"Brought to you by ALEC" airs again tonight on MT-PBS. This film was produced in Montana, by the J-School at Missoula. Here's some more good info, in case you missed it...
I've been actively opposing ALEC at every opportunity for 12 years, now. I've gone to Democrat meetings and told them about the dangers posed by ALEC and its organization in Helena. Steve Doherty, a long-time Great Falls legislator, tried to start a national organization to oppose it in 2006. Basically, it got no support and absolutely no media coverage in Montana when he did that. So little was it known that I, who knew Steve for nearly 20 years before that, and was publishing the Montana Green Bulletin at the time, never heard of his efforts.
We had both served on an early Great Falls Public Radio Association Board, and were both environmentalist activists, Native American advocates, etc. But Steve was part of the Baucus Machine, which was punishing any of its members who had anything to do with the Green Party. And the fact that the Green Party was already geared up to fight ALEC meant that the Baucusites would support ALEC instead of us, and in fact, most of the bad legislation that ALEC supported had a lot of support from traditional Democratic power blocs - especially military boosters (NO CUTS in military spending, ever), the Police State lobby (especially prison guard unions and the rest of the contractors, suppliers, private prisons, PATRIOT Act, Homeland Security, etc), and the "resource" extractive industries and their unions, including public utilities.
Montana Power was a big supporter of ALEC (which wrote most of the "de-regulation", "free trade" energy policy, making ENRON and other corporate scams legal), and now, Northwestern Energy has inherited that curse, as the largest ALEC sponsor in Montana.
If you're wondering why we're now paying twice as much for electricity, this is the reason. And since our Legislature and Public Service Commission are thoroughly controlled by ALEC supporters, that is why we continue to build prisons, "prison schools" and "the school to prison pipeline", and now propose to "buy back" the MPC dams at three or four times what PPL paid for them. Energy policy and the 7-fold expansion of the prison population (see the third story, linked below, from American Radio Works (2002) are ALEC's greatest successes, along with the revival of the nuclear industry, suppressing climate science and opposing any sort of taxes on polluters, let alone preventing them from happening in the first place).
When support for phasing out nuclear power was high, PPL (which owned 18 nuclear reactors, including part of 3-Mile-Island when it melted down), used that as an excuse to buy Montana's generating facilities by hiring Goldman, Sachs to gain control of MPC and liquidating the company. Needless to say, the Montana ALEC lobby along with the "Coal State Democrats" like Schwinden and Schweitzer were all for that.
For those who still don't know what ALEC is or does, it is the storm troopers of Corporate America. It is entirely owned, controlled, and in service to the largest corporations of nearly every kind, from Agri-business to Aerospace; from the "health insurance" racket to the drug cartels (5 corporations produce 80% of the world's drugs, and they are extending their monopolies through "free trade" laws to the rest of the world). From Banksters and Wall Street to Fox News and most of the rest of the national media. And don't forget the retailers - Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola, Sarah Lee, Monsanto, and all the companies which contributed to defeating the several campaigns to require GMO labeling. They are especially interested in busting unions, turning schools into prisons, and otherwise creating a totalitarian fascist state. One of the main mechanisms by which they accomplish this is the so-called "war on drugs," under which we lock up 5-10 times more people for non-violent crimes than any other country. They are also leading the opposition to legalizing cannabis for any reason.
Of course they call it "Jeffersonian Federalism" in the old rhetoric of "state's rights" and "local control." Needless to say, it is nothing of the kind. Although its work and sponsorships have recently come under considerable public scrutiny, I have yet to read a major media expose which really explains what ALEC does and has done.
Here are some links....
The United States of ALEC: Bill Moyers on the Secretive Corporate-Legislative Body Writing Our Laws
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/27/the_united_states_of_alec_bill
Democracy Now! premieres "The United States of ALEC," a special report by legendary journalist Bill Moyers on how the secretive American Legislative Exchange Council has helped corporate America propose and even draft legislation for states across the country. ALEC brings together major U.S. corporations and right-wing legislators to craft and vote on "model" bills behind closed doors. It has come under increasing scrutiny for its role in promoting "stand your ground" gun laws, voter suppression bills, union-busting policies and other controversial legislation. Although billing itself as a "nonpartisan public-private partnership," ALEC is actually a national network of state politicians and powerful corporations principally concerned with increasing corporate profits without public scrutiny. Moyers’ special will air this weekend on Moyers & Company, but first airs on Democracy Now! today. "The United States of ALEC" is a collaboration between Okapi Productions, LLC and the Schumann Media Center.
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America's Top Prison Corporation: A Study in Predatory Capitalism and Cronyism
Thursday, 03 May 2012 09:27
By Dina Rasor, Truthout | News Analysis
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8875-corrections-corporation-of-america-a-study-in-predatory-capitalism-and-cronyism
Last week I wrote about the private prison company The GEO Group and how allowing private businesses to operate prisons can affect our justice system, our laws and the fate of our prison population. This week, I will tackle the largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and its unprecedented proposal to buy prisons from money-strapped states, as well as how CCA has gamed the system with trips through the revolving door, self-dealing and influence peddling.
Just to set the stage as to how large the prison population is in the United States: our prison population is the highest in the world; one out of 100 US residents are in prison. This number has grown dramatically since 1990, due to tighter crime laws and longer sentences. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "Between 1970 and 2005, the number of people incarcerated in the United States grew by 700 percent. Today, the United States incarcerates approximately 2.3 million people...."
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April 2002
Corporate-Sponsored Crime Laws
by John Biewen
On the Internet
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/corrections/
Over the past two decades, America's prison population doubled, then doubled again, before finally leveling off at about two million inmates. One result: a $50-billion corrections industry. That's bigger than tobacco. The crackdown on crime has enriched corporations that build prisons or sell products to them, prison guard unions, and police departments that use budget-fattening incentives to pursue drug criminals. In this special report, American RadioWorks correspondent John Biewen explores how some groups with vested interests work to influence public policy— helping to keep more people locked up longer.
Prison Industry a Revenue-Generating Opportunity
The annual trade show sponsored by the American Correctional Association is like other big trade shows: a sprawling bazaar of colorful display booths. This one fills a huge hall at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. It brings together shoppers — mostly prison administrators — and hundreds of vendors hawking their wares.
You can find plenty of companies selling the basics, of course: prison design and construction; fence and razor wire; uniforms as well as RIT dye to color-code those uniforms and a system for stamping them with numbers and bar codes; handcuffs; surveillance equipment; janitor services; steel doors and powerful locks and the electronic control rooms from which to operate them.
The major phone companies are here — Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and the Bells and former Bells — vying to provide collect-call service to inmates' families. Dupont shows off a new lightweight, Kevlar protective vest just for prison guards. It won't stop a bullet but it will protect against inmates attempting to "stab and slash" the officer, explains Dupont's Gary Burnett. Of the 450,000 guards in the nation's prisons and jails, "only about fifteen-percent of them are now protected, so the goal is to get protection on as many as possible," Burnett says.
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