We know ALEC as the corporate Bill Mill that enlists 2,000 state legislators as members. ALEC promotes a far-right libertarian agenda that is anti-government, anti-regulation, and pro-unregulated free enterprise. Among its sponsors are the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, and many major corporations who don’t want government getting in the way of low wages and high profits. ALEC supports fracking and opposes gun control and environmental regulation. It despises unions and public schools.it loves charters and vouchers.
Writing in The Nation, Brendan Fisher Andy Mary Bottari report that ALEC has a new venture, the American City County Exchange, which met for the first time last year.
Its purpose is to encourage local officials who are aligned with its agenda. Specifically, ALEC wants local officials who believe that localities must defer to state officials. That way, when a local government tries to raise the minimum wage higher than that of the state, the locals must back off. If the locals want to fight climate change, they can’t. If they want to grant LGBT rights, they can’t go Father than state law.
This, ACCE has the unenviable task of persuading its members at the local level that local control is obsolete.
What a strange pretzel these rightwingers have twisted themselves into.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“What a strange pretzel these rightwingers have twisted themselves into.”
So well observed! So true!
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No, not strange at all. They worship Mammon and whatever Mammon dictates the regressive reactionary Mammonites will do. There is no political ideology, just Mammonite Idiology*.
Idiology (n.) Ideology based on error, falsehood and fantasy. The ideology of idiots
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The word “idiot” comes from the Greek “idios,” meaning “one’s own”–not being able to see beyond the end of one’s own nose–a typical problem for billionaires and their paid minions in Ed Deform.
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If the word idiot comes from Greek, how did it get to Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice where a character opens a casket to find “a blinking idiot presenting me a scroll” upon which was written “all that glisters is not gold…”
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Roy: “And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,” says Ben Jonson in “To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and What He Hath Left Us,” but the idea that Willie wasn’t learned is a misunderstanding, based on this, of the phrase “and though,” which can mean, here, as it commonly did in that time, “even if”–i.e., that what to come is a hypothetical. (Even if it were the case that you had little Latin and less Greek, you would still be considered extraordinarily learned.)” Willie certainly had a lot of Latin. He knew his Ovid inside out.
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The word “idiot” came from Greece, was adopted into Latin, entered Old French, and from there, entered English in the 14th century.
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Bob: I knew you would come out with something learned. I think the word idiot was used in the place I cited to mean clown or reference a sort of mime -like creature. What is really interesting is the incorporation of the word into academic psychology a century or so ago having to do with intelligence testing. This gave rise to terms like idiot savant and gradually made it to the average Billy Bob who today laces his pejoratives with the word liberally.
Speaking of words, Duane, I love the designation of Mammonites. It got me to,thinking that they probably travel the road in dark carriages made of gold-trimmed teak, in broad brimmed hats made of the hide of their unfortunate victims. I think I am getting carried away.
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The 5 cent grocery bag fee is the perfect example ACCE legislation. ACCE portrays the fee as a fee to be used to encourage people to bring their own bags for grocery shopping. If one forgets the grocery totes (lots of people do!), a 5 cent fee will be charged to the shopper per bag. The 5 cent fee is to help the store offset the cost of the bags and a portion is “supposed” to go for environmental clean up (or some other cause). The devil is in the details and small print about how much money goes to “the cause” and for how long. It compels shoppers to bring their own bags occasionally for the 1st year but then the numbers start rising for bag costs (flimsier bags lead to double bagging) and the dollars start decreasing for “the cause”. This is what happened when it was proposed in the DC area to clean up the Anacostia Watershed. This keeps the fossil fuel industry rolling right along.
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a year to the cause, a decade to the perpetrator
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Sigh. I suppose this nonsense was only a matter of time….
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Yes, this is an ominous big next step for nefarious ALEC. For 40 years, the right has been accumulating power institution by institution, campaign by campaign, no matter which party holds the White House, financed by billionaires. The patient decades-long effort to nullify democratic and constitutional rights is far advanced, and has provoked mass opposition which now faces Trump and 2020. Centrist corporate Democrats cannot reverse his damage by moderate “tweaking” or Obamian “calibrating” or by futile “Let’s reach across the aisle.” The looting and private conquest of power over the public represented by ALEC need stronger medicine.
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ALEC’s handiwork is clear in Florida. Last year amendment 8 proposed a lot of changes including term limits on school boards and moving charter approval to the state instead of school boards. When amendment 8 was taken off the ballot for logrolling, DeSantis just decided unilaterally to enact mass privatization through unneeded vouchers. He simply bypassed any voter input like a state dictator.
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There has got to be a “greed and mean” gene and this gene must run in families. I have no other explanation.
And yes, sure agree: “What a strange pretzel these rightwingers have twisted themselves into.”
Let night, I decided I needed to reread about the Vichy French and WWII. OMG.
I looked at my husband and said, “All those wars … I don’t get it. And now we have 45 who wants to play soldier and name a National Park after himself. Good grief.”
https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Trump-quietly-created-a-new-national-park-when-he-13622320.php
I blame so much stupidness on that online world and politicians.
Speaking of stupid, the people of Hawai’i think private schools are better and all schools are funded equally. It’s strange and the lie continues.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2014/03/living-hawaii-many-families-sacrifice-to-put-kids-in-private-schools/
And people sit in cars for hours and hours just to travel 30 miles, too. It’s insane.
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/13508517/surviving-oahus-gridlock/
I just hope that people realize that all that 45 put in place can be changed when he is no longer in office.
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The article in The Nation is dated 2014, the year that ALEC gave birth to Baby ALEC, the American City County Exchange (ACCE).
ACCE, like its parent, is funded by membership dues from corporations. ACCE corporate dues are between $10,000 and $25,000. Corporate members are buying the opportunity to have their lobbyists and preferred legislation introduced by local legislators. The scheme calls for local elected officials to pay just $100 to ACCE for a two-year membership. Their membership brings many perks
For example, local members gain access to a corporate lobbyist who will coach them on how to have an ALEC preferred “model” bill introduce in their local city council, municipality, or county meeting.
ACCE is designed to help members—elected officials and corporations—work together to make about 90,000 local governmental units in villages, towns, cities, metro areas, and counties strictly free market zones, minimal or no regulation, privatization to the maximum.
One of ACCE’s first initiatives is to get rid of local public sector unions including those for teachers, faculty in higher education, and AFSCME—American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—which includes nurses, corrections officers, child care providers, EMTs, sanitation workers and others. These contracts are “low-hanging fruit” compared to police officers and fire fighters.
ACCE members are already in office, or they will be running for local offices, including school board seats. I would not be surprised if ACCE receives money from “afar” to support stealth candidates, a practice of the Koch Brothers among others. Members of ALEC and ACCE are aided by “advisors” who track legislative and meeting agendas at the state and now local level of governance. For an example of these services visit http://www.stateside.com/services/legislative-monitoring/local-government-monitoring-services/
I wrote about the ACCE anti-union legislation several years ago here. https://dianeravitch.net/2016/06/21/laura-chapman-on-the-campaign-to-cripple-labor-unions/
You can see what ALEC/ACCE wants for education here ALEC’s views on education are in perfect alignment with those being pushed by DeVos. https://www.alec.org/issue/education/
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Thanks, Laura. The DeVos family foundations are major funders of ALEC.
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ALEC politicians are Republican.
It’s no surprise when a GOP elected official and/or his staff is forced to resign for the usual reasons that vile groups when exposed go down.
Huffpo reports the House Speaker of Tennessee has a chief of staff who resigned under pressure today.
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Linda, the proper spelling is Repugnican.
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No, the proper spelling is Rethuglican!
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It’s difficult to keep up with all the Goblish tribes!!! The Repugnicans, the Thuglicans, the Sycophanti Trumpetari, the Grifterians, the What Would Jesus Dodillians, the Magats, the Hucksterbees, the Trustfundarians, the Fortunate Sons, the Toadyminions, the Sanctimoanions, the Corporato-apparatchiks, the Venales
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Oops. Left out the the Pimply Aryans
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The What Would Jesus Dodillians are a particularly depressing lot. They maintain a simple, entirely beautiful faith in a loving God and gentle savior, don’t follow politics or economics at all, and go the polls and vote against themselves and their own beliefs.
What’s a snowflake to do?
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This guy had a lot of emails and social media post exposed by local channel 5. Some of the stuff I saw implicated the speaker of the house as well. Of course there is a fine historical tradition of upright politicians in our state. My undergraduate diploma is signed by a man who was governor and had to be removed in favor of Lamar Alexander in 1978. He was a democrat. We believe in non-partisan sleaze.
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Tennessee GOP aren’t Christian. They merely affix the title to themselves to improve a disreputable brand. The result is the reputation of religion gets tarred.
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This saddens me to no end, Linda! But I hold out hope. . . .
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Diane and Laura Chapman I have reposted the link and your note to the National Literacy Association’s group https://groups.google.com/group/aaace-nla
Also, I visited the link in Laura’s note–the ALEC cover letter there is loaded with all of the myths about public education: It is failing; its advocates say they only need more money, and yet they still fail, the same for colleges; blah blah blah. Then you can almost hear the heart-melt music as they turn the talk to saying how wonderful privatization is (charters, vouchers, home-schooling, etc.) tra-la.
NOTHING about trying to fix the present system, nothing about their own nation-wide problems that fortunately are collected here.
ACCE should be named the cancer on democracy that it is. Of course they are going after education–it’s where democracy has its only chance to survive the onslaught from the snake that, in fact, is eating its tale. But I’m not so sure those at the NLA are “getting it.” The thing about conspiracy theories is that, sometimes, there really is a conspiracy. CBK
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So well said!
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CBK, we must start by labeling ALEC a cancer on democracy, which is a provable fact.
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cancer is the perfect analogy because of its modus operandi–metastasis
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Very disturbing. One step closer to more authoritarian control.
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Gates’ ALEC is SETDA.
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This article is from 2015. Mary Bottari and Brendan Fisher from the Center of Media and Democracy. They are exactly who you are looking for. They have databases for searching and tons of articles on these kinds of shenanigans, and I’ve read a lot of info on privatization of schools there. At one point they were going to have a way for people to upload files of things they’d discovered, but I don’t think they have that up and running yet.
ACCE does a lot to take over school boards and city councils. They pay a couple grand in campaign donations and buys a ‘reform’ minded member in smaller towns. They appear local, but they, like our politicians, are bought and sold. I know the last SB election in Ann Arbor got ugly over ‘out of town’ campaign financing.
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Thank you for this invaluable information, Diane. Had not ever heard of ACCE & need to be on the lookout, esp. since we just had local elections (so now I’ll look back at campaign literature & election newspaper articles I hadn’t yet thrown out to see if there’s any mention of ACCE). Not long ago, we had an important high school district board election, and one of the candidates was backed by an extreme right wing PAC, which had an innocuous name. Thank G-d the candidate wasn’t elected. (I think people around here who did vote were informed voters.)
Of course, I’d been aware of ALEC for years, even attending a protest (large enough for the news to have covered but, nooo, it did not) outside their 40th “birthday” party, which was held at a swanky hotel in Chicago.
I fully expected them to throw cake scraps out the window, laughing, “Let them eat cake!”
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“…if they want to grant LGBT rights, they can’t go FURTHER than State law.
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Why? Aren’t LGBT PEOPLE who were born here American citizens? Which rights do you want to take away?
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