ALEC is the cause of our "national malaise"

How ALEC subverts democracy and representative government
 
The following essay was first published on 3/3/2011 3:08 PM MST, after the last Legislative Session was over.   Maybe it will be of some use to our present Legislature.  Please forward and share widely - especially with those in Helena. 


ALEC and the Rise of the Corporate Police State

by Paul Stephens

For the past 40 years, the "law and order", "tough on crime" Drug Warriors and their corporate sponsors have hi-jacked our government.  The "War on Terror" has replaced the Cold War as an excuse to support a vast military-industrial complex which is not only killing and impoverishing millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions elsewhere, but is killing the earth, itself. 

People often wonder:  How could this have happened?  Who is behind it all?  And what do these people believe - or believe in, if anything?  Is it all just corporate group-think?  Are they being bribed or coerced to support this mass destruction of our public institutions, the environment, and our very minds and souls?  Do they understand the consequences of what they are advocating and proposing?

More to the point (since it is lawyers and legislators who are actually carrying out this agenda), do they understand that they are discrediting the Rule of Law (independent judiciary) as well as democracy and representative government, itself?   It seems unlikely.  They think they are promoting business and economic development through "Jeffersonian Federalism."  And most of them have been spoon-fed a lot of plausible lies by an organization called ALEC - the American Legislative Exchange Council.  


If you don't know what ALEC is, you should spend some time finding out. Here's a good place to start.  "Creating a Right-Wing Nation, State by State" by Joshua Holland

http://www.alternet.org/story/28259/creating_a_right-wing_nation,_state_by_state

Unlike, say, the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute, which have similar origins and corporate sponsorships, ALEC doesn't care about ideas or whether or not its policies and programs are valid, moral, realistic, or even legal.  They write their own laws.  That is the main function of ALEC - to rewrite state and federal law on behalf of the prison and police-state lobbies, the "resource industries", the drug cartels, the "insurance" rackets, and most of all, the military-industrial complex of Disaster Capitalism. 

How do they do this?  They organize and "train" state legislators to submit and defend "model legislation" prepared by ALEC.  These are designed to benefit corporate interests and other entrenched power-blocs - especially military contractors, telecommunications (thanks to Conrad Burns, whose Senate committee gave away $80 billion worth of the people's airwaves in the Telecommunications Act of 1996), insurance companies, large banks and brokerage houses (which are now the same thing since repeal of Glass-Stegal - a major ALEC victory), the "pharmaceutical industry", and the destroyers of the global ecosystem.  Even such unlikely "partners" as Wal-Mart and Monsanto are now major ALEC sponsors. 

At the same time, ALEC and its member-legislators are working tirelessly to discredit organized labor, environmentalists, peace and justice policies, and almost all forms of social welfare services, Social Security, Medicare, etc.  Of course, they can't come out and openly advocate this.  They do it by claiming these programs are insolvent, wasteful, corrupt, etc.  Therefore, they ought to be "privatized" so that ALEC's corporate sponsors can take a rake-off from the tax-payer's dollars. 

Did you know that JP Morgan "manages" some 36 states' Food Stamp programs?  I believe Montana is one of them.  A year or so ago, there was a story, soon buried, that Northrop Corporation (!) was suing the state because they had submitted a lower bid, but the contract was given to Morgan (or whoever it was), instead.  [Apparently, they won the suit.  Grumman-Northrop, an aerospace company, is the present holder of this contract.] The bid?  More than $30 million out of $120 million actually spent on this program.   (These are figures from 3 years or more ago - now probably much higher). 

I get food stamps (SNAP card), and it was a regular MT state employee who interviewed me and determined my eligibility.  So, what exactly does Grumman-Northrop do for its $30 million rakeoff?  Nothing but the software and perhaps contracting out the debit cards which have replaced the old paper food stamps, which cost virtually nothing to print and distribute. 

Someone pointed out that the more the states spends on SNAP, the more JP Morgan and its competitors make!  They have the incentive, now, to keep expanding the program, and apparently this is accepted as a simple "cost of doing business" with the state officials.  The more that these corporate "contractors" get out of the welfare budgets, the less is left for those who need and receive the benefits.  What a good deal for us!

Apparently, nearly all Republicans (and maybe 1/3 of the Democrats) are completely cool with this kind of "privatization" program.  In fact, the Democrats support it even more, as they have done with contracting out Medicaid and other welfare services. After all, isn't the government a kind of mafia which steals from the poor to make the rich ever richer?  The evidence is clear that it is.  And what can I, as a poor citizen legislator trying to "create jobs," do about it?  We must respect our betters, and do whatever they tell us to do, right? 

Although I haven't checked it out, I'd willing to bet that the 36 states utilizing similar "outside contractors" under similar terms have all been participating in ALEC's "model legislation" program.  Gov. Walker of Wisconsin is obviously doing something similar, too.  Notice that he didn't want to get rid of the Police and Fireman's unions (which, along with Prison Guards unions - the MEA/MFT in Montana - support ALEC), but all the other public employee's unions are to be eliminated.  That would be difficult in Montana, since public employees unions are very powerful, here.  (I have another article in the pipeline which explains why these "Marxist" unions support massive environmental assaults and degradation). 

ALEC now claims fully one-third of all state legislators as dues-paying members.  ALEC used to be free - indeed, they paid legislators with all sorts of freebies, trips, seminars, and junkets just to sign up.  But that looked suspicious.  Apparently, ALEC re-organized sometime after 2002, to conform with other "legitimate" lobbying and "political action" groups. 

Despite its claims of "bi-partisanship" and "Jeffersonian Federalism," ALEC is a creation of the Neocons.  "De-regulation," "free trade," "supply-side economics," "globalization"  (Bush Sr.'s "New World Order"), ever-more military spending, "the War on Terror," "counter-insurgency", "the War on Drugs", and above all, ever-greater concentrations of economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands. 

ALEC opposes any and all "good government" initiatives.  It does not want government programs to succeed.  It is constantly on a mission to prove the Reagan Dictum that "government is the problem, not the solution."  As our public institutions and the Rule of Law collapse under this onslaught, there is a constantly-increasing demand for "security forces", corporate health care and rehab services, prisons and secure hospitals and treatment facilities, prescription drugs, and of course ever-more production of fossil fuels and nuclear power.  We are experiencing the classic run-up to a permanent war-disaster economy, culminating in a military dictatorship.