Ohio Governor is ALEC Puppet

Oil billionaires Charles and David Koch use their massive wealth to fund many right-wing organizations and stink tanks, including the Tea Party and Americans for Prosperity, but the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) gives them the best return on their investment. The Koch brothers bankroll ALEC task forces as they create “model bills” and hand them to GOP legislators who are also members of ALEC. Those lawmakers sponsor the model bills in their respective state legislatures, including Ohio, and get them passed into laws, making the Koch brothers’ extreme fundamentalism legally binding.

Ohioans can thank the Koch brothers, ALEC’s Ohio legislators, and Governor John Kasich for the extreme education laws that have been passed in recent years. One piece of ALEC educational legislation is HB 555, “The Ohio School Report Card Bill,” which houses the infamous “Third Grade Guarantee.” ALEC also orchestrated several new changes that were passed in Ohio’s biennial budgets, including a new school funding plan, the expansion of the school voucher program, and changes to the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System (OTES.) To see what other educational policies the Koch brothers and ALEC have waiting in the wings, check this out.

According to Bill Phillis of the Ohio Education and Adequacy Coalition: “ALEC is a champion of charter schools and voucher legislation and thus is geared toward starving the public common school. K-12 Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online charter schools, paid its CEO Ron Packard $5 million in total compensation in 2011. Additionally, Packard owns millions of dollars in company shares, not a bad compensation package for a school superintendent. He is on the ALEC Education Task Force. The Ohio Virtual Academy charter school is operated by K-12, Inc. Ohioans should recognize that tax dollars (deducted from school districts) are being used to support a superintendent’s salary of $5 million plus millions in company shares, while many school districts are cutting essential programs and services due to lack of funds. Ohio taxpayers are subsidizing outrageous salaries and benefits of for-profit charter operators, and slick, expensive marketing. On average, charter schools spend twice as much per pupil on administration as traditional school districts.”

ALEC pulls the strings of Republican governors around the country, many of whom are ALEC alumni like Kasich, and Charles and David Koch are the hands-on puppet-masters who help ALEC control the legislative process in those states. Every time another “school reform” bill is signed into law in the Buckeye state, this loud melodic pledge, sung to the tune written by Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn, can be heard coming from the 30^th Floor of the Riffe Center:

Pull the string and I’ll work for you, I’m your puppet,
I’ll say funny things if you want me to, I’m your puppet,
I’ll be yours to have and to hold,
Brothers, you’ve got total control of your puppet.

Pull another string and I’ll sign your bills, I’m your puppet,
Snap your fingers and I’ll give you thrills, I’m your puppet,
Your every wish is my command,
All you gotta do is wiggle your hands,
I’m your puppet, I’m your puppet.

Pull them little strings and I’ll sing you this song, I’m your puppet,
Make me do right or make me do wrong, I’m your puppet,
Treat me good and I’ll do anything,
I’m just a puppet and you hold my string, I’m your puppet,
Yeah, I’m your puppet.

Remember in November.

Think.

ALEC Can’t Buy Our Love

“I’ll buy you a diamond ring my friend,
If it makes you feel all right,
I’ll get you anything my friend,
If it makes you feel all right,
‘Cause I don’t care too much for money,
For money can’t buy me love…” 

Money can’t buy our love, John Lennon and Paul McCartney told us so in 1964; but can money buy elections?  Federal court rulings in 2010 tried to make that an ALEC dream-come-true, when political action committees (PACs) were given the green light to spend unlimited amounts of money on political races. The ruling, called Citizens United, also emboldened dark money groups, so-called nonprofits that don’t disclose their donors publicly. Those groups spent $256 million, just over a quarter of all non-party outside spending, in the 2012 elections.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the GOP continually support policies to increase the likelihood that the candidate with the most money and corporate support will win. Its 2009 Resolution Supporting Citizen Involvement in Elections bluntly “opposes all efforts to limit citizen involvement by limiting campaign contributions.”  http://alecexposed.org/w/images/f/f2/7G4-Resolution_in_Support_of_the_Citizens_United_Decision_Exposed.pdf

For all the spending it helped enable, Citizens United did not single-handedly determine the results of the last two elections. The biggest groups saw little return on their investment.  The Koch Brothers’ American Crossroads, 2012′s top outside spender, had a success rate of just 6.6 percent in the general election, meaning that over 93 percent of that money was spent attacking candidates who won anyway or supporting ones who did not prevail. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/01/four-years-after-citizens-united-the-fallout/

Facts such as these don’t stop the corporate donors behind ALEC who persist in their efforts to buy elections to this day. In Ohio, conservative-leaning newspapers continually inform readers that ALEC alumnus John Kasich leads the race for political contributions over Democratic challenger Ed Fitzgerald.  According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, as well as the Columbus Dispatch, Kasich has $9.3 million on hand after raising nearly $1.8 million in the most recent reporting period.  To their credit, those newspapers did report that among Kasich’s maximum contributors was conservative industrialist David Koch, one half of the Koch Brothers’ duo, but no mention was made of the Kochs’ close ties to ALEC.

ODP Chairman Chris Redfern responded to the campaign finance articles by saying, “The Republican cash dominance is to be expected for incumbents.  We’re running against an incumbent governor.  He’s pretty well tied into Wall Street. John Kasich benefits tremendously because he has access to power, both public and private, and he sells that access.”

Ohio GOP spokesman Chris Schrimpf said, “The (monetary) support largely speaks for itself.”  Yes, it does, Mr. Schrimpf, but the Republican Party needs to know that Ohio voters cannot be bought.

This mid-term election is one of Ohio’s most important elections ever, and progressives must do everything in their power to help Ed Fitzgerald, Sharen Neuhardt, and the rest of the Democratic ticket get elected to state office.  Money can’t buy our love, and it’s been proven time and again that money can’t buy our elections, even though many stories in the media try to convince us otherwise.

Can’t buy our votes,
Everybody- tell them so,
Can’t buy our votes,
No, no, no, no!

Think.

FREEDOM Fractured

The desire for gold is not for gold.  It is for the means of FREEDOM.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

FREEDOM means many things to many people, but we can agree that it’s a good feeling to live in a country that stands for FREEDOM for all.  Sadly, the repeated use of the word FREEDOM in political rhetoric, in right-wing SuperPacs, and in ALEC “model legislation” has fractured the meaning of this wonderfully patriotic word.

The Tea Party affiliated FREEDOMWorks, has joined the corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for a petition drive called “Ohioans for Workplace FREEDOM,” aimed at destroying unions by misleading people with the word FREEDOM.  The supposed goal of the ballot language is “to secure workplace FREEDOM for all Ohioans by amending Ohio’s Constitution to guarantee the FREEDOM of Ohioans to choose whether to participate in a labor organization as a condition of employment.”

According to the Center for Media & Democracy, “Right-to-work laws undermine collective bargaining by allowing some employees a free ride when the union uses the collective power of workers to negotiate wages, raises, and other benefits with managers.  Recent anti-union legislation can be traced to “model” bills from ALEC- take a look at the “ALEC Model Right to Work Act.”  http://alecexposed.org/w/images/c/c8/1R10-Right_to_Work_Act_Exposed.pdf

We Are Ohio, a bipartisan citizen-driven coalition of public and private workers, explains this about right-to-work:

The tricky titled “right-to-work” is WRONG because it is an unsafe and unfair attack on workers’ rights, good jobs, families, and the middle class.

It is unsafe because it places our everyday heroes, their co-workers, and the families and children they serve at risk.

It is unsafe because it makes it harder to collectively bargain for life-saving equipment, staffing, and other safety issues.

It is unfair because if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be treated fairly.

It is an attack on workers’ rights, because the worker loses his or her voice to speak up in the workplace. It strips workers of collective bargaining rights. Workers will be intimidated into losing their freedom of speech to point out potential safety issues regarding products, equipment, manufacturing, and other problems.

It is worse than SB 5. Voters have already spoken on the “right-to-work” issue by vetoing Senate Bill 5 by a 62-38 percent margin.

It is wrong, because it means less money, lower wages, and fewer benefits for you, me, all of us.

The idea of FREEDOM should include a guarantee for every citizen’s economic security and justice for those who’ve been denied equality.  A right-to-work law would have absolutely nothing to do with FREEDOM for the middle class majority in Ohio, but it would give a minority of wealthier Ohioans the FREEDOM to pay workers less and to offer them worse working conditions and benefits.

Beware.  If Gov. Kasich is re-elected, right-to-work legislation will definitely move forward in Ohio, even though Ohioans support collective bargaining rights.  Help restore the true meaning of FREEDOM.  Stand up to ALEC, and make sure John Kasich is a one-term governor.

Remember in November.

Think.