How corporate interests, right-wing politicians, and their media allies have captured governments...

[YoungDemCA]

..in the United States at both the state and local levels-and turned them into laboratories of right-wing corporate oligarchy.

Where Do Donations from Corporations or Corporate Foundations Go?

For one, they help subsidize legislators' trips to attend ALEC meetings. ALEC has reported to the IRS that it has liabilities of about one million dollars a year for "scholarship funds." These are not scholarships for kids who do well in school; they are financial gifts called "scholarships" to help cover the costs of the family vacations that legislators and their families take to ALEC conventions at resorts every August, after their state legislative sessions end. For these conventions, legislative members are charged a registration fee that is substantially less than what corporate members pay. Some undisclosed number of legislators have their airfare and hotel costs for trips to these posh hotels paid by ALEC. As part of the registration process, legislators can arrange for childcare, which ALEC dubs "Kids Congress," for six-month old babies to teens for $250. ALEC reports that it has spent over $250,000 for childcare for meetings in 2009.

ALEC also spends about $600,000 a year on what it describes as the "recruitment and retention of ALEC State Legislator members." For an organization that claims such devotion to the free market, it is difficult to imagine an ordinary business justification for spending $600,000 to recruit and retain legislative members who only contribute about $80,000 a year in income to ALEC. But plainly, such a lop-sided loss must be covered by other returns on investment. Indeed, ALEC brags about how over 1,000 of its model bills get introduced in statehouses each year, but sticks to its claim that its bill factory does not count as "lobbying."

ALEC's corporate "state chairs" -- companies whose identities are not publicly disclosed by ALEC -- are expected to raise "state scholarship funds" for state legislators to attend ALEC conventions. ALEC's by-laws from 2007 also provide that the legislators who serve as state chairmen have a "duty" to work with the corporate state chairmen "to raise and oversee expenditures of legislative scholarship funds." In other words, select corporations work directly with legislators to raise money from other corporations to subsidize trips for legislators to ALEC events. State chairmen are also tasked with "working to ensure introduction of model legislation." The scholarship funds are apparently essential to ALEC's operations, because most state legislators work as public servants part-time and earn, on average, about $46,000 a year. Without ALEC's subsidy, not as many of them would likely be willing or able to use the ALEC convention as a family trip. But ALEC membership does provide other rewards for legislators. It allows them to rub elbows with rich, out-of-state potential donors to their election campaigns and also to build similar relationships with ALEC's state corporate members.

What Else Does ALEC Do with the Corporate Money?

It spends about $2.5 million a year on its "task forces." ALEC describes its role as providing a forum for legislators and the private sector to discuss model legislation. Many of the corporate representatives on these task forces are lobbyists for their companies, who are discussing their legislative wish lists with politicians through ALEC's facilitation. ALEC has stated that because actual "laws are not passed, debated or adopted during this process," "therefore no lobbying takes place. That process is done at the state legislatures." Yet ALEC is spending millions of dollars to ensure that corporate wish lists get in the hands of legislators, that the legislators vote for the legislation behind closed doors through ALEC, as do corporations, and then that the politicians who are leaders of ALEC introduce those very bills and get them made into law. ALEC then heralds the introduction and enactment of this legislation that was advanced through the enormous corporation donations it receives. As the documents revealed by ALEC Exposed show, ALEC calls its role in the state legislative process "unique" and "unparalleled." As ALECexposed.org demonstrates, it is also deeply troubling.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10887/cmd-special-report-alecs-funding-and]
spending#sthash.AxySZ8O5.dpuf

...the highly organized and lavishly financed right wing campaign to use state and local governments to fight their battles continues to succeed. Many have read about the successful campaigns against unions in states governed by Republicans. But Republicans have also managed to enact laws that allow the Governor to take over any cities or towns that have financial difficulties by throwing out all democratically elected officials – mayors, city councils and so forth – and appointing what usually amounts to a crony of the governor as, for all intents and purposes, the dictator of these places. This dictator can then undo local laws, abrogate union contracts – including pensions, close schools, fire teachers, break unions, sell off pubic assets to their cronies at fire sale prices, and so forth.

This just happened in Detroit Michigan, the largest city yet to have democracy annulled and right wing dictatorship imposed. Surprise : the state government has been cutting financial assistance to Detroit to help push it into financial duress.

A powerful right-wing vehicle for conquering state and local governments and making them vehicles for implementing reactionary agendas is an organization called ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council. This well-funded group brings together right wing intellectuals, activists and policy technicians with conservative legislators at the state and local government levels, and trains them in ways to get right-wing legislation passed. For example, ALEC has crafted bills in support of all its objectives ready to be submitted as is to state and local government bodies. This has made it quick and easy to pass a high volume of conservative legislation quickly. And of course ALEC and its funders can provide resources needed to help gain support for that legislation. The recent takeover of Detroit by the governor of Michigan is just their most recent and greatest success.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/14938-the-right-wing-assault-on-america-is-working

Where is the media in all of this, you may ask? Well, take this story from Idaho in 2012.

The Franklin Center is a multimillion-dollar organization whose websites and affiliates provide free statehouse reporting to local newspapers and other media across the country. Funded by major conservative donors, staffed by veterans of groups affiliated with the Koch brothers, and maintaining a regular presence hosting right-wing events, the organization boasts of its ability to fill the void created by state newsroom layoffs.

The group's editors claim that their "professional journalism" work is walled off from the organization's more nakedly political operations and say that their "pro-taxpayer, pro-liberty, free market perspective" doesn't compromise their accuracy or independence. But many journalism professionals - even newspaper editors who reprint the work of Franklin Center affiliates in their own pages - speak warily of the group's ideological bent.

snip:

The group has its origins in the Sam Adams Alliance, a non-profit organization that promotes free-market Tea Party-style citizen activism, which "helped launch" the Franklin Center in 2009, reportedly providing the nascent organization with "seed money," according to the National Journal.The umbrella group took in $2,378,931 in contributions and grants in its first year, and $3,776,997 in 2010, according to the most recent disclosure forms available.

snip:

The organization also highlights its ability to influence the debate outside the narrow confines of those sites, bragging in a May 30 fundraising email, "When you give to the Franklin Center, you have an immediate impact on the power of our reporting. Legacy news outlets regularly pick up our stories, driving them far beyond the typical audience for online news."

Indeed, the Franklin Center's focus on state legislative news allows it to take advantage of a long-running downturn in staffing and resources at mainstream news outlets' statehouse coverage dating back nearly a decade, providing content local newspapers are otherwise unable to afford.

A 2009 American Journalism Review study found that 355 newspaper reporters and editors were covering state capitols full time, a 30% decrease at the time from 524 in 2003.

"The evidence suggests that, clearly, there has been a significant diminution of bodies from the legacy media outlets covering statehouses and state politics around the country," said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which tracks such trends. "Even in a city like Boston, you saw the TV bodies in the statehouse diminish quite dramatically.

"In the newspaper environment, there are just fewer bodies to go around anywhere and that has meant cutting back fairly dramatically on statehouse coverage."

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/11/how-a-right-wing-group-is-infiltrating-state-ne/187059

Our current President has always said that political and social change happens "from the bottom up." The Right certainly understands this. Progressives must understand this as well, if we are to ever even HOPE to mount a challenge to the right-wing takeover of our politics.

Fight the corporacracy-beginning at the local level and in your own state, in every way possible. Fight ALEC. Passivity and disengagement is not an option.

[stevenleser]

1. Interesting research. Will have to sift through it all.

[Scuba]

2. The Franklin Center ... provide free statehouse reporting to local newspapers and other media ..."

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater." - Frank Zappa

[YoungDemCA]

3. Self-kick

nt