Tens of thousands of Mainers responded by petitioning for the matter to come to a referendum. Issue 1 was one of the most-anticipated votes on election day this year, with pundits watching closely to see how citizens would react to the Republican-led war on voting, which ramped up in states across the country this year.
Thank you for writing in about this! I really appreciate that you took the time to do so. We have covered the Occupy the Corporations efforts, and I regret that recent articles have not referred back to those non-violent protest events in cities across the country. We will address this. Lisa
Check out [http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/12/moveons-99-percent-spring-obama-and-the-dems-march-in-lock-step/ this crtique] published April 12 at CounterPunch. I am quoted near the end:
“Democratic donors and unions have — since the 2000 Nader/Gore/Bush election — flowed millions of election year dollars into non-profit organizations and liberal media to rally progressives and create an echo chamber that can impact politics in favor of Democrats. Clearly this is precisely what’s at play for the 99% Spring effort led by MoveOn.org, Van Jones and other trusted Democratic Party collaborators. 99% Spring’s activities will surely be carefully and quietly coordinated behind the scenes to have a maximum positive impact in defeating Republicans and re-electing President Obama,” he continued. “These groups will claim independence from the 2012 Democratic campaign agenda, but the fact is that funding will flow to them simply to create buzz and the appearance of a movement that dovetails perfectly with Obama’s campaign rhetoric. For months we have seen Democratic advertising money flowing to loyal media collaborators such as on AlterNet, The Nation, Mother Jones, and others. Come December this big liberal election year slush fund will dry up, but until then the progressives who play this game will have plenty of cash for staffing, online media, and protest events aimed at Republicans. The feeding trough is overflowing for those who play this game every four years.”
Not so fast, says activist and author [[John Stauber]], an expert in exposing corporate and political front groups. "What’s going on is very simple. Massive amounts of soft money from unions, wealthy donors and foundations such as the Tides Foundation are flowing into NGOs willing to help support the re-election of Barack Obama, and this MoveOn front group is key to whipping liberals and progressive activists into line to attack Republicans for the cause. The brand and energy of Occupy Wall Street are being coopted by MoveOn’s 99 Spring for this purpose,” he said in an interview.
Here they go again. 99% Spring reminds me of the [[AAEI]] coalition, another [[MoveOn]] front coordinated by [[Tom Matzzie]] that worked with Nancy Pelosi in 2007 to see to it that the Iraq war was funded and used as a political stick to beat Republicans in 2008. Or the massively funded [[Health Care for America Now]] coalition backed by MoveOn in 2009 which made sure that single payer health care was ignored while the White House pushed its pro-insurance industry legislation derided as ‘Obamacare’. In this latest case, the so-called 99 Spring, MoveOn is enlisting other NGOs to create the appearance of a populist uprising from the Left, when it’s all about keeping the rabble in line and aimed at the Republicans to re-elect Obama.
Want current evidence of the coordination among Obama and 99% Spring? The major campaign hook for Obama this week is the Buffett rule and "tax fairness." And MoveOn is urging the trainers of the 99 Spring to focus on tax fairness demonstrations as their first action. It couldn't be any more obvious.
This is just Democratic Party manipulation of the so-called "movement" to re-elect Obama, a failed President for the 1%.
seriously...i don't understand how so many articles can be produced about each company that drops ALEC, and not one mention to the huge national action against them by Occupy on Feb 29th. In around 90 locations nationwide, occupy together with other public-interest groups, demonstrated at ALEC offiliated corporations to demand that they drop their membership and to spread the public knowledge of this illegal lobbying group.
yet all we see is the movement become marginalized and contained in to simply "public interest groups". Did PRWatch turn a blind eye as to why new organizations such as Color of Change even decided to start up? Occupy brought attention to ALEC, we spread the word about them and ALECExposed.com to the world through twitter/fb/everywhere online and it caught like wildfire.
ALEC's first public statement in defense of itself in 37 years (from what can be found on their site) was in August of 2011 after CMDs exposing report. The next was a week before the Feb 29th Occupy action as the independent media/RT/many others were a-buzz with the upcoming events. Then SIX MORE afterwards, in response to articles and the fallout of corporate members, 3-4 weeks after the action when Color of Change and others came out to support the campaign against ALEC.
www.shutdownthecorporations.org for more info. Just a mention would be at least respectful to our efforts.
Pages