VRWC news: gonna be a long thread

[boutons_deux]

Senate sends union-busting aviation funding bill to Obama

Organized labor, which Democrats hope will provide vital fundraising and organizational support in the November elections, fiercely objected to a provision that makes it harder for airline or railroad employees to form a union.

“Airline and rail workers would suffer significant losses as contracts are jettisoned, collective bargaining rights are cut and legal hurdles will be placed in the way of gaining a voice at work,” 19 unions said in a joint statement when the legislation was announced January 30.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/0...=Google+Reader

==========

The 1% will always screw the 99%, the game is rigged, and there's no unrigging it.

[boutons_deux]

Ohio Lawmakers Introduced 33 Bills Last Year Based on ALEC Model Legislation

The American Legislative Exchange Council's (ALEC) influence weighs heavy in the Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature, where brazen attempts to crush the collective bargaining rights of public workers and change voting rules in favor of Republicans have made national headlines in recent months. Over the past year, Ohio lawmakers introduced 33 bills that are identical to or "appear to contain" elements of the ALEC's infamous model legislation [4] that promotes a pro-corporate agenda, according to a report released this week by watchdog groups.

At least nine of the 33 bills have passed the State Legislature, including the now-defunct Senate Bill 5, which was poised to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights until Ohioans overwhelmingly voted for a repeal [5] in November.

"At a time when Ohioans are desperate for cooperation ... seeking Democrats and Republicans to come together to create jobs to get our economy moving again, far too often we see legislation introduced that does just the opposite," said Tim Burga, president of the Ohio ALF-CIO. "Far too often, we see the influence of ALEC on the legislation that's introduced, legislation that is anti-worker, anti-consumer and anti-education, and it really seems like it's on behalf of the super-wealthy and the investor class."

ALEC brings together state legislators and lobbyist from some of America's wealthiest corporations to draft model legislation that participating lawmakers can introduce in their homes states. Last year, the Center for Media and Democracy exposed 800 of these model bills, revealing a conservative agenda aimed at privatizing education and prisons while weakening unions and environmental legislation. One model bill, for example, would repeal a state's prevailing wage laws that require certain wage rates for those employed by public projects, making it harder for union workers to compete for contracts.

Elements of 64 ALEC model bills can be found in the 33 bills recently introduced in Ohio, according to the report. Some of the bills have the same content as ALEC model bills, while sections of others match ALEC language word for word.

Included in the list of bills carrying ALEC's stamp is proposed legislation that would require voters to show a photo or state ID to cast a provisional ballot. Another bill signed into law last year allowed Ohio to become the first state to sell a public prison to a private corporation, in this case the Corrections Corporation of America, which donated $10,000 in 2010 to Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich's post-election transition fund.

As of January, 57 members of the Ohio legislature, or 43 percent of state senators and representatives, were ALEC members. Rep. Michael Stinziano of Columbus is the only Democrat on the list, according to the report.

http://www.truth-out.org/ohio-lawmak...ion/1328711032

[boutons_deux]

ALEC (corporations, wealthy) buying the state legislators, and legislation.

The Big Money Behind State Laws

It is no coincidence that so many state legislatures have spent the last year taking the same destructive actions: making it harder for minorities and other groups that support Democrats to vote, obstructing health care reform, weakening environmental regulations and breaking the spines of public- and private-sector unions. All of these efforts are being backed — in some cases, orchestrated — by a little-known conservative organization financed by millions of corporate dollars.

The American Legislative Exchange Council was founded in 1973 by the right-wing activist Paul Weyrich; its big funders include Exxon Mobil, the Olin and Scaife families and foundations tied to Koch Industries. Many of the largest corporations are represented on its board.

ALEC has written model legislation on a host of subjects dear to corporate and conservative interests, and supporting lawmakers have introduced these bills in dozens of states. A recent study of the group’s impact in Virginia showed that more than 50 of its bills were introduced there, many practically word for word. The study, by the liberal group ProgressVA, found that ALEC had been involved in writing bills that would:

¶Prohibit penalizing residents for failing to obtain health insurance, undermining the individual mandate in the reform law. The bill, which ALEC says has been introduced in 38 states, was signed into law and became the basis for Virginia’s legal challenge to heath care reform.

¶Require voters to show a form of identification. Versions of this bill passed both chambers this month.

¶Encourage school districts to contract with private virtual-education companies. (One such company was the corporate co-chair of ALEC’s education committee.) The bill was signed into law.

¶Call for a federal cons utional amendment to permit the repeal of any federal law on a two-thirds vote of state legislatures. The bill failed.

¶Legalize use of deadly force in defending one’s home. Bills to this effect, which recently passed both houses, have been backed by the National Rifle Association, a longtime member of ALEC.

ALEC’s influence in the Virginia statehouse is pervasive, the study showed. The House of Delegates speaker, William Howell, has been on the board since 2003 and was national chairman in 2009. He has sponsored or pushed many of the group’s bills, including several benefiting specific companies that support ALEC financially, like one that would reduce a single company’s asbestos liability. At least 115 other state legislators have ties to the group, including paying membership dues, attending meetings and sponsoring bills. The state has spent more than $230,000 sending lawmakers to ALEC conferences since 2001.

Similar efforts have gone on in many other states. The group has been particularly active in weakening environmental regulations and fighting the Environmental Protection Agency. ALEC’s publication, “E.P.A.’s Regulatory Train Wreck,” outlines steps lawmakers can take, including curtailing the power of state regulators.

There is nothing illegal or unethical about ALEC’s work, except that it further demonstrates the pervasive influence of corporate money and right-wing groups on the state legislative process. There is no group with any comparable influence on the left. Lawmakers who eagerly do ALEC’s bidding have much to answer for. Voters have a right to know whether the representatives they elect are actually writing the laws, or whether the job has been outsourced to big corporate interests.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/op...gewanted=print

[boutons_deux]

Wealthy One Percent That’s Behind Minnesota’s Racist Voter ID Push

The report, by the group TakeAction Minnesota, describes how Minnesota’s wealthiest finance ins utions and their executives, lobbying groups, PACs and the chamber of commerce have been pooling funds together, sharing resources, and in some cases sharing office suite space in a collective effort that’s at least partially responsible for a Republican takeover of the state legislature in 2010.

The group’s report shows more correlation than causation when it comes to the voter ID initiative. But it’s instructive in detailing the way serious money is shaping state-level politics where basic civil rights issues like the right to vote are at stake.

An example of this is Wells Fargo executive vice president Jon Campbell chairing the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the state’s top lobby, joining together with the Minnesota Business Partnership, the state’s third largest lobby, for a mega-lobby called MN Forward, which focuses on slashing corporate taxes and cutting government spending. All the en ies — the Chamber, the Partnership, MN Forward — have flooded hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past few years into the coffers of Republican candidates, some of whom are architects of a photo ID voter mandate that Republicans would like to have placed on a referendum ballot in November.

Says the report, the banks’ “executives and board members have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates who will make it harder for members of the 99 percent of the population to vote.”

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154107

[boutons_deux]

St Ronnie War on Employees continues in Repug criminal Scott's FL:

Florida bill would slash minimum wage for tipped workers

“We are being brave and bold and being statesmen and not politicians,” Republican state Sen. Nancy Detert, the committee’s chair, asserted, adding that the bill had been requested by the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association.

“They’re doing this because it benefits employers,” labor attorney Loren Donnell explained to the Tampa Bay Times. “In this economy, you’re talking about lowering an even subminimum wage requirement.”

Cindy Berg, who has been a server for 20 years, has already seen her income cut as tips dried up in the economic downturn.

“Those days of 15 percent tippers, and 20 percent tippers and Christmas tippers are gone,” she remarked. “They are gone.”

“My husband works 60 to 70 hours a week. I work 40, and we’re still barely making it,” she added. “I’ve never been in this position in my life. … It’s just tougher and tougher and tougher.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/1...=Google+Reader

[spursncowboys]

So male teachers make more money than female teachers?
Male librarians make more money than female librarians?
Male soldiers make more than female ones?
Male CEO's make more than female ones?
I just don't believe it. Especially since woman have been going to college at a higher rate than males, it would be absurd to think any company would be willing to lose that amount of talent.

[boutons_deux]

"I just don't believe it."

your belief is convincing evidence.

google "men women unequal pay"

"Women earned 59% of the wages men earned in 1963; in 2008 they earned 77% of men's wages—an improvement of about half a penny per dollar earned every year. Why is there still such a disparity?"

Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/equal...#ixzz1mfpxL5cg

etc, etc.

"any company would be willing to lose that amount of talent"

1000s of them are willing. White, male, Christian incompetence trumps female competence.

[Wild Cobra]

"I just don't believe it."

your belief is convincing evidence.

google "men women unequal pay"

"Women earned 59% of the wages men earned in 1963; in 2008 they earned 77% of men's wages—an improvement of about half a penny per dollar earned every year. Why is there still such a disparity?"

Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/equal...#ixzz1mfpxL5cg

etc, etc.

"any company would be willing to lose that amount of talent"

1000s of them are willing. White, male, Christian incompetence trumps female competence.

Not on an equal job basis.

[boutons_deux]

"Not on an equal job basis."

ideology, belief, do you ideological fringe right wingers have any data (and not just from your personal observations)?

[Wild Cobra]

"Not on an equal job basis."

ideology, belief, do you ideological fringe right wingers have any data (and not just from your personal observations)?

How about showing me the data that shows the same job pays less money for the same performance and availability. Every job I have had, the women were on equal pay footing. There are still many women who choose not to advance in certain management positions, are are not chosen to, because they cannot do the work, when they place family first. That's about it. A male or female who has obligations to children and cannot work 14 hr. days or be on call simply don't get some very high paying jobs.

[boutons_deux]

Do Your Own Research (tm) -- WC

google "men women unequal pay"

also google Lilly Ledbetter, screwed over for decades doing the same job as men but paid a lot less.

[Wild Cobra]

also google Lilly Ledbetter, screwed over for decades doing the same job as men but paid a lot less.

Yes, I recall that story somewhat. Are you saying one incident means all?

[boutons_deux]

no, but the guvmint saw it as a discrimination to be outlawed.

[Wild Cobra]

no, but the guvmint saw it as a discrimination to be outlawed.

I see.... You are contending the government is always right...

The court transcripts reveled that she was given less favorable performance reviews. She knew the status of here review. If this was the reason or not, we will never really know. The disparity of wages may have been performance, it may have been based on sex, it may have been both.

[boutons_deux]

More murderous nastiness from VRWC hit team

ALEC Has Pushed The NRA's "Stand Your Ground" Law Across The Nation

The legislation apparently preventing the successful prosecution of Trayvon Martin's killer was reportedly adopted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as model legislation that the shadowy group has spent years promoting across the country with the help of their allies in the National Rifle Association.

Formed in 1973 by conservative activists including Paul Weyrich and state legislators like then-Illinois State Rep. Henry Hyde, ALEC has earned infamy throughout the progressive movement for its ability to promote model legislation favorable to its corporate funders through statehouses across the country.

Legal experts have noted that Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law may prevent George Zimmerman from ever being successfully prosecuted for the killing of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman has claimed that he acted in self-defense, and court precedent indicates that the State has the heavy burden of disproving this in order to win a conviction.

Florida's statute on the use of force in self-defense is virtually identical to Section 1 of ALEC's Castle Doctrine Act model legislation as posted on the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). According to CMD, the model bill was adopted by ALEC's Civil Justice Task in August 2005 -- just a few short months after it passed the Florida legislature -- and approved by its board of directors the following month.

Since the 2005 passage of Florida's law, similar statutes have been passed in 16 other states. This was no accident. In a 2008 interview with NRA News, ALEC resident fellow Michael Hough explained how his organization works with the NRA to push similar legislation through its network of conservative state legislators:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012032...=Google+Reader

[boutons_deux]

More murderous nastiness from VRWC hit team

ALEC Has Pushed The NRA's "Stand Your Ground" Law Across The Nation

The legislation apparently preventing the successful prosecution of Trayvon Martin's killer was reportedly adopted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as model legislation that the shadowy group has spent years promoting across the country with the help of their allies in the National Rifle Association.

Formed in 1973 by conservative activists including Paul Weyrich and state legislators like then-Illinois State Rep. Henry Hyde, ALEC has earned infamy throughout the progressive movement for its ability to promote model legislation favorable to its corporate funders through statehouses across the country.

Legal experts have noted that Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law may prevent George Zimmerman from ever being successfully prosecuted for the killing of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman has claimed that he acted in self-defense, and court precedent indicates that the State has the heavy burden of disproving this in order to win a conviction.

Florida's statute on the use of force in self-defense is virtually identical to Section 1 of ALEC's Castle Doctrine Act model legislation as posted on the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). According to CMD, the model bill was adopted by ALEC's Civil Justice Task in August 2005 -- just a few short months after it passed the Florida legislature -- and approved by its board of directors the following month.

Since the 2005 passage of Florida's law, similar statutes have been passed in 16 other states. This was no accident. In a 2008 interview with NRA News, ALEC resident fellow Michael Hough explained how his organization works with the NRA to push similar legislation through its network of conservative state legislators:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012032...=Google+Reader

[boutons_deux]

NRA's Campaign For "Stand Your Ground Laws" Continues After Trayvon Martin's Killing

The organization's lobbying arm spent the weeks following his death promoting similar statutes in Iowa, Alaska, and Minnesota.

On March 16, the NRA's Ins ute for Legislative Action (ILA) criticized the Judiciary Committee chairman of Iowa's state Senate for failing to hold hearings on "NRA-initiated HF 2215, the Stand Your Ground/Castle Doctrine Enhancement." According to NRA-ILA, the bill would "remove a person's 'duty to retreat' from an attacker, allowing law-abiding citizens to stand their ground and protect themselves or their family anywhere they are lawfully present." The group urged supporters to contact state Senators and tell them to support the bill. NRA-ILA previously told supporters to contact Democratic members of the Iowa House after they "left the Capitol building in an attempt to block consideration of these pro-gun bills" on February 29.
On March 14, NRA-ILA urged Alaskan supporters to contact their state Senators and tell them to support House Bill 80, which it termed "important self-defense legislation that would provide that a law-abiding person, who is justified in using deadly force in self-defense, has 'no duty-to-retreat' from an attack if the person is in any place that that person has a legal right to be." NRA-ILA also promoted the bill on March 5, March 8, and February 29.
On March 5, NRA-ILA executive director Chris W. Cox criticized Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton for vetoing House File 1467, which Cox said "would have removed the duty to retreat for crime victims currently mandated under Minnesota state law and precluded victims from facing prosecution for lawfully defending their lives." NRA-ILA also urged supporters to contact Dayton and urge him not to veto the bill on March 1 and February 29.

The NRA has referred to Florida's statute as "good law, casting a common-sense light onto the debate over the right of self-defense."


http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012032...=Google+Reader

=========

Is there anything in the center or left of center that approaches the evilness of the VRWC and all its demons?

[boutons_deux]

How ALEC is Destroying the Teaching of Climate Change Science, One State at a Time

The ALEC Model Bill

As DeSmogBlog reported in January, the Tennessee bill is based on an ALEC model bill passed in May 2000. We explained at the time,

"The bill's opening clause reads [PDF], 'The purpose of this act is to enhance and improve the environmental literacy of students and citizens in the state by requiring that all environmental education programs and activities conducted by schools, universities, and agencies shall…'

Provide a range of perspectives presented in a balanced manner.
Provide instruction in critical thinking so that students will be able to fairly and objectively evaluate scientific and economic controversies.
Be presented in language appropriate for education rather than for propagandizing.
Encourage students to explore different perspectives and form their own opinions.
Encourage an atmosphere of respect for different opinions and open-mindedness to new ideas.
Not be designed to change student behavior, at udes or values.
Not include instruction in political action skills nor encourage political action activities."

To summarize, under this model bill and its relatives, global warming will be taught as a "theory" among other "credible theories," including those unscientific "theories" peddled by the well-paid "merchants of doubt."

This, of course, flies in the face of the well-accepted scientific consensus, which has proven global warming as the harsh reality, time and time again. The science speaks for itself, and the fossil fuel money funding climate change deniers speaks for itself.

The Tennessee Bill

Key portions of the Tennessee bills are as follows (emphases mine):

"The teaching of some scientific subjects, including, but not limited to,biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and humancloning, can cause controversy."
"The state board of education, public elementary and secondary school governing authorities, directors of schools, school system administrators, and public elementary and secondary school principals and administrators shall endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to…respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues."
Neither the state board of education, nor any public elementary or secondary school governing authority, director of schools, school system administrator, or any public elementary or secondary school principal or administrator shall prohibit any teacher in a public school system of this state from helping students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught."

Look familar? It should.

The bill was opposed by a broad-based coalition, including the National Association of Biology Teachers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the American Ins ute for Biological Sciences, the Knoxville News Sentinel, the Nashville Tennessean, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, the National Earth Science Teachers Association, the Tennessee Science Teachers Association, and all eight Tennessee members of the National Academy of Sciences.

These voices of reason were no opposition to ALEC, its corporate backers, and the politicians who serve them, which saw the bill pass with little opposition whatsoever.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154655

[boutons_deux]

The Have's, the VRWC's and ..


1%’s Plan for the Rest of Us – Livestock to be Milked for “Rent”

As Thomas Palley has discussed, and the chart below underscores, the US changed in the early 1980s from a model where rising worker wages were seen as the driver to growth and hence a focus of policy, to one where rising consumer debt levels and asset appreciation were used to subs ute for stagnant incomes. (for the 99%)



http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/...=Google+Reader

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St Ronnie firing ALL the 10s of 1000s the ATCs after a 2 day strike gave the President's approval to wage war on employees. Kock Bros' ALEC had been going since the 1970s, and Lawyer Lewis Powell's "the Haves must take back their America" from the "socialist/democratic " advances of the 1960s and 1930s rallied the Haves into action. The Repugs have been bent in making the country pay for head Nixon (and Bork, and Clarence Thomas').

America is ed by the 1%, and will continue unstoppably to the 99% (see Ryan's budget version 2.0)

[boutons_deux]

How The Right Wing "ALEC" Teamed Up With The NRA To Get Copycat, "Stand Your Ground" Laws In 21 States

According to Fischer, "The bill was brought to ALEC by the National Rifle Association (NRA), and fits into a pattern of ALEC bills that disproportionately impact communities of color."

It is no surprise that ALEC is hardly a household name. The American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC) prefers to do its business in secret. And since ALEC's founding in 1973 by Paul Weyrich (who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and is widely considered to be one of the Godfathers of the New Right); former Illinois Republican Congressman Henry Hyde; and conservative activist Lou Barnett, the organization has successfully stayed out of the spotlight.

If it weren't for the resolute reporting of a handful of investigative journalists and the extraordinary work of the Center for Media and Democracy's ALEC Exposed Web site, not much would be known about ALEC.

Source Watch, a project of the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, described ALEC as a "semi-secretive" organization that "has been highly influential, has operated quietly in the United States for decades, and received remarkably little scrutiny from journalists, media or members of the public during that time." A report by the American Association for Justice, led "ALEC: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America" described the organization as "the ultimate smoke filled back room."

As John Nichols recently pointed out in The Nation, "the shadowy Koch brothers-funded network ... brings together right-wing legislators with corporate interests and pressure groups to craft so-called 'model legislation.'" And while ALEC is predominantly concerned with cutting tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals, privatization, de-regulation, and weakening, if not eliminating unions, it "also dabbles in electoral and public safety issues. And 'Stand Your Ground' proposals have for seven years been on its agenda."

Last year, when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker unleashed an unprecedented attack on public workers in that state, and Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country began its assault on voting rights, ALEC's fingerprints were all over those initiatives.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154689

[boutons_deux]

How Ronald Reagan Broke the Air Traffic Controllers Union--And Why That Fight Still Matters

With employers’ “freedom to fire” renewed, entrepreneurial initiative could once again be unleashed. Reagan’s action thus inaugurated a miraculous era of “low unemployment and low inflation.” If we subs ute Greenspan’s phrase “freedom to fire” with “break unions, strip them of the right to strike, redistribute wealth upward, and create massive economic insecurity,” then we have a story that is similarly satisfying to the Left. Indeed, the PATCO strike has become the pivotal event—both symbolically and substantively—in almost everyone’s understanding of the massive realignment of class power in the United States in the last few decades.

The PATCO strike may be the watershed moment in the consolidation of the post-New Deal order, but it has also become a bloated political symbol. Fortunately, Joseph McCartin gracefully moves the union and its famous strike from myth to complex historical analysis in his new book Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, The Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America. McCartin’s assessment captures the very real importance of the strike coolly, without reading too much into it: “No strike in American history unfolded more visibly before the eyes of the American people or impressed itself more quickly and more deeply into the public consciousness of its time than the PATCO strike. No strike proved more costly to break. And no strike since the advent of the New Deal damaged the U.S. labor movement more.”

Reaganism is partially a symptom of these changes and partially an agent of them. And if the administration didn’t intend a revolution in labor relations, context matters even more. Somewhere between Nixon’s tolerance of the postal strike in 1970 and Reagan’s destruction of PATCO in 1981, a sea change occurred in the culture of a nation. As the author concludes, PATCO is “prologue to a story still unfolding.” For that reason alone we owe McCartin a debt for setting us straight on what happened in a peculiar dispute that launched a revolution. In strange forms do new ages come.

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154595

======

Reagan, along with lots of other , launched, approved, encouraged the VRWC War on Employees with the PATCO destruction. As a result, household real incomes has been essentially flat since 1980 while corporate profits (investor gains), productivity, and mgmt pay have skyrocketed. Mission Accomplished

[boutons_deux]

Lobbyists, Guns and Money

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.

What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.

Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.

But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.

And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.

Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?

Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.

Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.

Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/op...gewanted=print

=====

So no righties here even mention ALEC, ok.

[boutons_deux]

...

[boutons_deux]

After the Billions of unsolicited credit cards mailed in the 90s and 2000s to create the largest househeld debt ever, anybody notice cc offers arriving in the mail now after the lull of the Banksters Great Depression?

There's a reason:

Finance as Wealth Transfer Mechanism: An Interview with James Galbraith

*changes* in inequality have a common source. Looking at the major turning points, which were in 1971-3, 1981 and 2000, a leading candidate for that source emerges: the changes in the world financial system.

Until 1971, the world’s economies were largely stabilized under the Bretton Woods system. After 1973, there was a widespread commodities-and-debt boom that tended to reduce inequality in developing countries. After 1980, high interest rates and the debt crisis raised inequality almost everywhere. And finally in 2000 there was a peak; after that interest rates fell, commodity prices recovered, and inequalities around the world tended to ease.

In the face of these global pressures, it’s possible for some countries with very stable policies and strong ins utions to resist for a time: for example Denmark does not show rising inequality in our data. Or a country may be insulated from global shocks, as China and India were from the debt crisis in the 1980s (but not in the 1990s). But these cases are very few. In most cases the global forces dominate the picture.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/...=Google+Reader

[boutons_deux]

UCA stuffing its pockets with pay slip "tax" deductions

Paying Your Boss: How States Are Letting Corporations Pocket Their Workers’ Tax Payments

According to a new report by Good Jobs First, an organization that promotes accountability in economic development, a growing number of companies are collecting their workers’ income tax payments and keeping them, with the approval of state governments. Instead of having their taxes go to pay for public services like schools or roads, these workers are, quite literally, handing their tax payments to their bosses:

For some people, the personal income taxes they see deducted from their paychecks aren’t supporting public services. Indeed, this is true for workers at more than 2,700 companies in 16 states.

Nearly $700 million is getting diverted each year. And it is very unlikely that the affected workers are aware, given that no state requires that the diversion be disclosed on pay stubs.

Where is the money going? To the employers of those workers. A growing number of states are diverting revenue traditionally devoted to funding essential government services to pay for lavish subsidy awards to corporations for job creation or sometimes simply job retention. The practice of redirecting large portions of the state personal income tax (PIT) withholding deducted from paychecks means many workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...r-boss-report/