from the know-a-man-by-the-company-he-keeps dept.
Microsoft News reports
Microsoft has announced that they are dropping their membership with ALEC. The American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC) is a lobbying group that works to advance limited government, free markets, and federalism at the state level through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America's state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public. But it was recently revealed that ALEC was involved in lobbying for measures to repeal renewable energy standards, block meaningful disclosure of chemicals used in fracking and more.
Microsoft provided the following statement regarding ALEC:
"In 2014 Microsoft decided to no longer participate in the American Legislative Exchange Council's Communications and Technology Task Force, which had been our only previous involvement with ALEC, With this decision, we no longer contribute any dues to ALEC...we are no longer members of ALEC and do not provide the organization with financial support of any kind."
Greenpeace senior IT policy analyst Gary Cook commented the following to CNET:
"Microsoft deserves praise for living up to its sustainability values by ending its membership in ALEC, an organization which has attacked clean energy and climate policies in nearly all 50 states, Microsoft has demonstrated a commitment in recent years to clean energy and climate action by introducing an internal carbon fee and purchasing large amounts of wind energy to power two of its data centers."
ALEC is also a major force behind "Stand Your Ground" ("Shoot First") legislation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Monday August 25 2014, @01:55PM
They call themselves "nonpartisan". Ha!
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2014, @04:25PM
Why is stand your ground law relevant here? It wasn't in the original article.
I think soylentnews is developing a tiny partisan bias. It's not yet enough to be worth talking about now, but something seems to be there.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2014, @04:36PM
> I think soylentnews is developing a tiny partisan bias.
Soylentnews is people. So it will have whatever bias its members have.
ALEC is people too since corporations are people my friend.
It is totally the same.
(Score: 1) by lonestar on Tuesday August 26 2014, @03:40AM
There is nothing more offensive than a union hack bitching about Citizens United. The union mobs take money from their members - forcibly - and fund all kinds of fringe fucked up causes that their members probably would never contribute to directly. Spare us the double standard, the intellectual dishonesty is absurdly obvious to anyone with a half-functioning brain.
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:48PM
The union mobs take money from their members - forcibly - and fund all kinds of fringe fucked up causes that their members probably would never contribute to directly. Spare us the double standard, the intellectual dishonesty is absurdly obvious to anyone with a half-functioning brain.
In what way does that differ from what corporations do?
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 1) by lonestar on Wednesday September 24 2014, @01:01AM
You're kidding, right? When's the last time a corporation forcibly took money from you?
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Wednesday September 24 2014, @10:01PM
When's the last time a union forcibly took money from you?
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday August 25 2014, @05:39PM
The reference is in the submission as received. I think it is unfair to claim that this represents a bias on the part of SN.
If the editor had elected to remove the reference, could he be accused of dictating the views or opinions that members of our community should hold?
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2014, @08:20PM
Actually, Soylentnews is (rather to my disgust) starting to look quite biased in terms of content.
I'm not a doctrinaire anything. I read very widely, from MSNBC to Daily Telegraph, in multiple languages, so I have a good idea who is pushing which talking points and ignoring which issues.
Let's take a quick look at this story:
This is the first warning, actually. No idea who (or what) gewg_ is, but as a source it appears to be a mouthpiece for some progressive movement. But oh well, let's delve a bit...
So far so good. Factual report. What ALEC is. Not sure why it's important enough to rate a mention on Soylent, but what the hell, it made the newsday. I guess the Microsoft mention pushes it up.
Precisely what these lobbying measures are, isn't described. Did they happen to mention that the renewable energy standards looked like a pain in the butt to implement over dinner, or did they show up in Joe Congresscritter's office with a wheelbarrow of unmarked, used, nonsequential bills? Block meaningful disclosure ... by which measure? What constitutes meaningful disclosure? There may be answers, but we have no idea what it is. Maybe the disclosure process wasn't meaningful because it didn't detail what was where? Or maybe it didn't include three thousand pages of scary things some chemicals might do if directly injected into the pituitary glands of cancer-prone lab rats? Who knows? We don't. And from this story, we can't. And more ... more what? More lobbying? Scary! Classic Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt at work.
OK, so Microsoft used to be on their tech group. Now they're not. Maybe they didn't get their collective dicks sucked enough, and maybe they're tired of paying for it. Who knows? We don't know why, but the biggest clue available is that recently Microsoft has done a lot of cost cutting. This may just be an extension of their cost cutting. Who knows? We don't. And from this story, we can't. But it sure looks scary!
Oh great. This illuminates all our shadowy doubts with the light of unbiased clarity .... or no, wait, it doesn't. It spews Greenpeace propaganda about how evil ALEC is. Oh, and a sentence which describes "Stand Your Ground" legislation as "Shoot First". Because that's exactly what the law says. Except it doesn't. Not even a little bit.
Come on, guys. If you're trying to be subtle, you're failing. If anything, you're being so cartoonishly over-the-top as to make the republicans look like reasonable and mature participants in a balanced political environment. Please stop making me praise republicans. It hurts me. Deep inside.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday August 25 2014, @09:04PM
You're missing the forest for the trees. It's an article about the behavior of a major tech company. That's interesting, as it often sets a precedent. Second, Soylentils are probably left of center politically. So what? You want more rightwing articles, you know where the submit button is. That's the way forums work!
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 25 2014, @11:25PM
Knowing that SN has a significant international membership and the US "political center" is actually quite towards the right of the political spectrum, isn't this to be expected?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:48AM
MOD PARENT WAY UP
(Score: 1) by Yog-Yogguth on Tuesday August 26 2014, @10:12AM
Maybe they are, maybe not, it's not always obvious or in any way relevant. I'm so far to the right (as opposed to the wrong hurr hurr) that sometimes I can't see any company except to the left of me and only if I use a telescope :D well actually that's kind of a lie, there seems to be a few others similar to me around here (geographically) so we get to share the telescope while we pretend to hide from the "anti-fascist" fascists we spot through he lens (but they're boring: always beating and knifing themselves/their own kind and throwing stuff around or repeating old failed mantras before they sell out like the ones before them).
Submit right wing articles? No thanks: fuck ideology, it stops people from thinking (and sometimes even from laughing).
Did I mention that ideologies are by their very nature collectivist? Try that one out on some “right wing” US radio talk-show hosts and see if their heads asplode :)
So anyway I think gewg should keep on keeping on no matter how much I or anyone else agrees or disagrees (and hopefully there will be plenty of differing opinions) but at least to me it would be helpful with more context and/or explanation of his point of view. Can't really blame him for it: it's the hardest part of communicating and I'm equally guilty if not more so. It's usually also a good idea to avoid deeply politically flavored words like ‘reactionary’ when it is only (and obviously) being used as shorthand for “automatically doubleplus bad”.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Tuesday September 23 2014, @09:58PM
Did I mention that ideologies are by their very nature collectivist?
Humans are by their very nature collectivist. As are chimps and bonobos.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:04AM
Glad to see I'm not the only one who reads and replies late :D I just recently got through a three digit backlog.
Social animal [wikipedia.org] and collectivism [wikipedia.org] are for the most part distinctly different things but either way it doesn't change that ideologies are by their nature collectivist :)
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by lonestar on Tuesday August 26 2014, @03:43AM
"I think soylentnews is developing a tiny partisan bias."
A tiny one? Ha, this place is fucking Think Progress central sometimes.
Notice that one of the first comments was mocking the claim that ALEC is nonpartisan.
I guess advocating for limited government is "partisan" now. I wonder what the average age of the membership is here.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday August 26 2014, @06:15PM
If you look at the far right wing republican platform and then look at the issues ALEC supports, you will find that they are exactly 1 to 1. If they were formed around one issue, then perhaps they could have some plausible deniability, but these guys are rather obviously a mouthpiece for the most conservative elements of the party.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 25 2014, @02:01PM
ALEC's role in US politics is to write laws that then get pushed through state legislatures, almost exclusively to benefit the corporations that fund it. By lobbying at the state level rather than the national level, they often avoid the scrutiny that most lobby groups get.
Some of the other policies ALEC has designed:
- Voter ID requirements to prevent certain kinds of people from voting
- Arizona's "show me your papers" law for anyone who a police officer suspects of being an illegal immigrant (my Canadian immigrant friends never got hassled, my US-born Hispanic friends were when they visited the area)
- Making involvement with animal rights groups an act of terrorism if anyone connected to the group does anything illegal towards the target of (lawful) protest
- Three strikes laws that can send people to jail for life for relatively small offenses
- Preventing state regulators from requiring those engaged in hydraulic fracking from having to tell the public what they're using to do it (i.e. what is now going to show up in the water supply)
- Banning governments from creating public broadband and wireless Internet service
- Replacing public education with charter and private schools
Decide for yourself whether you like or hate these folks, but know what they stand for.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2014, @08:47PM
OK, so corps get together to lobby, and do so at the state level. So far, doesn't bother me more than lobbying in general does - just sounds like a more directed, efficient approach. No law says corporate masters have to be stupid.
Voting is a right, and a prerogative (to the enfranchised anyway). Nothing about that says that there shouldn't be a hurdle to prevent fraud, and an identity check of some sort seems reasonable. That's why we have fingerprint readers, password systems and so on on computers. I think we can protect democracy with at least as much technical sophistication as pornography. So I guess I'm cool with this as long as the burden doesn't amount to a poll tax.
Arizona has a problem. It sucks for people who get hassled, and Arizona's policing probably could use some oversight, but there's no reason Arizona should not be able to look for lawbreakers in their territory. I happen to know that even green card holders are supposed to pack their green cards with them wherever they go. So solve the policing problem, and come up with a better way of addressing Arizona's influx problem. If you don't have a better idea, then don't move to Arizona.
Granted, terrorist definitions are getting way out of hand, and that shit needs to be rolled back. However, there are clear and deliberate criminal groups under the animal rights banner, and I don't really see why they shouldn't be held to the same standards as the rest of us when they burn things, break things, steal things and so on. Or are the ALF suddenly untouchable?
Which lots of people voted for and passed to great acclaim a while back, and which on balance are actually getting rolled back as people realise it was a bad idea. Yeah, go figure.
Actually that's a very complicated story, it's not clear how much of what lands in which water supply under which conditions, nor how what might change in which conditions. So a lot of those reports amount to fact-lite scare documents. Should there be public information? Quite probably, but states have often been quick to pass stupid laws, and leave industry holding the bag so I'm not ready to condemn them out of hand knowing that what most state legislators know about chemistry and geology could be written longhand on the back of a small postage stamp.
Granted, that ban makes no sense to me - applying some conditions does make sense to me, but the details vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Given the current state of public education, I'm not sure that doesn't count as a service to the nation.
Don't like 'em. Don't hate 'em. Sound no better nor worse than the average run of american politics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2014, @11:30PM
Believe me, looking at US from outside, what happens there sound so outlandish that "planet America" is a term more appropriate than USofA.
(Score: 1) by albert on Tuesday August 26 2014, @05:24AM
Voter ID requirements: come on, seriously... voting 42 times is not cool. If we aren't going to require ID, we might as well elect via a SoylentNews poll.
Stopping illegals: why have a law if you won't enforce it? (and no, we can't open the border without instantly becoming 3rd world) It kind of goes with the above; you need ID.
Animal rights: destroying medical research is not cool. If you think it is, please refrain from visiting the hospital or using any medicine.
Three strikes: It isn't life in jail for a small offense. It's life in jail for being an unrepentant career criminal. There comes a time when you need to be put away for good. (or executed) There exist people who have proven that they are unfit to live among the rest of us in a civil society.
Fracking stuff: OK, sort of... though protecting the formula is understandable for competitive reasons, both company-to-company and between nations.
Local government Internet service: OK. This service should be like roads and water. (along with power and phone too)
Charter schools: it's extremely offensive that public school budgets have long been used to fund the Democrats. (via a private tax called "union dues") This is massively corrupt. As a consequence, public schools need to die. There is no other way to stop the corruption.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:59PM
It's so not cool that there are fewer than 40 documented cases of anyone voting in person more than once in the last decade, with that kind of voter fraud being used to swing precisely 0 elections. The problem it purports to fix simply doesn't exist in a significant enough size to be the real purpose of the policy, while there is significant evidence that disenfranchising people who legitimately had the right to vote was in fact a major goal of the policy.
You are not legally required to carry an ID with you unless you are (a) driving, (b) buying an age-restricted product like porn, alcohol, or cigarettes. In many states, you are not even required to give your name to a police officer if he asks for it.
You seem to have misunderstood the laws and their application. People have been convicted and jailed under these laws for making Internet postings in favor of animal rights, being members of non-violent organizations where another member committed a violent act even though no proof existed that the accused had anything to do with the violent act other than knowing the guy, and for filming and distributing films of cattle in factory farms.
I think the ALF are a terrorist group. I think PETA and their cronies are wrong. I disagree with the idea that government has the right to jail people for spreading information.
Just so we're clear, that means that stealing $300 in one robbery is a 2 year sentence, but stealing $250 in three separate robberies is a life sentence. That seems screwed up.
Are you saying that company profitability matters more than the ability of citizens to have water that is safe to drink? That seems backwards to me.
So there's pipeline of money from "taxes->public school systems->public school teachers->teachers' unions->Democratic Party", and you're saying the only way to end that is to eliminate all public schools? That's a chain that could be broken at other links: You could ban donations from public employee unions to political parties. You could simply get the teachers to vote to do something else with their money.
Also, that pipe is probably not as large as you think: teachers unions donate roughly $10 million per year to mostly Democratic candidates, while the US spends roughly 63,000 times that amount on education. Teachers unions, and unions in general, are not even close to the biggest donors to the Democratic Party: Like the Republicans, the Democrats currently rely mostly on corporate support.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by modest on Monday August 25 2014, @02:01PM
I've heard this before and I don't understand the angle. ALEC seems to push legislation to protect and promote corporate interests and I don't really see how "stand your ground" fits in. Any thoughts?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 25 2014, @02:42PM
1. Their membership includes Smith & Wesson, Colt, and other firearm manufacturers. Laws that make it likelier that a gun owner can shoot somebody and not go to jail increases sales of guns.
2. Some of the other laws put forward by ALEC, specifically Voter ID and Arizona's immigration enforcement law, are racist in their application if not their intent. Stand Your Ground has so far been also racist in application [occupywallstreet.net]: About 1% of black-shoots-white versus 17% of white-shoots-black are ruled justifiable.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday August 26 2014, @11:24AM
While I don't disbelieve that race(ism) could easily be a contributing factor in this disparity, the statistic alone doesn't really tell you that.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2014, @03:29PM
>occupywallstreet.net
Oh, there's an unbiased source.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday August 25 2014, @03:55PM
Yes, it's a biased source. That doesn't mean that what that particular article had to say wasn't true: The article lays out exactly what its sources were and the methodology used, and you are welcome to confirm or deny their validity.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2014, @03:47PM
Gunning you down so they can repo the property. Since it's technically THEIR property now, and you're still on it, they can stand their ground all the way to you being under it :)
I kid, but wouldn't be surprised if something similiarly offensive really was the long term intent.
(Score: 4, Informative) by captain normal on Monday August 25 2014, @06:57PM
From the FA: "...ALEC was involved in lobbying for measures to repeal renewable energy standards, block meaningful disclosure of chemicals used in fracking (sic) and more." Seems to me this falls under the "more" category.
Also just check out what else ALEC has been up to and just who is behind it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council [wikipedia.org]
http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed [alecexposed.org]
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2014, @06:54PM
What a great person I am!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:45AM
What kind of a moron (well, neo conservative obviously or a M$ shill) modded this offtopic. The point is it's sad to celebrate the fact you no longer take part in something evil.
(Score: 4, Informative) by SpockLogic on Monday August 25 2014, @09:12PM
ALEC represents the worst in politics. Sleazy corporations buying legislation at the expense of voters from corrupt and gullible legislators.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII