ALEC is still under siege

For over a year, the political left has waged a vicious and effective campaign to dissolve the American Legislative Exchange Council.  Twenty-five companies have already cut ties with ALEC and liberal groups are keeping the pressure on the organization through shame campaigns and other forms of extortion.  As reported by CJ Ciaramella of the Washington Free Beacon on July 17, various arms of the institutional left gathered in Arlington, Va last Thursday for a forum about this “shady” organization.  However, the focal point of their strategy can be found in the letter by Color of Change Executive Director Rashad Robinson back in June.

“We have commissioned a series of radio ads to make consumers aware of [your] relationship with ALEC and the policies it supports,” Robinson continues. “We plan to begin running these ads soon on Black radio stations across the country. We will also make the media aware of this ad campaign.”

“If [redacted] is reconsidering its relationship with ALEC, please contact Color of Change’s Director of Strategy, Gabriel Rey-Goodlatte, as soon as possible,” Robinson warns. “We would appreciate a response within one week.”

Obviously, if the client is in retail, they will run for the hills and so this campaign of intimidation in tough economic times is working and conservatives seem to be silent on the matter.  However, Mr. Rey-Goodlatte may have a criminal history. Ciaramella wrote that:

Rey-Goodlatte was arrested in 2001 for buying merchandise with counterfeit $20 bills, according to news reports. The Jones lieutenant, then 18, was charged with three felony counts of first-degree criminal possession of a forged substance and misdemeanor counts of petty larceny, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported at the time.

When reached on his cell phone and asked if the news report was true, Rey-Goodlatte said, “No,” and then announced he was heading into a meeting and hung up. Color of Change did not return numerous requests for comment about its funders or its campaign against ALEC.

In all, the left’s goal is to “to make ALEC toxic to be a part of,” which was stated by “Diallo Brooks, the director of field mobilization for People for the American Way, told the crowd at the town hall-style forum. Brooks was explaining his organization and its allies’ strategy to dismantle the private-public partnership of state legislators and businesses that works to advance free-market legislation.”  Because free markets are so evil, they only brought close to 400 million people into the middle class in China.

Nonetheless, this magical mystery tour included the usual suspects, like the AFL-CIO whose:

 State government-relations director Naomi Walker [stated] ALEC’s goal is no less than to “destroy our democracy.”

[Other] groups represented… included the National Education Association, Common Cause, ProgressVA, and the AFL-CIO. Several former and current progressive Virginia lawmakers also were on hand.

“Anyone who comes to you and says, ‘We have a great new innovative idea,’ stop and question it,” said Kim Anderson, the advocacy director for the National Education Association. “Because I guarantee they’re not interested in equity and equal access for every kid in America.”

“ALEC’s mechanics are second grade arithmetic,” NEA vice-president Lily Eskelsen said at the Netroots Nation panel. “Deregulate, defund, and privatize.” While Color of Change works to harass ALEC’s corporate sponsors, Common Cause has been leading the fight on the legal front.The non-profit group, which presents itself as a strictly non-partisan organization, has filed an IRS whistleblower complaint against ALEC, challenging the group’s tax-exempt status and accusing it of lobbying activities. It has also filed requests with more than 45 state attorneys general to investigate ALEC. Common Cause’s president, Bob Edgar, is a former Democratic congressman. The law firm working with Common Cause in its complaint, Phillips & Cohen, also has a long history of donating generously to Democrats.

With regards to Kim Anderson, teachers unions are interested only in teachers unions so cool it with the rhetoric about your organization’s commitment to students and their education.  In addition, I’m not going to listen to policy prescriptions from socio-economic cartels that inevitably fail in the end.  As the left continues its death by a thousand cuts strategy to destroy ALEC, I feel conservatives could be doing more to save this great organization. However, Ben Howe’s video from May shows that grassroots efforts against ALEC are small, but the media, in driving the narrative, has scared companies into bolting from the council.

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Mr. Griffin’s Bio on the NLRB Website
https://www.nlrb.gov/who-we-are/board/richard-griffin

Richard Griffin, Obama’s recent recess appointment to the NLRB, was a lawyer for a Union with close ties to the mafia.  Secretary of Labor  Hilda Solis stated that “we can’t afford to not move on very important issues that affect working class people, and particularly working Americans that are struggling right now…we need to know there’s a sense of security and … that we honor the ability to collectively bargain.”  However, let’s take a look at Mr. Griffin.  According to The Washington Free Beacon:

 That recess appointee, Richard Griffin, was former general counsel for the 400,000-member [International Union of Operating Engineers] – a union tainted over the years by mob connections and a history of corruption.

Public documents obtained by Fox News show that more than 60 IUOE members have been arrested, indicted or jailed in the last decade on charges that include labor racketeering, extortion, criminal enterprise, bodily harm and workplace sabotage.

In some of the more egregious examples, federal prosecutors alleged in February 2003 that the Genovese and Colombo crime families wrested control of two IUOE locals, and stole $3.6 million from major New York area construction projects — including the Museum of Modern Art and minor league baseball stadiums for the Yankees and Mets in Staten and Coney Islands.

“Hope and Change” right? Fuggedaboutit!

(H/T Washington Free Beacon)

Boxer responded in kind stating  Chuck, “if that was the case we would never pass a civil rights law. We would never pass any laws protecting people and protecting consumers. You have to see that when the Republicans bring up trial lawyers, it’s a way to distract from the fact that they’re doing the bidding of the wealthiest few, who are employers, who just want to pocket that money.”

We're Number 1! We're Number 1!

In actual fact, trial lawyers are the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party and to say they don’t want anything in return is gross naïveté.  Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon wrote today, June,7, 2012, that:

In 2008, lawyers and law firms donated more than $230 million to federal political candidates and committees, 76 percent of which went to Democrats.

The industry gave $43.2 million to President Obama in 2008 and was his top source of campaign donations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The industry is also the number one source of political donations for 48 of the 53 members of the Senate Democratic caucus over the course of their careers. In total, lawyers and law firms have contributed more than $132 million to Senate Democrats—all of whom supported the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.), Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.), and Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) are the only Democratic caucus members for whom lawyers are not the top source of political donations. Lawyers are the second-highest contributors to all of those senators except for Sanders.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), who has been one of the most aggressive critics of Republican opposition to the Paycheck Fairness Act, has received more than $5.4 million from lawyers and law firms over the course of her career. A number of those firms specialize in the very sort of lucrative class action lawsuits likely to proliferate under the measure.

Yeah…this move isn’t political in the slightest.

(h/t Washington Free Beacon/Andrew Stiles/ Kyle Becker)

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has obtained new emails that show direct involvement between the White House and the Department of Energy over its disastrous green energy loan program.

“Department of Energy’s credibility is thin, and I’m currently trying to put off communications with people on the Hill,” Brightsource CEO John Woolard wrote to Matt Rogers, senior adviser to the secretary of energy for the Recovery Act.

Brightsource received a conditional loan guarantee worth $1.6 billion in taxpayer dollars to build a solar farm in California.

“Also, Darbee at PG&E talked directly to Obama about the program’s challenges and the bad situation it puts him in,” Woolard wrote in the email.

That was a reference to Peter Darbee, the former CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric.

PG&E has entered into power purchase agreements with Brightsource for its new solar project. As previously reported by the Free Beacon, PG&E is an aggressive purchaser of renewable power in California and has a formidable presence on Capitol Hill. The company has spent $82.3 million on lobbying since 2008, and the company’s political action committee has given nearly $380,000 to Democrats since 2008.

The White House has maintained the narrative that no influence was exerted with these companies, but that appears to be a false claim.

This is part of a litany of developments that show crony capitalism and wasteful spending.  In Nevada, Americans for Prosperity uncovered more waste from the Section 1603 program with the revelation that only 5,500 full time jobs have been created through green energy initiatives.  That’s $2 million per job!

Moreover, “Energy from the solar plant will cost ratepayers nearly three times more than energy from natural gas. (This is thanks to mandates from the state government; it enacted a Renewable Portfolio Standard of 25 percent “green” energy by 2025.)”

However, Obama has also wasted money in the areas of research and development.  According to MyGovCost.org:

The NBC Investigative Unit has raised questions about two grants totaling nearly $1.5 million dollars distributed to the University of California San Francisco. The money was part of the federal stimulus program and went to studies into the erectile dysfunction of overweight middle aged men and the accurate reporting of someone’s sexual history.

Here’s the $726,805 grant the government issued for the research into the erectile dysfunction of overweight middle-age men, which created 1.61 jobs according to the government’s estimates and which, apparently, is now more than 50% completed.

As for the study into how to improve the surveys in which data about individual sexual histories are collected, here’s the $1,260,717 grant, which as of May 15, 2012 is reported by the federal government to have resulted in the creation of 0.78 jobs, which is down from the 0.85 jobs that the NBC Bay Area Investigative Team reported just a day earlier.

Let’s give a round of applause to the stimulus’s resounding success!

Read more: http://www.americansforprosperity.org/051112-more-wasteful-spending-solar-energy-nevada#ixzz1v6av9uAz