pirate persona

It should come as no surprise that right wing propaganda mogul Rupert Murdoch corporate interests are part of equally crooked ALEC, an entity that engages in widespread right wing corruption of our legislators at all levels, but especially at the state levels, while also waging right wing culture warfare and actively disinforming right wingers to control their minds.

To illustrate the scope of the carrot / stick behavior of Rupert Murdoch and his corruption, was this latest story from the UK, about how Murdoch media tried to gather dirt to pressure, even blackmail, members of parliament in the UK:

From the Independent:
According to Mr Thurlbeck, reporters were told by those in "deepcarpetland" to obtain evidence of affairs or gay relationships. The aim, he claimed, was to "to find as much embarrassing sleaze on as many members as possible in order to blackmail them into backing off from its highly forensic inquiry into phone hacking". In a letter – a copy of which has been obtained by The Independent – to the Deputy Assistant Commissioner leading the Met's inquiries into News International, Sue Akers, Mr Watson wrote: "If these allegations are found to be true, it suggests there was a conspiracy to blackmail."

Rupert Murdoch is at the top of a huge national scandal in the UK, one that appears to have spilled over to the United States -- it cannot fairly be said that Murdoch contains his corruption outside the U.S.  One can argue that Murdoch corrupts not only our government and business, but causes deterioration of your mind,  Not only is ALEC corrupt, but trying to get your news from Faux News will only dumb you down anyway, so you can get twice the benefits by boycotting Fox News - you can push back against corruption, and you can get smarter at the same time.  Actually, you're smarter if you have NO sources of news, than if you rely on Fakes News.  That is the result of multiple polls and studies, most recently this one:

Yet Another Survey: Fox News Viewers Worst-Informed, NPR Listeners Best-Informed

by Andrew Kirell | 10:29 am, May 23rd, 2012

» 264 comments
A new survey from Farleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind finds that people who watch no news at all can answer more questions about international current events than people who watch cable news outlets like Fox News and MSNBC. The survey also finds that Fox News viewers are the worst-informed on domestic and international current events, while NPR listeners are the best-informed.
The poll report claims that “NPR and Sunday morning political talk shows are the most informative news outlets, while exposure to partisan sources, such as Fox News and MSNBC, has a negative impact on people’s current events knowledge.”

Minnesota's Own Medtronic QUITS ALEC!!!!

This has been a great week for ALEC news!  We have the corp-o-rats leaving the Pirate ship of ALEC.
I couldn't be happier to see this particular home-grown Medical Technology company getting out of the corrupt entity that is ALEC!
ALEC corporations write the legislation, IN SECRET not transparently in public forums, which is crafted so that it
benefits them, and pays both directly and indirectly to have conservative majority legislatures pass the legislation which benefits their special interests rather than the public interest.  We elect these legislators to serve US, not to serve a corp-o-rat master, often out of state. 
I for one do not want to see a company like Medtronic funding the social culture wars as part of getting preferential treatment for their business in this underhanded, corrupt manner.  Corruption has been defined, as the best working definition I have seen, of use of public office for private gain --- and these ALEC corporations are buying public government for their gains - and they DO make unfair gains at public expense.

'swinging' corp-o-rat pirates

We need to be supportive of innovative industries like Medtronic in Minnesota, but we need to do so in the full light of day, not by buying off legislators to make dirty secret deals.  Personal disclosure, my family has old, profitable deep ties to the  Medtronic corporation, going all the way back to the earliest days of the corporate founders.  So I am especially happy to see the corporation leave the dark side of dirty conservative 'pirate' politics as the public pressure for ALEC disclosure and abandonment continues.  In the interim, there is an almost unlimited number of images available of rats as pirates for me to play with for these stories of ALEC diminishing.
'
As was noted in a recent op ed rebuttal posted in the Star Tribune, "Bribery equals corruption -- from any angle" about business ethics (or lack of them) generally, and WalMart core corporate member of ALEC specifically, good business can act legally and ethically, and still be very successful.  This is not ONLY about bribery in Mexico; the WalMart executives who did so are now sitting smugly in the corporate boardroom of WalMart, having earned big corporate rewards in terms of personal compensation for doing so, and having apparently violated U.S. law not once, but twice in a cover up effort.  They should be fired, not promoted, if any corporation is serious about their ethics.  And if WalMart were serious about not bribing American politicans and authorities, they would quit ALEC, and not simply move their shady practices to the cover of other entities instead -- as is allegedly the case with ALEC as more and more businesses end their support for it.  The right wing is not about government reform, it is about private greed, and only the most blindly ideologically ignorant continue to support it believing otherwise. In opposing the looting and pillaging and bribery and other forms of corporate corruption on the right, conservative voters are hurting themselves, and they are hurting the rest of us -- INCLUDING honest Minnesota businesses.   The author of this op ed piece is NOT 'anti-business', the usual label that the right tries to paste on their critics to distract from their corruption, and he is quite famliar with both good honest capitalism thriving in Minnesota - and with Mexico.

Amazon is the 16th Corporation that Quits ALEC - Sunshiny News on a Rainy Thursday

 I've referred here before as the member corporations and corporation/ industry lobbyists as Corp-o-rats.  The image at left personifies that perfectly.
The image on the right - feel free to enlarge, print, and color - is holding a cup full of money,
which brilliantly represents the collection of corp-o-rat welfare that ALEC does so well for their corp-o-rat members. 

Thanks to our commenter Democommie for calling my attention - and now yours - to something I did not realize, a fact which has been under-reported.  THIS week is National Small Business Week!   The cartoon below reflects how the corp-o-rats, including WalMart as one of the core companies running ALEC, impact small businesses owned by individuals who are part of our communities on Main Street.  WalMart is of course involved in scandals about Bribery and cover ups in other countries; they're involved in ALEC corruption (by the World Bank definition) here in the U.S.

People for the American Way just issued this press release, with some really great news in fighting the good fight to push back corporate greed, special interest money and corruption in government.  Unfortunately, there is no indication other core business interests will abandon their ALEC activity, and there are indications that other activities which had been pursued by these interests with the cooperation and apparent corruption of conservative legislators under cover of other conservative organizations.  The World Bank describes corruption as the use of public office for private gain.  That appears to describe ALEC and a large number of conservative, almost exclusively Republican politicians.  Those politicians who get rewarded directly and indirectly through ALEC and related entities operated by the same people, are out to push this agenda they call freedom, but is another word for slavery to corporations, including deregulation that damages us all, and which pushes corporate costs of doing business on all of us without our consent, from too few food inspectors to protecting energy companies engaging in fracking, to trying to gut the EPA, hoping to sell harm to the public by re-labeling it as 'freedom'.  If there were truth in advertizing, it would be spelled 'freedumb'.:

From People for the American Way:

Amazon.com Drops ALEC, PFAW Encourages Others to Follow

Amazon.com is now the 16th major corporation to cut ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), according to reports. The announcement came after more than 500,000 petition signatures– collected by People For the American Way, ColorOfChange.org, CREDO Action, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, SumOfUs and Fuse Washington – were delivered at an event outside the company’s shareholder meeting in Seattle. The petition called on Amazon.com and other corporations to stop funding ALEC, of which Amazon.com had been a member since 2011.
Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way, issued the following statement:
“Amazon.com has heard the voices of the half million people who signed this petition, and today they did right by their customers. But the ALEC agenda continues to harm many more people across the country. Responsible businesses have no reason to fund ALEC’s agenda, which hurts the working families they depend on. The corporations that have yet to leave ALEC should realize that standing up for their consumers is the best business decision they can make.”

ALEC activity amounts to corruption

The World Bank defines corruption as use of public office for private gain.

The activities of conservative legislators and corporations, acting outside the states where the legislators are elected, for the benefit of those legislators above and beyond their legislative compensation, and where they draft legislation to give preferential treatment and profit to those select corporate donors.

Or, as I have called them before here - Corp-o-rats.

This occurs in every state.  It occurs here in Minnesota, and most of it occurs in secret, which is utterly and completely contrary to citizen participation government and the promised transparency.  It IS however utterly consistent with conservative polititicians saying insincerely they serve smaller government and the people in public, while slavishly serving private interests in reality.
Shame on conservatives, and look out because as ALEC is phased out, or at least minimized after this attention, we're already watching where the action on the right to slavishly serve private special interests while taking money corruptly will go  next to operate clandestinely.

From the Uptake, relating to the utterly corrupt conservatives next door, who are just like the conservatives HERE in Minnesota doig business with - and for - ALEC.  Hooray for the Wisconsin Watch Dogs!!!!  Get all those damnably corrupt, crooked, unethical, hypocritical, lying conservatives!!!! 

They are anti-democracy, making up claims of voter fraud, while themselves defrauding legitimate voters of the right and ability to exercise their constitutional rights at the ballot box.



From the Uptake:
Corporate money may have illegally influenced Wisconsin’s state government says a report from the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin.

It’s report on the influence of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Wisconsin details how at least 17 legislators have received thousands of dollars in gifts from the corporations that pay for ALEC and those gifts have often not been disclosed to the public.
According to the report:
“ALEC has created a “scholarship” scheme to help cover the costs for legislators to travel to out-of- state resorts for these meetings, where the children of lawmakers and lobbyists are entertained and state legislators and their spouses are wined and dined. On these trips, ALEC arranges “task force” meetings that take place behind closed doors, away from the view of the press and public, where corporate lobbyists and elected officials vote as equals on ‘model’ legislative templates to change the laws in states across the country.”
Press release about the report
CMD Releases New Report “ALEC Exposed in Wisconsin: The Hijacking of a State”
Watchdog Groups Call for Attorney General Investigation of ALEC Lobbying Activities
MADISON — 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).

14th Corp-o-RAT Leaves ALEC!!!!

The right, especially the more far right to right wing extremists, favor all kinds of changes to the U.S. education system, from privatization so that our nations education becomes secondary, to corporate profit and finding ways to do favors for those loan companies that profit off of students at higher rates than government loans for college or other secondary education, to enabling the religious right to promote ignorance only failed sex ed and to assaults to teaching factual history, legitimate science and economics, and badly bowdlerized and censored literature.  The right also has sought to remove any coursework that doesn't feature exclusively European focused cultural orientation, attempting to remove any and all mention of Hispanics, Asians, Blacks and native Americans from education.  The right would also apparently like to keep our population stupid and ill educated along class lines, so as to ensure that more of them would accept conservative positions without critical thinking or a reliance on objective facts and reality - because conservative ideology is frequently at odds with those.  A right wing educated population is more likely than a centrist, competitive and comprehensive educated population to be compliant, submissive and conformist to the right wing elite manipulators.  They seek to keep people of color and other groups - notably women - poor and under their thumb, and they wouldn't mind keeping a lot of white men poor and stupid, bowing and scraping to wealth either.  Gutting a quality public education, at all levels, K-12 through post secondary levels is their ticket to control.  The right doesn't do well with a thoughtful, independent and well educated population, so no matter how much it goes against the ideals of our founding fathers, they want to keep people stupid like sheep.  Every effort, every educational policy provision is consistent with that analysis.

That is why the 14th Corp-o-rat to break with ALEC is particularly sweet.

From the Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch:

For-Profit Education Firm Kaplan Is 14th Company to Dump ALEC

by Rebekah Wilce — April 27, 2012 - 12:22pm

Topics: Corporations

Projects: ALEC Exposed

Kaplan, a for-profit education, tutoring, and testing empire that is the largest division of the $4 billion Washington Post Company, recently told the Republic Report (RR) that Kaplan's for-profit college division "was a member of ALEC for a one year period, which ended in August 2011." Kaplan's membership in ALEC's Education Task Force is documented in task force agendas and materials obtained by Common Cause and publicly released yesterday.
A Kaplan Education Center (Source: Rees Architecture)The Education Task Force is currently co-chaired by Connections Academy, a for-profit education company, owned by Pearson (a British-based company that publishes Prentice Hall and Addison-Wesley textbooks as well as the Financial Times and Penguin Group imprints), that contracts with charter schools, school districts, or governmental entities to provide "online" lessons to students.
As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported, ALEC's education agenda encompasses a 20 year effort to privatize public education through an ever-expanding network of school voucher systems, which divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools to private schools. ALEC bills also divert public funds into private charter schools or for-profit internet schools. ALEC bills also allow schools to loosen standards for teachers and administrators, exclude students with physical disabilities and special educational needs, escape the requirements of collective bargaining agreements, and experiment with other pet causes like merit pay, single-sex education, school uniforms, and political and religious indoctrination of students. Learn more about ALEC's education agenda in The Nation.
As RR reports and Common Cause documents attest, the following for-profit education companies were also members of ALEC's Education Task Force in 2011:

• Bridgepoint Education (a for-profit education services holding company which owns for-profit, online and land-based Ashford University and University of the Rockies)
• Corinthian Colleges (owns and manages a collection of for-profit career-oriented colleges in the United States and Canada including Everest College and Everest University, Heald College and WyoTech)
• Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU, formerly the Career College Association, the for-profit schools trade association)
• K12, Inc. (the nation's largest provider of online charter schools)
• Insight Schools, Inc. (now a division of K12)
• National Heritage Academies (a for-profit charter school management organization headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a collection of 67 charter schools in the eight states and a separate network of college preparatory high schools)
• International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL, the online schools trade association)

Kaplan, Bridgepoint and Corinthian are all under investigation by multiple state Attorneys General for waste, fraud, and abuse. APSCU works on behalf of the industry to mitigate these investigations and keep federal funding flowing.
Kaplan is the 14th corporation to announce publicly that it has declined to renew its ALEC membership, joining Procter & Gamble, YUM! Brands, Blue Cross Blue Shield, American Traffic Solutions, Reed Elsevier, Arizona Public Service, Mars, Wendy's, McDonald's, Intuit, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola. 28 legislators have also publicly cut ties with ALEC in recent weeks.
CMD, Color of Change, Common Cause and others are now asking Amazon, State Farm, AT&T and Johnson & Johnson to cut ties with ALEC.

artistic rendering of a greedy Pi-Rat

I hope Penigma readers will join with us in pressing corporations and legislators to break with ALEC and to repudiate (not refudiate, the ill-educated phrase of the chronically inarticulate Sarah Palin) corruption in government.  The World Bank describes corruption as the use of public office for private gain -- that tracks with ALEC legislation written in secret by corporations for their benefit being passed by right wing legislators.  The overwhelming majority of ALEC legislators and ALEC legislation is pushed through by Republican corrupt legislators, most of whom have received some form of compensation or benefit, directly or indirectly from ALEC, or ALEC members, including through PAC support and campaign donations.

Despite the parrots in the right wing blogosphere who so willingly repeat endlessly what they are told,  the facts are clear, and with the protest efforts they are loud.  ALEC acting for special private interest through the use of public office is corrupt, is bad public policy, and should at the very least lose its tax exempt status, and possibly be the subject of a government investigation.  Want to bet you won't see one of those from the investigation-mad witch-hunters on the right in Congress?  They will happily look the other way; and we know what direction that is.

Many of the Few Democratic Legislators Belonging to ALEC Decide to QUIT

Democratic legislators are leaving ALEC even faster than corporations continue to do so.  While I predict they will be much slower to come to their senses and abandon such egregious corruption, I believe that the conservatives in the face of rising outrage at allowing out of state obscene special interest money sources to draft legislation, will find themselves in uncomfortable positions defending their actions to the living breathing not-special-interest constituents who elect them.  There comes a point where no amount of money will guarantee a conservative an election, when people are knowledgeable enough, and angry enough about what they know. 

The electorate should be angry - very angry.  We the people are getting the shaft while the big money that pays off our legislators gets richer, makes bigger profits, unfair, unequal and disproportionate profits at our expense.  Simply put, we do not like it when the party which promises transparency meets and drafts legislation in secret - often outside the state where it is passed.  We do not like our legislators being paid off, either directly or indirectly by entities competing with our interests and the service of our legislators.

Right wing culture war agendas are unwelcome, and unpopular.  In record breaking numbers, the legislation by the right is being undone or overturned, and those elected to government are being thrown out with deliberate haste.

I used to have respect for conservatives; I used to BE a conservative.  Now they are fact averse, anti-education, anti-science, and selling out to an unprecedented degree since the late 19th / earliest part of the 20th century to corrupt big money.  Their arrogance since the latter 20th century and the first decade of this century is unprecedented in my life time.

Here is the latest on the legislators leaving ALEC.  If the Corp-o-rats are the businesses, like Koch and WalMart (and others), and lobbyists for big money entities like the NRA interceded for gun manufacturers, then the legislators are the crew of the sinking ship, heading for the exits -- and the dinghys.

From the Nation:

Meet the 28 Lawmakers Who Have Quit ALEC This Month

Zaid Jilani

April 26, 2012

 

Editor's Note: This article was first published by RepublicReport.org.
 
The exodus of major corporations from the corporate front group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has made headlines nationwide as the group’s agenda has been increasingly scrutinized by the general public.

But as these corporations have fled ALEC, there has also been one other little-noticed exodus from the group: that of legislators. SourceWatch and Keystone Progress have been tracking the defections of lawmakers. Here are 28 who have left so far:

- Sen. Nan Orrock (D-GA): “As a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council for several years, having joined ALEC with the primary goal of better understanding the corporate-dominated organization, I know first-hand that ALEC is not the innocuous organization it claims to be.” [4/17/12]
- Sen. Greg Cromer (R-LA): “‘It has been brought to my attention that there have been meetings and/or activities with ALEC staff members within the state of Louisiana that I have not been privy to,’ Cromer wrote in his resignation letter that went out as an email to key lawmakers and staffers.” [4/17/12]
- Sen. Mike Colona (D-MO): “‘Their agenda is radical and wrong for Missouri. I was a member and saw firsthand the sort of extreme legislation they push on state legislators around the country,’ Cromer said in a statement to the organization “Progress Missouri.” [4/12/12]
- Pennsylvania Reps. Kate Harper (R), Sandra Major (R), Mark Mustio (R), Harry Readshaw (D), and Sen. John Pippy (R) [4/26/12]
- Sen. George Muñoz (D-NM) [4/20/12]
- Rep. Ted Vick (D-SC): “Recent revelations concerning ALEC’s funding sources from radical elements have proven to be the final straw for me. ALEC has become too partisan and too extreme.” [4/24/12]
- Nebraska Senators Danielle Conrad (D), Tony Fulton (R), Health Mello (D), and Jeremy Norquist (D) [4/26/12]
- Texas Democratic Party Reps. Alma Allen, Armando Martinez, Dawnna Dukes, Hubert Vo, Harold Dutton, Chente, Quintanilla, Eddie Rodriguez, José Menéndez, Ruth Jones McClendon, Eric Johnson, Tracy King, Ryan Guillen [4/2012]
- Rep. Jennifer Selig (D-UT) [4/9/12]
- Rep. Kevin Van De Wege (D-WA): “My membership status is increasingly becoming a divisive issue this year, and I prefer to put my time and energy into efforts that unite our district rather than divide it.” [4/11/12]

We applaud these legislators for leaving the corporate front group, which has been responsible for pushing destructive special interest legislation, from climate change denial in schools, to anti-union and anti-consumer bills, to the controversial Voter ID and Stand Your Ground laws.

the ALEC money corp-o- ' Rat'