It’s ridiculous, but this article in the LA Times about the Supreme Count decision on Clean Elections last summer captures the essence bf the false premises and dishonest motives behind the drive to repeal the program:

Conservative political neophytes like Smith have steadily taken over Arizona politics since voters passed the Clean Elections Act in 1998, a demonstration that the real-world effects of policy can defy partisan stereotypes. Now conservatives are scrambling to come up with new ways to finance challengers to the more centrist Republicans who once dominated state politics.

“That’s something that’s being lost in the reaction to this Supreme Court decision,” said Rudy Espino, a political scientist at Arizona State University. “This decision could actually help Democrats in the next election.”

Espino noted that conservatives — frequently those who favor a tough stance against illegal immigration — have steadily ousted incumbent Republicans in primaries over the years, which are dominated by party activists. Especially in legislative races, the winner of the GOP primary usually wins the election. That’s shifted Arizona’s politics strongly to the right.

“Clean Elections was one of those decisions that is an example of unintended consequences,” Espino said.

That narrative of Clean Elections pushing Arizona Republicans to the right is plausible, to the extent that it requires one to ignore the rest of the country completely. Arizona is one of very few states in the country that has any type of public campaign finances but we’re far from the only state plagued by wild-eyed right wing zealot lawmakers acting weird and introducing harmful bills. I like to use the example of Michele Bachmann, who got all the way from school board to the Minnesota state assembly to Congress to (briefly) being considered as serious Presidential candidate. Bachmann, who is clearly off her rocker, never received a dime of public campaign finance. Senator Steve Smith, referenced in the article, was elected in 2010 when the Tea Party wave swept rabid conservative neophytes in to state legislatures and Congressional seats across the nation. He credits Clean Elections for his victory, which is a true statement, in a sense, since that’s where he got his campaign funding. But you can’t blame Clean Elections for the wingnuttiness of Arizona legislators Frank Antenori, Scott Bundgaard, Lori Klein, Al Melvin, Terri Proud, Amanda Reeve, or Ted Vogt, to name a few, since none of them ran Clean.

Put the blame where it lies: On conservative think tanks, evangelical religious movements, and talk radio and Fox News propagandists. Also on all the self-serving Republican lobbyists and consultants in Arizona who were only too eager to push wedge issues election after election to get the flock to the polls so their big clients could get their tax cuts and deregulation. Pointing the finger and crying “Clean Elections done it!” absolves them of their past responsibility and allows them to pretend they can’t help having to donate to Senator Lori Klein, gun brandishin’ Tea Partier and GOP fundraiser “extraordinaire” now. They’ll wring their hands over the occasional embarrassment of a Birther bill but overall they’ve gotten most of what they want out of the Republican-controlled legislature.

Which is why the argument that getting rid of Clean Elections will help Democrats is simply ludicrous. With the exception of the few districts in which Dem voters are a majority, Democratic candidates in Arizona are usually at a substantial disadvantage against Republicans in traditional fundraising. Make no mistake, that is why business interests are so keen on killing public campaign financing.

“If the whole system went away, both Democrats and Republicans would have to reach out to a broader spectrum of people,” said Glenn Hamer, president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. “We would view that as a positive.”

Oh please. Hamer is disingenuously playing the “both sides are equally bad” false equivalence card here. The whackadoodles are on the Republican side and he knows it. He played a part in getting them there since he’s a former executive director of the AZ GOP. And he’s trying to pretend that the elitism at the heart of opposition to Clean Elections is truly populist. Nice try, Chamber of Commerce dude. The argument against Clean Elections is rooted in elitism. The narrative is that political extremism emanates from the working classes, and if you let the riffraff have a crack at elected office everything goes to hell. So it’s best to keep elected offices in the hands of the consultants, lobbyists, and business leaders who are the proper stewards of democracy. For some reason there are journalists, Democratic leaders, and even university professors who buy it.

2. Define “medical emergency” to encompass “significant health risks,” namely only those circumstances in which a pregnant woman’s life or a major, physical bodily function is threatened.

Nebraska passed a similar law last year and this New York Times piece described that ghastly consequences to one Nebraska woman as a result of their 20 week abortion ban:

They permit abortions after 20 weeks only to avert the death or “serious physical impairment of a major bodily function” of the mother. There are no exceptions for rape or incest, none for less dire medical threats or mental health.

Nor, under the laws, is an abortion allowed after 20 weeks when a fetus is discovered to be catastrophically impaired but still living, as is sometimes discovered by routine ultrasounds in midpregnancy.

Last fall, Danielle and Robb Deaver of Grand Island, Neb., found that their state’s new law intruded in a wrenching personal decision. Ms. Deaver, 35, a registered nurse, was pregnant with a daughter in a wanted pregnancy, she said. She and her husband were devastated when her water broke at 22 weeks and her amniotic fluid did not rebuild.

Her doctors said that the lung and limb development of the fetus had stopped, that it had a remote chance of being born alive or able to breathe, and that she faced a chance of serious infection.

In what might have been a routine if painful choice in the past, Ms. Deaver and her husband decided to seek induced labor rather than wait for the fetus to die or emerge. But inducing labor, if it is not to save the life of the fetus, is legally defined as abortion, and doctors and hospital lawyers concluded that the procedure would be illegal under Nebraska’s new law.

After 10 days of frustration and anguish, Ms. Deaver went into labor naturally; the baby died within 15 minutes and Ms. Deaver had to be treated with intravenous antibiotics for an infection that developed.

Ms. Deaver said she got angry only after the grief had settled. “This should have been a private decision, made between me, my husband and my doctor,” she said in a telephone interview.

These arbitrary abortion restrictions spring from the fervid imaginations of social conservatives who believe that women routinely abort late term, viable pregnancies on a whim. SB2838 is riddled with language that patronizes women and treats us like mentally and morally deficient children. In the fantasy world Kimberly Yee inhabits, there are practically never valid health reasons to terminate a pregnancy and she, despite her complete lack of medical credentials, is qualified to substitute her judgment for that of trained health care providers on the medical necessity of the procedure. And such a necessity is practically nonexistent, as far as she’s concerned. A severe fetal deformity is no reason to abort until the woman has gone into a life threatening infection.

Mind you, this will probably be held out as the “moderate” alternative to Sen. Smith’s personhood bill.

1. Komen/Planned Parenthood smackdown. Supporters of comprehensive (and that includes reproductive) women’s health care pushed back hard on the Komen Foundation’s ideologically driven decision to pull breast cancer screening grants to low income women from Planned Parenthood and came out the winners. For some good national-level analysis on it, check out the excellent work Amanda Marcotte and Lauren Kelley have done. If you still doubt the extent of the victory, look no further than Arizona’s own Cathi Herrod of the socially conservative Center for Arizona Policy, who is very miffed about what she sees as Komen’s “waffling” and the pro-choice movement’s refusal to back down on women’s health.

Planned Parenthood has activated their base and is in full attack mode. We need to send a positive message to the Komen Foundation and pray they have courage and boldness during this time.

In that same blog post Herrod grouses about the Obama administration standing strong against the attempts of theocratic reactionaries to deny women contraception in private health plans. The moral of the story is that when we fight back, we win. And it hacks off Cathi Herrod, which is always a worthy endeavor.

2. Goldwater Institute exposed. The AZ legislature dropped a spate of bills designed to break public sector unions and cut the pay of teachers and first responders. It’s been described as “Wisconsin on steroids” and already the response is rivaling what happened in Wisconsin with educators, public safety workers, and advocates for working families amassing protests and press events to fight back. The Goldwater Institute was instrumental in drafting the anti-worker legislation, having feted WI Governor Scott Walker back in November at a fundraiser. GI is getting national exposure for this and much of it is not flattering. EJ Montini of the Arizona Republic called foul on both the Legislature and the (unelected) Goldwater Institute, whom he describes as “waging war on children, on sick people, on poor people, on teachers and on unions.” Kudos for the Mother Jones reference, EJ.

The moral of the story here is that the Goldwater Institute, which has presented itself for years as an objective academic organization serving lofty libertarian principles, is being exposed for what it really is – a big business lobbying group pushing ALEC legislation. Like the radical “pro-life” zealots who have finally gone too far by going after breast cancer screenings and birth control, GI has gone too far with this attack on highly regarded public servants.

Arizona progressives, let’s have a toast with the beverage of our choice over the nice victories of the past week and brace ourselves for next week.

O’Keefe’s video shows individuals in polling stations throughout New Hampshire attempting to vote using the name of recently deceased persons in this week’s primary election. While his video shows smooth-sailing for every attempt, the reality is that the actions were so suspicious, they prompted a voting supervisor to call the police. Before O’Keefe released his edited version of the attempts, news outlets were already printing reports on this suspicious behavior.

As a result, O’Keefe has demonstrated that attempting to systematically rig an election via voter impersonation fraud is not feasible at the scale necessary without being caught. Instead, proposed Voter ID laws would only make it harder for legitimate citizens to be able to vote. One election law expert told TPM that O’Keefe’s next video should “show how easy it is to rob a bank with a plastic gun.” While such a move could be done a few times, there are already laws against it—just like laws against voter impersonation—and such a person would get caught pretty quickly.

Of course, someone attempting to rob a bank with a plastic gun to prove what they perceive as a legal weakness would likely run afoul of the law—and it looks like O’Keefe’s attempts at voter fraud are no different.

But none of that is going to deter our GOP state legislators from attempting to erect yet more barriers to voting based on apocryphal tales of hordes of undocumented Mexicans casting votes. Back in December State Senator and crazy person Sylvia Allen made the claim to a Tea Party gathering in Payson. And she had proof, y’all. Eyewitness accounts of those people flagrantly registering to vote! In front of Hispanic markets and everything!

Sen. Allen also decried various efforts to increase voter turnouts, with things like mail-in ballots and online voter registration. Allen said efforts to make it easier to register and vote could make it much easier for illegal immigrants to sway elections. “There are people voting who should not vote and there are lots of them. It’s bad enough that they’re here without permission.”

She cited as an example the successful effort to recall Senate President Russell Pearce who gained national attention for pushing strong state measures to curb illegal immigration. She said people in front of markets in Hispanic communities in Pearce’s district registered people to vote.

“There were people at those markets who hated Russell Pearce. They were registering people for a month, but no one checked that. One reason they want open borders is they want to merge us with Mexico.

“They’re being lied to and told they can vote. We need to work on this. What are we going to do if people can’t see it’s you voting (with an online ballot or mail-in ballot). We need to see what we can do to protect our vote.”

Ironic how it was not too long ago mail-in ballots and online registration heavily favored the “right” kind of voters but now they have to go because the “wrong” kind of voters have more access to computers.

But Cheuvront, who said he made it known months ago he would run again for the Senate, throws a monkey wrench into those plans.

“I said if you’re going to run as a team, I’m going to run with my mom,” Cheuvront said.

I thought there was nothing I hated more than Democratic primaries (with good reason), but now I can amend that to say there’s nothing I hate more than vindictive Democrats who force a primary because someone didn’t play nice.*

I guess Cheuv thinks we’re in high school.

Memories of high school bullies aside, I can’t help but wonder where Cheuvront’s heart is. If you remember your local history, you’ll remember that Cheuvront ran for Justice of the Peace in 2010 when he got termed out of the Senate, but he got kicked off the ballot for using the wrong petitions to collect signatures. Not that this matters significantly, except it indicates a fickle, nonchalant, and arrogant attitude – either he was planning on dropping JP mid-term to run for the Senate seat again or he’s punishing other Dems for his petition mistake and doesn’t care what seat he runs for.

Regardless of Cheuvront’s reasons for running, he didn’t need to be vindictive about it. It’s a shame he’s forcing a primary in the House by dragging his mom into the race. Having said that, I’ll be open-minded and listen to all the House candidates. A part of me can’t help but consider the irony of Cheuvront losing the Senate primary but his mom, Jean McDermott, winning a House primary. I just think it’s kind of a cool thing for McDermott to have done.

As for the Senate, Cheuvront hasn’t endeared himself to me with his retaliatory and immature comments, but I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d vote for him over Rep. Hobbs anyway.

Welcome to the 2012 Legislative Races!

*This isn’t quite true. There are a lot of things I hate more than Democratic primaries, like green peas, comic sans, and people who think ‘irregardless’ is a word.

Statement from David Lujan on Board of Supervisors’ Appointment to Arizona Senate
Lujan vows to advance forward-thinking, inclusive vision for Arizona

PHOENIX – “I’m grateful for the opportunity to complete the term of my former seatmate, Kyrsten Sinema, and look forward to fighting harder than ever before for the forward-thinking, inclusive values that the voters of our district hold dear. The Arizona Legislature will be faced with two competing options this session. We can either return to the divisive, destructive agenda of Tea Party extremists; or we can pursue an agenda to jumpstart Arizona ’s business climate by embracing our diversity as a strength, and remain laser-focused on creating quality jobs and world-class schools,” Lujan said Wednesday morning. “I look forward to that debate, and look forward to standing on the side of prosperity and inclusion.”

Lujan was appointed to the Senate after being selected by fellow Democrats in Legislative District 15 and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors for the seat. He will be sworn in on the floor of the Senate tomorrow, January 12, during the Senate’s regular floor session.

“I know there will be some who take issue with my appointment,. I humbly ask them to join me in looking to the future; that we might move forward together, fighting side by side for hard-working Arizonans in this Centennial Legislature. Let me be perfectly clear: it is only by standing together that Arizonans of good will can put a stop to the destructive agenda of the remaining extremist Republicans, and I look forward to standing tall for a prosperous, long-term vision of Arizona,” Lujan said. “It’s no mystery what kind of policies it takes to get Arizona moving in the right direction: policies that focus on quality schools and that value diversity. Anyone who is willing to let personal gain get in the way of those policies should consider themselves on notice.”

Lujan’s priorities for the 2012 Legislative Session include:

Working with Sen. Steve Gallardo as co-sponsor of a bill repealing SB 1070.
Fighting for our children’s education, including restoring funding for public schools.
Supporting SB 1071, which would prohibit racial profiling in Arizona .
Standing up for the rule of law by opposing any appropriations to MCSO should it fail to cooperate with the DOJ Civil Rights Investigation, and joining with other community leaders and elected officials across Arizona in calling for the resignation of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

David Lujan is a former three-term member of the Arizona Legislature, where he was the prime sponsor of the Arizona DREAM Act and a proud advocate for additional funding for English Language Learners. He is also a former Phoenix Union High School District Governing Board President, where he helped reform schools, improve student achievement and led the charge to create a district-wide Cesar Chavez holiday. A nationally-recognized child welfare attorney, Lujan serves as Chief Administrator of a college preparatory charter school in Central Phoenix . He has lived in Central Phoenix for over 15 years.

It’s not my district and I didn’t have a dog in the fight. I like both Lujan and Ken Clark. I know people are still understandably upset with Lujan for abstaining from the SB1070 vote in 2010 (and we all know why he did) but I think Lujan’s statement demonstrates contrition by embracing strong progressive stances. If he’s pandering I don’t care because he’s pandering to us, for once, instead of making a big point of how moderate he is.

Speaking of how incredibly popular progressivism is, some of y’all may have seen this:

Pretty remarkable considering how hard the right wing has been working to denigrate the word ‘progressive’ as it did with ‘liberal’, which actually isn’t faring too badly either (and beating ‘libertarian’, ha!). Notably, 68% of independents have a favorable association with ‘progressive’. Arizona skews somewhat more libertarian than the rest of the country but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a big hunger for progressive change here too. Arizonans have expanded Medicaid, increased the minimum wage, created First Things First (early childhood education and support), authorized medical marijuana (okay that’s libertarian too), etc. Hugging the middle and being eager to compromise with the Republicans isn’t the best course for Democrats in every case. And doing so all the time needlessly demoralizes the left and doesn’t necessarily resonate with independents.

Brewer’s statement said she believed the investigation was a politically motivated attack on her family. She said she believes it began with an anonymous complaint to Social Security before last year’s election.

Cry me a river, will ya? Had Jan Brewer not lucked into a successful political career by spouting simplistic social conservative platitudes and were simply Jan Brewer, x-ray tech of Glendale, whatever public assistance she and her family were getting (including everything going to her institutionalized son) would be characterized as “welfare”. She’d be exactly the kind of person whom Republican politicians call a “loser” and whom they derisively suggest should turn to churches and private charity. Because, you know, $619 a day for a state facility and $450 a month or so for disability is forcibly redistributing wealth from hardworking achieving Job Creators^TM, isn’t it? And maybe she should be drug tested, like conservative lawmakers want other recipients of government aid to be.

I had Kathleen’s back at the beginning:

Arizonans have become masters at throwing the covers over their heads. Over and over, they close their eyes to the tough issues. As if all those cold realities, from an out-of-whack state budget to lagging student scores, might magically go away.

No more hitting the snooze button. The new Arizona Directions 2012 report, laying out data and critical issues, should be the final wake-up call.

The report, a joint project of Arizona State University and the Arizona Community Foundation, was presented at the Morrison Institute’s annual State of Our State gathering Wednesday in Phoenix.

Back in the summer of 2009, when the Legislature failed to meet the budget deadline, I met a nice woman down at the Capitol. She was a pink-slipped teacher who told me she voted R down the whole ticket every election and “had no idea how crazy they are!” I can forgive the pink-slipped teacher for her lack of attention to her representatives but I cannot forgive Kathleen Ingley (much as I usually like her work) for this:

Wake-up call: The state Legislature is more and more divorced from the views of the average Arizonan.

Just 27 percent of Arizonans in the Merrill/Morrison poll are satisfied with state government. No wonder. Most legislative districts are so dominated by one party that the general election is meaningless. The real decision is made in highly partisan primary contests, which favor more extreme candidates.

It’s time to adopt open-primary elections in which candidates compete, regardless of affiliation, for two slots in the general election. The idea has support from 58 percent of Arizonans, according to the poll.

The bulk of her column reads as a straight indictment of conservative kookiness and craptacular GOP policies but in this section Kathleen simply had to play the Both Sides Are Equally Bad^TM game and shill for top-two primaries. Really, Kathleen? That’s your takeaway from all this? That is unbelievable.

My Google Alert for Center for Arizona Policy popped up last night and it was Cathi Herrod’s weekly “5 Minutes for Families”. The latest installment is about the importance of stalwartness in protecting traditional marriage from the liberal gay plague: Never Let Our Guard Down.

While the marriage amendment victory was a critical step to protecting marriage in Arizona, we would be foolish to think our work is done to ensure marriage is never redefined. A recent poll from the liberal Public Policy Polling group claims a smaller margin of Arizona voters now support traditional marriage – 45% say same-sex “marriage” should be illegal, and 44% say it should be legal. Their poll also says that a majority of voters think that Arizona should establish marriage counterfeits like domestic partnerships.

Of course, the poll did not ask whether marriage should be defined as only the union of one man and one woman. The questions were not exactly neutral, and the polling company typically works for those who want to redefine marriage. The obvious intent is to begin laying a foundation to ask Arizona voters to redefine marriage in the next ten years or so.

The poll shows the “never give up” commitment of marriage opponents to eventually win on the marriage issue. These organizations are well funded and are well organized. Marriage opponents will be out registering voters and working hard to influence the 2012 elections. At CAP, our team will never let our guard down in our stand to see marriage stay the union of one man and one woman.

They certainly won’t. And their dedication to the pursuit of micromanaging your personal life for the Lord does not preclude dishonest Earthly means to attain Heavenly theocratic ends. Note Herrod’s mention of “marriage counterfeits like domestic partnerships”. Now, this is interesting because Prop 102 in 2008 was the “Marriage Protection Act”. It was sold to voters as a state constitutional amendment that would simply define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. The proponents of the measure made a big deal of emphasizing that the state of marriage, and only marriage, was under consideration.

This was because in 2006 Arizona voters had narrowly defeated a proposed amendment with broader language that included denying legal rights to all unmarried couples.

To preserve and protect marriage in this state, only a union between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage by this state or its political subdivisions and no legal status for unmarried persons shall be created or recognized by this state or its political subdivisions that is similar to that of marriage.

So they came back two years later.

Didn’t we already vote on this?

Nope. In 2006, the voters focused on a different issue—benefits for unmarried couples. Prop 102 is a different amendment with different language. Prop 102 is 20 simple and clear words that define marriage as only the union of one man and one woman. That’s all.

But, I believe everyone is entitled to the same rights. Doesn’t Prop 102 take rights away from some people?

No. Prop 102 does not take rights away from anyone. Prop 102 simply defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Everyone has the right to live as they choose, but no one has the right to redefine marriage for all of society. Voting “yes” on Prop 102 secures the definition of marriage for future generations.

See? You were being silly and overwrought if you thought Prop 102 was an effort to invalidate unmarried relationships! It was all about marriage. Marriage, marriage, marriage. Oh wait.

Their poll also says that a majority of voters think that Arizona should establish marriage counterfeits like domestic partnerships.

Geez, why would Cathi care about people in alternative arrangements now that the precious holy institution of hetero marriage is secure?

After Prop. 107 went down to defeat by a vote of 48-52 percent, supporters of same-sex marriage adopted a clear strategy: They would back new partnership benefits, then frame the public debate around protecting those benefits, all the while paving the way for same-sex marriage. But opponents of gay marriage also learned from their loss. They decided to push for a simple, straightforward amendment that would enshrine the traditional definition of marriage without touching the domestic partnership issues raised in 2006, thus making it difficult for the opposition to obscure the central issue. “Just the simple definition of marriage was what we wanted to do,” said Herrod. “Other issues related to that would be addressed at a different time.”

Cathi and her crew got right on “other issues related to that” once Jan Brewer became Governor, didn’t they?

My dear friend Diane D’Angelo, who by the way is an outstanding correspondent on Arizona for Huffington Post, wrote on Facebook yesterday that a Capitol Times reporter asked her if she really thought ALEC wrote laws for GOP legislators in Arizona. I’m now looking for someone to suture my tongue together, quoth Diane about that. I understand the sentiment. Those of us who have been painstakingly explaining how the American Legislative Exchange Council wields tremendous power over state legislatures, with facts and cites to back us up, are rather tired of so-called “legitimate” journalists treating it as if it’s sort of a wacky conspiracy theory akin to 9-11 Truth or chemtrails. I understand why Cap Times might act that way – they rely heavily on ad revenue from the very lobbyists they cover in their newspaper. Same with the major newspapers and TV news teams vis a vis corporate ad revenue. But even Stephen Lemons of the New Times had to reassure his readers he’s “not a conspiracy-minded individual” in his otherwise credible coverage of the ALEC conference and planned protests in Scottsdale.

My theory is there are a couple of things going on here, aside from the aforementioned corporate interests. The first is plain old butthurt among local journos that out of staters (NPR and In These Times) scooped them on the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), ALEC, and Russell Pearce connection back in 2010. There was some brief, superficial coverage but a false choice narrative developed quickly among the Arizona chattering class that Russell Pearce couldn’t have gotten SB1070 straight from ALEC because he’s always been such an anti-immigrant demagogue. I also recall a Twitter exchange I had with Casey Newton, then the political reporter for the Republic, where he dismissed the NPR story and the private prison connection due to some nitpicks over a minor inconsistency or two (which didn’t detract from the main story at all). The second thing is that ALEC is an organization that keeps aspects of its operations, such as meetings and legislator member lists, secret. Now, lots of very powerful organizations do key parts of their operations in secret (CIA, military, etc.) and no one doubts that. But concocting elaborate imaginary secret networks is also the stock in trade of conspiracy loons. So kneejerk defenses tend to go up when people see “secret”. It triggers the “wacky conspiracy” switch in their brains, especially if it’s something unfamiliar, like ALEC is to most people. But reporters should really try to deactivate that switch and activate the “powerful and scary” one where ALEC is concerned.

This may seem like a re-hash, and it is, but I’m going for a conceptual frame here. Call it the conspiracy theory-free case for why ALEC should be taken more seriously by mainstream reporters:

History

ALEC was formed in 1973 by a small group of right wing politicians and operatives including a crafty neo-con nutbag named Paul Weyrich. Weyrich was a fundamentalist Christian who wanted to reshape America as a Dominionist theocracy but he also liked sweet, sweet corporate money and power. So he and his pals formed the American Legislative Exchange Council to be a clearinghouse of conservative and business-friendly economic policies and to wield influence over state legislatures. They figured, rightly, that it would be easier to shove anti-environment, anti-worker, anti-regulation laws on Americans via the states rather than Congress, which people tend to pay more attention to. More people can name their member of Congress than can name their state reps so state reps can do a lot of damage, largely under the radar. Weyrich was also super hostile to the peons voting.

“I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

What a guy. But, as you can see, the history behind the conservative-corporate nexis that is ALEC is documented and easily verified.

Eyewitness Testimony

I’m sure State Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) would be more than willing to share his experience with reporters and others still having trouble grasping that ALEC is a real, and formidable thing. Pocan, a staunch liberal, somehow managed to finagle an ALEC membership and has attended some of their national conferences. In the linked Progressive piece Pocan recounts vividly the atmosphere of secrecy and paranoia that pervades ALEC.

The level of paranoia at the convention by the ALEC staff was intense. They had added security to keep outsiders away. Even people who tried to register for the convention from outside groups like the Center for Media and Democracy were kicked out and the person’s picture was known by all the staff.

When two people from the Center for American Progress were kicked out, they even had altercations with them. Outside of one of the secret evening events, they were physically accosted and one person left bleeding by the end.

No video cameras were allowed. They nervously paced the hallways at all levels looking for suspicious characters. When you went to one of the Task Force meetings where they actually approve the corporate model legislation, only task force members can even get a copy of what is presented. And since members are selected by their state delegation leaders, no one like me would ever get on a task force.

Pocan isn’t able to get into the super-duper secret inner sanctum task force meetings but I think it should be clear from what he has witnessed that ALEC is a shady and profoundly undemocratic outfit.

I understand why they have such intense secrecy. They should. They are nothing more than a front for passing on corporate and special interest wish lists to conservative legislators, really a matchmaking service as I have described before. Call it corporate match.com I guess. But it is clear what goes on.

So Rep. Pocan is talking a lot about the secrecy here but it’s his firsthand account and you can ask him directly about it if you want.

Model legislation, and lots of it.

Really guys, the grunt work has been done for you, research-wise. Whistle-blowers from inside ALEC provided the Center for Media and Democracy with reams of model legislation secretly voted on by ALEC legislator and corporate members. Voted on in secret with no public input. CMD created a website called ALEC Exposed where they have helpfully categorized and analyzed the model bills and resolutions. A veritable treasure trove straight from the source. There are also good secondary source reports like this one from People for the American Way and Common Cause doing a side-by-side comparison of ALEC model bills and actual bills introduced by the Arizona Legislature, including the infamous SB1070. Why not try reading all this stuff and seeing how factual and well-sourced it is and why it matters greatly to the lives and well-being of Arizonans? Why not develop a full understanding of what ALEC is and what it does before playing that dismissive and condescending he said/she said false equivalence game some of you do so well? I know you have deadlines but, sheesh, they put it on easy-to-read charts for you! You guys have demonstrated repeatedly how every time the Goldwater Institute farts up a “research” paper it ends up being an 8 part series about pension abuse (or whatever the corporate issue du jour is) on the front page and the topic of breathless “investigative” coverage on the evening news. So I know you can do it. If you choose not to do legit coverage on ALEC for whatever reason (maybe your job security) just please spare us the snotty conspiracy insinuations, okay? ALEC isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a travesty.