Apr 24, 2013
From Mother Jones article “EXCLUSIVE: Read the Koch Brothers’ Plans for Their Upcoming GOP Donor Retreat“ By Andy Kroll… For more than a decade reports of attempts by the Brothers Koch – Charles and David – to assert their ideological branding upon American politics have been in the news. Founders or funders of nearly every ultra-conservative PAD [...]
Apr 22, 2013
By Bob Sloan As many have begun to write, ALEC is pursuing privatization of everything “public” in America. Perhaps a better description for their actions is “profitizing”, a term VLTP has used for nearly two years to describe efforts by the conservative Koch-funded cabal of think tanks and corporations to turn tax dollars into profits [...]
Mar 14, 2013
It’s ba-aack. The Voter ID bill is on the GOP agenda again. Last night the Republican leadership held a public hearing on proposed Voter ID legislation. (It happened after press time; check our Triangulator blog for a roundup.) The bill, which almost 75 percent of North Carolinians support, according to a recent Elon University poll, [...]
Jan 19, 2013
It wasn’t mere coincidence that a day before N.C. Senate leader Republican Phil Berger (R-ALEC) unveiled a plan to overhaul the state’s tax system that Nebraska’s GOP Gov. Dave Heineman was giving his State of the State address focusing on the same thing. And it’s not just happenstance that the centerpiece of both plans is [...]
Jan 13, 2013
Crap! We’ve know it was coming, but the shitstorm of rad-right legislation that is only to be expected by a state led by a Duke Energy exec–paytoplaypat, Art Pope, an ALEC-dominated State Legislature – a supermajority in Raleigh. Recently I reposted an article from Mother Jones talking about the Democracy Initiative where they reported that [...]
Dec 26, 2012
From article written by Bob Sloan and published on Policy Mic… Fact: 282 bills were passed in Michigan during the lame duck session. 42% of all the bills passed in the last two years were in this last lame duck session, with 180 votes taken on the last day of the 2012 session alone. Fact: In the session [...]
Dec 19, 2012
VLTP Op Ed by Bob Sloan The Corrosive Effect of the Koch/ALEC Cabal on U.S. and World Governments In a perfect world, we as citizens in a representative democracy would elect those who best represent our views on issues critically important in our lives. In the context of that perfect world, our elected representatives would [...]
Dec 17, 2012
Last June I wrote an important piece on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and exposed the “Legacy” or lifetime memberships held by current or former ALEC state legislators. Nearly 100 of the alumnae are currently members of the U.S. House and Senate – and at least one is the sitting Governor of South Carolina, [...]
Nov 12, 2012
“The Center for Media and Democracy reports several ballot measures backed by the extremist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) went down to defeat yesterday. Most notable was in Michigan, where voters overturned the state’s emergency manager law. Known as “financial martial law,” it allowed Gov. Rick Snyder (R) to declare a “financial emergency” in a city or [...]
