Wisconsin Right-wing Nut Governor Scott Walker Thinks Corporate Taxes Can Never be Low Enough and he is Willing to Kill Women to Prove It

Wisconsin Right-wing Nut Governor  Scott Walker Thinks Corporate Taxes Can Never be Low Enough and he is Willing to Kill Women to Prove It

First he gutted worker's rights [1], then slashed state education funding [2] and dumbed-down sex ed [3]. Next on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's hit list? Breast and cervical cancer screenings for women. Come January 1, Wisconsinites who rely on Planned Parenthood to access free cancer screenings may be out of luck.

The Wisconsin Well Woman Program [4] is an 17-year-old state service created to ensure that women ages 45 to 64 who lack health insurance can access preventive health screenings. It is administered by the Department of Health Services and provides referrals and screenings for breast cancer, cervical cancer, and multiple sclerosis at no cost. The state currently uses a number of contractors to coordinate and provide those services, including Planned Parenthood. But now, in a move that could leave many women in the state without access to the program, the Walker government is ending Planned Parenthood's contract.

In four Wisconsin counties, Planned Parenthood is the only health care provider currently contracted as a coordinator for the cancer screenings. Coordinators evaluate women for eligibility, enroll them in the program, and then connect them to health care providers that can perform the exams. The coordinators also do community outreach, letting women know that there are options for preventative care even if they don't have health insurance. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin has been a contractor since the program began—including during the terms of previous GOP governors Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum—but the group recently learned that its contract is being terminated at the end of the month.

Beth Kaplan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, told Mother Jones that no decision has been made on the contract and would not comment on why it might not be continued. But Tanya Atkinson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, says they were told that the state is cutting them out of the program. "They have very clearly stated that they were ending the contract with us," she says. [UPDATE: Walker himself has confirmed [5] that the state is ending its contract with Planned Parenthood.]

Atkinson says the DHS cut is politically motivated; as far as she knows, her group was the only service provider whose contract was not renewed. The move puts in question what will happen to the more than 1,000 women that access the Well Woman Program through Planned Parenthood in Winnebago, Fond du Lac, Sheboygan, and Outagamie counties every year. Doctors found 15 cases of cervical and breast cancer in the 1,260 women screened in those counties in 2010—cases that likely would not have been detected if women didn't have access to the Well Woman Program. The county health officers in two of those counties have already issued statements decrying the state for targeting Planned Parenthood for the cut and for risking the health of their residents.

"If it's not Planned Parenthood, then who's going to coordinate? Where do women go?" Atkinson asks. "We don't have any indication at this point."

If Walker goes through with the cut, women like Laurie Seim might not get the services they need. Two years ago, the 52-year-old Seim discovered a lump in her breast and started feeling feverish and sick. Even though she had a part-time job as a medical assistant, she didn't have health insurance and had never had a mammogram. The doctor she worked for sent her to the Well Woman Program coordinator at the Outagamie office of Planned Parenthood. She was able to get a mammogram the next day as well as an ultrasound, and both were covered by the program. Thankfully, she learned she had a cyst, not cancer. But without the program, she says, she probably wouldn't have gotten that care.

"I didn't have to worry about anything. It was such a godsend," Seim says. "If I hadn't been referred to that program, I don't know what I would have done." She worked in the medical field but still didn't know how to navigate the system. "Well Woman was there for me."

Just another day among the fake patriots who call themselves conservatives. They honestly believe in having a dog-eat-dog survival of the lucky society. If you have health problems and cannot afford care, conservative Republicans believe you should die. They proved that to the entire nation when they applauded a question during the Republican debates about letting someone without health insurance die. 

America Hater Newt Gingrich Has Ethics. They Just Happen to Be Abominable

America Hater Newt Gingrich Has Ethics. They Just Happen to Be Abominable

The GOP presidential primary is a lot like a kindergarten t-ball game: When it comes to being in first place, just about everybody gets a turn. And now, congratulations, Newt Gingrich: It’s your turn!

Steve Kornacki wrote about the Public Policy Polling survey that found Gingrich is following in the footsteps of Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain as the Republican flavor of the week. Gingrich benefits from three things: A lot of Republicans can’t stand Mitt Romney, Cain and Perry have shamed themselves in public, and by contrast, he’s had no bad debates. So far he’s come off as smart and affable, trying to rally his rivals against the big, bad media that’s trying to get them to fight.

Since Gingrich has mostly been in single digits, far back in the polls, his rivals have humored him and ignored his liabilities. That’s about to change, and Gingrich, like Perry, Cain and Michele Bachmann before him, will likewise wither under the hot sun of political scrutiny. The seemingly affable professor and author is a hothead with many political liabilities and almost as many enemies. He’s committed so many political and ethical transgressions that his baggage has baggage.

Gingrich is probably best known for serving his wife with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery, so he could marry his mistress, whom he later divorced to marry a staffer. But he’s also probably the only politician, who when you’re asked “What’s the worst thing he’s done?” has done a lot of things that rival leaving his cancer-stricken wife for his mistress. For most people in the world, in fact, that would be the hands-down worst act ever; for Gingrich, it’s just not that clear-cut (h/t Jamie Kilstein).

For instance, he’s the only House speaker in American history to be disciplined by Congress for ethics violations.  In 1998, he paid a $300,000 fine after he was found to have been misusing his tax-exempt foundations for political gain.

OK, those have to be the two worst things, dumping his wife who had cancer for his mistress, and congressional ethics sanctions, right?

But wait, but there’s more:

    Shutting down the government in 1995 at least partly because President Clinton allegedly snubbed him by seating him in the rear of Air Force One on a flight home from Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral. No, really, he told reporters the “snub” was “part of why you ended up with us sending down a tougher continuing resolution.”
    Advocating that the children of welfare recipients be taken away from their parents and raised in orphanages.
    Leading the drive to impeach Clinton over lying about adultery when he was himself lying about adultery, cheating on his wife with a staffer, Callista Bisek, who became his third wife.
    Insisting President Obama suffers from “a Kenyan anti-colonial mindset” like his Kenyan father, even though he barely knew his Kenyan father.
    Denouncing Paul Ryan’s radical budget (that was actually smart) as “right-wing social engineering,” then flip-flopping and warning that “any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood.”
    Railing against Obama’s alleged “class warfare” when he’s run up a $500,000 tab at Tiffany’s.
But my all-time favorite Newt Gingrich “worst” was the time he blamed the horrendous case of Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother( a Republican who was having an affair with her Republican father-in-law) who murdered her young sons in 1994, on Democrats. Smith, you’ll recall, first blamed her son’s drowning deaths on a black man who supposedly car-jacked her, but it turned out, she did it herself. Just before the 1994 election, in which his party swept back into power, Gingrich said:

     I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things. The only way you get change is to vote Republican. That’s the message for the last three days.

Two days later, Gingrich defended his comments by insisting he’d been saying the same thing for years: that Democratic rule had frayed the moral fabric of the country: “We need very deep change if we’re going to turn this country around.” Asked directly if he was saying electing Republicans could stop killings like Smith’s, he said flatly: “Yes. In my judgment, there’s no question.”

He later blamed the Columbine and Virginia Tech killings on liberals, too.

America has never been perfect, but its "moral" fabric has always been in most danger by conservatism. Conservatism - forget the names of the political parties Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives were in both parties until the 1980s - has always been the biggest threat to America. Conservatism by its very nature is anti-American. Conservatism as a movement has more in common with the ultra-nationalism of the Japanese leading up to WW II. Gingrich fits in perfectly. he believes in a dog-eat-dog culture and economy. He believes America should be ruled by the elite and voting rights given only to those who believe in the far Right agenda.


Scott Walker recall, Day 1, by the numbers and you can download a Walker recall form here. Beware of false recalls conservative nuts who will throw your recall petition in the trash.

Republicans Claim The Stimulus Did Not Create Jobs and Government Cannot Create Jobs

Republicans Claim The Stimulus Did Not Create Jobs and Government Cannot Create Jobs

I have to admit, I never tire of stories like these.

    …Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH) kicked it old school on Thursday by cutting the ribbon on a new road that received millions from the same spending bill he opposed.

    Guinta spoke at the opening ceremony for Raymond Wieczorek Drive, a new access road connecting various towns to the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Later he posted a picture of the event on his official Facebook page. Other attendees included Gov. John Lynch (D) and New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien.

    “It’s going to help us with our tourism, our economy, and it’s going to provide us greater flexibility for our residents, our business commuters, and those visiting our state,” Guinta said at the event. “It’s a real example of how when we put our mind to it we can accomplish anything we want to accomplish.”

These examples are a lot less common now, not because GOP officials have become more responsible, but because Recovery Act funding has just about been exhausted. But when the instances come along, they tend to be doozies.

In this case, Guinta absolutely loathes stimulus spending — his hatred for these public investments was a central part of his 2010 campaign platform — but that didn’t stop him from trying to take credit for the infrastructure project that was financed by stimulus spending. That this new project wouldn’t exist if Guinta had his way didn’t interfere with his smiles at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Now, every time these examples come up, I get some pushback. As the argument goes, these Republican lawmakers who hate stimulus spending and want stimulus spending at the same time aren’t really doing anything wrong, because once the funds are available, members of Congress have a responsibility to look out for their districts’ interests.

There’s certainly some truth to this, and I can fully appreciate the importance of fighting for a slice of a pie. After all, their taxpaying constituents are paying for these investments whether they like it or not.

The problem, though, is the ways in which this practice pokes holes in the larger Republican ideology. GOP lawmakers like Guinta run around telling the public that public investments can’t create jobs and are bad for the economy. GOP lawmakers like Guinta then also tell the public investments can create jobs and are good for the economy.

Look again at those remarks the conservative Republican lawmaker made at the ribbon-cutting ceremony: because Congress agreed to spend this money, over his objections, Guinta’s community will get a larger economic boost. But if that’s true, why has Guinta fought so hard to kill this and related investments? Isn’t boosting the economy a worthwhile goal?

If there’s money on the table, and Republicans want to fight for some of it, fine. But what gets me are the ideological arguments that are as wrong as they are cynical — public spending will undermine the economy, unless it’s in my area, in which case it will be good for the economy.

One way to explain how conservatives look at the world is whatever benefits them is good - there s no real underlying system of beliefs. They're like children who want a piece of candy are are going to stomp their feet and cry until they get. Everything else they say or do is just so much noise. Some conservatives still try to get away with calling themselves the party of Lincoln. That was around the last time the Republican party stood for any principles.

How Conservatism and Personhood Laws Could Make Women Servants to Government

How Conservatism and Personhood Laws Could Make Women Servants to Government

Tuesday’s ballot initiative in Mississippi regarding a constitutional amendment that would grant fertilized eggs legal personhood is polling right down to the wire, with 45% of Mississippians favoring it and 44% opposed. Gender influences opinion on this initiative somewhat, with men favoring it by six percentage points and women opposing it by four percentage points. Race and party affiliation has even more influence, with Democrats and African-Americans registering around 60% opposition to the amendment. This suggests that the racial and class-based aspects to this amendment that have passed national attention aren’t passing the attention of Mississippi voters, and hopefully fear of this law will be enough to keep personhood for fertilized eggs from becoming law. 

Most of the national attention to this ballot initiative has focused on the potential effects it could have on access to abortion and birth control, as supporters of the personhood amendment erroneously claim that hormonal birth control works by killing fertilized eggs. (All forms, including emergency contraception, work by preventing ovulation.) These are very real concerns, of course, but not out of the ordinary for an anti-choice movement that spends most of its time trying to restrict access to contraception and abortion. The personhood represents an even more disturbing shift rightwards, because if it’s passed into law it will turn women of reproductive age into a criminally suspicious class whose privacy will be invaded and basic rights ignored, all with the pretense of protecting this new class of “persons”. If this law passes in Mississippi, women who have miscarriages could be facing the handcuffs, and pregnant women could very well lose basic freedoms to a state that uses the fetus in their bodies as an excuse to control them. 

And the women who will be most affected will be those who are already targeted routinely by law enforcement: poorer women, young women, and women of color. 

The campaign for the personhood amendment fallaciously claims that they’re just trying to return Mississippi to a pre-Roe state, but this is simply and demonstrably untrue. Fertilized eggs didn’t have personhood status prior to 1973; bans on abortion and contraception were generally justified by the state arguing it had a right to control sexual morality, which is why the court decided Roe on the basis of sexual privacy rights. Under pre-Roe laws, doctors were mainly the ones prosecuted for providing abortion, but under personhood laws, a woman who procures an abortion has taken a hit out on a legal “person”, and can also be charged with a crime. At it’s foremost, this is about expanding the power of the state to throw women in jail for private medical choices. 

But there’s so much more at stake with this wild expansion of state control over women’s bodies. That’s why it’s ridiculous for personhood amendment supporters to wave off concerns that this law will lead to imprisoning women for miscarriages. If embryos count as “persons”, then it’s entirely possible and in fact likely that the state will start investigating women who miscarry. Like Will Saletan writing for Slate notes:

    A woman who suffers a miscarriage would be prosecuted not because she had a miscarriage, but because police and prosecutors suspect she might have had an abortion. You would certainly be investigated if your born child disappeared and you said it had died in an accident.

Much like everything conservatism stands for small government is just another myth, a fairy tale of epic proportions. Conservatives, given the chance and power to govern at the state or federal level have always increased the size and power of government and taken away more rights from individual Americans.

Did liberals cause the housing crisis? No.

Anti-American Fox News Tries to Hide Connection Between Fox and Georgia Based Domestic Terrorists

Anti-American Fox News Tries to Hide Connection Between Fox and Georgia Based Domestic Terrorists

Fox News is now actively concealing a link between an Alabama-based blogger repeatedly featured on the network as an expert and allegations of a domestic terrorist plot.

This morning on America's Newsroom, Fox News ran an extensive report on yesterday's arrest of four Georgia men accused of plotting an attack on federal employees and U.S. citizens using explosives, guns, and the biological toxin ricin. At the end of the segment, correspondent Jonathan Serrie pointed out that one of the defendants "allegedly cited the online novel Absolved, which discusses small groups of citizens attacking U.S. officials," with the defendant allegedly "saying that the attacks would be based on events in that novel."

Charging documents indeed state that accused plotter Frederick Thomas repeatedly cited as an inspiration the novel Absolved, in which underground militia fighters declare war on the federal government over gun control laws and same-sex marriage, leading to a second American revolution. But Fox's report neglected to mention the allegedly inspirational novel's author, who is no stranger to Fox viewers.

Indeed, the author, Mike Vanderboegh, has been mainstreamed by the network, which has repeatedly featured him as an expert on the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious. Fox has identified Vanderboegh as an "online journalist" and an "authority on the Fast and Furious investigation," and has consistently failed to acknowledge his extremist views, actions, and affiliations.

Vanderboegh, a former member of the militia and Minuteman movements and now a leader of the "anti-government extremist group" the Three Percenters, which claims to represent the three percent of gun owners who "who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act" but will instead, "if forced by any would-be oppressor, ... kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution."

The complaint against Thomas details a similar scenario:

    THOMAS described a scenario in which he felt would be the "line in the sand" that would result in the activation of militias. THOMAS believed that soon, during a protest action, a protestor would be shot. It is his opinion the militias would act and respond by openly attacking the police. He then openly discussed having complied what he called the "Bucket List" which is a list of government employees, politicians, corporate leaders and members of the media he feels needed to be "taken out" to make the country right again."

Vanderboegh has stated that "another civil war in this country is the last thing I want,"writing in the introduction to Absolved that the novel is "a cautionary tale for the out-of-control gun cops of the ATF," who "need to know how powerful" the "armed citizenry" "could truly be if they were pushed into a corner."

Fox News has repeatedly presented Vanderboegh as a credible source. Their failure to mention his authorship of a novel that allegedly inspired a terrorist plot is telling.

UPDATE: In a subsequent report, Fox's Serrie said that Absolved was written by "the former leader of an Alabama militia," and briefly flashed an image of the book's cover that showed Vanderboegh's name. Serrie did not note Vanderboegh's connection to Fox News.

As Congressional Republicans do everything they can to stop employment programs and make life harder for the unemployed, the conservative media id trying to hide its ties to radical anti-American Republicans. P.T. Barnum once said there was a sucker born every minute. He might as well have been talking about modern day conservatives who keep falling for the conservative movement hiding its anti-American agenda behind the flag and the Bible.  


Subprime Loans, Foreclosure, and the Credit Crisis. What Happened and Why? - A Primer(pdf)

By 2007, subprime loans accounted for 29% of total home loans. The vast majority of the subprime loans causing today’s massive foreclosures were issued by institutions and independent mortgage brokers not covered by the CRA.

Anti-American Zealot Rep. Allen West(R) Exploits Martin Luther King Jr to Justify His Elitist Agenda

Anti-American Zealot Rep. Allen West(R) Exploits Martin Luther King Jr to Justify His Elitist Agenda

At the dedication of the national Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial last Sunday, the Rev. Bernice King said her father Dr. King would support the 99 Percent Movement: “I hear my father saying what we are seeing now all across the streets of America and the world is a freedom explosion.” She reminded the nation that civil rights leader worked not just for racial justice, but for economic justice as well. “We should never adjust to the one percent controlling more than 40 percent of the wealth,” she said.

Florida Rep. Allen West (R), however, was “born and raised” in the same town that Dr. King grew up in. Therefore, he asserted as a fact today in a Newsmax interview that “Martin Luther King, Jr. would not back these types of protesters”:

    WEST: I was born and raised in the same town that Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have backed these type of protesters. First of all, Martin Luther King, Jr. had a focus, he had a message. He was divinely inspired. I don’t know what the inspiration is for these individuals.



Unfortunately for West, geographical proximity clearly did not provide West any insight into the man himself. Like the 99 percent movement, King consistently called for economic justice. He critiqued unregulated free marketism as a system that permits “necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few.” He envisioned a “Poor People’s Campaign” in which a multiracial coalition would march through the capital to “demand that President Lyndon Johnson and Congress help the poor get jobs, health care, and decent homes.”

King was assassinated just weeks before the march on May 12, 1968. Rev. Ralph Abernathy carried his legacy to DC, stating, “We come with an appeal to open the doors of America to the almost 50 million Americans who have not been given a fair share of American’s wealth and opportunity, and we will stay until we get it.” This, incidentally, is what the 99 Percent Movement is about.

This, however, is also what West sees as “contradictory to the foundational principles and values that we have in the United States.” If West grew up anywhere near Dr. King and his legacy, he has now turned his back on him.

Many Americans may know West as the man who terrorized a bound unarmed man in Iraq. He was kicked out of the military for his cowardly behavior. Unlike what West would have done, the military took pity on him and gave him his tax payer funded military pension. Now West is in Congress ( once again making a living off the government he says he hates) West is doing his best to stop President Obama from creating jobs, while also fighting for even more tax cuts for millionaires. West doesn't seem to have a genuine patriotic bone in his body, no wonder right-wing conservatives love him.

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

Has Republican Conservatism Become a Cult

Has American-Style Conservatism Become a Religion?

As the American right lurches from traditional conservatism – a go-slow approach to governing that stresses the importance of continuity and social stability – to a far more reactionary brand typified by acolytes of Ayn Rand and Tea Party extremists waving misspelled signs decrying Democrats' "socialism," the time has come to ask whether modern “backlash” conservatism has become a religious faith rather than a pedestrian political ideology.

Ideology is grounded in the real world. It offers us a philosophical lens through which we can efficiently process what's happening in the world around us. Religion is different. It's a fixed belief system, based on faith, and it is immune to – or at least highly resistant to – challenges mounted by objective reality. Which better describes the belief system of a typical Rush Limbaugh fan or Tea Party activist?

Like religious faiths, the hard-right reveres an original text – the Constitution – and, like all religious fundamentalists, conservatives claim to adhere to a literalist interpretation of it while actually picking and choosing from among its tenets. Just as the vast majority of Christian fundamentalists don't actually stone their daughters to death when they're obnoxious to their fathers, the Tea Partiers conveniently ignore more or less the entirety of Article 3. Also like other fundamentalist sects, most conservatives actually have a poor understanding of what the text they revere actually means.

Like the Manicheans – adherents of one of the world's great religions at one point in history – they tend to see a world defined by a conflict between the forces of light and darkness. The forces of good are decent, conservative, "real" Americans – mostly white, married Christians, but with exceptions made for others who keep the faith. They stand opposed to a wide array of diabolical figures: liberals, gays and lesbians, Muslims, Mexicans, socialists and other foreigners, especially the French.

And like adherents of other religious faiths, they hold a special enmity for apostates. When stalwart conservatives like David Frum started talking about “epistemic closure” – “conservatives’ tendency to operate in an information bubble” – they were pilloried by their fellow travelers, accused of the worst offense: liberal heresy. Not only are moderate conservatives like Kathleen Parker or Christine Todd Whitman ripe targets, but so are red-meat Republicans who stray from the party line to any degree. Even people like former Utah Senator Bob Bennett can be painted as RINOS (Republicans in name only) if they stray from church doctrine even slightly.

Backlash conservatives also have their prophets and their saints. Just listen to Republicans talking about the Founders – a groups of liberals, moderates and conservatives of their day who agreed on very little but are assumed by the flock to have been staunch right-wingers. The faithful conveniently ignore the real-world foibles of their Holy Men. Yes, Ronald Reagan offered amnesty to undocumented immigrants, raised taxes 11 times and ran roughshod over the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution, but to the believers, he remains as pure as the Virgin Mary is to Catholics. (Reagan would be polling right there at the bottom with Jon Huntsman if he were running for the GOP nomination today.)

Perhaps the easiest parallel to draw between conservatism and religion is the right's vilification of climate scientists, 98 percent of whom agree that human activities are changing our world with dangerous consequences. The attacks are reminiscent of the Catholic Church's running battle with “Copernicans” who believed that the Earth revolved around the sun; a theory that flew in the face of church doctrine. In that sense, Michael Mann of “climate-gate” fame is like a modern Galileo (only Mann has been completely vindicated while Galileo was handed over for trial by the Roman Inquisition and lived out the rest of his life under house arrest).

Conservatives certainly claim they represent literal interpretation of the Constitution and the Bible, but in reality they actually pick and choose. Goodness knows they seem to completely ignore Jesus Sermon on the Mount. For even a peculiar brand of Christianity it is odd how much they love the blood, guts, violence and revenge of the Old Testament. When it comes to the Constitution they also pick what they like   - free speech for them and no one else. Freedom of religion for them and no one else.

Republican Lying Puppet of the Week - American Legislative Exchange Council Pulls the Strings and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) Dances

Republican Lying Puppet of the Week - American Legislative Exchange Council Pulls the Strings and Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) Dances

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is pushing a medley of policies closely correlated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a “corporate front-group” that represents the interests of big-name corporations by drafting legislation for state lawmakers. ALEC, which has the support of conservative heavy-hitters like Koch Industries, Walmart, and ExxonMobil, has written close to 800 model bills as templates for legislators on a wide range of issues.

A ThinkProgress analysis of documents recently released by the Center for Media and Democracy show that ten of Perry’s recent initiatives mirror either ALEC model legislation or policy recommendations from ALEC’s state affiliate, the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Four bills he designated “emergency” legislation in the 2011 session — all of which became law. Here are two (more below):

Bill: Voter Photo-ID Act
Perry’s Involvement: emergency item—regular session
Authors: Eight ALEC senators, including ALEC state chairman Sen. Kel Seliger and Sen. Troy Fraser, the recipient of $314,000 from its corporate members
Sponsors: Four ALEC representatives
Co-Sponsors: 28 ALEC representatives, including two ALEC state chairmen
ALEC Model Legislation: Voter ID Act
Similarities: requires a valid photo ID to vote; sets a strict six-day statute of limitations on provisional voters
Outcome: Perry signed into law on May 27

Bill: Tort Reform Act
Perry’s Involvement: emergency item—regular session
Authors: Two ALEC representatives, including state chairman Rep. Jim Jackson
Co-Authors: 30 ALEC representatives
Model Legislation: Litigation Accountability Act
Similarities: creates disincentives for citizens suing corporations by assigning all litigation costs to the claimant when a court dismisses a case as “groundless in fact or in law”
Outcome: Perry signed into law on May 30.

Perry has recently used his political capital to push policy positions strictly out of the ALEC playbook, even though his state faced a staggering budget shortfall, struggles with the highest percentage of residents without health insurance in the nation and ranks as the worst state for carbon pollution. His close financial and personal relationships with both ALEC and TPPF, however, shed some light on his legislative priorities.

Out of the 2,000 state lawmakers included among ALEC’s members, Perry has benefited “far and away the most of any candidate in the decade of data analyzed,” taking in more than $2 million in donations from 50 of its corporations. Just last August, he accepted the group’s highest honor, The Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award, which includes among its previous recipients the Koch brothers. Perry even spoke at ALEC’s Dec. 2010 conference.

Furthermore, he has nurtured strong working ties with TPPF, which Perry has described as “a quality outlet.” The ALEC state affiliate has also donated extravagantly to Perry’s campaigns over the years, with its 14 board members responsible for nearly $1.5 million in funds. He has reimbursed the conservative group’s investment by giving them all the proceeds from his latest book–and by appointing its members to important positions.

TPPF President Brooke Rollins used to serve as Perry’s Deputy General Counsel and as his Policy Director, and Perry has appointed three of the other board members to high-profile seats on the Regents Boards for Texas state university systems. Through those appointments, he has not been shy about pushing TPPF’s outcomes-based education policies, starting back in 2008 when he summoned all of the Texas regents to a TPPF seminar introducing seven “breakthrough” education initiatives.

But the biggest concern should be that, if Perry does end up throwing his hat in the ring for the GOP presidential nomination, his legislative agenda–and its ties to corporate America and ALEC–could impact more than just Texas.

ALEC's agenda is staunchly anti-American. They have done their best to undermine the rights of average working Americans, they have repeatedly pushed legislation that threatens children and those already suffering from health problems with laws that make it easier to poison our water and air. ALEC has made a mockery of the democratic process by working behind the scenes, in the shadows of the legislative process. They have weakened democracy by weakening voter rights. So no wonder that smiley-faced fascist Rick Perry is their puppet.