Scott Walker's latest attack on unions is straight out of Alec's playbook
http://trib.al/NklzOVQ
Scott Walker's latest attack on unions is straight out of Alec's playbook
The latest policy announcement from the Republican candidate’s faltering campaign has been pushed by the corporate lobbyists since at least 1998
Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker speaks to reporters in front of a piece of the Berlin Wall in the Ronald Reagan Peace Garden at Eureka College, Illinois, on Thursday. Photograph: Seth Perlman/AP
Ed Pilkington in New York
@edpilkington
Thursday 10 September 2015 17.13 EDT
Six weeks ago, the Guardian asked whether Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, could become the first Alec president of the United States – a reference to the controversial corporate lobbying network with which he has close ties.
Scott Walker, first Alec president? Long ties to controversial lobby raise concern
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Six weeks is a long time in politics – particularly with Donald Trump on the scene. Walker’s presidential star, which was ascendant in July, is now barely flickering. In the latest tracking polls he came in a miserable seventh place, with 5% of probable Republican voters’ support to Trump’s 30%.
In an attempt to kickstart his flagging campaign, Walker, who made his name nationally by taking on Wisconsin’s public sector unions, has come up with a new union-bashing ruse. In a speech on Thursday at the alma mater of his hero Ronald Reagan, Eureka College in Illinois, he pledged to destroy the political activities of federal employee unions by blocking their political funding.
Vowing to “wreak havoc on Washington” – his new campaign mantra – Walker said that on his first day in the White House he would force the unions to disclose how much of their dues they were spending on political activities.
He would also put an end to the federal government practice of holding back a portion of union dues from workers’ paychecks for that purpose.
An interesting though largely overlooked feature of Walker’s bid for survival is that it is not new at all. In fact, the idea of hitting public unions by cutting off their political funding has been promoted by none other than the American Legislative Exchange Council, Alec, since at least 1998.
In that year, Alec released the Paycheck Protection Act as a model bill that it began disseminating among Republican-controlled state legislatures. ........................
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