FIXED (Or At Least Explained)

Remember this?



It's about the PADems google ad that seems to point no where.



Late this morning I was contacted by a representative of PADems with an explanation of the google ad. Google, I was told, requires a URL to be listed in its ads but they give next to no space for that URL. The space alotted was waaaay to small for what was needed here.



The ad itself is address specific and links to an online petition demanding that they do the right thing and that the money reimbursed for those ALEC events be re-reimbursed to the tax payers. The ad never not worked if you were able to click it.



So if you lived in Mike Turzai's district and you clicked on the ad, you'd be taken to this petition.



So if you lived in Daryl Metcalfe's district and you clicked on the ad, you'd be taken to this petition.



I checked both links - they both work. Nice that things worked out.

Can Someone Fix This PLEASE?

This isn't helping, guys. You have to know that.



A few days ago, on August 9, John Micek over at Morning Call reported that the State Democratic Party:

... has launched a series on online advertisements attacking House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R- Allegheny, and other GOP lawmakers for billing the taxpayers for their membership in right-leaning legislative think-tank called The American Legislative Exchange Counci

Good. Glad to hear it. Important story - transparency is all-important when the crafting of legislation is involved.



So what's the problem?



The ad itself, which looks like this:

Now try going to the site mentioned in the ad. As of 7:30 this morning 3 days after Micek's report, it's still showing a "page not found" message at padems.com.



Surely someone can slap together a press release to post there.



Hey, how about something like this?

GOP Used Taxpayer Dollars for Membership Dues, over $30,000 on Chicken Breasts and Lollipops



Harrisburg, PA - Today, Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman Jim Burn called on Republicans in the state legislature to reimburse taxpayers for the money they gave to an extreme right wing organization, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). As reported by Salon, many Republican lawmakers, including House Leader Mike Turzai, use taxpayer dollars to pay their membership dues and the Republican caucus spent $50,000 to cater a conference for ALEC in Philadelphia.

I didn't write that, by the way, I found it at padems.com. Easy enough to link to that page. Why hasn't someone done it yet?



Will Rogers was right.

More On ALEC Defenders

I normally don't comment on letters to the editor (as I figure everyone's entitled to their own opinion) but when the letter writer's a legislator who's a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council and the letter in question is defending ALEC, well I gotta. I just gotta.



Here's the letter:

ALEC's mission



As the national chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council, I want to respond to "Analysis Finds State Legislation Copied From D.C. Group" (Aug. 3). ALEC is a transparent, nonpartisan, 501(c)3 organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free markets, limited government and individual liberty.



ALEC is a resource for state legislators across the country to find sound policy solutions to today's complex issues with a primary focus on fiscal responsibility and economic growth in each policy area. ALEC believes a vibrant private sector is good for the economy and job creation and, when faced with policy decisions that have an enormous effect on our society, legislators should hear from those who are affected. No one would consider writing an education bill without talking to teachers, or health care legislation without talking to doctors. So why would we do it in any other area?



The simple fact is that no matter what we discuss at a conference, we each have to make a decision whether it is good for the people we represent. If so, whatever may begin as a model bill must go through the legislative process unique to each state. The bills are subject to legal review, committee hearings, amendments and floor debate before legislators vote to reject or adopt it and a governor signs it into law.



It's an entirely democratic and transparent process and to suggest otherwise misleads the public.



America is a representative democracy and legislators are elected by the people to represent the people. As state legislators, we try to find the best solutions to growing the economy, creating jobs and utilizing taxpayer dollars effectively and efficiently. ALEC helps us fulfill this goal.



REP. NOBLE ELLINGTON

National Chairman

American Legislative Exchange Council

Washington, D.C.

I see the word "transparency" twice. First that ALEC is a "transparent" organization and second that it's part of a "transparent" process that's unquestionably democratic.



Really?



Then why is the membership private? Then why is the "model legislation" section of ALEC's website kept only for the private membership?



Who funds ALEC? Who drafts the "model legislation"? And finally who are its members who are are also elected officials from Pennsylvania?



IF the organization is transparent, THEN we'd have an answer to at least some of these questions. Since we don't we can't agree with the noble legislator from ALEC when he asserts (incorrectly, as it turns out) that ALEC is a transparent organization.



Think Progress has some evidence for who funded ALEC's recent convention in New Orleans. Given the "pro-business" stance of ALEC, it's hardly surprising that these three corporations would be supporting the convention at the President's Level:

• BP
• Reynolds American
• Takeda Pharmaceutical

Didn't BP have a little oil spill close to New Orleans some time ago?



I seem to recall something about that in the news.



Then there's the Chairman Level:

• Allergan
• Altria
• American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity
• American Electric Power
• AT&T
• Bayer
• Chevron
• ExxonMobil
• EZCorp
• Lumina Foundation
• Peabody
• PhRMA
• Shell
• State Farm
• State Policy Network
• UnitedHealthcare
• Visa
• Walmart
• Walton Family Foundation
  
  

And so on. Big Oil, Health Insurance, "Clean" Coal - who'da thought that they'd what to influence statewide legislation?

ALEC In The News!

From today's Post-Gazette:

An analysis released Tuesday from Keystone Progress points to four Pennsylvania measures that they say are nearly identical to model legislation peddled by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council.

The right-leaning association of state legislators has drawn national attention recently for reports that its model bills are being duplicated in statehouses across the country, and it has been criticized for the influence industry representatives are said to have in the drafting of that model legislation. It has also taken flack for its annual conferences, which lawmakers can attend free of charge and learn about model policies.

While several state lawmakers -- including Cranberry Republican Rep. Daryl Metcalfe -- have attended those conferences and reported the expense-paid trip on their ethics forms, it was the mirror-image legislation that drew much of the criticism from liberal detractors.

You can download the report and read it for yourself from here.

In the report, they've identified some ALEC legislators from PA:

• GOP House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (whose participation in ALEC is paid by state taxpayers)
• GOP House Majority Caucus Chair Sandra Major
• GOP House Caucus Administrator Dick Stevenson
• GOP House Judiciary Chair Ronald Marsico
• GOP House State Government Chair Daryl Metcalfe
• GOP Senate Majority Caucus Secretary Robert Robbins
• GOP Senate Judiciary Chair Stewart Greenleaf
• And GOP Chairs of numerous committees, including Representatives Matthew Baker (Health), Stephen Barrar (Veterans Affairs), Paul Clymer (Educational), John Evans (Game & Fisheries), Robert Godshall (Consumer Affairs), Kate Harper (Ethics), Dick Hess (Commerce), Ronald Miller (Labor & Industry) and Senators Charles McIlhinney (State Government), Jeffrey Piccola (Education), John Pippy (Law & Justice)
• The only identified Democratic PA member of ALEC is Rep. Harry Readshaw, Minority Chair of Professional Licensure.
• Rep. John Evans (R- Crawford, Erie) currently serves as ALEC’s PA chair

Good to see our boy Daryl Metcalfe isn't alone.

There's some pushback in the piece:

"There's some who are trying to portray it as corporations trying to take over legislation -- that's not it," [Rep. Seth Grove, a York County Republican] said. He added that he also looks for policy ideas from the moderate National Conference of State Legislatures.

And:

However, it's unclear whether all of those lawmakers have maintained their involvement with the organization. A spokesman for House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, said the lawmaker is no longer involved with ALEC.

However from Salon.com we learn:

Republican Majority Leader Michael Turzai has also had membership dues paid for by the state, something that Turzai's spokesman, Steve Mishkin, defended.

"It’s always good to hear from the experience of other legislatures," he said. "That’s how you exchange ideas, best practices, and try to bring those to Pennsylvania’s problem."

Mishkin likened ALEC to the [National Conference of State Legislatures.], but the NCSL doesn't develop and promote model legislation with corporate input and is open to legislators regardless of their ideology. ALEC, by contrast, boasts that its conference "has been described as the 'largest gathering of conservatives held each year.'"

So Turzai's spokesman defended having his ALEC membership dues paid for by the state?

I think someone's trying to pull a fast one, Mr. Mishkin.

Let's assume both statements are correct - that Turzai had been a member of ALEC (with dues paid for by the PA taxpayers) but he's no longer a member. If that's the case, then I have some questions:

• When did the taxpayer support end?
• How long was he a member of ALEC?
• Why did he join?
• Why did he quit?

Maybe next time Turzai's on Night Talk, someone will call in and ask him.

But somehow I don't think this story will end up on the pages of the Tribune-Review. Why not? From the report:

Some of the major ALEC funding sources include Richard Mellon Scaife’s Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation, Exxon Mobil and Koch brothers-related funding sources. [

Something we touched upon in mid-June.

Good to know the P-G is catching up.

Daryl Metcalfe Gets Some Press!

In the Philadelphia City Paper.

Go read it. Here's Daniel Denvir's opening:

State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a gun-toting 48-year-old who represents Pittsburgh's fast-growing, far-out Butler County exurbs, has spent more than a decade slogging his way toward power. For years, he was a nobody in Harrisburg, and the media paid far more attention to his strong-worded comments about gays, guns and immigrants than his colleagues ever did to his legislation. But in the wake of President Barack Obama's election, things changed: A national movement of angry conservatives took hold and voted out any Republicans or Democrats who smelled of moderation.

Or, as Metcalfe put it to the liberal news website Talking Points Memo, "I was a Tea Partier before it was cool."

Here's that TPM piece on him. In it, there's this about Metcalfe:

Metcalfe says he's a dyed-in-the-wool conservative (he told me "I was a tea partier before it was cool") and promises to fight his own party if necessary to maintain purity on issues like gun rights, tax reduction and "keeping marriage between a man and a woman."

Last October, Metcalfe landed in hot water after he called veterans who support global climate change treaties "traitors to their oaths to uphold the constitution."

But back to the PhilyCP. There's this defining his legislative power:

Metcalfe is now chairman of the powerful State Government Committee, and he's savoring the political moment: He was a key supporter of an expansion of gun owners' rights to fire on an assailant, a bill signed by Gov. Tom Corbett. The House passed Metcalfe's legislation requiring voters to present government identification, which could disproportionately keep the poor, elderly and nonwhite from the polls. This fall, he is expected to move legislation to pass a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage; anti-immigrant measures modeled on Arizona's draconian law; and an anti-union "right-to-work" bill that Corbett pledges to sign.

Crucially, Metcalfe, who did not return repeated requests for comment, will help oversee the decennial process of redrawing congressional districts to reflect population changes from the 2010 census. He wields enormous power to reshape districts and, thus, elections, for years to come.

And this on his gay agenda:

Metcalfe is the House's most prominent critic of gays: He opposed Philly's program to market the city to gay tourists, saying that tax dollars should not be used to "promote immoral behaviors"; he tried to cut state funding to universities such as Temple because they offer domestic-partner benefits; he sued a gay New Hope couple for attempting (and failing) to get a marriage license; and he opposed Domestic Violence Awareness Month, calling it part of "the homosexual agenda" to support a "sinful lifestyle" because it recognized male victims of rape. "The gentleman from Butler has made this problem even worse and more men may be abused, even killed in their homes," decried Rep. Babette Josephs, a Democrat from Philadelphia, on the House floor in 2009.

All that really fun stuff aside, here's where some ongoing threads intertwine once again. It's all about Daryl and ALEC:

Like many right-wing state legislators nationwide, Daryl Metcalfe is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which produces model legislation drafted in part by big business. This year, ALEC has come under criticism for its role in pushing legislation like Wisconsin's anti-union bill. What's surprising is that Pennsylvania taxpayers pick up the tab for Metcalfe's involvement.

Documents obtained by City Paper from the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission show that ALEC reimbursed Metcalfe $832.91 in 2007, a "scholarship" that is funded by major corporations. And state documents obtained by good government group Common Cause and reviewed by City Paper reveal that taxpayers also reimbursed Metcalfe $509.25 in per diems, and for parking and transportation, food and other fees for the 2007 ALEC conference in Philadelphia.

Since 2007, taxpayers have footed $1,164 in ALEC expenses for the self-professed small-government advocate. He isn't the only Republican steering taxpayer dollars to the conservative advocacy group — other legislators also had fees and per diems covered.

That same year, the documents also show that a $50,000 appropriation to cater the ALEC meeting was added into the state budget, a food bill footed by taxpayers that included $30,450 in roasted chicken breast and $3,000 for cheesecake lollipops. The budget outlay was described as "for the payment of expenses related to hosting conferences, meetings or conventions of multistage organizations which protect the member states' interests or which promote governmental financial excellence or accountability."

Metcalfe's agenda more or less mirrors that of ALEC model legislation, including efforts to compel local police to enforce immigration laws and prohibit localities like Philly from enacting their own gun restrictions.

Daryl and ALEC,
sittin' in a tree,
K-i-s-s-i-n-g...

More of ALEC Exposed

I think we'll be spending some quality time in the near future looking deeper at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

We've written about ALEC before, but for those who don't know what ALEC is, according to this post at crooksandliars it's:

...the high-level overview. ALEC is the acronym for American Legislative Exchange Council, a secret right-wing consortium created to write boilerplate legislation for states to use to advance the right-wing agenda. Some of ALEC's handiwork can be seen in Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida, to name a few.

And it's a good possibility we're seeing it's handy work here in Pennsylvania with Representative Daryl Metcalfe's Voter ID law.

The bad news is that so little about ALEC has been known. But that's changing. From John Nichols at The Nation:

The details of ALEC’s model bills have been available only to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 300 corporate members. But thanks to a leak to Aliya Rahman, an Ohio-based activist who helped organize protests at ALEC’s Spring Task Force meeting in Cincinnati, The Nation has obtained more than 800 documents representing decades of model legislation. Teaming up with the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation asked policy experts to analyze this never-before-seen archive.

Here's ALECExposed.

We've already mentioned how Scaife money was involved in the formation of ALEC and how Richard Mellon Scaife continues to shuttle money from the foundations he controls to ALEC.

So whether it's legislation regarding Worker Rights or Voter Rights or Taxes or any number of other pieces of right wing legislation oozing through Harrisburg, we'll be checking to see if there's an analogous piece of ALEC legislation supporting it.

Feel free to peruse the archive yourself. I'm guessing that that's the last thing our ALEC legislators want.

Isn't that right, Daryl?

I Think I Hear ALEC Knocking At My Door

From In These Times:

On February 25, 2011, Florida State Representative Chris Dorworth (R-Lake Mary) introduced HB 1021. The bill sought to curtail the political power of unions by prohibiting public employers from deducting any amount from an employee’s pay for use by an employee organization (i.e., union dues) or for any political activity (i.e., the portion of union dues used for lobbying or for supporting candidates for office).

And:

Given the similarities between HB 1021 and a rash of like-minded bills in states across the country, including Wisconsin, on March 30 a public records request was sent to Dorworth’s office seeking copies of all documents pertaining to the writing of HB 1021, including copies of any pieces of model legislation the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) may have provided.

And finally:

Dorworth’s office delivered 87 pages of documents, mostly bill drafts and emails, detailing the evolution of what was to become HB 1021. Buried at the bottom of the stack was an 11-page bundle of neatly typed material, labeled “Paycheck Protection,” which consisted of three pieces of model legislation, with the words “Copyright, ALEC” at the end of each.

The ALEC "Paycheck Protection" documents can be found here.I get ahead of myself.

When I wrote about ALEC in mid-June, I ended the blog post with a set of questions, the first one being:

I wonder how much ALEC legislation has oozed into Harrisburg?

Given all of the above, I have to wonder about State Senator John Eichelberger's Public Workers Paycheck Protection Act.

Eichelberger's conservative bona fides are set. He's proposed an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman and has already insulted the commonwealth's LGBT community.

So I gotta wonder how much of Eichelberger's legislation has been enhanced by the Scaife and Koch funded secret society?

ALEC - The American Legislative Exchange Council

Yesterday I happened across this posting at Crooksandliars. It's about something called the American Legislative Exchange Council:

If you're not familiar with ALEC, here's the high-level overview. ALEC is the acronym for American Legislative Exchange Council, a secret right-wing consortium created to write boilerplate legislation for states to use to advance the right-wing agenda. Some of ALEC's handiwork can be seen in Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida, to name a few.

ALEC has a new game called Publicopoly. Some of the "properties" include government operations, health, environment, telecommunications, infrastructure, education and public safety. But of course, it's not such a new game after all. The object of the game is to privatize everything. To that end, they have aggregated the reports of think tanks like the Mackinac Center, the Reason Foundation, the Platte Institute, and the Heartland Institute. [Emphasis added.]

The "secret" isn't the website but who's writing this legislation for the right wing legislators to use. Here's what ALEC has to say about it's legislation:

One of the most important resources ALEC provides to its members is model legislation. Through the combined effort and unique partnership of public and private sector members, model legislation is drafted, deliberated and approved by one of ALEC's nine Task Forces. These bills provide a valuable framework for developing effective policy ideas aimed at protecting and expanding our free society.

While ALEC provides the resources, our members, long known for their legislative activism, introduced hundreds of bills based on ALEC model legislation. During the latest legislative cycle, dozens of ALEC model bills were enacted into law.

And guess, JUST GUESS who's got all this started? According to the mediamatters transparency project, the Richard Mellon Scaife controlled Allegheny Foundation has given $1.7 to ALEC over the years.

That's even more than the $1.25 million Exxon gave to ALEC.

Of all the foundation donations, Allegheny Foundation is the biggest.

And these numbers may be low. In 1999 the Washington Post published:

Another form of proselytizing is conducted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich. ALEC's members are predominantly conservative state legislators. The organization provides training, information and draft legislation to make them more effective. Of the country's 6,500 state legislators, 3,000 belong to ALEC, including dozens of leaders of state legislatures and senates. Twelve sitting governors are ALEC graduates, as are 77 members of Congress. The group's first president was a then-member of the Illinois House named Henry Hyde.

ALEC makes a mark with its model legislation. The last time it counted (1995-96), 132 ALEC bills were enacted in various states, from charter school legislation to pro-business bills on environmental and regulatory topics. Many states used its version of welfare reform legislation.

ALEC is unabashedly pro-business. Its expert task forces, which write the model legislation, are composed of legislators and business representatives. About two-thirds of ALEC's $6 million budget comes from corporate contributions.

Scaife has given ALEC more than $2 million since 1975, keeping the group alive in its early years. Now his donations ($75,000 last year) are an insignificant part of its budget.

The "insignificant" support of between $15K and $75K per year has continued since then.

I wonder how much ALEC legislation has oozed into Harrisburg? I wonder how much commentary Scaife's braintrust has written about it? I wonder if ANYONE knew that without Scaife's millions, ALEC probably wouldn't be the organization it is today.