News of today - Walker & Co. have locked the doors to the Capitol and now every man, woman and child must go through a metal detector to visit Their House! I know, some of you in other states have always had to endure this but in Wisconsin we have never had to put up with this nasty business. And let me add that it isn't a need for more intense security because of some threat posed to the building or anyone working within, it is because the governor and his henchmen are trying to stop citizen protest by locking the doors and siphoning people through metal detectors one visitor at a time. Pure and simple and - very nasty indeed. Shame on this kind of control freakiness.
Part II of Jim Hightower's Lowdown brings us to the second bogus front organization doing dastardly deeds in the name of ultra-right wing agendas: American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC, their acronym, boasts "nearly 2,000 members" and is a verrrry secretive organization. They hide their list of legislators from us on purpose but I wonder if anyone from Wisconsin might be on that shadowy list? Hmmmm. ALEC identifies itself as a nonpartisan group. Ha! Not hardly. All of the 22 legislators who serve as board members of this "tax-exempt legislative service organization" are republican. Jim says that the only Dems invited in are tokens and "individually vetted to make sure they adhere to the corporate dogma".
ALEC poses as a legislative association when in reality there is no "exchange" between lawmakers but in actual practice the exchange is between lawmakers and behind-the-scenes powerhouses as Altria, AT&T, Bayer, Cocoa-Cola, ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmithKline, Intuit, Johnson&Johnson, Koch Industries, Kraft Foods, Peabody Energy, Pfizer, Reynolds American, State Farm Insurance, UPS, and Walmart. These companies form ALEC's "private enterprise board", and as Jim writes, "they are among the self-interested corporations that put up its money to shape its agenda".
I know, it's depressing isn't it? And maddening as well. Still, it's better to know what the land looks like as it shifts beneath We The People's feet. Here's some additional dope on ALEC pertinent to Wisconsin politics. As Jim tells us: "Even before Scott Walker took office this past January, ALEC agents were handing him model bills for clubbing teachers and other public employees. Pushing ALEC's attack from the inside the legislature was Wisconsin state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald - (grrrrr) -, the rancorous, union-busting majority leader who was ALEC's state chairman last year." I knew that guy was poison.
Alec was the organization that drew up the Voter ID Act seeking to ban university students from using their college ID's to vote. What a bunch of slash and burn megalomaniacs! There's a lot more to ALEC like the infamous Arizona anti-Latino law, developing state laws to stop citizens from interfering with corporate whim, and working diligently to undermine Obama's universal healthcare reform. Nasty indeed!
In addition to all this fake organization subterfuge going on I promised I'd tell you who is trying to shut up professors. This is what I found out from Jim.
Apparently three professors at different Michigan universities all received the same freedom-of-information demands for all their emails that "used certain words". Strange huh? These professors were all teaching in the labor studies area and the words they were using turned out to be - 'Scott Walker', 'Madison' and 'Rachel Maddow'. Uh oh. Jim says "the demand didn't come out of the blue, but from far right field, specifically from a ferociously anti-union corporate front group called the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Peek behind the curtain and you'll find piles of money from the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, the Prince family, and the Waltons of Walmart." Sickening but no surprises. Jim finishes this piece with this - "Now the billionaires' Mackinac unit is behind the chilling witch hunt for state university professors."
Remember back in the late winter I wrote about our Wisconsin Night of Glass. I am further going to say that this type of intentional hunt for and discrediting of professors (a part of our culture's intelligentsia) is again reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. I also believe it is critical for We The People to draw parallels and connectors, to remember stories of other times in order to see what is happening currently. Things to not have to be exactly the same to be the same!
Pay attention. Share your feelings and readings with others. Try to imagine what it would look like to lose our cherished freedoms - those we have not already lost. We need in the worst way not to stay asleep right now - we need to be wide awake. One of my favorite movies is V for Vendetta. For all the Hollywood in the movie it is a great statement on where the U.S. finds itself right this minute. Watch it if you haven't seen it and if you have watch it again. Feel the connectors in that movie to your life or what your life could be like in the very near future.
I wish to thank Jim Hightower for his intelligent and bold commentary on politics in the U.S. He is a courageous man writing the truth. Thanks, Jim.
Power To All The People!
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