Culprit Spiderweb Behind the Constitutional Convention Call
(Their
Goal is Obvious: More Power and Influence)
When Uncle Sam Calls: Help answer the call
Introduction
to ALEC, an organization
dedicated to the advancement of free market and limited government principles
through “a unique public-private partnership between state legislators and the
corporate sector.”
Wow – what a
statement – now a lot more here from Common Cause.org working hard to inform and educate
the public on this critical topic.
To most critics, ALEC is a shadowy back-room arrangement
where corporations pay good money to get friendly
legislators to introduce pre-packaged bills in state houses across the country.
It was started in the mid-1970s, and its existence has been long known but its
practices have not.
For example, they haven’t been eager to tie bills in Wisconsin to say those in Ohio or to those in North Carolina.
Through a
website called ALEC Exposed it
was shown to have more than “800 so-called model bills.” Beyond the bills
themselves, the group built out a wide-ranging, sometimes confusing wiki aimed
at documenting which legislators take part in the group, which corporations
support it, and where the bills go once they leave ALEC (to be passed into
law).
Now the topic for today:
There is a
call for a concerted effort to hold an Article 5 Constitutional Convention, which is one path to use to meet and plan amendments
to the U.S. Constitution – that is any time two-thirds of the state
legislatures (ALEC members) petition the Federal government for such a convention.
Governors, who typically wield veto power over legislatures, are not part of
the petition process – so they can’t stop it.
(Note:
This path has never been used until now. ALEC
is 99.9% Republican members consisting of elected office holders, appointed
officials, and major GOP campaign donors to those in state government. The Koch
Brothers and other big pocket donors are deep into this effort and ALEC has
only 1 Democrat out of 104 state legislators in their leadership positions –
figure that one out).
If allowed
to succeed, unelected, unaccountable delegates will be granted the power to
write their far right-wing agenda into our Constitution and it could all become the law of the land vice what we have now for nearly 230 years.
That could mean things like: Shredding environmental regulations,
rolling back civil rights advances, and enshrining far-right wing economics as
permanent fiscal policy through a balanced budget amendment and whole more of ultra right wing goals
Follow the money as they say: More than
98% of ALEC's revenues come from sources other than legislative dues, such as
corporations, corporate trade groups, and corporate foundations. Each
corporate member pays an annual fee of between $7,000 and $25,000 a year, and
if a corporation participates in any of the nine task forces, additional fees
apply, from $2,500 to $10,000 each year.
ALEC also
receives direct grants from corporations, such as $1.4 million from ExxonMobil
from 1998-2009. It has also received grants from some of the biggest
foundations funded by corporate CEOs in the country, such as: the Koch
family Charles
G. Koch Foundation, the Koch-managed Claude
R. Lambe Foundation, the Scaife family Allegheny
Foundation, the Coors family Castle
Rock Foundation, to name a few.
Less than 2%
of ALEC’s funding comes from “Membership Dues” of $50 per year paid by state
legislators, a steeply discounted price that may run afoul of state gift bans.
Now, just 6
more states need to sign on then the Koch Brothers and their cronies will reach
the two-thirds majority they need to tear apart our U.S. Constitution. For
more, see this special report on ALEC funding and spending here.
My 2 cents on this: Name a current constitutional right
you care about – free press, reproductive rights, privacy, criminal justice –
well any one of those can be placed on the chopping block. The goal about this
movement is painfully clear and folks, it’s not pretty – I am not crying wolf,
just simply following the evidence and past ALEC attempts and such related
moves by them to gain power and influence.
I will do what I can to help stop this effort, and I hope you
can, too… this truly is a huge issue and it must not succeed.
Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.
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