If the Minnesota DFL didn’t have the “American Legislative Exchange Council”, better demonized known as “ALEC”, to turn into a boogeyman for the low-information voter, they’d have to make them up…
…oh. Haha. They already did make it up.
Nonetheless, the MNDFL – in this case, Senator Scott Dibble – has taken time out from its relentless drive to put every Minnesotan to work to introduce a bill aimed at ALEC:
If the measure became law, anyone who promotes or distributes model legislation would be required to register as a lobbyist. Under the measure, lobbyists and lawmakers would have to disclose any scholarship funds they get to attend events or meetings.
“It is aimed at ALEC,” said Minneapolis DFL Sen. Scott Dibble, the bill sponsor. “ALEC is a very strong influential entity.”
So isn’t it just a little…bitchy to write a law “aimed at” – that’s what Dibble said – a group that does exactly, exactly the same thing as the “National Council of State Legislatures”, or the “Progressive States Network”, or the political arms of all the unions do; write model legislation and try to persuade legislators to pass them into law?
Oh, there’s an out of sorts:
The measure would also apply to other national groups that push model legislation, that is, bills that are proposed and written outside of Minnesota and then tailored to the state. Dibble said a coalition of lawmakers interested in environmental issues would also be forced to disclose more information in the bill became law.
Well, isn’t that special.
I’m not so much upset that the DFL is wasting the legislature’s, and the peoples’, time to count coup over the head of an organization that does exactly what a roomful of other groups do at the Legislature.
No, what we should all be upset at is the role the Twin Cities media have played in serving as the DFL’s handmaidens in this demonization. The Twin Cities media have written countless stories in this past year, entirely at the behest of left-leaning pressure groups like the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, about the “insidious influence” of ALEC – but you’ll scour the net in vain for even a trivial mention of the fact that the PSN, the NCSL, and an organic poo-ton of liberal activist and pressure groups do exactly. The. Same. Thing.
I’d love to ask the likes of Rachel Stassen-Berger, Mike Mulcahy and Bill Salisbury why that is.
But I’d imagine the public doesn’t have a right to know that.
It has been nearly a year since MPR reported that multi-million DFL campaign group ABM was holding regular meetings with the governor’s office, the administration and the Legislature to discuss strategy. In that time there has been no follow up as to who was in those meetings, when they occurred, how often they occur, if they still occur or what was talked about. But by golly if ALEC ever looked at a policy idea we know about it post haste.
These days the Left believes that limited government leads to tyranny.
They are insane.
Why I do not waste time watching WDFL or bother readingthe Red Star. Neither is a news source. They are apologists.
This bill could be fun.
The next time the Minneapolis or St Paul city councils pass laws on the environment, sanctuary cities, or any of those really pointless resolutions condemning war, we get to file complaints with the campaign Finance Board.
Wonder when Dribble will get around to clipping the wings of a particularly nasty group called “OutFrontMN”, which has been methodically inserting sexual perversion into the curriculum of government schools.
Yup, using the kids to promote disease spreading debauchery…it really doesn’t get much worse than that.
Erm, well, it doesn’t get much worse for kids that manage to make it out of the womb with limbs intact that is.
Roe v Wade: body count 53 million and climbing. Planned Parenthood had it’s best crop of dead babies last year.
Er,
http://koolaidreport.blogspot.com/2007/08/new-legislation.html
(That among others which I can’t presently locate.)
So now I have to register as a lobbyist?
Curious…
Foot, there are some FLEEN episodes that could be used to argue in favor of registering you as a terrorist in Minnesota.
Developing….
In fact, any FLEEN episode could be used thus.
So, we have to register these organizations because our legislators are too stupid to recognize bad legislation when they see it, and vote against it? Hmmm, apparently so, considering what these DFL legislators themselves come up with.
Pingback: CNN Is Shocked…Shocked… | Shot in the Dark