By Dick Morris
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Agree or not with the purpose, just don’t give Gov. Tom Corbett and his Republican cohorts running the state legislature credit for originality.
For at least three decades, mostly GOP lawmakers and Governors have been doing the bidding of the American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”), a hugely powerful organization of corporate lobbyists and right-wingers.
ALEC hates labor unions, want to privatize every government function from education to lotteries and never saw a tax on businesses they liked, existing or proposed. In its spare time ALEC hopes to make it more difficult for minorities and college students to vote, wants to permit guns in bars, parks and playgrounds, shuns recognition of climate change and abolish collective bargaining..
Otherwise, ALEC members are just like us — just better financed and more persevering. Liberals and real Democrats appear to have no counterpart. Their think tanks and public policy advocates are fragmented with less money and often limited focus.
The Republicans have a national strategy to capture state legislatures, according to a New York Times, January article by Nicholas Confessore. The game plan is working. Heading into the 2014 General Election, 23 states are now solely controlled by Republicans and 15 by Democrats.
Democrats have only been able to hold on in some states by Latino immigration, economic transformation and other demographic forces.
In Pennsylvania two of the three branches of government are controlled by Republicans, despite a million Democrat plurality in voter registration. The GOP also maintains at least nominal rule of the judicial branch.
Seven Republican lawmakers representing Western PA districts are known to be ALEC members, according to website Keystone Progress in an article last December. They are:
Rep. Brian Ellis, of Butler, who is the current PA ALEC co-chair; Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, also of Butler; Rep. Kathy Rapp, of Warren and surrounding; Rep. Sam Smith, Speaker of the House, of Jefferson and surrounding; Rep. Richard Stevenson, Majority House Caucus Administrator, of Mercer and Butler; Sen. John Eichelberger, of Blair and surrounding, and Sen. Bob Robbins, Majority Caucus Secretary, of Mercer and surrounding.
Eichelberger, Stevenson, Smith and Metcalfe pay their ALEC membership and expenses from public funds. ALEC’s secretive nature prevents confirmation of all memberships and there are no money trails.
Nowhere has ALEC been more successful than North Carolina, a somewhat “purple” state where Republicans are now solidly in control. The difference with Pennsylvania can be attributed to the competency of GOP leadership.
Jim Hightower, in his monthly “Hightower Lowdown” nails North Carolina’s move to the right succinctly:
“In the past half century, this southern state had built a reputation for having a relatively moderate government that provided good schools and essential pubic services to enhance the common good. No more. Today’s GOP supermajority is sledgehammering all traces of public decency.
“It has rammed through hundreds of bills to decimate and corporatize public schools, has denied health coverage to a half million people, gutted jobless benefits, unleashed big oil frackers, suppressed access to the polls, shredded campaign funding laws, shifted taxes on the rich to the sore backs of middle class and poor and restricted the rights of women and labor.”
In North Carolina “progressive” has become a dirty word.
ALEC has garnered heavy financial support from more than 100 large corporations. These include:
US Chamber of Commerce, National Rifle Association, American Petroleum Institute, Google, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Express Scripts, ExxonMobil and Georgia-Pacific.
The IRS Form 990 (Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax) for 2012 shows contributions and grants totaled over $7 million, slightly less than for 2011.
Many bucks went to a “scholarship fund” used to pay legislators’ ALEC expenses and wine and dine lawmakers.
Bottom Line: Democrats need to develop a national counter-strategy. America will continue to swing to the right so long as GOP is more focused than Democrats.
