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WalMart dumps ALEC!
Thursday, May 31, 2012 7:32 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Quote:Walmart Stores (WMT), the world's No. 1 retailer and the biggest seller of firearms in the United States, is dropping out of a U.S. conservative advocacy group that has been a lightning rod over voting and gun laws. Walmart said late Wednesday it is suspending membership in the American Legislative Council (ALEC), which the retailer joined in 1993. In April, ALEC said it was abandoning the committee that worked on "public safety and elections" to focus on the economy. Despite the change, Walmart decided it was no longer focused on the same issues as the council. "Previously, we expressed our concerns about ALEC's decision to weigh in on issues that stray from its core mission 'to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets,'" Maggie Sans, Walmart vice president of public affairs and government relations, said in a May 30 letter addressed to ALEC's national chairman and executive director. "We feel that the divide between these activities and our purpose as a business has become too wide. To that end, we are suspending our membership in ALEC." Sans, who is also giving up her role as secretary of ALEC's private enterprise board, did not specify the issues that caused the split. Walmart has benefited from ALEC campaigns involving taxes, commerce and technology. "As we announced in April, ALEC is solely focused on limited government, free-market solutions in the states that create jobs and improve the economy, said spokeswoman Kaitlyn Buss." Walmart is the latest group to back away from supporting ALEC, including Coca-Cola Co (KO), Kraft Foods Inc (KFT), McDonald's Corp (MCD), Procter & Gamble Co (PG) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/05/31/wal-mart-ending-membership-in-conservative-group/ government" and "free-market solutions", eh? Hoo-kay, this is sure limited government:Quote:The bills are almost identical in word and phrase, and the Sunlight Foundation has released the results of a recent examination of the Texas bill which forces a woman to have a sonogram before any abortion procedure:Quote:Sunlight’s analysis using SuperFastMatch shows that the Texas bill shares multiple instances of identical text with 12 of the 13 bills to which it was compared, including Virginia. Our analysis also showed text overlaps between the Texas bill and the model bill written by Americans United for Life. SuperFastMatch, an automated textual analysis, identified overlaps in text in multiple ultrasound bills, but also found cases where entire passages were replicated. In some cases an entire passage was replicated across bills with exception of one word, such as the use of “that” instead of “which,” causing the technology to overlook those instances and not count them as matches. When that occurs, it takes the work of a human to point out that that passage is in indeed the same.So, ladies, ALEC and their henchman organization, AUL, now have their sights set on your vagina. It’s time to (wo)man the battle stations. http://veracitystew.com/2012/03/12/war-on-women-update-abortion-tax-wrongful-birth-and-alec/, this is more "limited government" and "free-market":Quote:Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization. What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism. And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future. Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote? Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim. Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/krugman-lobbyists-guns-and-money.htmlOh, yeah, and there's still more good news: Amazon has also dumped ALEC due to concerns about ALEC’s union-busting, voter-suppression agenda. Little by little, gawd willing, this group MIGHT be stopped.
Quote:The bills are almost identical in word and phrase, and the Sunlight Foundation has released the results of a recent examination of the Texas bill which forces a woman to have a sonogram before any abortion procedure:Quote:Sunlight’s analysis using SuperFastMatch shows that the Texas bill shares multiple instances of identical text with 12 of the 13 bills to which it was compared, including Virginia. Our analysis also showed text overlaps between the Texas bill and the model bill written by Americans United for Life. SuperFastMatch, an automated textual analysis, identified overlaps in text in multiple ultrasound bills, but also found cases where entire passages were replicated. In some cases an entire passage was replicated across bills with exception of one word, such as the use of “that” instead of “which,” causing the technology to overlook those instances and not count them as matches. When that occurs, it takes the work of a human to point out that that passage is in indeed the same.So, ladies, ALEC and their henchman organization, AUL, now have their sights set on your vagina. It’s time to (wo)man the battle stations. http://veracitystew.com/2012/03/12/war-on-women-update-abortion-tax-wrongful-birth-and-alec/, this is more "limited government" and "free-market":Quote:Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization. What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism. And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future. Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote? Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim. Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/krugman-lobbyists-guns-and-money.htmlOh, yeah, and there's still more good news: Amazon has also dumped ALEC due to concerns about ALEC’s union-busting, voter-suppression agenda. Little by little, gawd willing, this group MIGHT be stopped.
Quote:Sunlight’s analysis using SuperFastMatch shows that the Texas bill shares multiple instances of identical text with 12 of the 13 bills to which it was compared, including Virginia. Our analysis also showed text overlaps between the Texas bill and the model bill written by Americans United for Life. SuperFastMatch, an automated textual analysis, identified overlaps in text in multiple ultrasound bills, but also found cases where entire passages were replicated. In some cases an entire passage was replicated across bills with exception of one word, such as the use of “that” instead of “which,” causing the technology to overlook those instances and not count them as matches. When that occurs, it takes the work of a human to point out that that passage is in indeed the same.
Quote:Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization. What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism. And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future. Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote? Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim. Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/26/opinion/krugman-lobbyists-guns-and-money.html
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