{"id":26866,"date":"2012-03-16T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T17:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=26866"},"modified":"2013-01-09T10:36:08","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T16:36:08","slug":"compare-and-contrast-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=26866","title":{"rendered":"Chanting Points Memo: Compare And Contrast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s “Compare and Contrast” feature pits the “American Legislative Exchange Council<\/a>” – also known as “ALEC”, and also also known as “This Year’s DFL Boogeyman” – against the “National Conference of State Legislatures<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Who”?<\/p>\n

Exactly.<\/p>\n

Let’s compare them, point by point:<\/p>\n

Agenda<\/strong>: \u00a0The group promotes a partisan point of view.
\nALEC<\/strong>: \u00a0Yes – center right.
\nNCLS<\/strong>: Yes – center-left.<\/p>\n

Pushing Agenda<\/strong>: \u00a0The group writes “model legislation” that, if passed, would further its agenda, and distributes it to its legislative members (because all legislation needs to be submitted by an elected legislator, naturally).
\nALEC<\/strong>: \u00a0Yes. \u00a0As, by the way, do other conservative think tanks; Cato, the NRA, whomever.
\nNCLS<\/strong>: Yes. \u00a0As, by the way, do liberal think tanks, as well as the political action wings of all the unions. \u00a0Especially the NEA.<\/p>\n

Content Of That Agenda<\/strong>: \u00a0The group promotes an agenda that its opponents find debatable.
\nALEC<\/strong>: \u00a0Yes – and that fact has pushed the more-deranged reaches of the left to the point where the liberal “attention” has become self-parody, and has gotten to the point where “Berg’s Seventh Law”<\/a> applies. \u00a0Two years ago, they babbled about the Koch Brothers to cover the fact that Alita Messinger was pouring millions into the Minnesota campaign. \u00a0This year, yapping like obedient dogs about “ALEC” will obscure the fact that the unions and groups like the NCLS will be doing the same, and much, much more, just by simple dint of there being more of them.
\nNCLS<\/strong>: Yes – although you don’t hear much about it.<\/p>\n

Who Pays The Dues To Join The Group To Learn About The Agenda?<\/strong>: \u00a0Both groups charge dues, which by definition makes them “not lobbying groups”. \u00a0Someone has to pay for legislators to join and remain “members”.
\nALEC<\/strong>: \u00a0The members pay their own dues.
\nNCLS<\/strong>: Dues are paid by the state, using taxpayer money. \u00a0One source with background in legislative matters tells me the dues amount to over $300,000 in state money a year. \u00a0That’s money that’s being taken from the children <\/em>to pay for our legislators to think like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Attention Group Gets From Its Detractors<\/strong>: \u00a0What’s the group’s profile among its opponents?
\nNCLS<\/strong>: <\/strong>Not much. \u00a0Even though it promotes an institutionalist, big-government agenda, and does it with public money, you rarely if ever hear about the NCLS’ actions or agenda. \u00a0Or those of the National Education Association, which does all the same things – promoting policy, writing model legislation, trying to inveigle legislators into sponsoring it, yadda yadda. \u00a0Or the same operations at AFSCME, MAPE, the SEIU, and on, and on, and on.
\n<\/strong>ALEC<\/strong>: \u00a0The group is to the left in 2012 what “birth certificates” were to the fringe right in 2009, what “Bush’s cruise missiles” were to the “fringe” left in 2004, what “black helicopters” were to the paranoid right in 1996; a stalking horse for their lunatic fringes at best, justification for its own excesses at worst.<\/p>\n

Hope we’ve settled that.<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s “Compare and Contrast” feature pits the “American Legislative Exchange Council” – also known as “ALEC”, and also also known as “This Year’s DFL Boogeyman” – against the “National Conference of State Legislatures“. “Who”? Exactly. Let’s compare them, point by point: Agenda: \u00a0The group promotes a partisan point of view. ALEC: \u00a0Yes – center right. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,63,18],"tags":[243],"class_list":["post-26866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanting-points-memo","category-lefty-alt-media","category-pc","tag-bergs-7th-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26866"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26871,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26866\/revisions\/26871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}