Bill Moyers Exposes the Stranglehold the Corporate & Right-Wing Alliance Has on Our Democracy

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/bill-moyers-exposes-stranglehold-corporate-right-wing?akid=9462.277129.HU_JwZ&rd=1&src=newsletter718206&t=3



***SNIP


BILL MOYERS: ALEC is a nationwide consortium of elected state legislators working side by side with some of America’s most powerful corporations. They have an agenda you should know about: a mission to remake America, changing the country by changing its laws one state at a time. ALEC creates what it calls "model legislation," pro-corporate laws like this one that its members push in statehouses across the country. ALEC says close to a thousand bills, based at least in part on its models, are introduced every year, and an average of 200 pass. This has been going on for decades, but somehow ALECmanaged to remain the most influential, corporate-funded political organization you had never heard of—until a gunshot sounded in the Florida night.

RACHEL MADDOW: Trayvon Martin, unarmed, but for a bag of candy and an iced tea that he was carrying.

BILL MOYERS: You’ll recall that the shooter in Trayvon Martin’s death was protected at first by Florida’s so-called "stand your ground" law. That law was the work of the National Rifle Association. There is its lobbyist standing right beside Governor Jeb Bush when he signed it into law in 2005. Although ALEC didn’t originate the Florida law, it seized on it for the "stand your ground" model it would circulate in other states. Twenty-four of them have passed a version of it.

RASHAD ROBINSON: How did this law not only get in place in Florida but around the country? And all the fingers kept pointing back to ALEC.

[marmar]

1. k/r

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, xchrom.

[jsr]

3. Can't recommend enough