Meet ALEC. He’s out to change your life…and not for the better

Have you met ALEC? You should get to know him. He's helping to write new laws that will benefit wealthy special interests while negatively affecting the lives of average Americans, and now, apparently, he’s brought his anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-education agenda to West Virginia.

ALEC, of course, is not a person. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a self-described “nonprofit” organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives who draft “model legislation” to be introduced into state governing bodies around the country. An example of an ALEC proposal, according to reports, is the omnibus education bill—known as Senate 451—which seeks to redefine public and private education in West Virginia to benefit the state’s elite while draining funds from public schools and punishing teachers who went on strike last year to fight for a meager pay raise.  

Nearly all of ALEC’s funding is provided by corporations including—but not limited to—Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, Reynolds American (big tobacco), Philip Morris Tobacco (now called Altria), Energy Future Holdings, Peabody Energy and Walmart, and trade associations including the pharmaceutical industry's PhRMA. The organization uses its funds to buy state legislators who then meet behind closed doors with ALEC representatives to rewrite state laws that govern individual rights, including:

* Expanded voter identification laws to restrict minority voting;

* Anti-environment laws that rebuke climate change, encourage fossil fuel consumption and discourage the use of alternative energy sources;

* Laws to lower or eliminate other environmental regulations;

* Pro-life statutes and laws to restrict or ban abortions;

* Bills to reduce corporate taxes;

* Right to Work and other laws designed to damage, cripple or kill labor unions;

* “Stand Your Ground” pro-gun legislation; and

* Legislation to privatize certain institutions, including prisons and public schools. 

Bills promoted by ALEC are not designed to improve the lives of every day citizens; they are almost always written to directly benefit their corporate patrons and benefactors. For example, in several states, ALEC worked to overturn laws that required utility companies to produce a percentage of their electricity using alternative sources such as water, wind and solar. That left utilities free to burn more fossil fuels—specifically coal and natural gas—which benefits the businesses of the Brothers Koch. 

ALEC provides the basic templates for bills that members may customize and introduce for debate in their own state legislatures. Approximately 200 of ALEC’s model bills become law each year.

I don’t know what other bills ALEC has generated for this session of the West Virginia Legislature but you can bet than none of them will do the average state resident any good. I’m also looking for a list of state lawmakers who are supported by ALEC or members of its legislative council. Here is a partial list, culled from several sources:

* State Senator Patricia Rucker, (R-16), Harpers Ferry, State Chair, said to be a driving force behind SB 451;

* Delegate Eric Householder (R-56), Martinsburg, State Chairman and Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force member;

* Delegate Gary Howell (R-49), Keyser, member of ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force; and

* Larry Kump (R-59), Falling Waters.

(Funny how they all seem to hail from the same general area of the state, wouldn’t you say?)

For the present, I encourage West Virginia voters to continue to oppose legislation that would undercut public education in the state and any other pro-ALEC legislation you can identify. For the future, I’d suggest that the next time you encounter your elected representatives, you ask them if and how they are affiliated with ALEC and what they’re getting from the organization for their support. Then, if any of them has the stones to own up to it, I strongly encourage you to vote him or her out of office the very next time you get the opportunity.

That’s because if you’re an average West Virginian—like me—ALEC is not interested in your welfare. Not in the least. But don’t take my word for it. Following are some links you can follow to educate yourself about ALEC, its sponsors and its goals. I strongly suggest that you click these links and read up on ALEC before it’s too late.

https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/What_is_ALEC%3F#Who_funds_ALEC.3F

https://www.republicreport.org/2012/the-top-five-most-despicable-laws-passed-by-corporate-front-group-alec/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council

This is the true national emergency

Ever since faux-president Donald Trump first suggested declaring a “national emergency” to get funding for his ill-conceived and clearly unnecessary southern border wall—funding which Congress has steadfastly refused to appropriate, even when Republicans controlled both legislative chambers—opponents of the administration have been spewing forth a litany of issues that they propose are true national emergencies:

* Gun safety;

* Climate change;

* The opioid crisis;

* Poverty.

I beg to disagree. These issues are not national emergencies, they are national tragedies. Gun safety would only qualify as an emergency if armed men were roaming the country in packs shooting up schools, theaters, concerts and dance clubs, were presently lined up outside in the parking lots and were poised to strike at any minute unless the government issued an emergency declaration. Even then, what would such a proclamation actually do? Buy all their guns? What would stop someone from doing it anyway? Would gun violence end because Congress says “don’t do that again?” I think not.

Climate change has been a national tragedy for so many years that declaring it to be an emergency now is much too little and far too late. What would Congress appropriate money for? Giant freezers to re-solidify the polar ice caps? Could they pay the science deniers to change their minds? Could the government outspend the Koch Brothers and others who thrive on the profits from the burning of fossil fuels? The only way to stop climate change is to completely alter the way energy is produced, shut down polluting businesses, park half the cars in America and tell cows to stop farting. Not going to happen. Sorry.  

The opioid crisis could be stopped with common sense legislation, the opening of a few treatment centers and a crackdown on the suppliers who flood the market with millions of pills. This could have been done a long time ago if not for the lobbying efforts (and dollars) of large pharmaceutical companies and the inability of Congress to do much of anything. However, this would only rise to the level of an “emergency” if something specific were about to occur. Otherwise, as I said, it’s just an ongoing national tragedy that needs to be addressed in conventional ways.

And poverty? We’ve always had it and we always will. What’s the “emergency” remedy for poverty? Sending food baskets to every hungry person three times a day? No. Again, this is a complex issue that requires thoughtful solutions, but you can’t declare a national emergency over a problem that has been around for all of my lifetime and several lifetimes before that.

So that said, I suggest that all of us are, in fact, facing an actual national emergency and it’s a really, really big one. Want to know what it is?

It’s a two-pronged emergency. First, a large number of members of Congress—who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States—are standing back and watching while the current administration dismantles our Constitutional protections one by one and gradually transitions the country from a democratic republic to a third-world autocracy, ruled by an insane narcissist with traitorous intent who shouldn’t be allowed to visit the White House, let alone live in it.

Need proof?

The aforementioned members of Congress have, for two years and counting, allowed the sitting president to break dozens of laws that would have disqualified any other politician from holding the office of dog catcher, enabled the appointment of Supreme Court judges who believe in expanding—not limiting or counter-balancing—executive power and most recently sat quietly while an unqualified huckster under investigation for fraud assumed the position of Acting Attorney General so he could learn the full details of the special counsel’s investigation into the president’s various crimes and report the status of the case directly to White House lawyers.

Just this past week the president of the Senate took to the Senate floor to announce his support for the president’s ginned-up national emergency, even though he knows it’s a clear violation of the Constitution he is sworn to defend and a usurpation of the authority granted to Congress by Article 1 of the Constitution. In other words, our Congress has allowed the president to buy “get out of jail free cards” for himself and his minions by stacking the judiciary with friendly judges, and now is trying to abdicate its own Constitutional authority to the executive branch.

Do you see what I’m saying? The three separate and co-equal branches of government that have stood as the pillars of our democracy for more than 240 years are being melded into one by an incompetent con man with an aversion to the truth who was elected to office with the support of a foreign adversary and our Congressional leaders—specifically those on the Republican side—are loathe to do anything about it. That, my friends, is an actual national emergency.

Americans who treasure our democracy should be taking to the streets by the millions to protest what is happening in Washington. We should be calling and writing and texting our elected representatives and showing up at their offices to demand that Congress do the job for which it was elected, and the protests should continue until we get the government the Constitution says we are owed. We the people should declare a national emergency if no one else will and we should not stop fighting until the emergency is brought to a close. This needs to happen now, before the dictator is fully empowered and all semblance of democratic government is lost.  

And that brings me to Part Two of this two-pronged national emergency. It’s the fact that at least half of the country doesn’t seem to care.

When an actual emergency isn’t one, but one that really isn’t is

Let me see if I’ve got this straight:

It’s a national emergency that threatens our safety and security when a supposed “caravan” of homeless women and children from Guatemala and Honduras walk hundreds of miles across Mexico carrying their earthly possessions on their backs to legally seek political asylum in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, but backing out of a nuclear arms treaty with our greatest and most dangerous geopolitical enemy is not considered a threat in the Land of Trump.

Can someone please explain to me in what universe and under what bizarre circumstances this illogical paradox makes sense?

In case you missed it, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has just announced that the United States plans to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that was a cornerstone of the agreement that helped to end the cold war with the former Soviet Union, currently known as Russia or, more specifically, One Who Holds America on a String.

Donald J. Trump, the 72-year-old con man crime boss POTUS with the mentality of a 12-year-old boy and the foreign policy knowledge of a door knob, wants to terminate the agreement on the grounds that Russia has repeatedly violated its terms. I’m sure it’s a mere coincidence that Trump’s best bro’ – Russian President Vladimir Putin – has wanted out of the treaty since at least 2007.

People who actually understand global dynamics say the demise of the INF Treaty raises fears of a new nuclear arms race, the prospect of which threatens not only the U.S. and Russia but essentially every other nation on the planet.

Pompeo said the United States would “suspend participation in the agreement,” setting in motion a six-month countdown to final U.S. withdrawal. It was noted that Russia could end all of those missile programs which Trump sees as violations and thus salvage the IMF Treaty, but that’s as likely as Russia admitting that it hacked the 2016 presidential election and apologizing for helping to install Putin’s favorite puppet into the highest office in the United States.

Right.

According to The Washington Post, arms control specialists said that without the IMF Treaty, “the United States may move to position missile systems in Europe or Asia, while Russia could use the opportunity to base missile systems elsewhere. In Asia, the United States could deploy conventional mid-range missiles near Chinese ships and militarized artificial islands during a conflict to defend parts of the East China Sea or South China Sea.”

So two nuclear powers would be free to place more missiles in Europe and Asia and park some of them around Chinese ships and territories. What could possibly go wrong?

The newspaper also noted that “the death of the INF Treaty also raises questions about the future of other arms control agreements,” including the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or START, which reduces by half the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers deployed by the U.S. and Russia. If the White House and the Kremlin don’t agree to extend New START beyond its scheduled expiration date in 2021, such a decision “would turn the clock back to an era where Washington and Moscow possess nuclear arms with practically no agreed restrictions and risk the return of a full Cold War-style arms race.”

Meanwhile, following his State of the Union address next week, Trump is expected to declare a national emergency so he can bypass Congress and try to secure the funds he needs to build a wall on the southern border, which he claims is necessary to protect us from all of those homeless women and children coming north to seek a better life in our fine country.

Well, I have some advice for the people in that caravan: Go back! You don’t want to come here right now. Trust me. When our president takes the shackles off the world’s cache of nuclear weapons and plays "chicken" with the rest of the world, this is not the place you really want to be.