ALEC has operated in the background since 1973, funded by major corporations who want to advance a corporate-friendly agenda into state legislatures. Some 2,000 state legislators belong to ALEC and attend its posh conferences, where they hobnob with corporate lobbyists.
ALEC suffered a PR setback when Trayvon Martin was killed last year in Florida by a man who invoked ALEC’s “stand your ground” law. The bad publicity caused some 40 corporations to abandon ALEC.
It has written draft legislation for vouchers, charters, cyber charters, ending teacher tenure, ending collective bargaining, and a host of other measures to “reform” American education so that public dollars flow to private hands with minimal or no regulation or accountability.
Life is unfair, even for ALEC. Common Cause is trying to strip them of their tax-exempt status, saying that they are lobbyists. ALEC Exposed has posted their radical legislation for all to see.
A legislator in Montana wrote a column critiquing ALEC. Ouch!
They were even wounded by a post on this blog. How touching to know that ALEC follows us.
They also need to go after the “foundations” run by Gates, Broad, Walton, and others that are nothing more than lobbying groups.
Sometimes, even though its far too rare, the rats are exposed for their collective gnawing at democracy and institutions such as public education, ALL for advancement of the growing international,corporate czars whose money madness threatens the U.S.
in a myriad ways, from killing voting rights to destroying public education. ALEC truly is an insidious blight on the country, especially the evaporating middle class! The ALEC full agenda ought to send a chill through every sentient citizen. The goose stepping tactics they used to curtail, or at least try to curtail, voting rights in the last election brings back
memories of the KKK, Jim Crow laws EXCEPT these scoundrels cross hairs are on the backs of all but the Romney rich 1%. Education seems to be the target of every
corporate cabal to milk the system and leave an empty shell of once was a model for the world. Just tonight I was talking to a teacher about the sorry state of DPS, a model
of a businessman’s greed, that picked the bones of older faculty members, and black balled them from securing a teaching spot anywhere else in the state! I know because I’ve talked to too many of these martyrs to injustice and tyrannous tactics that put the
creators right up there with the infamous Tweed ring of yesteryear. Teaching has become in one decade the worst profession due to the farcical, health robbing burdens placed on teachers. I am so cynical that I think such oppressive demands are made just to drive all the teachers who will not relinquish there rights and knowledge from the
profession, and leave those remaining in a fear fraught existence. It is a tragedy that is heinous in its goals and actions. ALEC is one of the leaders along with other velvet rats such as Gates, the Bushes, and their corporate cronies. The feeding frenzy of these
parasitical destroyers has reached a frenetic pace, much like throwing a piece of meat in a piranha tank. No one wants to know the truth, no one cares about the dedicated victims and many applaud the public systems’ demise, that will ultimately reach their very doors by reducing our country to academic levels of a some of the third world countries. We truly are watching the decline of a country that can be graphed by the increasing poverty poor who beg pennies from nearly every street corner…and THIS is the richest country in the world? ONLY for the the plutocracy…
I feel sooooooooooo sooooooooory for them. Now the fun starts on them. All we have to do is continue to pound them with the truth. Their psychology does not allow for that to happen. Keep the pressure on them and watch what happens. Happy Days are Here Again. It won’t be easy but it is starting to happen before our eyes. Never give up or they win by default without really trying. That is how you lose.
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If countries like Mexico, New Zealand, Chile. Etc where this same agenda is taking root, the people are literally protesting in the streets. Where is our collective anger and outrage in America? “You can have a few with the majority of the wealth or you can have democracy – you cannot have both.”
We Americans seem to have a unique tolerance for being screwed and even a unique passion for defending our right to be screwed. I think it has a lot to do with the American Dream, the “rags-to-riches” story that so many people believe in. First, we believe that the rich and powerful got that way because of their own hard work and virtue, and second we believe that we too are going to be among the rich and powerful. Those two (erroneous) beliefs combine such that we can’t see the blatant avarice and outright plunder of the rich and powerful. If the rich and powerful are so deserving and virtuous, and if we ourselves are going to be rich and powerful some day, we certainly don’t want any unnecessary laws holding back these virtuous, deserving people, do we?
The American public has been sold a bill of goods.
Everyone needs to read Winner-Take-All Politics by Jacob Hacker, which explains how the super rich have gamed the system to keep adding to their wealth, while the middle and lower classes struggle to get by.
Broad, Walton, et al continue to spout the idea that American schools are failing. They are taking a page from Hitler, who said: “But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”
Not that I am comparing any of them with Hitler, but they are using a propaganda technique used by him and his followers. They distract everyone from the truth by repeating the same thing, to the point that everyone thinks it is true. After all these rich guys, who must be smart or they wouldn’t be rich, are saying it, so it must be true.
Raising my glass and hoping that ALEC will be confined to the dustbin of history, soon-very soon.