Showing posts tagged alec
You haven’t heard of Donors Trust, but it’s bankrolled the right’s fights against unions, public schools, climate scientists, and more. View high resolution

You haven’t heard of Donors Trust, but it’s bankrolled the right’s fights against unions, public schools, climate scientists, and more.

Exposed: The Dark-Money ATM of the Conservative Movement

You haven’t heard of Donors Trust, but it’s bankrolled the right’s fights against unions, public schools, climate scientists, and more.

[from this earlier post]

Actually, those almost seem like fair questions, HOWEVER:

  • Voting is a valuable and cherished right that many people have fought and died for. Other comparisons tend to fail because voting is not a purchasable, nor an easily revoked privilege like flying or driving —how many people were tarred and feathered or murdered because of fighting for their “right” to fly or drive?
  • The 24th Amendment makes poll taxes illegal. Requiring someone pay —directly or otherwise— for the right to vote is neither democratic nor patriotic
  • Voter ID laws disproportionately impact disabled, the poor and the elderly —all groups that often lack “proper ID.”
  • Many college students (and older people) simply do not drive —and thus have no need for a state issued driver’s license. I know people who live in New York who have never, ever owned a license or a car
  • Students have used their college IDs to vote in elections for decades. But suddenly, after the 2008 and 20012 election results, Republican led legislatures have found cause to suppress their votes. Additionally, it is worth noting such Voter ID restrictions tend to be more lax in districts that have consistently voted for Republicans. Why is that?
  • Many states requiring an “official government ID” to vote have simultaneously reduced drivers license office hours and/or completely closed many offices, thereby making it even harder to obtain the very type of ID they’re mandating
  • Some elected Republican officials like Mike Turzai have said that Voter ID laws were being passed for the expressed purpose of rigging an election. Other elected Republicans like Bill O’Brien, have openly stated they simply do not want college students voting because they tend to vote for Democrats
  • ALEC, a GOP/Koch Brothers political organization, is directly responsible for the surge of voter suppression laws seen in the last decade. ALEC’s founder, Paul Weyrich, was quoted as saying, “I don’t want everybody to vote. Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
  • There have been more elected GOP officials found guilty of Election Fraud than actual voters committing voter fraud
  • Voter ID laws are “solutions” to a problem that does not exist. Voter ID laws are a Republican response to Republicans losing elections, not to fixing voter fraud. There has been a comprehensive study—at the behest of many Republicans—which showed that in more than a decade of voting, exactly 10 people engaged in voter fraud. That’s 10 people out of the millions who voted since the year 2000. And some of those likely did so unknowingly (ie, voted at the wrong voting precinct, or were genuinely unaware they were ineligible to vote, etc.)

ALEC wants to make it illegal to do hidden camera investigations of corporate misconduct in agribusiness.

(Source: NPR)

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is under attack and Citizens United was just the opening salvo.

Let’s say it as clearly as possible:

Citizens United - FCPA = Legal Bribery… FOR CORPORATIONS.

➤ Read More 

Do the Kochs aim to privatize parole in Florida?

Sounds like soft on crime privatizing parole and probation.


Here’s why we’re concerned:

  1. FSU’s “Project on Accountable Justice” is hosting a sales pitchconfab on “new approaches” to parole and probation. (It’s on Jan. 10 at FSU’s College of Law, if you’re interested.)
  2. Florida State University sold out its economics department to the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers. In 2008, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation gave the department $1.5 million in exchange for final say over hiring professors.
  3. On the board of the PAJ is David Rasmussen, dean of the FSU College of Social Sciences and Public Policy. Rasmussen defended the university’s deal with the devil the Koch brothers.

more

h/t TeamsterNation

[x] View high resolution

[x]

findyourlovely:

beautifullyonyx:

The picture on the left is a “shocking new photo” of George Zimmerman the night he murdered Trayvon Martin that the defense has released to support the whole self-defense/stand your ground mumbo-jumbo. The picture on the right is of George Zimmerman taken at the police station THE SAME DAMN NIGHT.

Are these motherfuckers serious?!?

a bloody nose is justification for murder?

a bloody nose you admittedly provoked?

oh. ok.

thanks, america

George Zimmerman needs to go straight to the electric chair or life in prison. Do not pass go.

Aaaand *still* waiting for the NRA to say Trayvon should have been armed.

image

(Reblogged from findyourlovely)
View high resolution

(Source: leonhascal)

(Reblogged from marmaladeteardrops)

Koch Brothers Exposed

for sale to highest bidder View high resolution

for sale to highest bidder

(Source: questionall)

(Reblogged from recall-all-republicans)

excusemypassion:

pushinghoopswithsticks:

Invoked “Stand Your Ground” and Went Free [via]

the fuck

Reminder: All of the Stand Your Ground laws around the country are a result of the American Legislative Exchange Council, aka ALEC. ALEC is a conservative group that writes laws (such as the recent spate of GOP Voter ID laws) for conservative legislatures (with nearly exclusively elected Republican membership) and has strong ties to the Koch brothers.

Finally, for glaring examples of how ALEC literally —literally— writes laws for state and local legislators, look here and here.

Stand Your Ground laws, Voter ID laws and ALEC are inherently racist, corporatist and inextricably tied to conservatism and endorsed by the Republican party. And there is a strong occurrence of ALEC laws in Florida.

ascension-seeker: searchingforknowledge: lover-root: sweet florida -_- Land of injustice, we salute you.  SMH

(Reblogged from browngurlwfro)
“

I suspect he’s one of those guys, a kind of guy who unfortunately feels familiar to me, who just gets explosively enraged when people he perceives as his inferiors don’t do what he wants them to do, because he thinks he has the right to demand it.

I suspect that Dunn erupted like an emotional volcano because he was fear-raging at being denied some show of deference to which he believes he’s entitled, sheerly by virtue of who he is.

Or: He “snapped,” as it is known in the common parlance when white men behave this way, as though it is inexplicable behavior instead of inevitable behavior when certain portions of any population are told they are special and then their frustrations at a world that treats them otherwise redirected onto scapegoats by the very tricksters who created their discordance of identity in the first place.

I suspect that the problem was not that Dunn “felt threatened” in that particular moment, but that he “feels threatened” all the time, in ways that are carelessly encouraged by all the institutions that exploit the impotent rage of people whose identities and self-worth are inextricably tied to unearned privilege, fanning the flames of their insecurity that their privilege, nay their very identities, are being eroded by nefarious Others whose very existence is an existential threat.

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville: He Felt Threatened (via billowingclouds)

Michael Dunn. Another white man who murdered yet another 17 year old boy. In Florida. Again. For no other reason than existing while being black [x]

(Reblogged from billowingclouds)
sarahlee310: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a shadowy trade association that has had its hand in almost every bad thing that’s happened in Washington for decades — from the financial deregulation that led to the Great Recession to Congress’s failure to address climate change. Now the Chamber wants to buy the November election on behalf of anonymous corporate donors, and if it succeeds there will be disastrous consequences for our economy, environment, and the power ordinary citizens have over our lives. It’s time to tell the corporations that feed our families and connect us to our friends that if they want our business, they need to keep their hands off our democracy. Tell Google, Pepsi, Microsoft, IBM, and other corporations: Quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. With plans to spend up to $100 million dollars influencing this election, the U.S. Chamber is one of the greatest threats to democracy in America. And since Citizens United opened the floodgates for corporate spending on elections, we can expect even worse in the future unless we work to shut it down now. The good news is we have power over this situation. The Chamber’s corporate backers don’t want their brands associated with buying elections, cutting taxes for the rich, violating workers’ rights and destroying the environment. SumOfUs.org members have already taken on some of the world’s largest corporations; together we dealt major blows to two of America’s most powerful right wing “think tanks,” ALEC and the Heartland Institute — and we’re ready to do it again. The U.S. Chamber’s destructive and short-sighted policies have already begun to alienate relatively responsible companies. Three years ago, Apple quit over the Chamber’s die-hard opposition to any climate legislation and Nike quit the executive committee. After the Chamber took a stand against internet freedom and backed SOPA and PIPA, Yahoo quit, and Google let it be known that it was considering leaving as well. So put Google, Pepsi, Microsoft, IBM, and other corporations on notice: tell them to save their reputations and get out of the Chamber. **********Citation for the Chamber President Tom Donohue quote in the graphic: “In other words, a large part of what the Chamber sells is political cover. For multibillion-dollar insurers, drug makers, and medical device manufacturers who are too smart and image conscious to make public attacks of their own, the Chamber of Commerce is a friend who will do the dirty work. “I want to give them all the deniability they need,” says Donohue.” Show him the money, Washington Monthly, July/August 2010 Read this and then go sign this petition to tell Pepsi, Google and others: Quit the Chamber. It’s trying to buy the U.S. election. yeah I can remember when I found out the Chamber of Commerce was basically just another arm of the GOP and/or pure corporatists. View high resolution

sarahlee310:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a shadowy trade association that has had its hand in almost every bad thing that’s happened in Washington for decades — from the financial deregulation that led to the Great Recession to Congress’s failure to address climate change. Now the Chamber wants to buy the November election on behalf of anonymous corporate donors, and if it succeeds there will be disastrous consequences for our economy, environment, and the power ordinary citizens have over our lives.

It’s time to tell the corporations that feed our families and connect us to our friends that if they want our business, they need to keep their hands off our democracy.

Tell Google, Pepsi, Microsoft, IBM, and other corporations: Quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

With plans to spend up to $100 million dollars influencing this election, the U.S. Chamber is one of the greatest threats to democracy in America. And since Citizens United opened the floodgates for corporate spending on elections, we can expect even worse in the future unless we work to shut it down now.

The good news is we have power over this situation. The Chamber’s corporate backers don’t want their brands associated with buying elections, cutting taxes for the rich, violating workers’ rights and destroying the environment. SumOfUs.org members have already taken on some of the world’s largest corporations; together we dealt major blows to two of America’s most powerful right wing “think tanks,” ALEC and the Heartland Institute — and we’re ready to do it again.

The U.S. Chamber’s destructive and short-sighted policies have already begun to alienate relatively responsible companies. Three years ago, Apple quit over the Chamber’s die-hard opposition to any climate legislation and Nike quit the executive committee. After the Chamber took a stand against internet freedom and backed SOPA and PIPA, Yahoo quit, and Google let it be known that it was considering leaving as well.

So put Google, Pepsi, Microsoft, IBM, and other corporations on notice: tell them to save their reputations and get out of the Chamber.

**********
Citation for the Chamber President Tom Donohue quote in the graphic:

“In other words, a large part of what the Chamber sells is political cover. For multibillion-dollar insurers, drug makers, and medical device manufacturers who are too smart and image conscious to make public attacks of their own, the Chamber of Commerce is a friend who will do the dirty work. “I want to give them all the deniability they need,” says Donohue.”

Show him the money, Washington Monthly, July/August 2010

Read this and then go sign this petition to tell Pepsi, Google and others: Quit the Chamber. It’s trying to buy the U.S. election.

yeah I can remember when I found out the Chamber of Commerce was basically just another arm of the GOP and/or pure corporatists.

(Reblogged from recall-all-republicans)