From the Maine weekly The Forecaster:
http://www.theforecaster.net/content/pnms-beem-universal-notebook-111611The Universal Notebook: Smart ALEC, LePage and the unconstitutional right
By Edgar Allen Beem
Nov 14, 2011 10:40 am
Gov. Paul LePage has now proposed mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients. Unless he thinks needing financial assistance is reason enough to suspect illegal drug use, he ought to understand that what he is proposing is very likely unconstitutional.
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Where does LePage get these crazy ideas? Well, yes, he is a copycat governor, but it’s not just his fellow tea party gubernators who have his ear. For the most part, the LePage agenda comes straight out of the American Legislative Exchange Council playbook: a corporate legislative blueprint on how to restrict voting rights, privatize prisons and public education, repeal labor laws and worker rights, limit environmental protections, crack down on immigration and welfare, and enact tort reform.
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The hypocrisy underlying the ALEC agenda being pursued by hard-line Republicans and repudiated by the rest of us is perfectly clear. While complaining about the erosion of personal freedoms, these right-wing ideologues and corporate stooges represent the greatest threat to individual liberties in this country today.
If tea party Republicans like LePage were successful in enacting all of their reforms, restrictions, programs and punishments, every U.S. citizen would have another U.S. citizen keeping an eye on them. That’s not America. That’s ALEC.
More on this group's dangerous influence and the harm it does in the long compilation topic on the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).