From The Center for Media and Democracy: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11902/alecs-so-called-right-work-bill-political-revenge-michigan
by Lisa Graves
December 11, 2012
As concerned workers come together across Michigan in protest, partisan politicians are poised to make one of the strongholds for America’s blue-collar worker rights into a so-called “Right to Work” (RTW) state — in accordance with the ALEC blueprint to change to state laws at the behest of some of the biggest corporations in the world. Yet, 42 corporations, including General Motors, have distanced themselves from ALEC this year after ALEC’s role in controversial and divisive legislation was exposed.
RTW — Brought Home to You by ALEC (and the Kochs, of course)
At issue is a bill spearheaded by ALEC legislators so beholden to their corporate benefactors that they think it’s legitimate to vote in secret as equals with corporate lobbyists on model bills like RTW through ALEC “task forces,” as the Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch/ALECexposed has previously reported. Key provisions of the Michigan RTW bills (for instance, HB 4054) are taken almost verbatim from the ALEC template.
That agenda is part of a corporate wish list of Charles and David Koch, the oil billionaires who have spent millions trying to popularize extremist ideas and move them from the fringes into binding law. David Koch’s group of political operatives known as “Americans for Prosperity” (AFP) — which I call “Americans for Greed” — is backing the divisive legislation in Michigan.
RTW — Brought to You by Vengeful Partisans and Very Lame Ducks
But the bill rushed through the statehouse for the governor to sign is also poisonous political payback in a state where President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by almost 10% of the vote (nearly half a million votes), despite millions spent by the Kochs and other bilionaires in campaign donations as well as dark money operations to get Romney in the White House and to get laws changes to their liking.
Michigan was a landslide loss for Republicans, who also lost seats in the state legislature in Lansing, a loss which will take effect when the next class of legislators is sworn in this January.
The get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort in Michigan was built on workers banding together to knock on doors, make phone calls, and get people to the polls on election day. Volunteers from organized labor unions were not the only ones working to get people to vote. AFP and others backing Republicans knocked on doors too, and Romney won the vote of 50,000 more Michiganians than John McCain did in 2008, but fell far short of winning the state’s 16 electoral votes.
Continue reading at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/12/11902/alecs-so-called-right-work-bill-political-revenge-michigan
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