Smarter ALEC?

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Today, the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC) announced that it’s shut­ter­ing the group work­ing on pro-​​gun and voter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion laws (“Pub­lic Safety and Elec­tions Task Force”). This comes in response to sev­eral com­pa­nies ter­mi­nat­ing their rela­tion­ships with ALEC, after the Trayvon Mar­tin killing, when atten­tion was called to the organization’s back­ing of “stand your ground” laws.

Here’s the irony: the task force was already mostly dead. They hadn’t met since the end of Feb­ru­ary, and have been a rel­a­tively minor part of ALEC’s efforts this year. In keep­ing with the pri­mary Repub­li­can goal of oust­ing Pres­i­dent Obama, ALEC’s leg­isla­tive focus in 2012 is eco­nomic pol­icy, such as bust­ing the Wisconsin’s pub­lic employee union.

So ALEC gets to tell the com­pa­nies that it’s being respon­sive — albeit after hav­ing told them that they shouldn’t be try­ing to influ­ence them in the first place. And, by doing so, they’re able to pro­tect their rev­enue stream, which over­whelm­ingly con­sists of cor­po­rate donations.

After all, let’s face it — what cor­po­ra­tion is going to deny fund­ing to an orga­ni­za­tion devoted to reduc­ing union influence?

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  1. Quite a game there, promis­ing to stop doing what they’d already stopped doing.

    The seem to rel­ish wield­ing power in the dark­ness. Now that they’re com­ing under increas­ing scrutiny, it may be time to dis­band and then re-​​form under a dif­fer­ent name.

     

  2. what cor­po­ra­tion is going to deny fund­ing to an orga­ni­za­tion devoted to reduc­ing union influ­ence?
    Prob­a­bly as unlikely as a pub­lic employee union not spend­ing boat­loads to try and recall a gov­er­nor that doesn’t give them every­thing they want.
    Inci­den­tally, lat­est PPP poll has Walker up 5% in the recall matchup. He won by 5.8%in 2010 against the same guy. All that time, money,and effort spent to gain 0.8%. Its shap­ing up to be pos­si­bly the biggest waste of time in polit­i­cal his­tory.
     
     
     

  3. Prob­a­bly as unlikely as a pub­lic employee union not spend­ing boat­loads to try and recall a gov­er­nor that doesn’t give them every­thing they want.

    Deflec­tion and non sequitur much?

    The dif­fer­ences are: 1) cor­po­ra­tions are not cit­i­zens and don’t get to vote, so their fund­ing of an anti-​​union lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion is an obvi­ous per­ver­sion of democ­racy, and 2) you mis­rep­re­sented (i.e., lied about) the moti­va­tions of pub­lic work­ers in Wisconsin.

     

  4. Deflec­tion and non sequitur much?
    Not really. I admit that cor­po­ra­tions are out for their own bot­tom lines. Gun laws and vot­ing ID issues really don’t help them much, so I’m not sur­prised they don’t want to fund those items. I doubt unions would want to either, although as I noted above, unions don’t really mind blow­ing their money on dumb stuff.
     
    cor­po­ra­tions are not cit­i­zens and don’t get to vote, so their fund­ing of an anti-​​​​union lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion is an obvi­ous per­ver­sion of democ­racy,
    Evi­dently, they don’t get to vote.…or even speak.