ALEC: Ghostwriting Law For Corporate America for Decades

Who or what is ALEC? The American Legislative Exchange Council?

Well, ALEC, founded in 1973, is a secret private association that  sets up Republican lawmakers with pro-business corporate-written ghost-written bills and sends them off to  legislatures all across the country to benefit the corporate structure, often at the expense of the consumer, and America. In 2009, thanks to ALEC,  826 bills were introduced in the states, 115 were enacted into law. ALEC's self described mission is "unite the public and private sector in a dynamic partnership to support policy development".

On July 13, 2011, the Center for Media and Democracy unveiled this trove of over 800 "model" bills and resolutions secretly voted on by corporations and politicians through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). These bills reveal the corporate collaboration reshaping our democracy, state by state.

Under ALEC’s published by-laws, legislators who are ALEC “state chairmen” have a “duty” to get the model bills introduced in their state legislatures. However, when ALEC legislation is introduced in state houses, it is under the name of the sponsoring legislator rather than ALEC itself, with no mention that the bill was pre-voted on by corporations through ALEC or even connecting the bill to ALEC. The task forces obscure how “corporations [get] access and influence for which they'd otherwise be publicly scrutinized." Nick Penniman, "Outing ALEC: The Most Powerful Lobby You've Never Heard Of," The American Prospect, Volume 13, Issue 12, July 1, 2002, p. 12

Some ALEC "Model" bills:

Through ALEC, Bank of America has written legislation that says seniors should be forced to give up their homes, signing over their homes through a reverse mortgage, in order to qualify for the state benefit, Medicare.

ALEC was behind the deregulation of utilities back when Enron was pulling $5 trillion out of the economy….transfer of wealth….

ALEC crafted model legislation designed to ban a Canadian-style, single-payer healthcare system: Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a history of using its web of state legislative connections to drive national debate, quietly pushing the agenda of its corporate backers [see Kusnetz, "Where Bad Bills Come From," June 28]. With its model legislation, the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, ALEC is encouraging state legislators to begin chipping away at the central components of the Obama administration's healthcare reform before it's fully implemented. What's more, ALEC and its allies have already contributed to a growing legal challenge that could give the conservative Supreme Court an opportunity to overturn the legislation even if Congress does not.

Here’s a partial list of ALEC politicians who promote anti-union legislation, prison privatization, pension fund destabilization, deregulation of workplace and environmental safety, etc.

Wisconsin: Scott Walker
Florida: Rick Scott
Michigan: Rick Snyder
New Jersey: Chris Christie
Pennsylvania: Tom Corbett
Kansas: Sam Brownback
South Carolina: Niki Haley
Arizona: Jan Brewer
Maine: Paul LePage

Holdovers include:
Louisiana: Piyush Jindal
Mississippi: Haley Barbour
Indiana: Mitch Daniels

Links:

Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America

ALEC Exposed

ALEC funding

Publicopoly Exposed How ALEC, the Koch brothers and their corporate allies plan to privatize government.

Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

Koch/ALEC Cabal - a Smoking Gun for financial connections and control...

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Sovietology: Four Stages Necessary to Destroy a Nation

The two-party system is an illusion. In reality, the two parties are coordinated in a chess game that's being played against us and we are losing. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

So, it's time to take a new look at America, and to stop playing the politics of "divide and conquer" which will only divide and conquer...us. It's time to figure out who the real enemy is, and unite to build a coalition against this common enemy: the corporations, the banks, and, unfortunately, our government whose only interest is propping up the elitist power structure, no matter how much they deny it.

In the video below, someone who knows how the game is played - KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov, a Russian born, KGB trained subverter - describes the four-stage process involved in destroying a nation. This interview was conducted by G. Edward Griffin in 1984.



Excerpts:

"All the American has to do is unplug the bananas from their ears and they can see it. There is nothing to do with espionage. But the main area is not in the area of intelligence at all. Only about 15% of time, money and manpower is spent on espionage. The other 85% is a slow process which we [KGB} call ideological subversion or "active measures" or psychological warfare.

One of the basic elements is to change the perception of reality for every American, to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country. It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages:

Four stages:

1.Demoralization - a process whereby the goal is to create an environment of confusion that capitalizes on the naivete and deliberately created ignorance of the people. That encourages dependence rather than self-reliance; powerlessness rather than empowerment; and that fosters fear rather than courage.

"Most of of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to a lack of moral standards" Once demoralized, "exposure to true information won't matter anymore. A person who is demoralized will not be able to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof: documents, with pictures...even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When a military boot crashes his ass, then he will understand, but not before that. That's the tragic of the situation of demoralization."

2. Destabilization (Takes 2-5 years to destabilize a nation.) "This Time subverter does not care about your ideas, your patterns of consumption..whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby doesn't matter anymore. What matters is essentials: Economy, foreign relations and defense systems. The influence of Marxist/Leninist ideas in the US is absolutely fantastic [remember, this is 1984]."

3. Crisis "It might only take 6-weeks to bring a country to verge of crisis. You can see it in Central America now."

4. Normalization - "With the violent change of power, structure and economy, you have the process of normalization. It may last indefinitely. Normalization is a cynical expression, borrowed from Soviet propaganda."

More excerpts:

"This is what will happen if you allow the schmucks to bring this country to crisis...to promise all kinds of goodies, and the paradise on earth; to destabilize your economy; eliminate principle of free market competition, big brother government in Washington DC, who will promise lots of things, never mind whether the promises are fulfilled or not....never mind, he will create false illusions that situations is under control. Situation is not under control. Situation is disgustingly out of control. It is only an illusion of being in control"

"Stop the military industrial complex from destroying whatever is left of the free world. And it is very easy to do: No credits. No technology. No money. No political or diplomatic recognition, and of course no such idiocy as deals to [fill in the blank]. [...] Stop aiding a bunch of murderers [...]

Educate yourself, understand what's going on around you. You are not living at a time of peace. You are in a state of war. And you have precious little time to save yourself. There is no other place to defect too."

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Democrats Offer to Triple Cuts in Social Spending While Tsunami of Inflation is Headed Our Way.

As "many workers are barely treading water as their wages fail to keep up with rising prices" the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have offered to triple the amount of cuts in social spending for 2011, from $10 billion to $30 billion, in order to appease congressional Republicans, who, after intense lobbying from the Tea Party, want to cut $61 billion,  before the April 8 deadline. These cuts "would mark the largest-ever federal budget cuts in social spending in a single year."

Despite the  criminal behavior of the ruling class, and, that throughout the bankster-created  crisis, their pay grew at pre-downturn clip, the extreme polarization of wealth, as productivity gains continue, and corporate profits surge, continues. It is not estimated that one in four American households have zero or less than zero net worth.

The modest wage growth appears to reflect lower expectations among the unemployed.

"There's a capitulation on the part of workers," said David Resler, chief economist at Nomura Securities. "They're increasingly willing to accept a lower wage than they might have thought they had to when the recession started. The fact that average hourly earnings are now weak or falling is an indication to me that the market is starting to clear."

This gives businesses an additional cushion at a time of higher commodity costs.

"Companies are in the dominant bargaining position," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, a consultancy. "They don't have the added problem of paying more for their wages as well."

And, if that's not depressing enough, according to the National Inflation Association a tsunami of inflation will hit the U.S. due to the Japan crisis.

Links:

It's the Inequality, Stupid

Greenspan Returns to De-Regulation

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Gradual Subversion of the Democratic Party

Many of the traits that we either have or admire in other people...that make us human - loyalty, trustworthiness, faithfulness, a tendency to seek out heroes, etc. - unfortunately, also makes us more likely to ignore evidence that contradicts what we believe to be true. In fact, the evidence to the contrary can manifest itself as large as an elephant, yet we still ignore. In other words, our humanness makes us vulnerable to master manipulators who may very well be less than human.

This brings me to why I believe in the co-option of the left.  The modern liberal – typically associated with the Democratic Party - fears the extremes of wealth and poverty under unrestrained capitalism; thinks all citizens are entitled to the basic necessities of life; champions the protection of the environment, and puts the welfare of all people above the ability of a few to profit enormously from what we’ve been led to believe is the “free market”.

Unlike the Republicans - who,  regardless of their status in life, seem to support the less humanitarian, less "bleeding heart" values of those who dwell at the apex of society - the positions that the Democrats  usually take, make the Democratic Party, in particular, more threatening to the powerful and wealthy. Simply put, the Democrats [used to] believe in speaking truth to power, whereas the ruling class is not interested in truth...only in growing and keeping all of their their wealth and power to themselves.

Therefore, it makes sense, that if the elitists want(ed) to secure their power base, throwing the Democrats/progressives/liberals off their scent...even better, engaging them in the task of defending/supporting their "cause" just might make their road a little easier.  So, why not push their agenda through the Democratic Party; albeit, much more covertly than they do, through the Republican Party.

How?

That's simple, when you consider the aforementioned traits that make us human. It's all about making good use of timing; infiltration, semantics (Orwellian doublespeak); consensus making -  placement of "change agents" or "facilitators" and "divide and conquer" technique (Delphi technique), and let's not forget the Hegelian dialectic (problem-reaction-solution), and/or psychological warfare.  In other words, deceiving the liberals by embedding their operations in issues that appeal to the left.

The evidence for this transformation is right in front of our eyes.  Ever since President Clinton took office, the Democratic Party has gradually moved so far to the right that it's transformed into the Republican party. Moreover, from "the environment" to "family planning", the issues or causes that the Democrats have traditionally supported have been, more or less, co-opted by the ruling class to mask their true motives. 

“I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.”

MR. RUSSERT: Let me pick up on some interviews that you’ve given this week as you’ve been touring, talking about your book, “The Age of Turbulence.” You said this: “I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” Republican?

MR. GREENSPAN: I’m sure he doesn’t like that joke, but if you look at his record compared to what I think appropriate policy ought to be, he’s for free trade, he’s for globalization, he was for welfare reform, fiscal restraint and—true enough, he’s not a Republican. I’m sorry, President Clinton, I didn’t mean to say that. But I must say, I had to follow an awful lot of your particular guidelines and found them very compatible with my own.

Remember DADT/DOMA-signing President Clinton promising that NAFTA wouldn't hurt a bit? Welfare Reform Act of 1996? Repeal of Glass-Steagall Act? DADT?

Fast forward a bit and we have President Bush 2.0 Obama who is a master at cloaking his almost neo-con "actions" in moderate, democratic rhetoric.  Obama, who Jeremy Scahill called "Blackwater's New Sugar Daddy" has upgraded America’s network of overseas detention facilities or ‘black sites’; approved the assassination of American citizens; signed a defense bill that blocks his bid to close Guantanamo Bay;  supports a 3-year extension of Patriot Act surveillance; extending the Bush-era tax cuts for two years, etc. Sure President Obama throws a bone to his base every once in a while, just like the Clinton administration did, but, for the most part, it's just a bone. Unless he's got some super secret strategy I'm unaware,  President Obama is as "Republican" as former President Clinton.

Regarding the co-opting of issues,  take global warming, of which a very strong argument can be made proving it's not man-made.  To be sure, the issue of global warming falls under the category of a "liberal" cause; however, if you dig deep enough and research Agenda 21, "sustainable development" and Global Biodiversity Assessment (the blueprint for Agenda 21) you will find a huge profit motive whose carbon reducing methods exploit all of us, but especially, those who have the least.

In the US, tighter controls on levels of consumption, and standards of living, intrusive carbon taxes, tolls, massive land grabs, conservation easement, zoning restrictions, energy audits, forcing small business to become energy efficient,  etc. are supposed to take place. Some already have.

"... an ‘agricultural world’ in which most human beings are peasants, should be able to support 5 to 7 billion people, probably more if the large agricultural population were supported by an industry-promoting agricultural activity. In contrast, a reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be one billion…” -- U.N. Global Biodiversity Assessment Report, states at page 773:””Whittaker and Likens (1975)

Former President Kennedy defined a liberal as the following:

“ ...someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'.

Granted, as a 'Liberal', he didn't make it far, and maybe that's why he was our second to last liberal president. Former President Johnson was probably our last.

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The Secret Well-Endowed Right.

Josh Reeves' The Secret Right Volume 1:



We hear about Trilateral Commission, Council for Foreign Relations, Bilderberg, but we hear very little about the ultra-conservative, secret, right-winged group, Council for National Policy, who has ties to the American Eugenics Movement.  This fact conflicts directly with the pro-life stance almost all the members, some of whom are listed below, claim so passionately:

Tim LaHaye who started it.
Nelson Bunker Hunt who initially financed it
Richard Melon Scaife
George W. Bush
John McCain
Sarah Palin
Rudy Giuliani
Trent Lott
Jack Abramoff
Erik Prince of Blackwater
Rush Limbaugh
Tom Delay
Mitt Romney
Michelle Bachmann
Jack Kemp
Dick Armey
Dick Cheney
Stephan Harper
Ross Perot
Pierre DuPont
Bob Jones
Mike Huckabee
Donald Rumsfeld
Mark Sanford
Steve Forbes
Tom Clancy
James Dobson
Coors Family
Pat Robertson
Ollie North
Pat Buchanan
Phylis Shlafley
Pat Boone
Jerry Falwell
Jesse Helms
Rev Sun Myung Moon who declared himself as savior, NOT Jesus Christ, yet who so many so-called Christians are financially beholden.

There are many other various interlocking groups, although often much older, fall under the umbrella of the CPN,  The Bohemian Grove is one of those groups. It's  an all male summer camp for the powerful, where decision makers, from cabinet members to captains of industry, cement bonds, and many say, make policy.  A statue of St. John of Nepomuk, who was martyred in 1393 because of his refusal to break the seal of the confessional and divulge the secrets of the queen of Bohemia to the Protestants, stands as a reminder to the oath of secrecy one must take to attend. Those who attend also sacrifice an effigy to a statue of an Owl, often thought to be representative of Moloch, but which is really symbolic of  the owl of Minerva, in order to cast away care so that members will do whatever it takes to succeed in their particular field. Past and present members include anyone and everyone in a powerful position.

Another group is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta with past and present members:

Mayer Amschel de Rothschild
Alan Dulles
Alexander Haig
Avery Dulles
Michael Bloomberg
Bush Family
Bill Clinton
Pat Buchanan
J. Edgar Hoover
Kurt Waldheim
David and Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Mandela
Rick Santorum
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan
Phyllis Schlafly
Erik Prince
Rupert Murdoch
Rudy Giuliani
William Casey
William F. Buckley
William Randolph Hurst
Frank Sinatra
Clay Shaw
Tony Blair
John Bolton
Michael Chertoff
H.L. Hunt
Oliver North
Rev Sun Myung Moon who declared himself as savior, NOT Jesus Christ, yet who so many so-called Christians are financially beholden.

However, the most interesting bit of information in the documentary, The Secret Right comes from the segment on standardized IQ.  One of the highly paid researchers, J. Philippe Rushton, in Charles Murray's highly controversial book, The Bell Curve (funded $3.5 million by The Pioneer Fund, established in 1937 to study racial purity as ideal) claimed that small genitalia may be a sign of superior intelligence.  Really?  I think this falls under the category of "too much information" about researcher, and, in a nutshell, exposes the group who really lacks intelligence: the secret right.

Of course, this same book concludes that blacks are permanently set and hard-wired at a lower level of intelligence than whites and therefore welfare and job-training programs should reconsider spending money to change people who cannot be changed. This is despite evidence to the contrary where blacks scored higher than whites when they came from states with good education systems.

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Republicans Filibuster Cost of Living Adjustment For Seniors, Veterans and Disabled

Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed legislation to provide $250 payments to some 58 million Social Security recipients, veterans and persons with disabilities facing a second straight year without a cost-of-living adjustment. The vote Wednesday in the Senate on Bernie's bill was 53 to 45 in favor of the proposal, but that was short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

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Glen Beck University of Unintelligible "Professors".

Where "weak minds are servilely crouched".

David Barton, a Texas Evangelical who appeared as an "expert" witness in the Texas Board of Education textbook hearings, a frequent guest on Glenn Beck's program, a "professor" at Beck University and who served as the chair of the Texas GOP, launched an effort with Newt Gingrich on behalf of Sharron Angle in Nevada, and stumped for John McCain in 2008 says homosexuality should be regulated.

"So if I got to the Centers for Disease Control and I'm concerned about health, I find some interesting stats there and this should tell me something about health.

Homosexual/bi-sexual individuals are seven times more likely to contemplate or commit suicide. Oooh, that doesn't sound very healthy.

Homosexuals die decades earlier than heterosexuals. That doesn't sound healthy.

Nearly one-half of practicing homosexuals admit to 500 or more sex partners and nearly one-third admit to a thousand or more sex partners in a lifetime.

I mean, you go through all this stuff, sounds to me like that's not very healthy. Why don't we regulate homosexuality?" -- David Barton,

I do believe Thomas Jefferson saw Beck and Barton in his crystal ball when he said the following:

“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.”— Thomas Jefferson

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Corporate Citizens United to Take Over America.

The Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, that allows corporations, unions and interest groups to spend as much as they want on political campaigns opened a Pandora's box of potential ways to exploit the already corrupted campaign process, as well as paving the road for "corporate persons" to to render we the people, obsolete.

Secret corporate "people" are  funneling their funds into nonprofit organizations - who don’t have to disclose their funders, and who can spend as much as half of their revenue on political activities - in order to buy elections that further their corrupt agendas.   Some of these nonprofits appear to be shell groups for political operatives looking to influence races. Mike McIntire of the New York Times investigated one of those groups, the Coalition to Protect Seniors, and came up empty when he tried to track down exactly who was behind the group.

The Supreme Court opened the door for foreign nationals to intervene in American elections. And guess what? The right-wing didn't waste any time, personally escorting them through...patriotic as always. Yep.  Lee Fang from Think Progress broke the story about foreign contributions to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a trade association organized as a 501(c)(6) that can raise and spend unlimited funds without ever disclosing any of its donors, that are possibly being used to fund political ads. They have already raised over $75 million and paid to have ads run more than 8,000 times on behalf of Republican Senate candidates.

"What we found were several fundraising documents that the Chamber has been using in places like Bahrain (and) India. The documents say foreign businesses are welcome and ask that these businesses send money to the same campaign account the 501(c)(6) that the Chamber is using to run attack ads. And they're telling these foreign businesses that they can have a voice in American public policy debates." - Lee Fang

Then, if things aren't bad enough, the Citizens United precedent  threatens to undermine progress in America's hard fought battle for equality.  Specifically, the repeal of the "public accommodations" section of the "The Civil Rights Act" which specifically states: "to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations."

But who and why would anyone want to repeal any part of the Civil Rights Act?  The libertarians, of course, who populate the the "Tea Party" movement, for one. They believe private businesses should be permitted to discriminate without legal repercussions, therefore they believe the public accommodations section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act interferes with the corporate citizen's first amendment rights. Glen Beck, at his “Restoring Honor” rally held on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech," claimed that he and his Tea Party followers would “take back the civil rights movement.”

Links:

Move to Amend

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

* Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our vote and participation count.
* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.

A recent report, Fading Disclosure: Increasing Number of Electioneering Groups
Keep Donors’ Identities Secret by Public Citizen found that in the 2004 elections, 98% of outside groups disclosed the names of donors who paid for their political ads.  Fast forward four years and only 32% disclosed the names of donors.

GOP Quietly Funded Foreign Donations.

Republicans Thwart New Campaign Finance Disclosure Rules As DISCLOSE Act Fails Procedural Vote in Senate

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You Didn't Get Mad.

As far as I know the following came from wall dude posting on the democratic underground. It's well worth the read:

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you saw the Abu Grahib photos.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city drown.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when.. when... wait for it... when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all ok with you but helping other Americans... well fuck that. That about right? You know it is.

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Great Depression For Low Income Workers.

Total unemployment has more than doubled over the past two years, and the number of underemployed; i.e., those persons working part time for economic reasons, has also more than doubled. In addition, the nation’s labor force shrunk by nearly one million over the past year rather than rising by 1.5 million as earlier projected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, no one has addressed the question, "Which American workers suffer the most from the deep deterioration in labor markets?" Until now, that is.

A new unemployment study reports that low income groups face unemployment on a massive and unprecedented scale --unemployment levels over 30%. At the same time, America's top income brackets are experiencing lower than average unemployment rates of anywhere from 3-4%. As if things weren't bad enough, underemployment and hidden unemployment (individuals who have given up) rates are also at record levels for lower income groups with rates at the 16% for those at the bottom, and 1-1.5% at the top.

If you break it down, professional employment is up 2%, management down 3%, clerical work down 10%, and construction and production work is down 22%. Although, if you depend on the mainstream media for your information, you would think things are reversed as they tend to portray atypical examples of the unemployed...financial managers, professionals and Wall Street employees.

Meanwhile, back at the Beltway, the U.S. Senate prepares to hold a vote on the $15 billion jobs bill (will need 60 votes to pass) aimed at spurring job creation (est. 180,000 new jobs) when lawmakers return Monday. The centerpiece of the bill includes a payroll tax break for employers who hire new workers, unemployed more than 60 days. It also includes measures aimed at improving access to capital for small businesses, an extension of the current federal subsidy formula for road and bridge repairs carried out by states, and a modest expansion of federally subsidized bonds to help local governments raise funds for infrastructure projects.

However, just last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) replaced a bipartisan job- creation bill with a more streamlined version of the legislation because, as sources said, McConnell would not agree to bring the bipartisan jobs bill to the floor quickly and Reid became concerned McConnell would drag out the process and the bill would ultimately fail.

So, is this a case of Republicans publicly calling for a jobs bill, but privately working to derail it?

According to Roll Call, Republican Senate leaders told more than 100 lobbyists yesterday that they plan to oppose the bill because of the process -- not because of the actual policy.

"The feeling is they aren't going to say anything in opposition to the bill, except to say it's incomplete," a lobbyist who attended the meeting said. "They are not opposed to the bill, they just believe their rights as the minority have been abridged."

Is it me, or are the Republicans acting like a bunch of school girls?

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Devout Laissez-Faire Reagan Appointee Declares Failure of Capitlism.

Aside from greed, stupidity, and corruption, it's clear that today's economic meltdown has much to do with a general lack of transparency, deregulation of the financial system, excessive leverage, the financial engineering of overly complicated and opaque securities, compensation mechanisms that in the words of James Surowiecki, "even when people recognized the possibility of dragons, they decided it was in their short-term interests (even if it wasn't in their company's interests) to run the risk of getting incinerated anyway", and a blindly or naively optimistic view of free market capitalism that ignores the inevitability of market imperfections.

Despite all the evidence, many of the conservatives are trying to market their own version of why our financial system crashed, and that is that the crash is actually the fault of government regulation. However, there are a few "free market" cheerleaders who have reversed their Panglossian ideas about laissez-faire economics. One of those men is Ronald Reagan appointed, Judge Richard Posner, author of A Failure of Capitalism The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression

The conservatives believe the depression is the result of unwise government policies. I believe it is a market failure...Without any government regulation of the financial industry, the economy, would in all likelihood, be in a depression. We are learning from it that we need a more active and intelligent government to keep our model of a capitalist economy from running off the rails. The movement to deregulate the financial industry went too far by exaggerating the resilience—the self-healing powers—of laissez-faire capitalism.

The depression has hit economic libertarians in the solar plexus because it is largely a consequence not of the government’s overregulating the economy, by doing so fettering free enterprise, rather innate limitations of the free market.” -- Judge Richard Posner, appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, and one of the nation’s most prolific legal defenders of free-market economics.

I greatly admire Judge Posner's willingness to rethink some of his fundamental beliefs about free market capitalism, however, after listening to Robert Reich, who I respect immensely, and the Judge discuss it on Tom Ashbrook's On Point radio show, I'm not sure he (Judge Posner) is fully convinced.

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The story that should bring down the republican party

It is a simple story to tell, as ugly and complicated as it is to untangle. The republican party has used its power to undermine and suppress the votes of those most likely to vote Democratic in order to keep power. It should spell doom for the republican party for decades to come.

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