{"id":33429,"date":"2013-01-15T07:29:04","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T13:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=33429"},"modified":"2013-01-15T08:47:39","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T14:47:39","slug":"stomp-that-boogeyman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=33429","title":{"rendered":"Stomp That Boogeyman"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the Minnesota DFL didn’t have the “American Legislative Exchange Council”, better demonized<\/del> known as “ALEC”, to turn into a boogeyman for the low-information voter, they’d have to make them up…<\/p>\n

…oh. \u00a0Haha. \u00a0They already did make it up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“It is aimed at ALEC,” said Minneapolis DFL Sen. Scott Dibble, the bill sponsor. “ALEC is a very strong influential entity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So isn’t it just a little…bitchy to write a law “aimed at” – that’s what Dibble said – a group that does exactly,\u00a0exactly\u00a0<\/em>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?<\/p>\n

Oh, there’s an out of sorts:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, isn’t that special.<\/p>\n

I’m not so much upset that the DFL is wasting the legislature’s, and the peoples’, time to count\u00a0coup\u00a0<\/em>over the head of an organization that does\u00a0exactly what a roomful of other groups do at the Legislature<\/em>.<\/p>\n

No, what we should\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>be upset at is the role the Twin Cities media have played in serving as the DFL’s handmaidens in this demonization. \u00a0The Twin Cities media have written countless stories in this past year,\u00a0entirely at the behest of left-leaning pressure groups like the Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota,\u00a0<\/em>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. \u00a0The. \u00a0Same. \u00a0Thing.<\/p>\n

I’d love to ask the likes of Rachel Stassen-Berger, Mike Mulcahy and Bill Salisbury why that is.<\/p>\n

But I’d imagine the public\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0<\/em>have a right to know that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u00a0Haha. \u00a0They already did make it up. Nonetheless, the MNDFL – in this case, Senator Scott Dibble – has taken time out from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tc-media-bias","category-mn-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33429","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=33429"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33431,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33429\/revisions\/33431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}