"What Madison Rep. Chris Taylor learned at the ALEC conference"

[applegrove]

What Madison Rep. Chris Taylor learned at the ALEC conference

by Jessica Vanegeren at the Capital Times

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/writers/jessica_vanegeren/what-madison-rep-chris-taylor-learned-at-the-alec-conference/article_479f4ad0-0136-11e3-9e5b-0019bb2963f4.html

"SNIP................................

“My takeaway after spending two days at a conference is ALEC is a well-oiled machine," Taylor said Friday on her way back from the conference. "Putting the amount of money it has aside, the coordination and the infrastructure this group has in place is incredible. I was both fascinated and horrified by it.”

She said the conference was comprised of task force and subcommittee meetings. The subcommittee meetings, held on a variety of topics including education and tort reform, were co-chaired by a lawmaker and a corporate representative, Taylor said, and all committee members would discuss and then vote on model legislation.

“In my observation, it was the corporations and the right-wing think tanks driving the agendas," Taylor said. "Corporations have as big a say as the legislators in the model legislation that is adopted (and then sent to state legislatures). It’s an incredible infrastructure. We have nothing like this on the left.”


.......

Taylor said she expects to see more efforts by ALEC to push legislation in Wisconsin and elsewhere that promotes voucher schools, digital schools (ALEC’s new name for what were formerly called virtual schools), efforts to get rid of the state income tax (mentioned by Walker earlier this year), and efforts to make unemployment insurance more difficult to obtain by unemployed workers.


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[NYC_SKP]

1. K/R, surprised they let her in! Here's a link to her diary:

My ALEC Diary

In “My ALEC Diary,” a two-part account that Taylor compiled for The Progressive magazine, she wrote that after her first day she felt like she “was on another planet.”

“When a speaker said during a task force on education that ‘universities are not reformable from within...' I thought I was going to lose my mind,” Taylor said.

Taylor said she registered for the conference about a month ago but never received any of the additional information detailing the conference agenda from ALEC. She said she found it “interesting” she didn’t get any of the other materials or emails sent to others prior to arriving at the conference.

“They knew who I was,” she said. “They knew I wasn’t a conservative.”

[Zorra]

2. ALEC is the deadliest threat to the people of the US that exists on the planet.

Al Qaeda is a cub scout pack in comparison.

[pscot]

3. Teaching Fascism to the political class

[Scuba]

4. Thank you Chris, for being our eyes and ears, and for all you do!

[Berlum]

5. "... it was the corporations and the right-wing think tanks driving the agendas..."

Note well. Do not underestimate.

[Scurrilous]

6. K & R