ALEC Legislators - Mercenaries in the War on Public Good

There’s an excellent read on Common Dreams this morning by John Atcheson:

In Memoriam: Putting American Democracy on Sale

There’s an all-out assault on the public sector.  Unions are being busted; public programs are being starved into incompetence and that incompetence is being used as justification for further assaults on the credibility and effectiveness of the pubic sector.

This two step has been used against the post-office, teachers, firefighters, transportation workers—anyone in the public sector.  And under the guise of “necessary” austerity (in a time of rapidly shrinking deficits) Republicans are trying to do the same with Social Security, Medicare, student loans, etc. etc. etc.

Why?  The prize is privatization; turning public sector programs administered for the public good, into profit centers for private gain. Robbing the many, to benefit the few. At stake, is tens of trillions of dollars a year.  Privatizing Social Security alone would pump more than a trillion dollars a year into Wall Street. Privatizing public education could put more than $780 billion into corporate coffers.  Privatizing publicly funded health care could turn over another trillion plus dollars. On and on it goes.

Every one of these paragraphs can be directly attributed to ALEC "model legislation" or policy.

Earlier in the article he notes:

The streets of our capital are occupied by an army of more than 12,000 paid lobbyists – mercenaries in the war on public good.  They write our laws, decide our budgets, define our future.

What is evident is that this writer does not know about ALEC - and the secretive meetings held multiple times a year - bhind closed doors - between ALEC state legislators and ALEC Croporate member lobbyists.

What is evident is that this writer does not know about ALEC - pushing corporate written legislation across the US with the help of ALEC state and federal legisaltors.

What this writer does not know about is the extremist pro-corporate American Legislative Exchange Council – creating "mercenaries in the war on public good" – AKA ALEC legislators.

Read the whole artilce

>>>>HERE<<<<