Is Wisconsin Ground Zero for the "AMERICAN SPRING " Or a THIRD PARTY?

[Segami]

"...This week Al Gore said something a lot of people have been thinking
when he told Keith Olbermann it's time for an "American Spring...."


:smoke:



- "ALEC," the "American Legislative Exchange Council," is holding its annual meeting this week in a city that's known for ... well, for lots of things people like much better. ALEC is funded by billionaire right-wingers the Koch Brothers. It's mission is to help political servants of the corporate class advance at the state and local levels, and then to provide them with their commands from the Death Star ... ahem, "model legislation" that they're expected to pass once they gain political power. The Wisconsin union-busting law, like other legislation passed around the country, was incubated in the bowels of ALEC. And now legislators from states like Florida and North Carolina are flying to New Orleans on the taxpayers' dime so they can be given more guidance on how to strip most of the same taxpayers of their rights, their prosperity, and their chances for economic advancement. Corporations don't get to program these automated politicians for free, of course. Undermining democracy is a "pay to play" proposition.

As Bloomberg News reports:

"At ALEC's annual meeting in San Diego last year, three companies -- pharmaceutical manufacturer Allergan Inc., telephone giant AT&T Inc. (T) and cigarette maker Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) -- each paid $100,000 to be "President Level" sponsors. Another 11 groups, including Pfizer Inc. (PFE) and the Institute for Legal Reform, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce arm that advocates for jury award limits, wrote checks for $50,000, according to documents distributed at the meeting that were given to Bloomberg."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-21/koch-exxon-mobil-among-corporations-helping-write-state-laws.html

People will say that ALEC isn't that bad, or that secretive. If so, why did they have its own staff throw one reporter out of the Marriott where the meeting's being held, while another was ejected twice for tweeting about it! (Who could have predicted that 2011's version of Big Brother would ban something called "tweeting"?) As for ALEC's agenda, the organization isn't content to strip union members of their rights. It's also behind a wave of "voter ID" laws designed to disenfranchise voters who are more likely to vote Democratic, to help their servile minions sympathetic politicians get into office. Those voters are more likely to be black, brown, and poor, which makes ALEC the country's leading sponsor of 21st Century Jim Crow laws.



- Gore's meaning was plain enough, of course: Americans need a revitalization of democracy, too. Fox helped make his point by its willingness to serve the ALEC crowd the way Qaddafi's newspapers serve their "great leader." People across the country who are disillusioned with the latest budget deal, and who see it (rightly) as yet another program funded and designed by billionaire cash, have a place to channel their third-party energy: We already have a third party of sorts, made up of candidates at the state and local levels who fly under the radar of corporate America, and who have been bought off by Wall Street cash of "legislative models" funded by polluters and multinationals.



cont'


http://www.truth-out.org/wisconsin-ground-zero-american-spring-or-third-party/1312554818



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[Amonester]

1. An American Spring is too far away, so how about the planned...

American Autumn instead? Starting October 6 (or even, why not, earlier... if 'things' keep going down the drain at the current rate of affairs...)

http://october2011.org/freedomplaza

[FreakinDJ]

2. I think the Wisconsin DEMs stepped up to the plate quite nicely

Risking ReCall and alike to protect workers

Wish we had more like them in the US Senate and House

[Segami]

3. Unrec Trolls out in force. Knock yourselves out.

[elocs]

4. I'm in WI & what we are doing is good, but it is no "American Spring".

Although you cannot see me, I'm in that picture of the tens of thousands in Madison. That was last February since we are wearing winter coats & gloves and it is snowing. There have not been crowds of that size since then.

We are working on the recalls now, all within the Democratic Party, not a third party.

Also, it's not really classy to complain about your own thread getting UnRecs. Leave that for others to whine about. Recs are not a measure of the quality of a thread since I've seen a deeply thought out OP saying "K&R if you like Obama" get hundreds of Recs.