Today at the Missouri Ethics Commission,  a contribution for Representative Noel Torpey (r):

C091283 01/14/2012 CITIZENS FOR TORPEY ALEC 1101 Vermont nw 11 floor Washington DC 20005 1/13/2012 $600.00

[emphasis added]

Heh, efficiency.

Previously: Rep. Jason Kander (D) in Higginsville (January 10, 2012)

Here’s a tip – cutting and pasting a quote out of context may help you with your right wingnut base, but it isn’t going to make you look very good to everyone else.

Via Twitter:

@shaneschoeller Schoeller 4 SoS

Conservative Schoeller Applauds Kander’s Support of Voter ID [….] #MOSOS 3 hours ago

Not so fast.

And also, the press release from Representative Shane Schoeller’s (r) Secretary of State campaign:

Conservative Schoeller Applauds Kander’s Support of Voter ID

Jefferson City, Mo. – Conservative Shane Schoeller today applauded Jason Kander’s public declaration of support for Voter ID legislation. Schoeller recently filed House Bill 1104, which would require photo identification to vote and damper attempts of vote fraud.

Kander, speaking to the Lafayette County Democrats in Higginsville, and reported by showmeprogress.com, said, “Uh, one of the big issues they’ve tried to make, one of the big issues in this in this race is photo ID. My rule is real simple, photo ID, going to vote – if it, if a policy makes it easier to vote and harder to cheat, then I’ll be for it.”

Schoeller welcomes Kander’s support on this issue, “It is imperative that we protect your vote and work to halt voter fraud. By requiring that a photo identification be presented helps us promote the integrity of our election process.”

Schoeller, an outspoken conservative and the Speaker Pro Tem of the Missouri House of Representatives….

Why, they left stuff out. Go figure.

If someone prefaces a statement with:

Representative Jason Kinder (D): ….one of the big issues they’ve tried to make….

[emphasis added]

They’re telling you it’s somebody else’s “big issue”, not theirs. And when they follow that up with a personal story which vividly illustrates a serious problem with somebody else’s “big issue” they’re not endorsing it.

….I’ve served on the Missouri Veterans Commission. I’ve been to a lot of veterans homes where you go in and you’ll talk to a veteran and you’ll find out that this is a person who was in Normandy. But, they haven’t driven in a long time, they don’t have a license. I think that if you were at, on the beach at Normandy you’ve earned the right to vote.  I don’t think we should put the [inaudible] that right….

You see, requiring a veteran to jump through hoops does not qualify as “makes it easier to vote.”

For the individual this would be called reading comprehension. For the twenty something campaign gofer on wingnut welfare, the right wingnut candidate, our old media, and anyone else, it’s also called “context”.

On the up side, who’d have thought that Representative Shane Shoeller (r) reads Show Me Progress? Maybe if he keeps at it he might learn something. You know, like elderly people and veterans would really like to be able to vote in our elections without having a corporatist right wingnut front group‘s spam legislation [pdf] make it impossible for them to do so.

Think about that.  

It is a commonplace among progressives that many GOP politicians serve the interests of a wealthy minority, and do so by exploiting the not necessarily wealthy, low information segment of the population. The right’s almost religious opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides an interesting case study that seems to illustrate the truth of this contention.

To start with, consider the release today of the annual survey prepared by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research & Education Trust. One finding is that by 2021, if the current cost trajectory continues, employee-based health insurance premiums will increase from an average of $15,073 today to $32,175, more than doubling over 10 years. Those poor souls who must enter the insurance market on their own, without the benefit of an employer’s benefit plan, will pay even more.

Then take into consideration that, according to the latest census data, the ranks of the uninsured in Missouri amounted to 14% of the population, or 826,600 individuals at the beginning of 2009. Since we’re dealing with a deteriorating employment picture that may not improve any time soon, those numbers are undoubtedly higher now and will continue to increase. Not a pretty picture- at least not until 2014 when, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), insurance exchanges should become operational.

You remember insurances exchanges don’t you? Each state is required to set up an exchange that would give individuals and small businesses a unified place to shop for affordable and, for the neediest, subsidized health insurance plans. Exchanges can be developed by states in order to take into account local conditions, although if states fail to act, the federal government will step in and implement an exchange.

Anther good thing about exchanges: They prohibit insurance company price-gouging. For instance, insurance plans in the exchanges have to demonstrate that 80% of the premiums they receive are used to pay for health care, and participating plans would have to provide stringent justification before increasing prices. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Makes insurance affordable for those in the market all by their lonesome, while holding health care costs down for all of us.

Got all this down? Good. Then watch this video of state Senator Jane Cunningham  going ballistic. She snorts, bellows, and paws well-trampled Tea-Party constitutional ground, charging the governor with violations of the same because he seems to have taken it for granted that it would be in the interests of citizens of the state to accept a  federal grant to help establish the exchanges. Bear in mind, we’re talking about our tax dollars coming back to Missouri. And of course, in spite of her histrionics, Senator Cunningham is dead wrong when she suggests a lapse of propriety on the Governor’s part.

Some further facts to chew on:

— The Missouri House approved, with almost no controversy, legislation that would have led to the formation of an insurance exchange in Missouri

— Anti-ACA crusader Jane Cunningham filibustered the House Bill in the Senate.

— As a result, a Senate Interim Committee has been tasked with exploring “Missouri’s options on the establishment of a health insurance exchange and to study the effect of existing state law on same.”

— Prominent among the Committee members – six Republican Senators and two Democrats – is the bellowing diva above, Jane Cunningham, who, along with a majority of the GOP members of the Committee, have long been on the record as virulently opposed to any government role in health care delivery.

— To all appearances, Senator Cunningham and her fellow-travelers on the Committee are attempting to use the hearings to sabotage the establishment of a Missouri Insurance exchange. Scores of witnesses who wish to speak in favor of an exchange have not been allowed to testify in hearings where insurance industry spokespeople and others opposed to the exchanges dominate.

To recap: We have federal legislation that has a good shot at providing insurance for many who lack it now, while helping to control costs for all the rest of us. Although, the ACA hinges on private insurers, many speculate that it could lead to a greater government role in health care delivery at the expense of the private insurance industry. On the other hand, we have a bunch of posturing ideologues who, as in the case of ALEC darling, Jane Cunningham, have cast their lot with millionaires. As for the folks who vote for them, Jonathan Bernstein sums it up aptly:

… they don’t care very much about the ACA. They strongly oppose the health care plan that Barack Obama and Nancy Peloci and  Harry Reid crammed through Congress against the will of the American people, and they think it’s an unconstitutional power grab that amounts to a government takeover that’s going to bankrupt the nation by cutting Medicare and death panels and all. But they don’t know or care anything about the exchanges, or the cost-cutting efforts, or most of the rest of it.

Yesterday I was chatting with a nurse who was setting me up for a minor procedure at a local hospital.  She said she was originally from Oklahoma and still had family there.  So I used that opening to mention the drought, the heat wave and climate change.  Every chance I get I bring up the odd coincidence that Texas and Oklahoma are getting the worst climate related damage since the dust bowl days and, as it happens, the Congressmen from Oklahoma and Texas are the ones who do the bidding of the “global warming hoax” beneficiaries.  Of course, they owe their political careers to oil barons, so what else can they say about the polar ice cap melting other than it’s a “hoax”?

I generalized that the men in Congress have done a lot of damage to all of us hoping the nurse would agree.  And she did.

Then she said, “And how about that president of ours?  He won’t even say the pledge of allegiance, and, when he does, he uses the wrong hand.”

OMG, how do we counteract simplistic thinking like that?  And this is an RN who had to have some post high school education.  She seemed bright and alert, good at her job and someone who would NOT be taken in by the lies generated by American Crossroads, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity and all the “defeat Obama whatever the cost” crowd.

Yet here she was – miss middle America. Totally convinced that the President of the United States won’t say the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America.   How can anyone juggle those two things cognitively?

I took a deep breath and told her that the photo online a few months ago was a fake.  I explained that nowadays anyone clever enough can make a fake photo or video.  She agreed that that was possible but didn’t seem to apply that piece of information to the Obama Left Hand Pledge photo.

Not being sure if she was even open for information that might mess up her hard core dislike of the President, I explained that photos like that are made up by people who hate Obama because he is trying to protect programs like Social Security and Medicare, and those people want to destroy those programs.  HELLO?  Medicare?  Hospital?  Nurse?   Income?

I don’t know what else to do but keep telling the truth about the Obama haters and sharing facts about what is going on.  Truth? Facts? No thanks, it’s time for my coffee break.  Have a nice day.  

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had a prominent story today on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Their write-up was careful to strive for balance in the face of facts that paint a damming picture of unbalanced corporate influence in the legislative process. Consider, for instance, that, as the Post-Dispatch noted:

State lawmakers pay $50 a year to join. Corporate members pay as much as $25,000. According to ALEC’s IRS filings, over the past three years it has raised nearly $22 million from corporations, foundations and other sources, and just $250,000 in dues paid by state legislators.

We’re expected to believe that down-and-dirty-bottom-line corporate CEOs are ponying up $22 million for, as State Senator Jane Cunningham puts it, “a clearinghouse of ideas from like-minded lawmakers around the country … that helps elected officials get perspective they otherwise couldn’t”?

I bet I can describe that perspective down to a tee without ever attending an ALEC gathering. Of course, if I wanted to incorporate my insights into the “model” legislation produced by the special interest task forces – consisting of equal numbers of legislators and ALEC’s corporate representatives – I’d have to fork over the big bucks. Essentially, ALEC’s corporate members put up a massive chunk of change and get a big say about what goes into our laws. And supporters call it “research” assistance!

Just look at ALEC’s role in Missouri politics – take, for example, Senator Cunningham herself. The Post-Dispatch cites Cunningham for her role as a standard bearer for ALEC’s signature effort to gut the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by eliminating the individual mandate. Cunningham also came out swinging when it appeared that more reasonable Missouri legislators were going to get down to business and form a Missouri health insurance exchange as mandated by the ACA. Nor should we forget Cunningham’s effort to gut child labor protections or eliminate teacher tenure, not perhaps directly modeled on ALEC’s model initiatives, but definitely right in line with ALEC’s anti-government, free market fundamentalist approach.

Cunningham has been very busy doing ALEC’s business – and she is not alone. Just take a look at what ALEC’s little flock has been up to in Jefferson City – and then sit down and think very carefully about who is running our government and for whom.

Is our problem that, like the Japanese emperor,  Gov. Nixon has been sleeping with the Sun Goddess?  Is that the reason that new college grads are facing a job seeker’s stone wall and that former shift supervisors are working part time at Home Depot and Hardee’s in an attempt to make the mortgage payments?

Or is it something more insidious, like, say, a thirty year trend of rising military spending, rising CEO pay, rising Wall Street bonuses, rising gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us, rising productivity, rising poverty rates among children, rising dropout rates?

An AP article points toward the latter explanation. Seems that a barely-worth-mentioning 1% of economic growth after the Great Recession has gone to wages and salaries. 88% of growth went to corporate profits. The proportion is 88 to one? It didn’t always used to be like that. The last three recessions illustrate the pattern of change. 1991-92 is an anomaly (that I’d like somebody to explain), but the trend is clear: corporations are getting richer and they ain’t concerned about the rest of us.

Percent of economic growth that went to:

Wages and Salaries                                           Corporate Profits

1981-82                                        

25%                                                            28%

1991-92        

50%                                                           none

2001    

15%                                                            53%

2008-11

1%                                                             88%

The trends above are national, but they are abetted at the state level by the course that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) tells Republican state legislators to steer. And boy howdy, do they steer it ALEC’s way in Missouri: cut funds for schools, for example, and then complain about lazy teachers with tenure who do an ineffective job–all this in hopes of eventually privatizing school systems that the wealthy would run. And the excuse given for cutting school funding is that the state is broke.  

Of course it is. We haven’t changed the state’s top tax rate since the thirties. It’s $9,000. Which means that some poor sucker earning $8,999 is paying the same rate of tax to the state as the CEO of Express Scripts. Democratic leadership in this state moans about how broke the state is. Why not howl, instead, about a solution voters would love. By a margin of two to one, U.S. voters, in poll after poll, support raising taxes on incomes over 250 thou a year. Even 43% of Republicans approve the idea. Democrats should be baying at the moon. They need to find a way to present a united front and smack Missouri voters upside the head with the notion that if they were in the majority in the state house, they would work to see taxes raised on the wealthiest.

Let Claire run the Medicare ads; that’s a federal issue. But our state legislators have a winner on the tax issue if they would grab it.

Because in the end, those hateful trends I mentioned won’t change without lots more progressives in office, both at the federal and state level. Getting Gov. Nixon to kick the Sun Goddess out of bed isn’t going to cut it.

Go to this website and see your friend Vicky listed as an ALEC alum.  Also my own Blaine Leutkemeyer and Kansas City’s Sam Graves.  These are all people who sucked at the teat of ALEC’s cash cows and are now paying their dues.  It’s much worse than fighting the light bulb thing.  They literally want to destroy our country – one mine, one drill rig, one poisoned farmfield at a time.

Those of you in St. Louis who can get free on a Monday morning might want to hear a group of Democratic state reps sum up (in something more than a moan) last spring’s session. Actually, Democrats had some prettyastounding success at fighting defensive actions. Paired with the state reps’ report will be a “revelation” (according to one of their officers) about ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council). Enticing.

West County Dems meets at the United Commercial and Food Service, Local 655, 300 Weidman Road.  (Just north of Manchester) . The program runs from 9:30 to 11:30, but socializing (great place to network) starts at 9:00 and some of the members will go out to lunch together as well. Non members are welcome.

Sunday I attended a workshop about the Missouri state budget at Faith Des Peres Presbyterian Church in an upscale St. Louis suburb.  The program was offered by members of the church and staffers from Metropolitan Congregations United of St. Louis and the Missouri Budget Project.  It involved asking ourselves what is “sacred” to us and how our values are reflected in the way we would divide up the revenue available for the state budget.  We did the “penny exercise” which forced us to make what politicians call “the hard choices.”

At the end of the session, David Gerth of MCU-StL asked those in attendance if they would come back to the church on August 24th at 5p.m. to meet with Sen. Lamping who represents the 7th Senatorial District.  I don’t know anything about Sen. Lamping, and I don’t live in St. Louis County, so I didn’t sign up.  But many others did.  They will meet beforehand and prepare their questions and comments for the senator. Our workshop group came to the conclusion that the state needs more revenue.  Here’s a shocker – at least to me.

The Missouri budget has declined every year since 2000, and, at the current rate of economic growth in the state, it will be 2016 before we are back to the revenue level we had in 2008.   Ruth Ehresman of the Mo Budget Project did a wonderful job of “show and tell” using props to explain what’s wrong with the policy decisions that have been made in recent years.

I think it’s wonderful that mainline faith communities are getting involved in talking to their reps and senators.  I’ve been wishing they would come out of hiding for years.  

I hope they are able to “move” some Republicans closer to decision making that reflects the care and concern for Missourians that the state motto calls for.

BUT………….

I don’t think the good hearted people who want to have a reasonable discussion with ultra conservative extremists in our state legislature realize what they are up against.

I have been harping on the influence of the American Legislative Exchange Council for months now, and national media outlets are finally exposing them and their insidious attempt to dismantle the programs that hold communities together and keep families from extreme poverty.

I really do hope the meetings with state senators by members of the various faith communities helps educate the senators about the damage their votes are causing.  I will network with friends in various churches and synagogues and ask them to invite MCU and Mo Budget Project folks to do this workshop in more places.   AND I’m going to keep reminding people that ALEC is out to destroy the country it took us 200 years of progressive change to build.  

Listen to Murdock Report, WGNU 920am, St. Louis

June 28 program on the American Legislative Exchange Council. If the link doesn’t take you right to the podcast, go to http://www.wgnu920am.com and click on Kenneth Murdock.

Ask your state reps and senators where they will be August 3-6.  If they say “New Orleans,” ask if they happened to be attending the ALEC conference to get talking points and model legislation from powerful corporations.

The most important homework progressives need to do right now is to study up on what ALEC’s mission is.  Below the fold, you can find a quick overview of the damage ALEC is doing to our country.  You can take it from there.  Pick one of their “initiatives” and educate everyone you know about it.

American Legislative Exchange Council

History and Philosophy:  After the “shellacking” the Republicans took in 1964 with conservative Barry Goldwater’s defeat in the presidential election, some really smart conservatives got together to form ALEC in 1973 with the intention of changing state laws gradually and, thereby, changing the country from a liberal-leaning mood to an ultra conservative one.  Keep in mind this was the Nixon era when Democrats and Republicans alike were passing things like the EPA, the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act,  women’s rights, and other liberal programs.  (It’s only since 1972 that it is illegal for newspapers to print “jobs female” and “jobs male” in the want ads.)  Back then, “conservative” had a negative connotation which the Paul Weyrich and friends crowd wanted to change.   With huge funding from major corporations, ALEC has grown from just an idea to one of the most influential ultra conservative organizations in the country.

Go to http://www.alec.org and read the three guiding principles of ALEC on their masthead:  Limited Government, Free Markets and Federalism.  These ultra conservative extremists honestly don’t believe it is the government’s job to help individuals.  They believe that individuals will make self-serving and therefore good economic decisions and, thereby, contribute to the well-being of society as a whole (the “invisible hand” theory.)  This is why they are anti anything “public.”

They believe “markets” should regulate themselves and that states should be allowed to make their own laws without interference from the national government.  (We know how well that worked out with segregation and labor laws.)

The whole “Don’t Tread on Me” theme so popular now with a small fringe of voters sums up the ALEC philosophy of federalism.  On the ALEC website, click on “Initiatives” and see how they brag about their “triumph” over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  They are the ones putting out the talking points calling health care reform “Obamacare” and doing all the fear-mongering about the effect of health care reform on different constituencies.  

Notice also under “Initiatives” that they are the ones who came up with the expression “EPA train wreck” which ultra conservative politicians on all levels of government are using.  They know that a catchy phrase like that, if repeated often enough, burrows its way into voters’ brains.  And that people don’t vote using rational arguments and facts.  They vote what they “believe.”  Ultra conservative extremists have pushed the “global warming hoax” frame so successfully that even rational voters question the facts about climate change.  

Membership:  State legislators join ALEC for a nominal fee.  Corporations join by paying anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 in dues.  This is what they call a “public-private partnership.”  Corporations foot the bills for meetings, dinners, retreats, vacations for legislators (and their families if they choose) who then go home and introduce the bills written by ALEC which benefit the corporations.   The website lists the number of bills written by ALEC and which law firm gets to write them.

(The next national ALEC meeting will be August 3-6, 2011 in New Orleans, and states have one night during that conference to themselves which they call “State Night.”  Legislators from each state get treated to a nice dinner and a chance to schmooze with corporate staffers.  Ask your state rep and senator where they will be August 3-6.)

Issues: Given their philosophy, it isn’t hard to figure out what ALEC’s priorities will be.  They are

    *anti union, anti collective bargaining, anti minimum or living wage laws

    *anti public education

    * anti environmental regulation

    * anti tax  (“starve the beast”)

    *anti health care reform

    * anti voter participation in elections  (Photo ID bills)

Each issue has a “task force” with legislators and corporations that are affected by each particular issue.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

From the above source:

“Backed by the oil industry, ALEC has lined up legislators to lower taxes on gasoline and to undermine regulations aimed at curbing  carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming.

  “Backed by the drug companies, ALEC has mounted a full-scale campaign to defeat initiatives by cities and states to promote importing lower-priced select medicines from Canada.

  “Backed by low-wage employers, ALEC has promoted legislation to block local governments from raising local minimum wages or even requiring government contractors to pay a fair wage to their employees.

  “Backed by the telephone companies, ALEC has worked to bar or hamstring cities that have sought to build cheaper or even free Internet services for their residents.

  “Backed by the insurance companies, ALEC has been promoting a campaign to stop state insurance commissioners from requiring insurance companies to meet the same accountability and auditing rules that were imposed on publicly-traded corporations in the wake of the Enron debacle.”

So ALEC’s tentacles reach into every part of our lives.  They are well-funded and have been very successful.  “Graduates” of their state legislature programs are now in the U.S. Congress pushing for the same goals.  To their credit, the people who run ALEC and their corporate backers have been very successful.  They started small and have grown into one of the most powerful organizations in the country.

If voters prefer the “Limited Government, Free Markets, Federalism” philosophy, so be it.  But I doubt most voters really understand the implications.  For a look at what our country will be like in a few years, go back and read the chapters about the 19th century in any history textbook.  I doubt this is what the majority of Americans want, but the gap between the rich and poor in our country is now as bad as it was in “the Gilded Age” when robber barons ran the country.  

Wisconsin voters have started the revolt against the corporate takeover of our country.  It’s up to the rest of us to join the protest movement and vote the ultra conservative extremists out of office starting at the state level.