Category Archives: Ethics

Wendy’s and Reed-Elsevier flee ALEC: 8 and counting

Companies with customers care about “the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC”. Two more just left, making it eight and counting.

Reuters reported an hour ago: Reed Elsevier, Wendy’s drop conservative group,

Reed Elsevier is the latest company to drop out of a conservative national advocacy group in the United States that has been a lightning rod for gun laws.

The Anglo-Dutch professional information service provider said on Thursday it resigned its board seat and dropped its membership of the American Legislative Council (ALEC).

…

Hamburger chain Wendy’s Co said late on Wednesday that it decided in late 2011 not to renew its ALEC membership for 2012.

That’s Pepsi and Coca-Cola, followed by Kraft and Intuit, plus the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, McDonald’s, and now Wendy’s and Reed-Elsevier. Eight and counting. Pretty close to one a work day.

Why?

“We made the decision after considering the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC,” said a Reed Elsevier spokesman.

The council has faced a push-back in recent weeks because of its involvement in voting laws and in “stand your ground” gun laws such as one under scrutiny in the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida.

Let’s not forget private prisons, such as the one CCA wanted to build in Lowndes County. Even though that one is “shelved” due to lack of customers, others are still sucking up tax dollars that could go to education.

I’m still rooting for next to leave ALEC to be UPS, based in Atlanta.

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McDonald’s maybe left ALEC last year or last month

McDonald’s doesn’t seem to know when exactly it left ALEC, if it ever did. They do know how to build a fast food store in a local neighborhood that doesn’t want it, though.

Ryan Grim wrote for HuffPost yesterday, and then updated, McDonald’s Says It Left ALEC In March 2012 [UPDATE],

Under pressure from a progressive campaign to abandon the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), McDonald’s is insisting that it left the controversial conservative organization in March.

Yes, but which March?

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No Gates for ALEC: who’s next to jump off the crony capitalism ship?

Apparently the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave more money to ALEC than Pepsi, Coke, Kraft, and Intuit combined, but no more. Who’s next?

Jessica Pieklo wrote yesterday for care2, Bill And Melinda Gates Dump ALEC,

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation became the latest high profile backer of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council to withdraw financial support after pressure from groups opposed to ALEC’s support of “stand your ground” laws and Voter ID.

And private prisons, such as the one CCA wanted to build in Lowndes County, and “anti-immigrant” bills that creat many new crimes to fill those private prisons. And charter schools, such as the referendum for charter school tax credits on the ballot in Georgia in November. Some of our local “white fathers” pushed school consolidation a few months ago and charter schools are yet another attack on public education, backed by ALEC.

Roll Call reports that a foundation spokesperson said it does not plan to make any future grants to the organization. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed more than $375,000 to ALEC in the past two years.

Meanwhile, according to ALEC Watch:

ALEC’s more than three hundred corporate sponsors pay annual membership dues ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 to advance their agendas, plus additional fees of $1,500 to $5,000 a year to participate in ALEC’s various task forces, where, according to an ALEC publication, “legislators welcome their private-sector counterparts to the table as equals.”

That’s the very model of a bad public-private partnership and crony capitalism. (More detail by ALEC Exposed.)

So what excuse does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have? Jessica Pieklo’s article says:

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Lowndes County and Valdosta history: origins of the old boys

If we want good clean industry for jobs for local people, we need good clean local government, too. Why do our local government bodies hide when they discuss public goods like waste disposal, try to avoid stating public positions on issues, and fail to publish minutes of elected bodies?

A little reading in local histories of the area or talking to people who were involved even a generation or two back indicates that Lowndes County has always been a cliquish sort of place, mostly run by old boys, for reasons that made some sense in the early days (lack of resources, mainly), but doesn’t so much anymore in these days of I-75 and I-10, airport, railroads that still go everywhere, Moody AFB, VSU as a regional university, technical and community colleges, two hospitals and medical industry, TitleTown, Grand Bay WMA, Wild Adventures, and south Georgia sunshine we can export to Atlanta and points north.

Here are a few books about the old days, all available in local libraries and possibly in local bookstores: Continue reading →

4 down and counting: Kraft and Intuit exit ALEC

After Pepsi and Coke, now Kraft (processed food products) said
“Our membership in ALEC expires this spring and for a number of reasons, including limited resources, we have made the decision not to renew.”
and Intuit (Turbo Tax and Quicken) also decided to let its ALEC membership lapse.

Reasons such as petitions by numerous organizations asking companies to ditch ALEC? We seem to have a case of the cheese fleeing the rat ship…. (Sometimes I wish I could draw.)

Here’s another petition for corporations to ditch ALEC. Let’s not forget ColorofChange’s petition about voter suppression.

And how about ALEC board member UPS, based in Atlanta?

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Insurgents win majority on Cobb EMC board

According to the Cobb EMC board election results, even without two runoffs, four new members were elected yesterday, so added to the 4 new members elected in November, that’s 8 out of 10 members opposed to coal plants, opposed to corruption, and for transparency.

Kim Isaza wrote for MDJOnline today, Four new Cobb EMC directors elected,

Four more seats on the Cobb EMC board of directors are now in new hands, and two more will be settled in unprecedented runoff elections on April 21.

The winners are: Rudy Underwood, who was unopposed in Area 2; Kelly Bodner in Area 3; Bryan Boyd in Area 8; and Eric Broadwell in Area 9.

One runoff will be for Area 4, where Jim Hudson won 681 votes (42 percent) and David McClellan won 601 votes (37 percent). There were eight candidates competing in Area 4.

The other runoff will be for Area 5, where Tripper Sharp — one of the plaintiffs to the 2007 lawsuit against the EMC — got 775 votes (46 percent), and Charles A. Sevier got 502 votes (30 percent). Nine candidates were vying for that seat.

To quote from Rudy Underwood’s platform:

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Georgia Legislators

I blogged about State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver and then happened to run into her about an hour later, along with her partner in ethics. This time she was in color.


Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (D-85 Atlanta) and Mary Margaret Oliver (D-83 Decatur):
Roswell, Georgia, 31 March 2012.
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

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Hunting for transparency

Some legislators tried to hide potential ethics violations in the name of privacy. They failed in the last hour of the last day of the legislative session.

Jim Galloway wrote for the AJC yesterday, Your morning jolt: The failed attempt to make ‘transparency’ commission a translucent one

In other words, the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission would have been handed permission to cut off from public view the more pesky complaints against your leaders. Cases that it would decide you didn’t need to know about.

Who did this, and when?

State Rep. David Knight, R-Griffin, introduced the conference report in the House, but didn’t mention the above paragraph. That came to light under questioning from state Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Atlanta, and other Democrats.

My AJC colleague Chris Quinn described a scene in which the tally board started out with green “yes” votes and red “no” votes evenly divided. But slowly, green lights began blinking out, and the red votes began to grow. At 11:08, the bill was defeated 25-143.

Sanity and ethics prevailed at the eleventh hour.

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ALEC, Trayvon Martin, CCA’s private prisons, and charter schools?

What’s the connection between the Florida law that’s letting the killer of Trayvon Martin hide, the private prisons CCA runs in Georgia and other states, and HB 797, the Georgia charter schools bill that’s on the floor today for Senate debate today? ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Paul Krugman wrote yesterday for the NYTimes, Lobbyists, Guns and Money,

ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.

Same as private prisons. The only real benefit goes to private prison company executives and shareholders.
Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
And today we have an organized threat to justice everywhere. That threat is called ALEC.

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Represent the people —George Rhynes on the radio 2012-03-10

After praising Valdosta City Councilman Yost for standing up for the people in his district, even though George sometimes doesn’t agree with his positions, George Rhynes said:
It is indeed time that we begin to put people on these governing bodies who gonna represent the best interests of the people. I don’t care whether you’re black or white, Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic. But it is time now for us to stop just putting someone on the council because they look like us. We need to put people on the Council and the County Commissioners who’s going to stand up as the founding fathers of our Republic. And I mean the founding fathers of those who put themselves in the civil rights struggle on the front lines to do what is right.
Then he said Valdosta City Councilman James Wright would be on George’s radio program, and he invited all the rest of them to appear on his show, Magic 95, 950 AM.

There’s much more in his show. Here’s the video:

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