ALEC/AFP'S REAL AGENDA EXPOSED IN WISCONSIN: I have written here before that the agents of the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Prosperity are very bad people who, instead of pledging their public service to the nation and its citizens, instead have prostituted themselves quite openly to the Koch brothers and the other oligarchs who run these two organizations. And obviously, the interests of the upper tier of the upper one percent overlap practically nowhere with the interests of other Americans. That doesn't stop the prostitution, because these "civil servants" like their comfortable lives and Cadillac benefits at the public trough (i.e. they themselves are the people they claim to hate the most... government leeches) and most of them aren't really fit for other (real) jobs. Joining ALEC and/or AFP all but guarantees that the oligarchs will dump vast amounts of money into their campaigns come reelection time, making victory for their opponents quite unlikely.

These proponents of "small government" and "local control" (*cough hack choke*) have lately shown a nasty predilection for exerting communist-style central planning mandates over actual small governments (read: municipalities, townships, school boards) when these tiny electoral entities fail to toe the Party Line. Most recent case in point is State Rep. Michael Schraa (affiliated with ALEC) and State Sen. Duey Stroebel (Persuasion Partners, an affiliate of AFP), who are pushing for a bill that would severely restrict the ability of communities to put public-school referenda on the ballot. This is apparently related to two recent events: the sweeping reelection of popular State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers over ALEC water boy Lowell Holtz (as I have noted before, Holtz was hung out to dry by the oligarchs as a lost cause after "Governor" Scott Walker threw a bone toward public schools, thus representing one of the only "liberal" victories in Wisconsin since Walker's inauguration... and since the victory was 70%-30%, it makes one wonder about the legitimacy of any state election since the Koch cabal took over), and also the success of local referenda in Wisconsin in continuing to fund public schools.

The intrepid reader might well ask, "How is this any of their g-ddamned business? If people want to raise their own taxes to have good public schools, they should certainly have that option."

And the intrepid reader would be correct in asking that question.

The answer is that, once again, ALEC and AFP are engaged in un-American activities (we had the House Committee on Un-American Activities [HUAC] back in the day to investigate the activities of so-called subversives, even though these "communist plants" were usually just ordinary Americans engaged in liberal causes like opposition to the Vietnam war--where is HUAC now when we really need them?). There is nothing more American than local citizens banding together to save their public schools, especially when their state government has been knee-deep in a shadow campaign to hand the reins of public education over to shadowy voucher-school contractors with no accountability to the people.

Never forget that the oligarchs' ultimate aim is to decide which American children will receive a quality education that will guarantee them high-paying employment for life... and which children (the vast majority) will be consigned to working in Dickensian sweatshops and dying early deaths. Anyone interested in democracy needs to nip this little experiment in the bud right now (good job, Wisconsin, in reelecting Tony Evers!).

If anyone doubts the real endgame of the oligarchs and their lapdogs in government, look no further than this nefarious bill. And expect to see more of the same in other states that are basically controlled by the Koch cabal and its enablers.

Posted by Alois on