Newt Gingrich’s War on Poor Children

By CHARLES M. BLOW  Published: December 2, 2011 NYTimes

Nearly two weeks after claiming that child labor laws are “truly stupid” and implying that poor children should be put to work as janitors in their schools, he now claims that poor children don’t understand work unless they’re doing something illegal.

On Thursday, at a campaign stop in Iowa, the former House speaker said, “Start with the following two facts: Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.” (His second “fact” was that every first generational person he knew started work early.)

This statement isn’t only cruel and, broadly speaking, incorrect, it’s mind-numbingly tone-deaf at a time when poverty is rising in this country. He comes across as a callous Dickensian character in his attitude toward America’s most vulnerable — our poor children. This is the kind of statement that shines light on the soul of a man and shows how dark it is.

Gingrich wants to start with the facts? O.K.

First, as I’ve pointed out before, three out of four poor working-aged adults — ages 18 to 64 — work. Half of them have full-time jobs and a quarter work part time.

Furthermore, according to an analysis of census data by Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College, most poor children live in a household where at least one parent is employed. And even among children who live in extreme poverty — defined here as a household with income less than 50 percent of the poverty level — a third have at least one working parent. And even among extremely poor children who live in extremely poor areas — those in which 30 percent or more of the population is poor — nearly a third live with at least one working parent.

For this analysis, the most granular national data available — census areas with 100,000 or more people — were compared. For reference, New York City has 55 of these areas. You’d have to slice the definition of neighborhoods rather thinly to find a few areas that support Gingrich’s position.

Lastly, Gingrich vastly overreaches by suggesting that a lack of money universally correlates to a lack of morals. Yes, poverty presents increased risk factors for crime. But, encouragingly, data show that even as more Americans have fallen into poverty in recent years, the crime rate over all — and, specifically, among juveniles — has dropped.

“Facts” are not Gingrich’s forte. Yet he is now the Republican front-runner. It just goes to show how bankrupt of compassion and allergic to accuracy that party is becoming.

Tea Party Columnist: Registering Poor To Vote ‘Like Handing Out Burglary Tools To Criminals’

Ryan J. Reilly TPM | September 2, 2011

Updated: September 2, 2011, 5:05 PM

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and “like handing out burglary tools to criminals.”

“It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote,” Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

“Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn’t about helping the poor,” Vadum writes. “It’s about helping the poor to help themselves to others’ money. It’s about raw so-called social justice. It’s about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers.”

Rep. Maxine Waters says “Tea Party can go straight to hell”

August 22, 2011 8:57 AM by Corbett B.Daly

Rep. Maxine Waters, the liberal lawmaker from southern California, continued to press for Democrats and President Obama to adopt a more combative style with Republicans ahead of next year’s elections.

“This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned — the Tea Party can go straight to hell,” Waters told an Inglewood, California audience at a “Kitchen Table Summit” Saturday night, according to Los Angeles television station KABC.

Waters made waves last week when she openly criticized Mr. Obama’s style and called on him to get tough with Republicans in order to help disadvantaged Americans, including African Americans.

“The president is going to have to fight and he is going to have to fight hard,” she said at a job fair in Atlanta on Thursday.

Waters said there was a growing sense of unhappiness among African Americans with the the first black president.

She said liberals lost the recent fight over cutting government spending that Republicans tied to deadline for the U.S. to raise the nation’s legal borrowing limit.

“We were basically held up in raising the debt ceiling, until they got all of those budget cuts they demanded,” Waters said in Atlanta. “We didn’t raise any revenue and they didn’t close any tax loopholes. I believe the Democratic Party and the president of the United States should not have backed down. We should have made them walk the plank.”

“I’m not afraid of anybody,” Waters said Saturday.

Stock Market Nose Dive: Response to Republican Policies Cause Markets to take Worst Dive Since 2008

“…uncertainty created by the debate in the United States to raise the debt ceiling had unnerved European markets as United States investors had become increasingly reluctant to lend to European banks.

Stocks Dive on Fears of Global Slowdown

By GRAHAM BOWLEY Published: August 4, 2011 NYTimes

Stocks around the world fell sharply Thursday on intensifying investor fears about a slowdown in global economic growth and worries about Europe’s ongoing debt crisis, which is centered now on Italy and Spain.

Stock market indexes in the United States and Europe dropped more than 4 percent as Japan intervened to weaken its currency and the European Central Bank began buying bonds to try to calm markets.

At the close, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 60.27 points, or 4.78 percent, to 1,200.07. The Dow Jones industrial average was off 512.76 points, or 4.31 percent, to 11,383.68, and the Nasdaq was down 136.68, or 5.08 percent, to 2,556.39.

There have been 17 days since the beginning of 2008 with single-day drops of 4 percent or more – 13 in 2008 and 4 in 2009.

Following accelerating falls over the past two weeks, the stock market is now officially in “correction” territory, defined as a drop of 10 percent to 20 percent since the latest peak.

The S.&P. 500 has fallen 10.6 percent since its recent high of 1,363.61 on April 29, underlining the new negative investment sentiment about the economy and Europe.

“We are now in correction mode,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s. “We could have another couple of weeks to go before it bottoms.”

The last time the market was in a correction was last summer, when it fell 16 percent before recovering.

A fear haunting markets is that the United States economy may be heading for a double-dip recession. And even after a second major rescue package for Greece and the agreement to raise the debt ceiling in the United States, investors are concerned that world leaders have not done enough to address fragile underlying economic growth, while Europe’s debt problems have moved on to the much bigger economies of Italy and Spain.

Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of the bond giant Pimco, said investors were selling risky assets like stocks “globally prompted by concerns about the weakening economic outlook, spreading contagion in Europe and insufficient policy responses.”

With Thursday’s dive, the three major American indexes had erased all of the gains made so far in 2011, with the S.&P. and Nasdaq markedly below the start of the year.

In afternoon trading, the Dow, an index of 30 blue-chip stocks, was about 9.4 percent off of its most recent closing high of 12,810.54, reached on April 29. But it was 18 percent below its all-time high of 14,164.53, on Oct. 9, 2007.

Unnerved by policymakers’ apparent inability to get ahead of Europe’s festering debt crisis, European stock markets turned sharply negative across the board.

In Britain, stocks closed down 3.43 percent. In Germany, the DAX index dropped 3.4 percent. In France, the CAC 40 closed down 3.9 percent.

“This is the worst it has been in Europe,” said Jens Nordvig, currency economist at Nomura Securities in New York. “The current rescue package was not enough to cope with the size of the problems posed by Italy and Spain. We need a new framework that can cope with those two countries, and without it markets are on their own and are falling.”

Major indexes in Italy, Spain, France and Switzerland all closed Thursday more than 20 percent below their 2011 highs, while Germany was off nearly 15 percent and Britain’s decline was more than 11 percent.

The selling has extended to many other markets. Mexican stocks are off almost 14 percent from their highs earlier this year, and Brazil’s major index has lost more than a quarter of its value.

Yields on Italian government bonds, already above 6 percent, rose sharply, adding to concerns that the nation’s current debt position is unsustainable. Yields on Spanish debt also increased. This was despite large-scale intervention by the European Central Bank, which for the first time since March began buying bonds in an apparent attempt to prevent the region’s sovereign debt crisis from engulfing Italy.

The markets had expected some concrete action from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Italian’s worsening debt situation in public remarks late Wednesday. But they were disappointed when he defended the country’s fundamentals and said current packages were enough to foster economic growth. The Italian stock market opened up but then slipped sharply.

Since many of Europe’s banks hold the bonds of countries like Italy and Spain, concern is turning to the health of the banking system as these bonds drop in value. With warning signs flashing that some European banks are struggling to fund themselves in increasingly expensive credit markets, the E.C.B. also moved to help weaker banks by expanding its lending to institutions in the euro area at the benchmark interest rate. Bank stocks nevertheless fell sharply in Europe.

Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the E.C.B., said the bank had acted in response to “renewed tensions in some financial markets in the euro area.”

He said that uncertainty created by the debate in the United States to raise the debt ceiling had unnerved European markets as United States investors had become increasingly reluctant to lend to European banks. “It’s clear the entire world is intertwined,” he said. “What happens in the U.S. influences the rest of the world.”

But the E.C.B.’s steps were not enough to help Europe’s bond markets.

Laurent Bilke, an analyst at Nomura in London, said the E.C.B. had been buying government debt of Portugal and Ireland in order to calm these markets. But it had not been buying Italian and Spanish government debt, and that had unnerved investors.

He said the E.C.B. council had also not been united in its decision to take extraordinary measures to intervene in the markets, and that fact had spooked markets.

Negotiating With Tea Party is Negotiating with Terrorists

Tea Party’s War on America

By JOE NOCERA Published: August 1, 2011 NYTimes Op-ed

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took.

Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise. When John Boehner, the House speaker, tried to cut a deal with President Obama that included some modest revenue increases, they humiliated him. After this latest agreement was finally struck on Sunday night — amounting to a near-complete capitulation by Obama — Tea Party members went on Fox News to complain that it only called for $2.4 trillion in cuts, instead of $4 trillion. It was head-spinning.

All day Monday, the blogosphere and the talk shows mused about which party would come out ahead politically. Honestly, who cares? What ought to matter is not how these spending cuts will affect our politicians, but how they’ll affect the country. And I’m not even talking about the terrible toll $2.4 trillion in cuts will take on the poor and the middle class. I am talking about their effect on America’s still-ailing economy.

America’s real crisis is not a debt crisis. It’s an unemployment crisis. Yet this agreement not only doesn’t address unemployment, it’s guaranteed to make it worse. (Incredibly, the Democrats even abandoned their demand for extended unemployment benefits as part of the deal.) As Mohamed El-Erian, the chief executive of the bond investment firm Pimco, told me, fiscal policy includes both a numerator and a denominator. “The numerator is debt,” he said. “But the denominator is growth.” He added, “What we have done is accelerate forward, in a self-inflicted manner, the numerator. And, in the process, we have undermined the denominator.” Economic growth could have gone a long way toward shrinking the deficit, while helping put people to work. The spending cuts will shrink growth and raise the likelihood of pushing the country back into recession.

Inflicting more pain on their countrymen doesn’t much bother the Tea Party Republicans, as they’ve repeatedly proved. What is astonishing is that both the president and House speaker are claiming that the deal will help the economy. Do they really expect us to buy that? We’ve all heard what happened in 1937 when Franklin Roosevelt, believing the Depression was over, tried to rein in federal spending. Cutting spending spiraled the country right back into the Great Depression, where it stayed until the arrival of the stimulus package known as World War II. That’s the path we’re now on. Our enemies could not have designed a better plan to weaken the American economy than this debt-ceiling deal.

One thing Roosevelt did right during the Depression was legislate into being a social safety net to soften the blows that a free-market economy can mete out in tough times. During this recession, it’s as if the government is going out of its way to make sure the blows are even more severe than they have to be. The debt-ceiling debate reflects a harsher, less empathetic America. It’s sad to see.

My own view is that Obama should have played the 14th Amendment card, using its language about “the validity of the public debt” to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Yes, he would have infuriated the Republicans, but so what? They already view him as the Antichrist. Legal scholars believe that Congress would not have been able to sue to overturn his decision. Inexplicably, he chose instead a course of action that maximized the leverage of the Republican extremists.

Assuming the Senate passes the bill on Tuesday, the debt ceiling will be a nonissue until after the next election. But the debilitating deficit battles are by no means over. Thanks to this deal, a newly formed supercommittee of Congress is supposed to target another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in cuts by late November. If those cuts don’t become law by Dec. 23, automatic across-the-board cuts will be imposed, including deep reductions in defense spending.

As has been explained ad nauseam, the threat of defense cuts is supposed to give the Republicans an incentive to play fair with the Democrats in the negotiations. But with our soldiers still fighting in Afghanistan, which side is going to blink if the proposed cuts threaten to damage national security? Just as they did with the much-loathed bank bailout, which most Republicans spurned even though financial calamity loomed, the Democrats will do the responsible thing. Apparently, that’s their problem.

For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.

Debt Ceiling Crisis: America Held Hostage by Republican Party Extremists

How Does the Media Portray it? Read The Centrist Cop-Out

By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 28, 2011 NYTimes

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of “centrist” uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. As you may know, President Obama initially tried to strike a “Grand Bargain” with Republicans over taxes and spending. To do so, he not only chose not to make an issue of G.O.P. extortion, he offered extraordinary concessions on Democratic priorities: an increase in the age of Medicare eligibility, sharp spending cuts and only small revenue increases. As The Times’s Nate Silver pointed out, Mr. Obama effectively staked out a position that was not only far to the right of the average voter’s preferences, it was if anything a bit to the right of the average Republican voter’s preferences.

But Republicans rejected the deal. So what was the headline on an Associated Press analysis of that breakdown in negotiations? “Obama, Republicans Trapped by Inflexible Rhetoric.” A Democratic president who bends over backward to accommodate the other side — or, if you prefer, who leans so far to the right that he’s in danger of falling over — is treated as being just the same as his utterly intransigent opponents. Balance!

Which brings me to those “centrist” fantasies.

Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don’t. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing.

But for those who insist that the center is always the place to be, I have an important piece of information: We already have a centrist president. Indeed, Bruce Bartlett, who served as a policy analyst in the Reagan administration, argues that Mr. Obama is in practice a moderate conservative.

Mr. Bartlett has a point. The president, as we’ve seen, was willing, even eager, to strike a budget deal that strongly favored conservative priorities. His health reform was very similar to the reform Mitt Romney installed in Massachusetts. Romneycare, in turn, closely followed the outlines of a plan originally proposed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. And returning tax rates on high-income Americans to their level during the Roaring Nineties is hardly a socialist proposal.

True, Republicans insist that Mr. Obama is a leftist seeking a government takeover of the economy, but they would, wouldn’t they? The facts, should anyone choose to report them, say otherwise.

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

More on ALEC: How Wisconsin Republicans Create Right Wing Legislation

July 13, 2011

In the midst of trying to balance the state’s multibillion-dollar budget, who had time to debate the state tax on moist tobacco products?

The American Legislative Exchange Council’s allies in the Wisconsin Legislature did.

Late in the budget debate, six Republican lawmakers – including four currently facing recall elections – sponsored a proposal to lower the overall price of moist snuff like Copenhagen and Skoal. Specifically, the provision would have altered the tax on smokeless tobacco products from one based on the price of the tobacco to one based on weight.

That stance on this obscure subject matches a model resolution approved by ALEC, a conservative outfit that brings corporations and lawmakers together to draw up draft legislation.

Gov. Scott Walker eventually vetoed the item before signing the 2011-’13 budget.

Mary Bottari, spokeswoman for the left-wing Center for Media and Democracy, said the moist tobacco proposal illustrates the influence the relatively obscure conservative outfit has on the legislative process in Wisconsin and other states.

“These are very specific, ideological agenda items,” said Bottari, whose group is making available online 800-plus of ALEC’s draft bills and resolutions that it obtained from a whistleblower. “It’s deserving of some scrutiny.”

Overall, her media research group has identified about 20 ALEC proposals that it says have been introduced or approved by Wisconsin lawmakers this year.

For instance, the center finds strong parallels between nine ALEC measures and the tort-reform law introduced by Walker and approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature in a special session in January.

But a Walker spokesman says the first-term Republican didn’t rely on any draft legislation from ALEC when putting together the tort-reform law or any other bill he’s introduced this year.

“Absolutely not,” said Walker aide Cullen Werwie.

Walker listed himself as a member of the conservative group on his official biography when in the Legislature during the 1990s.

State Rep. Robin Vos, state chairman for ALEC, said he’s unaware of any model ALEC bills or resolutions that have made it through the state Legislature so far this year, though he acknowledged that he could have missed one.

Vos said the group – which receives funding from the Koch brothers and the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation - simply provides a way for state lawmakers to share ideas from other states.

Even if someone introduces a model ALEC bill, Vos said, it still must be vetted via the committee process.

“This is a made-up issue,” Vos said.

Still, the similarities between some Wisconsin legislation and ALEC draft bills are striking.

On the moist tobacco proposal, an ALEC staffer even wrote to the governor to ask him not to veto the item after it was inserted in the budget bill.

“The amendment will create a fairer tax system that reduces market distortions and encourages fiscal stability,” wrote Courtney O’Brien, director of the Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development & Public Safety and Elections Task Forces at ALEC.

She did not return calls or emails. The measure was pushed by Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris USA, which would have benefited from it because it manufactures smokeless tobacco products that are far lighter than those of other manufacturers.

Two of the four Republican senators targeted for recalls who sponsored the provision – Luther Olsen of Ripon and Sheila Harsdorf of River Falls – distanced themselves from the issue.

“We do not interact with them at all,” Olsen aide Tara Baxter said of ALEC. She said her boss had never been a member of the organization and “never will be.”

Sens. Alberta Darling of River Hills and Randy Hopper of Fond du Lac didn’t return calls.

As it turns out, the proposal was ordered up by Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a Juneau Republican. He has received about $3,000 in reimbursements from ALEC to attend conferences in the past two years, according to his ethics statements.

Fitzgerald spokesman Andrew Welhouse said his boss pushed the moist tobacco proposal because it is the fair thing to do. Federal officials, he said, already tax snuff, chewing tobacco and pipe tobacco based on weight.

Welhouse said it’s not surprising that GOP legislators and ALEC agree on a tax issue.

“Lately, it feels like the Democrats are trying to create this ALEC boogeyman, but we didn’t make this change because it’s an ALEC bill – we made it because it’s a tax fairness issue,” Welhouse said. “ALEC supports organ donation and drug-free schools, too. Sometimes good ideas are just good ideas.”

That’s not the only proposal with strong similarities to ALEC’s draft legislation.

Vos fought to insert a provision in the state budget to bring for-profit bail bondsmen back to Wisconsin.

But the co-chairman of the powerful Joint Finance Committee said he couldn’t have used the model ALEC bills on this issue because Wisconsin’s statutes are so unusual on this issue.

Sen. Leah Vukmir – voted national “Legislator of the Year” at ALEC’s 2009 annual meeting – has introduced a bill that would give scholarships to handicapped students so they could attend private schools enrolled in the state’s choice program. The name of her bill, the Special Needs Scholarship Program Act, is verbatim as the model bill from ALEC.

That’s also true of her Patient’s Right to Know Act, a bill she sponsored in 2009 that would allow patients to ask health care providers and insurers about the cost and coverage for specific medical procedures.

Vukmir aide Jason Rostan said the scholarship bill actually came from a proposal in Florida. He said he thought the idea may have originally come from school choice proponents.

As for the health care legislation, he said, Vukmir took the proposal to ALEC after she introduced it here. Members of the conservative group then signed off on the plan, adopting it as a model bill.

“We actually gave it to ALEC,” Rostan said.

Bottari, the critic of ALEC, said she’s not buying the denials from the governor and top Wisconsin legislators that they’re not using material from the national group when crafting their bills.

Her group maintains that ALEC allows corporations and conservative lawmakers to work in secret to draw up bills that benefit specific business interests. By pushing the model legislation and resolutions, the group is trying to bring greater scrutiny to ALEC’s influence.

“When you consider the 20 ALEC bills we identified and the ideas that keep coming out of this (Walker) administration,” Bottari said, “it just defies belief that there’s no relationship between these bills and ALEC.”

The Nation on ALEC, Consortium for Republican Right Wing Policy

The Nation / By Joel Rogers and Laura Dresser July 15, 2011  |

The Conservatives’ ALEC Philosophy: Everything Related to Government Should Be Demonized, Starved or Privatized

Any force in civil society that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus, and to treat people like roadkill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.

 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. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for their e-mail newsletters here.

In the world according to ALEC, competing firms in free markets are the only real source of social efficiency and wealth. Government contributes nothing but security. Outside of this function, it should be demonized, starved or privatized. Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like roadkill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.

This view of the world dominated the legislative sessions that began in January. GOP leaders, fresh from their blowout victory in November, pushed a consistent message—“We’re broke”; “Public sector workers are to blame”; “If we tax the rich we’ll face economic extinction”—and deployed legislative tools inspired by ALEC to enact their vision. They faced pushback, but they also made great progress—and will be back again soon.

Let’s examine what happened in three critical economic areas:Revenue

ALEC has long sought to limit the ability of states to raise or collect taxes or fees. Before this spring, it had already succeeded in getting more than thirty to adopt such limits, often hard-wired into their constitutions or requiring supermajorities to change. Its varied model legislation to this end includes the Capital Gains Tax Elimination Act, Use Tax Elimination Act, Super Majority Act, Taxpayer Protection Act and Automatic Income Tax Rate Adjustment Act. Its model resolutions oppose such things as mandatory unitary combined reporting (the chief way states get corporations to pay any taxes at all) while supporting such things as the federal flat tax and efforts to extend the Bush tax cuts permanently. The Automatic Income Tax Rate Adjustment Act, for example, “provides for a biennial reduction in the state adjusted gross income tax rate on residents, nonresidents, and corporations if year-over-year revenue…exceeds certain amounts,” in effect ensuring no increase in state revenue, even during periods of growth, while keeping tax cuts on the table. The Taxpayer Protection Act “prohibits the revenue department of a state from basing any employee’s compensation, promotion or evaluation on collections or assessments,” otherwise known as doing their job.

This past session, ALEC members, drawing heavily from the list above, introduced 500 bills to “starve the beast.” But their greatest victory was the most obvious one. Faced with shortfalls in state revenues from the economic crisis, states almost universally and overwhelmingly chose cuts to public employment or services over progressive tax increases as a solution.

Privatization

Privatization is so central to ALEC’s agenda that it has built a fake board game, Publicopoly, on its website, where the curious can find model legislation and other resources on privatizing basically everything, from transportation (Competitive Contracting of the Department of Motor Vehicles Act) to the environment (Environmental Services Public-Private Partnership Act). Critical to ALEC’s agenda are the foundational bills that set up the rationale for privatizing government services: the Public-Private Fair Competition Act creates a committee to review “whether state agencies unfairly compete with the private sector,” and the Competitive Contracting of Public Services Act requires “make or buy” decisions to encourage privatization. The hallmark of ALEC’s model privatization legislation, the Council on Efficient Government Act, creates “a council on efficient government to leverage resources and contract with private sector vendors if those vendors can more effectively and efficiently provide goods and services and reduce the cost of government.” These councils typically include representatives from the private sector, who then decide to let their business colleagues bid for public sector work.

In the past few years, with at least three additions this session alone, legislation establishing a state Council on Efficient Government has been introduced in Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Illinois and South Carolina. In each case, the concepts in the bill mirror the ALEC proposal. In some cases—South Carolina, Arizona and Illinois—the state bills read as copies of ALEC’s model legislation. Virginia’s, Oregon’s, Maryland’s and Kansas’ bills, to varying degrees, contain language directly from ALEC’s model.

Unions

The fiercest attacks this session were reserved for public sector unions, especially in the once labor-friendly Midwest states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that went deep red in November. ALEC has a sweeping range of model antiunion laws, the broad aim of which is to make it harder to be a union and easier for workers not to pay the costs of collective bargaining or union political activity. The Right to Work Act eliminates employee obligation to pay the costs of collective bargaining; the Public Employee Freedom Act bars almost any action to induce it; the Public Employer Payroll Deduction Act bars automatic dues collection; the Voluntary Contribution Act bars the use of dues for political activity.

This spring, GOP governors or legislatures introduced at least 500 of these and other ALEC-inspired antilabor laws, including laws to restrict the scope of collective bargaining; to limit or eliminate “project labor agreements” and state “prevailing wage” requirements; and to pre-empt local living wage or other labor standards. Just keeping track of all the antiunion legislation was often daunting. In Michigan, the AFL-CIO was dealing with more than fifty laws aimed at its demise.

In some states, the results have been lethal. In Wisconsin, the first state to legalize public sector union bargaining, public sector unions (excluding police and firefighters) were reduced to near irrelevance. The law limits collective bargaining to wages only (no bargaining over benefits, safety or work conditions) and forbids those to be increased faster than inflation. To continue to exist, unions must annually win recertification elections with more than 50 percent of the vote of all workers in their bargaining unit—a threshold requirement that is unheard of. Ohio also passed a law limiting public sector bargaining rights (including for police and firefighters) and permitting members to opt out of paying dues.

There were limits to this stampede. “Paycheck protection,” introduced in fifteen states, passed only in Alabama and Arizona. “Right to work,” introduced in eighteen states, hasn’t advanced significantly anywhere. (Tennessee reaffirmed a pre-existing right to work, and in New Hampshire the governor’s veto is holding it back.) But damage has been done. It may be that unions and other progressive organizations, moved by the carnage, will work together and with the public to build a mass movement to reverse it. Certainly, many people are trying to do that now. Whatever their success, we can be sure that ALEC will fight them fiercely in the states, while pressing forward with its own project: the complete business domination of American public life.

Tea Party Group Admits It Wants to “Shut Down Public Schools”

Tuesday 12 July 2011 by: Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress

As ThinkProgress has documented, a tightly-knit group of right-wing Political Action Committees (PACs) and corporate foundations have unleashed an assault [4] on public education, pushing school voucher schemes nationwide that would funnel taxpayer dollars away from public schools and toward private schools instead [5]. In doing so, many of these voucher advocates claim they simply want to expand school choice [6] and improve the quality of education for all.

Yet one group that has been influential in the school voucher push — the Independence Hall Tea Party, which has run a major PAC [7] that operates in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — is finally admitting that its true goal is to abolish public education.

Truthout doesn’t take corporate funding – this lets us do the brave, independent reporting that makes us unique. Please support this work by making a tax-deductible donation today – just click here to donate. This week, an anonymous foundation will double your donation! [8]

In a series of e-mails and interviews, Teri Adams, the president of the Idependence Hall Tea Party Association, explains that her organization is involved in its voucher advocacy because it believes “public schools should go away.” Adams said that their ultimate goal is to “shut down public schools and have private schools only [9]“:

“We think public schools should go away,’’ says Teri Adams, the head of the Independence Hall Tea Party and a leading advocate — both in New Jersey and Pennsylvania — of passage of school voucher bills. The tea party operates in those two states and Delaware. They should “go away,” she says, because “they are hurting our children.’’ [...] Adams says the current voucher program “discriminates” against wealthier students by providing public subsidies only to inner-city children in allegedly failing schools. Her group’s e-mails pushing vouchers caught the attention of James Kovalcin of South Brunswick, a retired public school teacher who asked Adams for clarification. She responded via email: “Our ultimate goal is to shut down public schools and have private schools only, eventually returning responsibility for payment to parents and private charities. It’s going to happen piecemeal and not overnight. It took us years to get into this mess and it’s going to take years to get out of it.”

“It’s refreshing to see a vouchers promoter who is honest about her real intent — to destroy public education,” responded Julia Rubin, a spokeswoman for Save Our Schools, a New Jersey organization that is opposing the voucher push in the state. “Fortunately, most New Jersey residents understand how devastating vouchers would be for our excellent public schools [9].” (HT: @DianeRavitch [10])

Republican Secret Right Wing Playbook (ALEC) Exposed

The Center for Media and Democracy EXPOSED these bills

Worker Rights and Consumer Rights

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Limiting Worker and Consumer Rights, Privatizing Government Services, and Pushing “Free” Trade Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians are voting behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws. Bills on this page limit workers rights and drain labor unions of resources for protecting employees, undermine consumer protections, favor the Wall Street financial agenda, limit the ability to cap exorbitant interest rates on credit cards and big bank fees. The bills and resolutions here also attempt to funnel tax dollars to for-profit corporations through privatization schemes and push the “free trade” agenda that has shipped good-paying American jobs overseas. Through ALEC, corporations have both a VOICE and a VOTE on specific state laws to change worker and consumer rights. Do you?

READ the “Model Bills” HERE Click here for a zip file of Worker’s Rights, Trade, Pensions & Privatization bills Click here for a zip file of Banking, Consumer Rights & Housing bills Click here for a zip file of Property/Auto Insurance & Transportation bills Click here for a zip file of Telecommunications & IT bills For a full list of bills from this section, click here For descriptions of some of these bills, scroll down or click here. Joel Rogers on ALEC & Worker Rights Watch Joel Rogers, professor of law, political science, public affairs, and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, discuss ALEC and the corporate efforts to undermine worker rights.Watch other ALEC Exposed experts here. Read Joel Rogers’ and Laura Dresser’s article in The Nation here.

How YOU Can Expose ALEC & Share What You Learn SPREAD THE WORD. Share information about ALEC through Facebook, e-mail and Twitter. Concerned groups and people in every state need this to investigate how ALEC corporations are rewriting laws for their own advantage. And, please join the conversation on Facebook! EXPOSE ALEC LEGISLATORS. Demand the truth about which politicians in your state are in ALEC. Uncover whether YOUR tax dollars are paying ALEC “dues.” Expose politicians who accept “scholarships” from ALEC’s corporate-funded coffers for fancy trips. EXPOSE ALEC’S ROLE IN YOUR STATE HOUSE. Read these corporate-backed “model bills” NOW and cross-check them with bills in your state legislature. Ask your local media to report on what you have found and write your local newspaper. SHARE YOUR DISCOVERIES. Tell us what you uncovered! Tweet what you learn with the hashtag #ALECexposed, join a discussion on this site or email us a confidential tip via editor AT ALECexposed.org. And, follow our tweets on Twitter!

Get the Goods on ALEC ALEC Exposed Audio & Video From The Nation Magazine ALEC & Democracy ALEC & Education ALEC & Labor ALEC & Health ALEC & Koch From PR Watch ALEC & Injury Law ALEC & Wisconsin (NEW!) ALEC & Tobacco (coming soon!) Press on ALEC Exposed

Who Is Behind ALEC? ALEC Corporations ALEC Politicians ALEC “Scholars” ALEC Boards & Task Forces ALEC Staff More Information ALEC FAQ ALEC Exposed Press Release ALEC Funding ALEC Hotels ALEC Decoded ALEC & NCSL Comparison

Join the Conversation! ALECexposed ALECexposed on Twitter stone_circle RT @BrookeErdmann: Sign @CommonCause‘s letter asking the #IRS to investigate #ALEC‘s nonprofit status. http://t.co/hvxaPZS #ALECexposed 54 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite XiNeutrino RT @BrookeErdmann: Sign @CommonCause‘s letter asking the #IRS to investigate #ALEC‘s nonprofit status. http://t.co/hvxaPZS #ALECexposed 54 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite Florida_Andie RT @BrookeErdmann: Sign @CommonCause‘s letter asking the #IRS to investigate #ALEC‘s nonprofit status. http://t.co/hvxaPZS #ALECexposed 54 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite JuliaAdair RT @BrookeErdmann: Sign @CommonCause‘s letter asking the #IRS to investigate #ALEC‘s nonprofit status. http://t.co/hvxaPZS #ALECexposed 53 minutes ago · reply · retweet · favorite Join the conversation

Learn MORE about the “Model Bills” ALEC Corporations Are Backing to Rewrite YOUR Rights The Center for Media and Democracy analyzed the bills ALEC politicians and corporations voted for. More analysis is available below and also at ALEC Exposed’s sister sites, PRWatch and SourceWatch.

How do these bills attack working people? Through this “model legislation,” corporations are eroding the rights of workers. These bills: Limit union rights through “right to work”legislation, and specifically limit the rights of firefighters, police, teachers, and other public workers by: Prohibiting dues deduction from paychecks (or limiting dues deductions), and Allowing employees to opt-out of union dues but benefit from union negotiations with the employer (See also this bill), and Opposing release time for union activities from being negotiated as part of employment contracts, and Dramatically changing pension rights for public employees from defined benefits to defined contributions, transferring the management of pension funds to private companies, and even opposing socially conscious investments by those pension funds. Limit wages by: Repealing minimum wage laws or opposing increases in the minimum wage. Repealing the prevailing wage paid for government projects, which lowers wage standards, potentially lowers the quality of public works projects, and undermines the competitiveness of potential contractors that have union employees. Push international agreements that undermine the opportunities of American workers by: Favoring so-called “free trade” agreements that ship good-paying American jobs overseas to developing nations that pay workers subsistence wages. See the list here. Use tax dollars to subsidize for-profit corporations for work traditionally performed by government, such as: The Council on Efficient Government Act that outsources public services and weakens public employee unions, and The Competitive Contracting of Public Services Act and Public-Private Fair Competition Act, bills that require agencies to consider whether services can be provided by private entities at lower cost, which reduces the amount paid to workers while adding a profit margin in for corporate executives. Deter injured employees from making worker’s compensation claims by, for example, giving employers wide access to employees’ medical records. To see a full list of these bills, click here. Did You Know about this Bill? Authorizing “Car Title Pledges” for Predatory Lenders One model billapproved by ALEC corporations would authorize a form of short-term lending that many states have recognized as unfair and predatory to low-income consumers. Specifically, it advances the interest of lending companies in giving short-term, 30-day renewable loans backed by a borrower’s car title, loans that usually have high interest rates, which are very difficult for people in tough financial circumstances to keep up with.Consumer groups have opposed this type of lending not only because the high interest rates and short-term repayment period can trap consumers in a cycle of debt, but also because they risk losing their cars, which they often need to get to work. The bill also provides few consumer protections, for example failing to include a private right of action with strong remedies, and requiring that all claims be brought within one year. This provides little deterrence for predatory lenders, and because the budgets of regulatory agencies are limited, the state cannot adequately protect against abuses. The Consumer Federation of America, USPIRG, and the Center for Responsible Lending sent a letter to ALEC opposing “car title pledges” in November 2005, enumerating many examples of predatory title lending, and also pointing out the distorting influence of campaign contributors from this sector of sound public policy. Bills like this have become law in Mississippi, Tennessee, and elsewhere. The ban on this type of predatory lending was also rolled back in Wisconsin after ALEC alumni Scott Walker became governor in 2011.

In what ways do these bills undermine consumer rights? These bills restrict the rights of consumers in favor of the big banks, predatory lenders, and others by: Opposing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created to help police Wall Street and protect consumers. Some politicians are also trying to block Elizabeth Warren from leading the the CFPB. (Also Encouraging pension fund investment in real estate securities.) Opposing limits on astronomical credit card rates, and thus opposing efforts to limit Americans’ credit card debt Opposing limits on ATM fees Allowing insurance companies to engage in “red-lining” by re-branding the practice as “territorial ratings” Prohibiting local governments from regulating unfair or predatory lending practices, such as prohibitions on backing high interest loans with car titles, detailed below. Eliminating building and maintenance codes for affordable housing under the guise of “increasing the construction of low-income housing” And among other things, limiting the ability to fund comprehensive transportation policies through a state Constitutional Amendment requiring that revenues from gas taxes and vehicle-related fees be used for highways, rather than investment in light rail, bike lanes or other options less profitable for oil companies. To see a full list of these bills, click here. Some of this Corporate Agenda Has Already Become Law: Wisconsin Governor and ALEC alumni Scott Walker took a cue from ALEC’s corporate wish list and introduced a radical bill in February, 2011 to cripple public employee unions. Wisconsin Act 10 inspired months of protests and has been subjected to a series of legal challenges. There is no ALEC bill that exactly mirrors Walker’s proposal, but the Wisconsin bill does comport with ALEC’s sweeping anti-union agenda, which includes decades of support for “Right to Work”, Paycheck Protection” legislation and other measures to disempower and defund unions. On collective bargaining, ALEC’s “Public Employee Freedom Act” declares that “an employee should be able to contract on their own terms” and “mandatory collective bargaining laws violate this freedom.” This ALEC bill, and the “Public Employer Payroll Deduction Act”, prohibit automatic payroll deductions for union dues, a key aspect of the Walker bill. Have any of these bills been introduced or enacted in YOUR state? Helpful Resources Additional resources on ALEC’s corporate agenda: ALEC Funding, PRWatch (2011) American Legislative Exchange Council and other related articles, SourceWatch (2011) Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America, American Association for Justice (2010) Climate Denial Report on ALEC and Exxon Funding for ALEC, Greenpeace (2011) Governing the Nation from the Statehouses, Progressive States Network (2006) Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, Common Cause (2006) Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law, NPR (2010) Exposing ALEC, blogging group, Daily KOS (2011) ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures, People for the American Way (2011) Corporate America’s Trojan Horse in the States, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council (2002) The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law, Commonwealth Institute (2003) Wisconsin’s Cronon Affair: The Power of a Simple Fact, The Nation Magazine (2011) Ghostwriting the Law, Mother Jones (2002) ALEC Behind Voter Disenfranchisement Efforts, Center for American Progress (2011) ALEC Report, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (2011)

ALEC Exposed is a project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). CMD does NOT accept donations from for-profit corporations or government agencies. More information about CMD is available here. You can reach CMD’s Executive Director, Lisa Graves, via editor AT ALECexposed.org. Privacy policy: Other than material you post to this wiki in your name, our privacy policy is that we will not disclose private personally identifiable information or data about you, such as your name, email address, or other information, unless required by law. On copyright: ALEC Exposed considers contributions to this wiki to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License or in accordance with law. Information on how to provide us with notice regarding copyright is available at this link. Notices regarding copyright or other matters should be sent to our designated agent, Lisa Graves, via email (editor AT ALECexposed.org) or fax (608-260-9714).

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