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If you're not familiar with ALEC, here's the high-level overview. ALEC is the acronym for American Legislative Exchange Council, a secret right-wing consortium created to write boilerplate legislation for states to use to advance the right-wing agenda. Some of ALEC's handiwork can be seen in Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida, to name a few.

ALEC has a new game called Publicopoly. Some of the "properties" include government operations, health, environment, telecommunications, infrastructure, education and public safety. But of course, it's not such a new game after all. The object of the game is to privatize everything. To that end, they have aggregated the reports of think tanks like the Mackinac Center, the Reason Foundation, the Platte Institute, and the Heartland Institute.

You can find sample legislation under some of the different categories. For example, under government operations, there is a link to the State Budget Reform Toolkit, which features lots of helpful suggestions to "streamline" the state budget process. Here's a small example of one of those suggestions:

Reform State Pensions
In recent years, state governments have encountered a funding crisis in their pension plans for public employees. This crisis in the states has resulted from many factors, including:

• Escalation in health care costs
• Significant losses in the stock market
• Costly pension and health benefits provided in defined-benefit plans
• Public employees retiring earlier and living longer
• Reduction and postponement of employer contributions to the pension plans

This is their solution. I'll bet you guessed it before you've even read it.

Everything should be on the table, including changes in benefits and increased employee contribution rates, as well as employer contribution rates. Most importantly, states should consider replacing their defined-benefit plans with defined-contribution (401(k) style) plans for new employees.

In case state legislators don't have access to good policy wonks, ALEC helpfully supplies "model legislation" for each of their suggestions. Here's the description of the pension model legislation:

ALEC’s Statement of Principles on State and Local Government Pension and Other Post Employment Benefit (OPEB) Plans

Other helpful suggestions include delaying automatic pay increases, and of course, "embrace the expanded use of privatization and competitive contracting."

ALEC is heavily funded (and I do mean heavily), by Charles and David Koch, Betsy and Dick DeVos, and the Walton (WalMart) family. Legislation coming soon to a state near you.

By the way, I'm sure they hold all the "get out of jail free" cards, and there is no free parking.

[h/t Democratic Underground]

Like Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and many other states, Alabama has a big, new Republican legislative majority working hard to undermine unions. The House passed HB 64 yesterday, which would amend Alabama's 1901 constitution to require secret balloting for workplace unionization. Democrats objected to the bill, challenging sponsor Kurt Wallace on the relevance and necessity of such an amendment. Wallace had few answers to offer, but to his credit he never wavered from insisting the bill was "common sense." Part Two and notes below the fold:

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Digby wrote about this last week from this PBS show. It's always much more powerful listening and seeing the people who promote these draconian positions.
Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT (David Edwards)

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

When you hear Napoli's little monologue, he sounds like a man from one of those Satanic cult movies.

Digby then responds to a track-back:

"I got a track-back from the blog "Responding To the Left" to the post below, specifically the story of the woman who had an abortion because she already had two small children and couldn't afford another. I think it is an eloquent and honest representation of the way that many in the pro-life movement feel and it's great to see it out in the open so we can begin to debate this thing honestly:...read on

mcjoan over at Kos looks at John McCain's (having it both ways) view of SD's abortion ban:

"Well, Senator, the problem is that the South Dakota bill specifically ruled out exceptions for rape or incest, allowing only an exception for the health life of the mother, and by golly, the women of South Dakota were damned lucky to get that. I guess it's small comfort to know that their own lives rate just a little bit higher than a fertilized egg...read on"

(Update): Gov. Mike Rounds on Monday signed legislation banning almost all abortions in South Dakota....read on

Despite the soul-sucking process, this Congress has been one of the most productive and effective in recent history. Here's a clip from the Washington Post in January, 2010:

...this Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative success of any modern president -- and that includes Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. The deep dysfunction of our politics may have produced public disdain, but it has also delivered record accomplishment.

The productivity began with the stimulus package, which was far more than an injection of $787 billion in government spending to jump-start the ailing economy. More than one-third of it -- $288 billion -- came in the form of tax cuts, making it one of the largest tax cuts in history, with sizable credits for energy conservation and renewable-energy production as well as home-buying and college tuition. The stimulus also promised $19 billion for the critical policy arena of health-information technology, and more than $1 billion to advance research on the effectiveness of health-care treatments.

In 2010, we've had Wall Street regulatory reform, repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the new START treaty appears to have the votes for ratification, food safety bill was passed, student loan reform, extension of tax credits in the stimulus bill benefiting the poor and middle class for two more years, and we may yet still get a 9-11 responders bill passed in some form. These are not small accomplishments.

And yet.

Health care and Wall Street reform were far from the only shows in town. People will remember the 111th Congress as the best and most consequential of most of our lifetimes. And for those of us that had a front row seat? It was appalling, depressing, spirit-deadening, and completely sub-optimal. Go figure. I think it is best not to watch too closely.

Perhaps so. Or, assuming the new tea party House of Representatives doesn't de-fund everything as they're wont to do, we might actually begin to see the benefits kick in, and begin to understand how significant it really was.

If this is true, and the Democrats are successful, this will be very good news:

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer also had some new news on extended unemployment benefits. President Obama signed the bill late Thursday night.

It provides up to 99 weeks of support for people who have exhausted their state benefits. Schumer says there's more legislation in the works to extend past the 99 weeks.

“There are a number of people who have maxed out, they've been looking and looking for work but haven't found it, and there is a separate act that would extend those benefits to them,. Extending this was really important. There are some people who go beyond the 99 weeks and we're gonna try to do that next,” he said.

The senator did not give any timeline for the act.

From Michael Thornton of the Rochester Examiner:

Unemployment and 99er advocate Rob C has been in contact with various congressional representatives and his contact with Senator Schumer is as follows:

Senator Chuck Schumer – After emailing our request on 7/20 to Chief of Staff Mike Lynch I was referred to staffer who I will not name at his request, after leaving messages on 7/21, 7/22 and calling on 7/23 I finally spoke with that staffer. We had a heated discussion and debate on the matter, and I simply asked him to step up or not. Alex Levy advised that if we got Republican Senator to sign onto the bill that Senator Schumer would write it. I confirmed this with him again, and asked if we had a gentlemen’s agreement on this – he said “yes”. So the fight is on now to find that Republican Senator. Oddly enough a few hours after the call from our community, Senator Schumer went on camera and announced he is working on something.

Contact Senator Schumer and ask him to be ready to write benefit exhaustee legislation immediately:

http://schumer.senate.gov/new_website/contact.cfm

As a result of Senator Schumer's need for Republican support, it’s vital that Republicans be contacted to support 99er – benefit exhaustee legislation. Who are those Republicans that may be swayed to support the millions who are exhausting benefits? The list is small, but here are a few suggestions:

Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins,Scott Brown and Lindsay Graham.

These are the few moderate Republicans from states with higher unemployment. Call, fax and email them as often as you can.

So. In response to a Politico piece in which the authors and White House whine about the left wing blogosphere not being happy with all of Obama's "wins" and not caring about potential losses in 2010, Kevin Drum writes:

Here's the good news: this record of progressive accomplishment officially makes Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. And here's the bad news: this shoddy collection of centrist, watered down, corporatist sellout legislation was all it took to make Obama the most successful domestic Democratic president of the last 40 years. Take your pick.

Here's the thing. What matters is whether policy works. It does not matter if what Obama did was more left wing than anything that's been done in a while (though in absolute terms I would argue it mostly wasn't left wing, the health care plan, for example, was essentially a Republican plan from the 90s), what matters is if it was left wing enough (big enough stimulus, smart enough health care plan) to improve people's lives enough that they noticed.

It wasn't, and that's all that matters. Policies such as the stimulus were not done well enough, and everyone from Nobel prize winners with good predictive records like Stiglitz and and Krugman, down to nobodies like me, predicted it at the time. The President hired the wrong people to give him advice, didn't even do as much as many of them wanted, and now we all pay the price.

Sometimes half doesn't work. Half-assed rarely does. All Obama's half assed "left wing" policies have done is discredit the left for another generation. Combined with the ability of the media, Republicans and hysterical Tea Baggers unable to use a dictionary to define him as a "socialist" this means that Obama's policies are seen as left wing, and left wing policies are seen to have failed.

I don't want Obama doing anything I agree with, because he will screw it up and discredit it. In this respect he is like Bush. He is poison because he is incompetent at policy.

As for the original Politico post, the hysterical ranting at the peanut gallery the authors clearly don't even read, says more about them and the White House than it does about the left wing blogosphere they try to blame for Democrats own failures.

After 18 months, Wall Street reform is on its way to the President's desk. The Senate invoked cloture by a vote of 60-38 and the final conference committee report passed by the same margin. A good summary of the key provisions can be found here.

Even before the final passage, Minority Leader John Boehner called for its repeal.

"I think it ought to be repealed. There are common sense things we should do to plug the holes in the regulatory system that were there and to bring more transparency to financial transactions," he said. "Because transparency is like sunlight and sunlight is the best disinfectant."

"I think the financial reform bill is ill-conceived," he said. "I think it is going to make credit harder for the American people to get."

Here is a list of Boehner's 1,299,120 reasons why repeal appeals to him. Draw your own conclusions.

Reactions from around the blogs:

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California Gov. ArnoldSchwarzenegger announced Wednesday night that he will veto legislation allowingsame-sex couples to marry.The announcement,made through his press secretary, Margita Thompson, said that the bill is inconflict with Proposition 22 a ballot initiative passed in 2000 to preventCalifornia from recognizing same-sex marriages performed elsewhere...

You go, girl! When I read this earlier, I thought, "Why are the Dems giving this away without using it as a bargaining chip?" Once again, we see that the Speaker is the only one with real cojones:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck a combative tone tonight, rejecting the Medicare "doc fix" passed hastily through the Senate Friday until Senate Republicans allow a vote on jobs measures that have passed through the House.

"I see no reason to pass this inadequate bill until we see jobs legislation coming out of the Senate," said Pelosi in a statement.

"House Democrats are saying to Republicans in the Senate: Show us the jobs! (exclamation mark hers)"Her statement, along with Senate Republicans' unwillingness to pass any legislation that adds to the debt, means that Medicare doctors can expect a 21 percent pay cut when claims that have been held for two weeks start to be processed by Medicare's government administrator on Monday. Senate Democrats could not muster 60 votes twice this week when they considered bills more to Pelosi's liking. They passed the last-minute doc fix bill to avert the 21 percent pay cut to Medicare doctors on Friday afternoon, even as the pay cut was scheduled to take effect.

From Pelosi's office:
Pelosi to Senate Republicans: Show Us the Jobs

Washington, D.C.--Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued the following statement in response to Senate Republicans' refusal to pass jobs legislation along with the inadequate six months physician payment extension bill:

"The inadequate legislation on physicians' fees that Senate Republicans allowed to pass today is a great disappointment. The House has approved long-term reform that ensures that Medicare patients will have access to quality physicians' services.

"The bill Senate Republicans allowed to pass is not only inadequate with respect to physician fees, but it ignores urgent sections of the House bill to provide jobs. The House has repeatedly sent jobs-creating bills to the Senate since December -- Build America Bonds, small business hiring incentives, and importantly, summer jobs -- and yet Republicans continue to block approval of jobs legislation.

“What is it that Republicans in the Senate and House don't understand about the need for jobs in America?

"I see no reason to pass this inadequate bill until we see jobs legislation coming out of the Senate. House Democrats are saying to Republicans in the Senate: Show us the jobs!"

TIME magazine has a piece up about Russell Pearce's new brainchild, trying to outlaw children born in America.

"Anchor babies" isn't a very endearing term, but in Arizona those are the words being used to tag children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants. While not new, the term is increasingly part of the local vernacular because the primary authors of the nation's toughest and most controversial immigration law are targeting these tots - the legal weights that anchor many undocumented aliens in the U.S. - for their next move.

Buoyed by recent public opinion polls suggesting they're on the right track with illegal immigration, Arizona Republicans will likely introduce legislation this fall that would deny birth certificates to children born in Arizona - and thus American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution - to parents who are not legal U.S. citizens. The law largely is the brainchild of state Sen. Russell Pearce, a Republican whose suburban district, Mesa, is considered the conservative bastion of the Phoenix political scene. He is a leading architect of the Arizona law that sparked outrage throughout the country: Senate Bill 1070, which allows law enforcement officers to ask about someone's immigration status during a traffic stop, detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists - things like poor English skills, acting nervous or avoiding eye contact during a traffic stop. (See the battle for Arizona: will a border crackdown work?) But the likely new bill is for the kids. While SB 1070 essentially requires of-age migrants to have the proper citizenship paperwork, the potential "anchor baby" bill blocks the next generation from ever being able to obtain it. The idea is to make the citizenship process so difficult that illegal immigrants pull up the "anchor" and leave.

Back on May 25th, David N. posted on this when Pearce went on Bill O'Reilly and admitted this is what he had in store as his next volley as he continues his attacks on the non-whites of America.

O'Reilly, of course, is not much help: He counters Pearce by observing that this is "federal law" -- though that is hardly the half of it, since this particular principle, of birthright citizenship, is embedded in the Constitution and is indeed a proud part of America's heritage as a nation of immigrants.

Pearce wants to claim that this only refers to people with "legal domicile" in the U.S. -- even though the words appear nowhere in the Constitution.

He complains that the concept of "illegal immigration" hadn't been conceived when the 14th Amendment was written -- which is true enough, but irrelevant to whether it remains in force. Indeed, a much stronger argument can be made that the nakedly racist/eugenicist/Nativist Immigration Act of 1924 -- which first created "illegal immigration" -- was grossly unconstitutional because it clearly violated the 14th Amendment.

Moreover, it's irrelevant because the law has always been interpreted to mean that, when a newborn is accorded automatic birthright citizenship based on birth on American soil, its status is generally unaffected by the legal status or citizenship of that individual's mother or father. This was true both before and after 1924...read on

I think Pearce knows that this will be struck down in the Supreme Court even with the right wing fringe running the place because it's firmly embedded in our Constitution and Scalia and his clones are supposed to be Originalists, right? You must understand something about movement conservatives. They pick fights not because they know they can win it in the end, losing is just as acceptable when it comes to immigration and the culture wars because *"backlash politics" is all about playing the victim. They get to stir the pot, create some outrage, make tons of cash and get themselves elected over issues that they never can win at. Remember creationism vs evolution? They knew that it would never pass with the scientific community, but as Thomas Frank puts it, they don't care. They can hold their noses high and attack the "elites" over and over again making the case that those snobby, latte sipping Frenchmen think they know better than all of the red blooded-red state Americans because they believe they are smarter than us.

Backlash Politics:

The backlash narrative is more powerful than mere facts, and according to this central mythology conservatives are always hardworking patriots who love their country and are persecuted for it, while liberals, who are either high-born weaklings or eggheads hypnotized by some fancy idea, are always ready to sell their nation out at a moment’s notice.7