Gregory Crawford's Weekly Rant! -- ALEC Psychopaths

[Tace]

World News Trust and Airlight LLC present Gregory Crawford's Weekly Rant! 30 March 2014. Passionately written and delivered by Gregory Crawford. Francis Goodwin camera operator. Airlight Studios, Stockbridge, Vermont.

[mtasselin]

1. Thank You

Thanks Greg, but one change for ALEC the A stands for anti-American. You might know this already, but alec has a sister called ACCE know I am not kidding it stands for Anti-American Cities Counties Exchange, the purpose is to like the name implies is go into every city and county and take them over. America is fast becoming a very scary place. Google acce and see for yourself.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. Good point & worth reading up on. Here's a sample:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/06/conservative-group-alec-city-local-government

The rightwing group Alec is preparing to launch a new nationwide network that will seek to replicate its current influence within state legislatures in city councils and municipalities.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, founded in 1973, has become one of the most pervasive advocacy operations in the nation. It brings elected officials together with representatives of major corporations, giving those companies a direct channel into legislation in the form of Alec “model bills”.

Critics have decried the network as a “corporate bill mill” that has spread uniformly-drafted rightwing legislation from state to state. Alec has been seminal, for instance, in the replication of Florida’s controversial “stand-your-ground” gun law in more than 20 states.

Now the council is looking to take its blueprint for influence over statewide lawmaking and drill it down to the local level. It has already quietly set up, and is making plans for the public launch of, an offshoot called the American City County Exchange (ACCE) that will target policymakers from “villages, towns, cities and counties”.

The new organisation will offer corporate America a direct conduit into the policy making process of city councils and municipalities. Lobbyists acting on behalf of major businesses will be able to propose resolutions and argue for new profit-enhancing legislation in front of elected city officials, who will then return to their council chambers and seek to implement the proposals.

[gregcrawford]

13. Good stuff!

This is good fodder for an upcoming rant. Thanks!

Greg

[gregcrawford]

7. The United States of Corruption

Hey Tass!

The only thing scarier than ALEC's pervasive influence is the media's breezy dismissal of it as just standard operating procedure for the Conservative Malice & Mendacity Machine. "Okay, move along, folks, there's nothing to see here! Just the treacherous rape of representative democracy. Nothing for you to concern yourselves with! Now go chase the shiny ball that says, 'BENGHAZI!"

I'd heard about this ACCE initiative, but I'll definitely dig deeper. Thanks for the heads-up.

Greg

[Tace]

18. mtasselin: Thanks For The Info

We need to stop this nonsense. --Tace

[drynberg]

3. Good explanation of ALEC for those not in the know on this crucially horrendous organization, but

What is to be done about it? I suggest starting a possible list of actions...an internet brainstorm as it were. The first step is to notify many many of ALEC. Now, I'm proposing that you add ideas, good and not so good, but honest ideas and see what the DU Pool Mind comes up with. Please give your offering(s).

[hue]

4. Indeed ALEC is underestimated in many ways esp it's desire to control the public.

http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/What_is_ALEC%3F

Now, d/t some major corporations dropping at least it's public affiliation with ALEC ALEC wants to change it's name and become an integral force in our community's lives. It realizes that it is viewed as a "big brother" image and wants to become more like "apple pie".
Community legislation should be written by the citizens it governs for them. Effects on big business need to be clarified, or in other words who/what benefits in every way should be clarified. Who reaps the rewards? What are the goals and outcomes of the legislation??

[DhhD]

5. Hue, your reply reminds me of a video on DU last week where Jeb and Jindal were talking about

the new Republican Party makeover is the kind brotherhood that would be helping the neighborhoods in needy America.

ALEC sponsors the Education Foundation, or private money for projects in schools that they deem conservative. Most monies, which stem from private sources like the Chamber of Commerce, go to help the causes of the Pre-Advanced Placement student curriculums, therefore Advanced Placement programs in many schools.

http://www.naugatuckeducationfoundation.org/grant-application.html

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/11/11883/taxpayer-enriched-companies-back-jeb-bushs-foundation-excellence-education-its-bu

[hue]

11. & I'll bet Jeb Bush will be their presidential candidate of choice...

[gregcrawford]

17. Oh boy.

Just what we need. Another bush league "Decider in Chief."

Greg

[DhhD]

6. ALEC exposed with some of the laws the Republican Party uses to control Americans.

Published on Thursday, July 14, 2011 by The Nation

ALEC Exposed: Starving Public Schools

by Julie Underwood



This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council, in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy. John Nichols introduces the series

snip

ALEC’s most ambitious and strategic push toward privatizing education came in 2007, through a publication called School Choice and State Constitutions, which proposed a list of programs tailored to each state. That year Georgia passed a version of ALEC’s Special Needs Scholarship Program Act. Most disability organizations strongly oppose special education vouchers—and decades of evidence suggest that such students are better off receiving additional support in public schools. Nonetheless, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida, Utah and Indiana have passed versions of their own. Louisiana also passed a version of ALEC’s Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act (renaming it Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence), along with ALEC’s Family Education Tax Credit Program (renamed Tax Deductions for Tuition), which has also been passed by Arizona and Indiana. ALEC’s so-called Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act has been passed by Arizona, Indiana and Oklahoma.

ALEC’s 2010 Report Card on American Education called on members and allies to “Transform the system, don’t tweak it,” likening the group’s current legislative strategy to a game of whack-a-mole: introduce so many pieces of model legislation that there is “no way the person with the mallet [teachers’ unions] can get them all.” ALEC’s agenda includes:

§ Introducing market factors into teaching, through bills like the National Teacher Certification Fairness Act.

§ Privatizing education through vouchers, charters and tax incentives, especially through the Parental Choice Scholarship Program Act and Special Needs Scholarship Program Act, whose many spinoffs encourage the creation of private schools for specific populations: children with autism, children in military families, etc.

§ Increasing student testing and reporting, through more “accountability,” as seen in the Education Accountability Act, Longitudinal Student Growth Act, One-to-One Reading Improvement Act and the Resolution Supporting the Principles of No Child Left Behind.

§ Chipping away at local school districts and school boards, through its 2009 Innovation Schools and School Districts Act and more. Proposals like the Public School Financial Transparency Act and School Board Freedom to Contract Act would allow school districts to outsource auxiliary services.

ALEC is also invested in influencing the educational curriculum. Its 2010 Founding Principles Act would require high school students to take “a semester-long course on the philosophical understandings and the founders’ principles.”

Perhaps the Brookings Institute states the mission most clearly: “Taken seriously, choice is not a system-preserving reform. It is a revolutionary reform that introduces a new system of public education.”

https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/14-12

I have more about the Republcian Party controling America in the GD Forum OP titled, Jeb and Jindal Watch.

[hue]

10. Yup! ALEC supporters want to distort the young minds when they are most vulnerable!!

They want to foster private schools so they have control over what is being taught! Parents are not even fully aware of what the private schools teach-->they "trust" the private school masters!

[gregcrawford]

14. Kinda makes your blood boil, don't it?

My wife is an educator, and I work with kids a lot, both in theater and as a mentor, so I have an in-depth understanding of how destructive this whole "privatization" scam really is. We live in a very rural area, so kids are often tuitioned out to different high schools at taxpayer expense. There are a a couple of so-called "charter schools," which are really just private school, getting a LOT of money from small towns and providing a decidedly inferior educational experience to their students. And they can hire uncertified teachers and turn away special needs kids. WAY not cool.

Greg

[zeemike]

8. Good rant K&R

Keep them coming.

[polynomial]

9. It sounds like ALEC is the corporate connection

that is especially dangerous and linked to business/ political persons that span both parties.

Moreover the mainstream media knows but is not shaming this system of power and money that has turned American law at odds against good fundamentals that grow a peaceful society. The media is just skirting over the hidden issues by not naming names or describing exact irregularities in legislation that is the job of news that’s why we the people give them a license to operate.

It can be suspected America has been metastasized beyond the lynx exampled by the other gifted or lucky appointee’s in the Supreme Court that somehow think by changing the whole concept in physics wave motion within Newton’s Second Law making money the same as free speech wouldn’t be noticed as a monumental mental blunder worth asking for our members of the Supreme Court to get psycho analyzed in the basics of citizenship.

We all agree the laws have been shaped far too long with serious case of sexual objectification with obstruction in sexual orientations. Moreover specifically the Republican Party Tea Party get off the path of misogyny, the hatred of women, or homophobia, anti-Semitism of Jews and Mexican alien immigrants, or worse the current objection to universal health care. Get on the path of a fair living wage or realize a vanishing work force to the needs connected to the Republican platform.

It’s like most all else Republicans don’t want to make legislation better they just want a huge liberal free market place to blunder and profiteer with no rules. But if there are rules or regulations they are done behind closed doors under the shield of national security.

Yes, the National security of American profiteering through wars, secret gulags, Mercenaries, likely connected to the ALEC military industrial complex, and the largest economic sink hole ever in existence called Wall Street. Or the banking community always willing to tap the treasury via the Federal Reserve a la bush holding the door open for terrorist at ground zero. America needs a Cornerstone Granite Monument at ground zero that clearly specifies that terror operation was on his watch.

[DhhD]

12. Polynomial, your reply is a lot like the OP that I did in the Texas Group about Red State.

Many need to make the connection between the sociopaths of the Teapublican Party, ALEC and Red State.

[geretogo]

15. If these Psychopaths continue unopposed I see the day coming in the future where the only solution

to the Fascist Tyranny is a violent up rising as we see all over the world .

[gregcrawford]

16. Let's hope it doesn't come to that...

... but logic and reason has never been their strong suit. Psychopaths never surrender their power without a fight. The question is, will progressives have the balls for the battle, or will political expediency trump morality... again?

Thanks for sharing your voice.

Greg