URL: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Interesting_ALEC_Quotes

"Now many of our Christians have what I call the "goo goo" syndrome. Good Government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of 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."

 Paul Weyrich Founder of ALEC

URL:http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/alec-the-voice-of-corporate-special-interests-state-legislatures

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, who helped build a nationwide right-wing political infrastructure following the reelection of Richard Nixon. In the same year, he helped establish the Heritage Foundation, now one of the most prominent right-wing policy institutes in the country. One year later, Weyrich founded the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the predecessor of the Free Congress Foundation. In 1979, he co-founded and coined the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell, and in 1981 he helped establish the ultraconservative Council on National Policy.

ALEC’s major funders include Exxon Mobil, the Scaife family (Allegheny Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundation), the Coors family (Castle Rock Foundation), Charles Koch (Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation), the Bradley family (The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation) and the Olin family (John M. Olin Foundation). These organizations consistently finance right-wing think tanks and political groups.

Members of ALEC’s board represent major corporations such as Altria, AT&T, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Kraft, PhRMA, Wal-Mart, Peabody Energy, and State Farm. Such corporations represent just a fraction of ALEC’s approximately three hundred corporate partners. According to the American Association for Justice, over eighty percent of ALEC’s finances come from corporate contributions.

Question for you: If this is the principle of the Founder of ALEC who has written template voter ID laws for Republican controlled state governments, is it not the next logical step that these Voter ID laws are an organic extension to do exactly what Paul Weyrich wants, which is to supress the vote of people he thinks shouldn't have that constitutional right?

   History is/has been a good gauge of how government power has always been concentrated and co-opted to the top by a few. It’s a narrative that is repeated throughout history and is nothing new even for a Democratic Republic such as ours.

            The Tea Party has been solely concerned with the power and size of government and from taxes to regulations, which sadly seems to be the only thing that they connect with Personal (singular) liberty in our nation. Now, Barak Obama and their hatred of liberals have made it easy for them to vent this but it has come at a price and ignores the rest of the story about what has happened in our country.

            They connected the dots half way and then they stopped because to go much farther they would have to get out of their safety zone regarding the purpose and size of Private Enterprise and Corporations and the wealthy that they champion by default. To go any further would make them ask questions and seek answers they do not and will not, no matter how much you spin it, fit their world view.

 OWS completes the picture:

 Big Government with the collusion of few Mega multi-national Corporations and the immensely wealthy together have usurped the power of the majority of people in our country.

 Yes, it's a what came first argument “the chicken or the egg”, but regardless the rooster is crowing and a solution to this problem is not a simple answer such as “make government smaller” or “destroy corporations”.

            It is obvious that the balance of power has titled to the few and there is no better evidence to what is written in the tax code were money made from investment is counted at 15% which is used as household income by them, while income derived from real work such as landscaping is taxed at 26%. There is no way this unfairness could be sustained without government enforcing it. This is unfair to middle class tea party people and that is why I find it so hard to understand while they defend and champion multi-national corporate America which fleeces them as much as any liberal like myself.

Front Page Stories on the Journal Sentinel more or less proves my point:

URL: http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/legislators-worked-with-gogebic-taconite-on-mining-bill-593fk2n-135902053.html

URL: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/gableman-voted-with-law-firm-after-receiving-free-legal-services-o53gc01-135904063.html

I find it troubling the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) a private business lobbying group has so much sway over politicians (most on the right) and judges (Gableman and Zeigler) they prefer we elect by pumping millions into the election cycle; in both judicial rulings and writing legislation, An unholy alliance of which ALEC has codified and incorporated many WI politicians one of which is Robin Vos. Once we could look at WEAC as a counter balance to WMC, but Walker has crushed them so WMC is free to do what it wants.

 Don’t think for a second the WMC is looking out for you or what they want politicians to do will benefit you. They are there to benefit their members of which most of us are not. WMC’s values do not and will never benefit a typical middle class or working class Wisconsinite.

Also look for information about Congressional insider trading it is an excellent example. URL: http://www.economist.com/node/21541434

 The other thing that is important to remember is that when large Government, large Corporations and the immensely wealthy come together they have usurped the power of the majority of people in our country and it also stifles private enterprise and innovation because these forces use their power to fix the system to benefit them. Sure it’s raw capitalism to crush your economic opponent, but it should not exist in our democratic republic, which should be the moderating force to stop the playground bullies.

Corporations still don’t have the right to vote, nor do wealthy people have their votes weighted more than the rest of us, when big Government colludes with big private enterprise to fix the system, funnel our tax dollars into corporate welfare for themselves, or fix the tax code to benefit themselves at the expense of the rest of us, then our votes lose their meaning and the constitution is not worth the parchment it is written on.

Please repost any posts that have been blocked by other bloggers on this blog.

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I am looking for actual counter argument content that has been blocked.

Note: I added open forum to the title and content below.

On posting:

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A man in his mid-forties with two broken legs in casts is sitting on a metal folding chair.

There are no crutches or wheelchairs near him and it is obvious he can’t move anywhere.

The man who deliberately broke his legs is in a suit and walks up to him with a consoling and sorry look on his face; the man thinks back to the immense iron wrench that was used to smash both his femur’s causing immense pain and even more painful medical bills which he cannot afford and will probably bankrupt him, since the Gov. stopped work on the healthcare reforms mandated by law and changed the Badger-care requirements, he really had no choices other than to go bankrupt, buying insurance in the "Free" market was just to expensive.

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Did you see that pro-Scott Walker TV ad financed by at least ½ of out of state money from pro-corporate anti-tax the rich special interests groups?

The Koch brothers come to mind. There the left wing’s uber-rich uber -wealthy boogey-men who have their tentacles in creating the democratic voter suppressing ALEC, Created the Heritage Foundation, fund the CATO institute, AFP, frequently have Scalia and Thomas over to do their SCOTUS bidding on the high court, etc… To bad they are not real boogey-men, it would have been better if they were a myth.

Anyway you know the Ad:

In the soup kitchen His wife Tonette does the talking.

“The holidays are a time for us to give thanks — and to reach out to those who are struggling. It’s a tough time for many families. But in Wisconsin, we have a long tradition of helping our neighbors. We’re grateful for the opportunity to serve the people of Wisconsin.

In the Living room

 “In this season of peace, our hope is that we can put our differences aside, and move forward together.”

URL: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/walkers-holiday-ad-lets-put-our-differences-aside.php

I like how his wife Tonette is appealing for us all, Supporter and Opponent, alike to bury the hatchet with her Husband and start over and work together to put our differences aside, while her hard working husband serves food to poor boys and girls who can’t wait to get on welfare, non-producing working age men and women happy to be poor, and lazy grandmothers and grandfathers who suck off the social welfare system and have taught their children how to do it even better. And then the family going back to their all so middle class existence in the living room asking for us to work together with her husband.

As if Scott Walker’s actions and his Republican henchman actions didn’t happen at all, and in the spirit of the season we need to forgive and forget and TRUST that Walker and his collaborators have found the olive branch and want to move together in bipartisanship.

- As If when the public unions capitulated on all his financial demands, in the spirit of compromise, Walker cut their throats, with the goal of destroying public unions, to cut off funding to his democratic rivals. It must have never happened.

• As if he and his pals never took 1.6 billion of education aid away from public schools and the tech college system, without compromise without discussion from opponents and summarily dictated to the rest of us what is going to happen without any of the stakeholders buy in, but merely to fulfill their rightwing agenda and give the money away to charter schools, in a naked attempt to destroy public education.
• As if the most suppressive Voter ID law was never passed that targets likely democratic voters: Students, Minorities, The poor, and the Elderly with hidden poll taxes, and attempt to suppress the vote of people who would vote against him.
•  As if he didn’t sign a Redistricting bill that concentrates Latino and Black minorities and disenfranchises 300,000 people from voting for six years.

            Just like “It’s a Wonderful Life” when Clarence Thomas granted Mr Potters Wish to see how life would be without him. And with a snap it never happened and he an Clarence lived happily ever after..

The fact that he never lifted that olive branch in the past year, never included his opponents in discussion, and merely dictated his will, he want US to begin again, set the differences he and his cronies created and move forward?

But Back to the Ad.

We all know the Scott Walker thinks the poor should pull themselves up by their boot straps, regardless if they had any straps or boots. That government has no business to help those less fortunate to try to lift themselves out of being poor and only private money should go to help the poor (If this were fact then the wealthy in this country should have been able to solve the problem of “being” poor when the Bush tax cuts were enacted.)

I find the ad ironic and not warm or fuzzy at all. It’s more like a slap in the face to the poor in this state.

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The man in the suit is carrying a pair of crutches in his left hand and puts his right hand out so the man in the casts can shake it and says, “I am really sorry I had to brake your legs, but I had to do what was best and what I was hired to do and that was to hinder your mobility, we just can’t have you moving that fast.” The man in the suit pauses, “So to make up for what I had to do, I purchased and in person brought you some crutches since you know we had to stop funding to hospitals to give away free taxpayer funded crutches, when that taxpayer money could be used to create jobs.” Pauses again and He continues sighing, “In the future you will see it was for the best.”

 “C’mon let’s bury the hatchet, let’s start over.”

The man with the broken legs sat bewildered not sure what he was hearing and asked, “What about all the other legs of all the other people you had to break?”

 The man in the suit, always with a smooth answer replied, “I am sure my other wealthy supporters will buy them crutches as well, “with a widening grin. “We are very generous people.”

“Are you sure?” The man with the broken legs asks.  

He does not answer and pushes the crutches out even further for Man to take them.

The broken leg man reaches out with hand open and then stops…“So let me get this straight. After breaking my legs and removing funding for free crutches you come down with a pair of crutches you paid for and want me to forgive you and start over fresh.”

- - - - -- - -

Walker has cut tax credits for the poor by lowering the amount that the can get with the earned income tax credit and the homestead tax. “Under Walker's plan, the earned income tax credit would be reduced by more than $20 million a year - a reduction of more than 15% when compared with the $129.2 million paid out in the last fiscal year. URL: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/117501518.html Remember this is at the same time he did this, “reducing the tax credit because it is included in a budget that would roll back taxes on corporations and gives a new tax break on capital gains for those who invest in Wisconsin businesses.”

I wonder why the reversal of wanting to feed poor kids, I mean he also removed the painting of minority children from Milwaukee from the Gov’s Mansion. Why go see them at the WMCS Christmas Bash? Who even know’s if the soup kitchen in the ad was even real, Maybe Clarence Thomas was in on it, the official conservative angel of this story?

Why go and feed them then, why put yourself in the same place with the people your policies will make suffer? He  is making it harder for poor families to feed and support their own children, then why this fake compassion if that is what your polices are doing!

 I mean we know he hates using government to help these people and appeals to conservatives that see the poor and working poor as inferior human beings who do not deserve the human dignity they themselves enjoy, maybe it’s because they are likely democratic voters? If they were likely conservative voter poor, maybe they would care?

The argument from conservatives is that people who have a hard time finding enough food to feed their families need to give their fair share so they have a stake like the rest of us, that they contribute to the common good, etc…, and this is the argument from the right (sounds socialist to me) wanting all Americans to contribute to the common good and tax base.

Meanwhile

The 6 heirs to the Walton (Wal-Mart) fortune have more wealth than the bottom 30% of Americans, and all they did to have to get it was to be the Children of Sam Walton. URL: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/six-walmart-heirs-wealthier-than-bottom-30-percent.html

Half of all Americans have fallen into poverty. URL: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/15/143770049/census-1-in-2-americans-are-poor-or-low-income

What about those Americans who continue to profit at a compounded rate (the rich), while the rest of us are falling behind and have only seen are income rise 2.1 % since 1979. URL: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=957

Here’s the Take Away Folks:

            If conservatives want the poorest among us who are getting poorer to pay more in taxes for the little they make to contribute to our state and nation, then logically it follows that the Americans who have had their income and Wealth exponentially rise should have their taxes raised to contribute as well.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

“Yes you got it.” The suited man replies.

“And I bet, you want me to thank you for the crutches?”

“Yes, “He answers, “Who else would you thank for helping you?”