Evening Reads: The Barlow* Edition
Posted: August 2, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Black Agenda Report, Civil Liberties, corporate greed, GLBT Rights, Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, poverty, Women's Rights | Tags: american exceptionalism, Boehner of our existence, Chick-fil-A, Harry Reid, Michael Moore, the Constitution 19 Comments
Click for more flapper fun over at Collector’s Weekly…
Hey all, I’m filling in for Mink while she continues to rest up and recover from a nasty migraine. There’s no way I can compete with the excellent work she does on a daily basis, but I’ll try to do her Evening News space at least a fraction of the justice it deserves. Feel better soon, JJ! Sending you lots of healing energy!
So, I’d like to start with some reading on the Chick-fil-A idiocracy we live in, which IMHO, is the most definitive piece you’ll read about this mindboggling madness (though “The Chick Fellatio” gets an honorable mention.) Via Huffpo Gay Voices…
Chick-fil-A: 5 Reasons It Isn’t What You Think, by David Badash, founder and editor of The New Civil Rights Movement. I especially appreciated the last reason on the list:
5) Chick-fil-A is just exercising their First Amendment rights by running a business based on the Bible, right? Wrong. There’s a line between the “free exercise of religion” and violating the law. If Chick-fil-A is violating the law by discriminating against gay people, or by firing women so that they can be “stay home” moms, as one woman who is suing Chick-fil-A says in court documents, that’s not exercising religious expression or free speech, and that’s not a First Amendment issue. It may be, if the court decides, a violation of the law.
Thank you, David Badash!
Before I continue, I’d just like to note that we live in an era where a gun-toting embryonic chicken sandwich has more authority on interpreting the Bill of Rights and the Constitution than the average, living, breathing human being. Sad.
On the upside, Chick-fil-A manager goes against flock, sponsors gay pride festival! REFUDIATE DAT, HATERS!
Unfortunately, internal politics is a-roostin’…
“As all this news was swirling around yesterday about the Chick-Fil-A sponsorship for PrideFest, we started hearing that some people from within our own community are coming together to stand against us,” said Ryan Manseau, senior director for NH Pride Fest.
On Wednesday Manseau got a call about a major sponsor for Pride Fest being pressured by another local group to drop out because of the Chick-Fil-A sponsorship.
Let’s hope they get their feathers straightened out!
And, that is all I will link to on that. Otherwise, my puns will go further south than they already have… oops, I guess they just did š
Moving along. Michael Moore says… he wouldn’t say he supports Obama. And, the cow jumped over the moon.
Oh, but no worries! He and Susan Sarandon still hope O gets four more years. Well, ok. I guess that’s clarity of some sort…that means absolutely nothing.
Incidentally, because I know y’all are just dying to know. Here’s where Mona the Wonk stands:
- I’m Switzerland on Obama 2012.
- I don’t want to see Romney get four to eight years at any point on the space-time continuum.
- Hillary 2016.
Speaking of which… While I was in the airport en route from Houston to Chicago last week, I picked up a copy of the lastest issue of Foreign Policy on the stands. I hope to do a separate post on the Hillary feature soon. A good way for me to start exercising those blogger muscles again… š
In the meantime, I’d like to direct you to another feature in this edition of FP–Anthropology of an Idea, “American Exceptionalism: A Short History,” by Uri Freedman. Teaser:
On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney contrasts his vision of American greatness with what he claims is Barack Obama’s proclivity for apologizing for it. The “president doesn’t have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do,” Romney has charged. All countries have their own brand of chest-thumping nationalism, but almost none is as patently universal — even messianic — as this belief in America’s special character and role in the world. While the mission may be centuries old, the phrase only recently entered the political lexicon, after it was first uttered by none other than Joseph Stalin. Today the term is experiencing a resurgence in an age of anxiety about American decline.
An enlightening little timeline follows at the link. Fascinating tidbits like:
1950s
A group of American historians — including Daniel Boorstin, Louis Hartz, Richard Hofstadter, and David Potter — argues that the United States forged a “consensus” of liberal values over time that enabled it to sidestep movements such as fascism and socialism. But they question whether this unique national character can be reproduced elsewhere. As Boorstin writes, “nothing could be more un-American than to urge other countries to imitate America.”
Touche. Click over and give it a look.
A couple DC headlines for y’all before I close this…
Taylor Marsh on Reid’s tax charges against Romney:
Majority Leader Reid isnāt backing down. The problem is that heās turning into the story.
Meanwhile Boehner has stopped crying or some other such development:
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday he is āfeeling betterā about Republicansā chances of holding the House than he did in April, when he said the party faced a āone in three” likelihood of losing the majority.
āOur teamās in pretty good shape,ā Boehner said as he briefed reporters in the Capitol for the final time before Congress departs for a five-week recess. āOur members have worked hard. Frankly, our candidates and challengers out there ā a lot of them have been through tough primaries. And I feel good about where we are as a team. Weāve got a lot of work to do between now and November, but our team is doing well.ā
Boehnerās comments in the spring warning about the possibility of losing the House were seen as an intended wake-up call to Republicans in advance of the election season. Most political analysts now believe the chances that Democrats will win back the House in November are slim. They need a net gain of 25 seats, but most projections show them gaining only in the single digits.
In other news…Americans and all citizens of Planet Earth? Still screwed.
The always essential Glen Ford at the Black Agenda Report sums it up well:
The Poverties of a Decaying System
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
āThis crisis of capitalism will be full of drama.ā
A preview of new Census figures indicates that poverty in the United States will likely soon reach the highest levels in 50 years. Now, some of you optimists out there are saying: Well, thereās nowhere to go but up. Unfortunately, thatās not necessarily true. What I think is so depressing to many people about this particular historical juncture, is that there is absolutely nothing on the economic horizon on which even optimists can pin their hopes. There are no new industries on the verge of some huge explosion, no scientific breakthrough just around the corner. With education costs soaring, people canāt even hope to study themselves out of hard times.
Itās not a good time to be a child, because there is nothing sadder than growing up around adults who have themselves lost hope that our world will become a better place. Itās not a good time to be middle-aged, knowing that the Golden Age was 40 years ago, when the proportion of Americans in poverty was the lowest ever: only 11.1 percent. Itās expected to hit 15.7 percent under a president elected as an agent of Hope and Change.
But actually, thereās really nothing wrong with the world that a social revolution canāt fix. The fact that the two corporate political parties have no ideas worth listening to, simply means that the Democrats and Republicans can no longer even pretend that they can serve the 1% and take care of the rest of us at the same time. Thereās no need to despair ā just direct your political energies, elsewhere.
Well, now that I’ve brightened up your evening… š … it’s your turn! Have at it in the comments, Sky Dancers.
*barlow: a girl, a flapper, a chicken.
Eric Holder Speaks the Truth: Voter ID Laws = Poll Taxes
Posted: July 10, 2012 Filed under: 2012 elections, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, racism, U.S. Politics | Tags: 24th Amendment to the Constitution, Benjamin Jealous, Eric Holder, Mitt Romney, NAACP, poll taxes, Voter ID laws, voter suppression 60 Comments
Today Eric Holder spoke to the annual NAACP convention in Houston, TX, and as he was discussing the Texas voter ID law, which the Justice Department believes is illegal, he “deviated from his prepared remarks,” and said something I have long wanted him to say:
āUnder the proposed law, concealed handgun licenses would be acceptable forms of photo ID, but student IDs would not,ā Holder said, referring specifically to the voter ID law passed in Texas. āMany of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them, and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes.ā
That last line was not part of Holderās prepared remarks released to the press.
Holder has been very critical of voter ID laws in the past, but this appears to be the first time heās gone as far as to compare them to the Jim Crow-era effort to purposefully disenfranchise African-Americans.
I wasn’t able to find video of Holder’s speech on Youtube, but you can watch it at the above link to Talking Points Memo.
According to Huffington Post, Holder added:
“I don’t know what will happen as this case moves forward, but I can assure you that the Justice Department’s efforts to uphold and enforce voting rights will remain aggressive,” the attorney general said.
Holder said the arc of American history has always moved toward expanding the electorate and that “we will simply not allow this era to be the beginning of the reversal of that historic progress.”
“I will not allow that to happen,” he added.
In 1962, the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution made poll taxes unconstitutional in federal elections. Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi still had the poll tax requirement at that time.
However, it was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6ā3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) that poll taxes for state elections were declared unconstitutional because they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Poll taxes were used in conjunction with literacy tests and other means–including violence–to prevent African Americans from voting beginning with Reconstruction and continuing until the SCOTUS decision in 1966.
I can still recall the days when poll taxes, literacy tests, and other means of disenfranchisement were used in Southern states. Even the secret ballot was originally designed to prevent illiterate voters from getting help to fill out their ballots.
Now the Republican Party, along with enablers like ALEC, are trying to return us to the ugliness of deliberate voter disenfranchisment. Republicans should be ashamed for trying to effectively reinstate poll taxes by forcing people to pay for an ID as a condition of voting. This time, in addition to African Americans, the targets are students, senior citizens, and people with disabilities.
Mitt Romney will be speaking to the NAACP convention tomorrow. Will he address the voter ID issue? I doubt it, but if he had the guts this could be an opportunity for him to pick up some votes. Ben Jealous told the NYT that many African American voters are disappointed in President Obama.
āRomney could do much better than John McCain,ā said Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., the 103-year-old group Mr. Romney plans to address Wednesday at its annual convention in Houston….
āIf heās going to pick up more support in the black community,ā Mr. Jealous said, āhe has to send a message that heās prepared to lead on issues that we care about.ā
Topping the list is a wave of voter identification laws that Democrats say will suppress minority participation in November. āWe are living through the greatest wave of legislative assaults on voting rights in more than a century,ā Mr. Jealous said Monday in his opening speech at the convention. āIn the past year, more states have passed more laws pushing more voters out of the ballot box than at any time since the rise of Jim Crow.ā
Nearly a dozen states have passed strict voter ID laws in the last two years largely with the support of Republican lawmakers, who say that they are needed to prevent fraud. Democrats argue that the laws are really meant to suppress turnout by poor and minority voters, who tend to vote Democratic and who disproportionately lack government-issued identification.
It’s highly unlikely that Romney will address the voter ID issue, but stranger things have happened.
In any case, I’m glad that Holder has finally spoken the truth about the motives behind these laws and called them what they are–deliberate attempts to reinstate poll taxes. And this time, it’s not just in the South. We cannot allow the Republicans to get away with this outrage.
Friday Reads
Posted: April 27, 2012 Filed under: Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, education, morning reads, religious extremists | Tags: ALEC, anti-abortion, austerity fails again, Bobby Jindal, school voucher scam, tax payer religious fanatics 46 Comments
Good Morning!
I’ve been livid recently about our Governor’s jihad against public education.Ā Here’s some details on how Bobby Jindal used the ALEC play book to turn the state’s public schools upside down.
Gov. Bobby Jindal has remade the Louisiana public schools system with impressive speed over the past legislative session. Last week, he signed into law a suite of landmark reform bills that will likely change the direction of public education in Louisiana forever. But not all change is good, and critics say both Jindalās agenda and the strategy to move it come right from the playbook of conservative advocacy group ALEC, in an effort to revive Jindalās national political profile.
Louisiana is now home to the nationās most expansive school voucher program. Charter school authorization powers have been broadened. And teacher tenure policies have been radically transformed. Louisiana already had something of a reputation as a radical-reform state, thanks to the post-Katrina educational climate in New Orleans. But not all change is good, and education advocates have deep concerns about the efficacy of Jindalās overhaul, and the interests that have push it.
ALEC has overrun Louisiana at a time when it’s losing corporate sponsors and cronies in various state legislatures.Ā ALEC still has some steam left, however.
ALEC will survive, of course, kept afloat largely by the billionaire Koch brothers and their corporate allies. But as activists keep up the pressure, they must not lose sight of the worst culprits, who must be identified and targeted: the more than 2,000 legislative members of ALEC. The Center for Media and Democracy maintains a list of lawmakers allied with ALEC at ALECexposed.org. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee has begun to pressure dozens of Democrats involved with the overwhelmingly Republican group to quit. Their exit from ALEC would put the lie to the claim that ALEC is nonpartisan.
Common Cause argues that ALEC has abused its tax-exempt status by lobbying, and Wisconsin State Representative Mark Pocan has introduced a bill requiring ALEC to register as a lobbyist in that state. But especially as November approaches, the Exit ALEC movement must go beyond the group to confront some of the damage it has done. In the past two years, thirty-four states have introduced bills to restrict voting for some 5 million eligible voters; nine have passed voter ID laws; dozens of other states have gotten rid of early voting or tried to hobble voter registration drives. In Florida get-out-the-vote efforts by the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote have been sabotaged. The most affected are blacks, Latinos and other groups that skew Democratic.
If you haven’t been following CISPA, you really should.Ā Here’s a primer from Truth Dig.
What is CISPA?
CISPA, an abbreviation for the Cyber Intelligence Security and Protection Act, was introduced in the House of Representatives on November 30, 2011 by Mike Rogers (R-MI), as well as 111 co-sponsors. Since then, a number of amendments have been introduced. The House is expected to vote on the bill Friday and its author has said that the latest changes brought the number of supporting Congressmen āwell pastā the threshold of 218 necessary for the adoption of the legislation. It is therefore very likely that the bill will be passed by the House. However, itās not all that certain whether the bill will be made into law, especially with the White Houseās latest statement that President Obama would be advised to veto the legislation.
What does CISPA entail for internet users?
The act says it is meant to create procedures allowing āelements of the intelligence community to share cyber threat intelligence with private-sector entities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence.āĀ It also states that a cyber-security provider or a self-protected entity may share ācyber threat informationāĀ āwith any other entity designated by such protected entity, includingā¦ the Federal Government.ā
But what does that mean?
Unnecessarily broad definitions are the factor which makes CISPA so controversial with web users.
Experts argue that the bill would give the government the ability to circumvent internet privacy laws and obtain information on user activities from private companies ā be it providers, hosting companies or social networks ā essentially any company involved in the Internet.
The bill does specifically say that the Federal Government can only use the information obtained for a ācybersecurity purposeā or the āprotection of the national security of the United States,ā but the broad definitions of the terms could potentially lump an average Internet user sending an encrypted e-mail into the same threat category as a terrorist. Privately owned corporations could, under the pretext of cyber and national security, spy on users and transfer their data to a government agency.
āYou will get no accountability for that,ā explains David Seaman, host of The DL Show. āIf findings are turned against you in the worst possible way, you wonāt be able to get a lawyer and sue because of the litigation immunity.ā
You can find more analysis and links at Cannonfire.Ā The House has already passed CISPA.Ā No surprises there since these guys are standing in line to monitor US women’s menstrual periods and want to peer into every woman’s uterus.Ā As usual, a few Democrats joined in the effort to expand government’s intrusion into your personal lives.Ā Here’s wishing Obama follows through with his threat to veto.
The final tally was 248-168, enough to pass the measure but not enough to override the threatened veto. Forty-two Democrats broke with the White House to vote for the bill, and 28 Republicans voted against it.
The administration and Democratic critics opposed the bill because of privacy and civil liberties concerns. The other main sticking point was that, unlike a Senate bill by Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), CISPA would not mandate new security requirements for a critical infrastructure network.
Although those disagreements still exist, House Republicans have now jumped ahead of the Senate in a race to avoid the political fallout in the event of a major cyberattack.
At least some of CISPAās Democratic supporters werenāt happy with their colleaguesā opposition to the bill, nor with the White House.
After the White House issued the veto threat Wednesday, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, Rogersās chief Democratic ally, launched an all-out lobbying effort to persuade his fellow Democrats to back the bill.
Here’s an article that pretty much outlines my worst nightmares: “How Christian Groups Push Right-Wing Religion With the Help of Your Tax Dollars”;Taxpayer-funded crisis pregnancy centers are using religion to oppose abortion, and many of them only hire Christians.
If you want to help carry out the anti-abortion mission of the taxpayer-funded Care Net Pregnancy Resource Center, you have to be a Christian.
Itās right there on the Rapid City, S.D., centerās volunteer application.
āDo you consider yourself a Christian?ā āIf yes, how long have you been a Christian?ā āAs a Christian, what is the basis of your salvation?ā āPlease provide the following information concerning your local church. Church name ā¦ Denomination ā¦ Pastorās name.ā āThis organization is a Christian pro-life ministry. We believe that our faith in Jesus Christ empowers us, enables us, and motivates us to provide pregnancy services in this community. Please write a brief statement about how your faith would affect your volunteer work at this center.ā
But that hasnāt stopped the center from receiving federal funding and other forms of government support.
In 2010, it was awarded a $34,000 ācapacity buildingā grant as part of President Obamaās stimulus bill.
Last year, the nonprofit National Fatherhood Initiative, with āsupport from the US Department of Health and Human Servicesā Office of Family Assistance,ā awarded the center $25,000 for capacity building.
And when South Dakota passed a law requiring that women get counseling from a āpregnancy help centerā before receiving an abortion, the Rapid City center was quick to sign up ā becoming one of three such facilities listed on the stateās official website.
When do we get our country back from these whackos and when do we get to say that they don’t get our money?
I’m sending Hugs out today to Senator AL Franken for this.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Tuesday Reads
Posted: April 24, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Health care reform, Media, Medicaid, Medicare, morning reads, Patriot Act, Republican presidential politics, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: "liberal media" Allen West, bigotry, Bill O'Reilly, Communist Party, Democracy Now, domestic spying, Mitt Romney, NAACP, National Security Agency (NSA), red baiting, Robert Reich, Social Security, Tom Harkin, William Binney 16 Comments
Good Morning!! Let’s see what’s in the news today.
Mitt Romney has been whining about the “liberal media” giving him a hard time, but a new Pew survey has found that the “liberal media” are friendlier to Mitt Romney than President Obama. Adam Serwer at Mother Jones:
The Liberal Media has consistently given more positive coverage to likely Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney compared to President Barack Obama, according to a new survey of media coverage from the Pew Research Center’s Excellence in Journalism Project.
During the early weeks of 2012, Romney’s media coverage was slightly negativeābetween January 2 and February 26, 33 percent of the stories about the ex-Massachusetts governor were positive and 37 percent were negative, according to Pew’s analysis. But Romney has received mostly positive coverage since then (47 percent positive to 24 percent negative). By contrast, according to the report, President Barack Obama “did not have a single week in 2012 when positive coverage exceeded negative coverage.”
Check out the full report at the Pew link.
Florida Rep. Allen West was booted from an NAACP fund-raiser because of his claim that around 80 Democrats in the House of Representatives are card-carrying members of the Communist Party.
Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) was supposed to be the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for his district chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) this past Saturday. But days before the event, the group canceled the gathering and asked West not to come back when they rescheduled. Why?
“There’s a certain statement he made about Communists,” Jerry Gore, president of the Martin County NAACP, told Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. “That statement alone … we do not represent that type of atmosphere.”
But that didn’t keep West from making more ludicrous remarks. Yesterday, he claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is “being allowed to influence strategy.”
Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) criticized the FBI on Monday for removing nearly 900 pages of training material it deemed to be offensive, saying it showed extremist Muslim groups were influencing national strategy.
The FBI made the move after Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) complained about some passages, including one that advised agents to “never attempt to shake hands with an Asian” and another that said agents should expect “outbursts” from Arab minds.
West said that by removing such passages, the FBI was committing “cultural suicide” and allowing groups like the Muslim Brotherhood to influence U.S. policy.
āWe have to understand that when tolerance becomes a one-way street it leads to cultural suicide,ā West told “Fox and Friends” on Monday. āWe should not allow the Muslim Brotherhood or associated groups to be influencing our national strategy.ā
When asked if he believed those groups were influencing U.S. strategy, West responded, āOh, absolutely,ā and cited the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting report that didnāt mention the suspectās Muslim faith as a potential motive for the killings.
In another throwback to the McCarthy era, a few days ago Bill O’Reilly accused Robert Reich of being a communist.
Yesterday, Reich responded: Communist Accusations Matter.
For the record, Iām not a communist and I donāt secretly adore Karl Marx.
Ordinarily I donāt bother repeating anything Bill OāReilly says. But this particular whopper is significant because it represents what OāReilly and Fox News, among others, are doing to the national dialogue….
OāReilly based his claim on an interview I did last week with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, in which I argued that because Americaās big corporations were now global we could no longer rely on them to make necessary investments in human capital or to lobby for public investments in education, infrastructure, and basic R&D. So, logically, government has to step in.
Since when does an argument for public investment in education, infrastructure, and basic R&D make someone a communist or a secret adorer of Karl Marx?
Since the Tea Party crazies crawled out from under their rocks and took over the Republican Party, I guess. I sure wish they’d crawl back where they came from.
Now this is refreshing. Sen. Tom Harken defended Social Security in the Huffington Post yesterday, and proposed some solutions to future problems:
To strengthen America’s retirement system, my proposal would increase Social Security benefits and greatly improve the financial stability of the program. It does so by:
ā¢ Increasing the amount of earnings covered by higher replacement rates in order to increase benefits by approximately $60-70 per month
ā¢ Changing the way the COLA is calculated so that it better corresponds to the typical expenses of seniors
ā¢ Removing the cap, currently $110,100, that unfairly protects the highest earning Americans from paying into Social Security like the majority of hardworking Americans.All told, according to the Social Security Actuary, this proposal would extend the life of the Social Security Trust Fund to 2052 while cutting the long term funding deficit in half.
I’m sure Mitt Romney will explain to Senator Harkin why it would be wrong to try to raise payroll taxes on high income “job creators.”
Speaking of Willard, the LA Times had an interesting story on Romney’s health care plan–they call it “revolutionary,” and not in a good way.
In public, Romney has only sketched the outlines of a plan, and aides have declined to answer questions about the details. But his public statements and interviews with advisors make clear that Romney has embraced a strategy that in crucial ways is more revolutionary ā and potentially more disruptive ā than the law Obama signed two years ago.
The centerpiece of Romney’s plan would overhaul the way most Americans get their health coverage: at work. He would do so by giving Americans a tax break to buy their own health plans. That would give consumers more choices, but also more risk.
Critics and independent analysts say the impact would probably leave a larger number of Americans without insurance.
In addition,
While offering consumers more choices, Romney’s plan would give companies strong incentives to stop providing insurance to workers. It also would overhaul the 46-year-old Medicare and Medicaid programs for the elderly, poor and disabled.
The plan could swell the federal deficit; a similar plan backed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the 2008 presidential campaign would have cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years, on par with the price tag for the Obama healthcare law.
Romney keeps claiming he’s going to cut the deficit. Somehow I don’t think privatizing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will do that. Maybe he thinks he can end those programs completely.
Democracy Now has been running a series on NSA spying. A good starting point is this article at Alternet: Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying — The U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails
National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion “transactions” ā phone calls, emails and other forms of data ā from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States.
While you’re at Alternet, here’s another article you should read: How Obama Became a Civil Libertarian’s Nightmare
When Barack Obama took office, he was the civil liberties communitiesā great hope. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, pledged to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and run a transparent and open government. But he has become a civil libertarianās nightmare: a supposedly liberal president who instead has expanded and fortified many of the Bush administrationās worst policies, lending bipartisan support for a more intrusive and authoritarian federal government.
Please go read the whole thing and then check out Glenn Greenwald’s take on the story.
As I’m sure everyone here knows, we don’t live in a democracy anymore.
So what are you reading and blogging about today?
ALEC Announces It Will No Longer Focus on Social Issues
Posted: April 17, 2012 Filed under: American Gun Fetish, Breaking News, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, fundamentalist Christians, Human Rights, legislation, U.S. Politics | Tags: "stand your ground" laws, ALEC, Heritage Foundation, Koch Brothers, Moral Majority, Paul Weyrich, prisons, Voter ID laws 27 Comments
ALEC has sent out a press release announcing a very significant change in its organizational structure and goals. The headline: ALEC Sharpens Focus on Jobs, Free Markets and Growth ā Announces the End of the Task Force that Dealt with Non-Economic Issues. Here’s the gist:
āWe are refocusing our commitment to free-market, limited government and pro-growth principles, and have made changes internally to reflect this renewed focus.
āWe are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy. The remaining budgetary and economic issues will be reassigned….
āOur free-market, limited government, pro-growth policies are the reason ALEC enjoys the support of legislators on both sides of the aisle and in all 50 states. ALEC members are interested in solutions that put the American economy back on track. This is our mission, and it is what distinguishes us.ā
Except those really aren’t the reasons ALEC was founded. The brains behind ALEC were Paul Weyrich, who also founded the Heritage Foundation and joined with Jerry Falwell to found Moral Majority, and other right wing legislators focused on social issues like Henry Hyde.
One of the first to envision fusing the conservative movement with evangelicals, he and the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority as well. In fact, Weyrich coined the phrase the “moral majority”. No believer in majority rule, he said: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” His statement was a harbinger to ALEC’s later very dogged voter suppression activities. “Recently Voter ID legislation based on ALEC’s template was introduced in states across the country and passed in at least fourteen states,” under the guise of preventing election fraud.
So voter suppression was part of the organization’s charter, apparently.
ALEC’s model legislation has been instrumental in the explosive growth of the prison population. It helped pioneer “three strikes” laws, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws, which serve to abolish or curb parole so converts are made to serve the entire length of their sentence. “Because of truth-in-sentencing and other tough sentencing measures, state prison populations grew by half a million inmates in the 1990s even while crime rates fell dramatically.” In fact, one of ALEC’s benefactors, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), made an offer to cash- strapped states to buy up their prison populations at a cost savings as long as the state kept their prisons 90 percent filled to capacity.
And of course ALEC was behind the Stand Your Ground laws that have become such a big issue since the Trayvon Martin shooting.
And now ALEC is dropping this part of their agenda. This is a huge victory for anyone who care about human rights.
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