Category Archives: Random Blogging

Research Can Be Eye-Opening: ALEC Edition

Recently, a reader asked me to write something about ALEC–the American Legislative Exchange Council. I didn’t know much about the organization, so I consulted Dr. Google.

Here’s how ALEC’s official site describes the organization:

The American Legislative Exchange Council is America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators. Comprised of nearly one-quarter of the country’s state legislators, business and thought leaders, think tank scholars and individuals, ALEC provides a unique forum for diverse groups to exchange ideas and develop real, state-based solutions that encourage growth, preserve economic security and protect hardworking taxpayers.

Sounds good. But as it turns out, a wee bit inaccurate. A significant number of ALEC members are not legislators, but corporations, and virtually all of its funding comes from those corporations, whose interests–unsurprisingly– it serves.

ALEC is neither “diverse” or non-partisan. There is one Democrat out of the 104 legislators holding “leadership” positions, and Its website listed speakers at a recent meeting: Mike Huckabee, Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. Other featured speakers at ALEC events have included: Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, George Allen, Jessie Helms, Pete Coors, and Mitch Daniels.

The site listed people to whom ALEC has given awards: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George H.W. Bush, Charles and David Koch, Richard de Vos, Tommy Thompson, Gov. John Kasich (currently portrayed as the “moderate” running for President), Gov. Rick Perry, Congressman Mark Foley, and Congressman Billy Tauzin. 

So much for diverse opinions…

All that was from ALEC’s own site. Other sources described the organization as a corporate bill mill.

Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy’s ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site.

Heavily funded by the Koch brothers, ALEC’s bills undermine environmental regulations and deny climate change; support school privatization; undercut health care reform; defund unions and limit their political influence; restrain legislatures’ abilities to raise revenue through taxes; mandate strict election laws that disenfranchise voters; increase incarceration to benefit the private prison industry, among many other issues.

The good news is that after the 2010 elections, ALEC’s success in getting GOP legislators to introduce bills written to benefit their corporate members raised the organization’s profile. In the ensuing public outrage, a number of major corporations severed their ties with ALEC. Google, Microsoft, Visa, Merck, General Motors, Walgreens, Amazon, McDonalds, Coca Cola…even Walmart has left. And the exodus continues.

I wonder how many would have left if the organization had remained in the shadows.

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They’re Out to Get Us..

According to a recent story in something called the Civic Tribune,

The internet is abuzz with reports of forced micro-chipping taking place in Clint, Texas. Dozens of families were said to be rounded up by American troops, and given the option of an RFID implant, or imprisonment for an indefinite amount of time.

Well, as you know, Obama is using Jade Helm to take over Texas. He also plans to confiscate everyone’s guns. The moon landing was faked. The government is hiding the remains of aliens and their flying saucer in a secret compound at Roswell. Agenda 21 is a U.N. plan to destroy American sovereignty…

According to Time Magazine, there are more people who subscribe to these and other loony-tune theories than most of us would guess. (And I thought Donald Trump was the most depressing aspect of contemporary American life…)

According to a pair of new studies published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, conspiracy theorists—and there are a lot more of them than you may think—tend to have one thing in common: they feel a lack of control over their lives.

Jan-Willem van Prooijen, associate professor in social and organizational psychology at VU University Amsterdam, has been studying conspiracy theories and those who believe them for six years. “When I started this research, one of the things that I really found astonishing was how many people believe in certain conspiracy theories,” he says.

Conspiracy theories often crop up during times of uncertainty and fear: after terrorist strikes, financial crises, high-profile deaths and natural disasters.

We certainly live in a “time of uncertainty.” The Great Recession, the yawning gap between the rich and the rest of us, the incessant news reports highlighting terrorism both foreign and domestic, and–perhaps most of all– the constantly accelerating pace of social and technological change have combined to create a free-floating anxiety to which few of us are immune.

Still, it’s hard to believe that social uncertainty really explains the Birthers….and the Black Helicopters…and the New World Order….and the “proven” fact that Obama plans to cancel elections and make himself President for Life…

The distance between feeling a loss of control and embracing bat-shit-crazy is evidently a lot shorter than we knew.

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Shoot Me Now–Pun Intended

File under: Parishioners packing heat.

A church in Alabama has opened a gun range. Right behind the church.

According to the pastor,

“We had quite a number of church members, some elderly ladies, for example, and some not so elderly women that had purchased guns, but didn’t know how to use them,” Guin told WIAT-TV.

He said the safety classes evolved into a ministry, the Rocky Mount Hunt and Gun Club.

“This is an opportunity for us to reach out in the name of Jesus Christ in a setting that is completely unique. Even odd by some people’s standards. But who’s to say that church can’t happen right here,” Guin said…..

“Really, the whole purpose of this range is to provide recreational and gun safety in a warm, loving, Christian environment,” Guin said. “We wanted to come up with some different ideas to help our church grow, and we thought this would be a unique ministry to offer to the community.”

Evidently, in Alabama, the way to grow a congregation is to offer a “gun ministry.” The NRA will be so proud….

(It’s probably unfair, but when I read this, I immediately recalled an old Second City comedy routine from Cold War days, in which the repeated exhortation was to “kill a Commie for Christ.”)

I don’t pretend to understand the theology involved, but I’m worried that I do understand the marketing approach….

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Down is Up

The vast majority of Americans believe that the deficit has soared in the Obama era. Late last year, a Bloomberg Politics Poll found that 73% of the public believes the deficit has gotten bigger over the last six years. (This belief appears to be founded in equal parts upon a campaign of intentional disinformation and a conviction among rightwing conservatives that Obama is the AntiChrist determined to destroy America.)

The latest Congressional Budget Office projections tell a rather different story:

The budget deficit for 2015 is expected to drop to roughly $425 billion, according to a report released Friday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

That’s down from the $486 billion the CBO projected in March. If it drops to $425 billion by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, it would be a seven-year low for the government’s annual budget shortfalls.

Another Bloomberg poll found that only 6% of Americans are aware that the deficit is shrinking. So 94% of Americans are totally unaware that we have seen a $1 trillion dollar– that’s trillion with a “t” – deficit reduction since Obama took office.

As Steve Benen has written, this seems like the sort of development Tea Partiers and the Beltway’s Very Serious People should consider an extraordinary accomplishment. And I’m sure they would–If anyone other than Obama had accomplished it.

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Beyond Faux News

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution has an informative–and deeply disturbing–post on the influence of right-wing media on the GOP. As he notes, that media and that influence go well beyond the “usual suspects” like Fox News or Rush Limbaugh.

Mann cites a recent paper by Jackie Calmes, a national correspondent for The New York Times who was Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School this past spring.

Its title, “They Don’t Give a Damn about Governing,” is a direct quote from one of her Republican sources. The subtitle, “Conservative Media’s Influence on the Republican Party,” describes the focus of her impressive research, reporting, and analysis.

Calmes goes well beyond the familiar Fox News and talk-radio celebrities Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham to chart an expanding world of web-based “news” sites and social media outlets closely aligned with far-right groups such as Heritage Action, Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth and FreedomWorks. What began as a conservative insurgency nurtured and welcomed by the Republican establishment as a route to majority control of Congress has become a dominant force setting the party’s agenda and forcing repeated brinksmanship. This in turn impedes the Republicans’ ability to govern effectively and to win presidential elections…..

Her paper contains fascinating narrative on lesser-known personalities who have put themselves at the center of linkages between Republican activists and officeholders as well as case studies of why the Republican majority in Congress after the 2014 election has fallen well short of its stated objectives of restoring regular order and governing effectively.

A quote from a long-time, high-level Republican sums up the situation:

“It’s not just talk radio, but the blogosphere, the Internet – they’re all intertwined now. You’ve got this constant chorus of skepticism about anything the quote-unquote establishment does,” said a longtime former top aide to House Republican leaders, Dave Schnittger. And, he said, the chorus is loudest in opposition to those actions that are fundamental to governing: meeting basic fiscal deadlines for funding the government and allowing it to borrow. “Those are the things that leaders have to get done as part of governing,” the Republican said, “as much as conservative media may hate it.”

One of the unsettling realities of the Internet age is the ability to inhabit our preferred realities. Leaving aside the undeniably important question of who is really living in the “reality-based” community, at some point, we need to figure out how to live in a polis that is defined–and divided– by our expanded ability to reside within information bubbles of our own choosing.

And the reasonable Republicans–of whom there are still many–need to figure out how to get their party back.

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