Attend the liberal hate crimes Henninger documents:
In December, articles appeared on progressive websites attacking Google, Facebook and Yelp for participating in ALEC's annual conference last year. The Web giants wanted to explore various Internet legal issues with the state legislators.And by "explore" he means "let them know how it's gonna go down." But they hadn't counted on someone else sticking their oar in:
A coalition that included the Sierra Club, RootsAction and the Center for Media and Democracy said it outputted 230,000 petition signatures in a "Don't Fund Evil" drive to separate Google from "right-wing extremists" at ALEC, whose sin is "climate denial."This whole idea of so-called "right-wing extremists" pushing so-called "climate denial" is made up out of a whole cloth of facts.
The Sierra Club's site says Kraft, GE and McDonald's pulled away from ALEC in the past under pressure. To date, none of the Web companies have done so.Just like Mao Tse-Tung, these liberals.
...Here's the audio transcript of a radio ad created by ColorOfChange about CVS pharmacies, which supported ALEC: "CVS, when you hear that name, do you think of the law that protected Trayvon Martin's killer? Or laws that suppress the black vote." The ad never ran. But copies of the ad were mailed to CVS, John Deere, HP, Walgreens, Best Buy, BP and a dozen others. All disassociated from ALEC.
This is the Democratic left's modus operandi...Yeah -- it's called democracy, speaking truth to power! But only of a kind: Since our Elected Representatives are useless, these liberal groups have decided to cut out the middleman and appeal directly to the corporations who own them. It's like serfs bringing their grievances directly to their overlords. Shout-out to the libertarians, this one's for you!
Henninger doesn't approve, though; he calls it "threatening companies that participate in politics with reputational destruction" -- that is, thinking badly of them, and saying so -- which is "the American left's version of Maoist shaming sessions." Why isn't he looking at the big picture, and applauding the fortuitous shift from representative democracy to feudalism? Maybe he's just making it look good; the house can't win every time.
for those who aren't willing to sully their eyeballs and brains by getting off the boat, the lede for henninger's column is chris christie, obama, the irs, etc (no benghazi! however).
ReplyDeletetry as he might, exactly what all that has to do with alec isn't all that clear...you know, it's almost as if a..a think tank wrote - i don't know, like a template column for henninger? a column by committee? - that wall street journal could run whenever and just stick the scandal du jour at the top.
would be wild if something like that ever caught on elsewhere.
Not only does the First Amendment protect employees from being fired because they say something stupid that embarrasses their employers, but it also protects products from the tyranny of boycotts. So sayeth the constitutional geniuses of the right.
ReplyDeleteALEC already writes all the legislation for North Carolina. Ant student of the antebellum south has a wonderful opportunity to get past all the mythos and see what it would have looked like as it tried to worm it's way out of the Constitution. basically a bunch of witless gobbets of tallow wrapped in Calvinist Jesus.
ReplyDeleteOur governor and state leg are just a bunch of realtors descended from tobacco trash. If there isn't an ass bared for the sucking on, they're at a complete loss.
It's not like most of the corporations that he mentioned aren't big enough to employ their own army of lobbyists, ALEC just meant they didn't have to. They were a useful one stop shop with established contacts among lobbyists and pro business legislators. Is he complaining that the left is making them clean up their act? Does he think that dissociating from ALEC is the same as reforming those businesses into employee owned co-ops? To companies the size of Google and John Deere, leaving ALEC is just good business sense, now that ALEC has the public approval rating of gangrene. And ten minutes after they leave ALEC, they will join or form a functionally identical organization and keep buying business friendly legislation at bargain basement prices.
ReplyDeleteDaniel Henninger just thinks that is asking too much, as if these companies gave leaving ALEC anywhere near the same amount of deliberation they would give to changing out ad agencies.
To be fair, this is as opposed to the US House of Representatives, which is filled with America's best coiffed dealership owners.
ReplyDeleteSo, it's wrong to try to limit corporate bad behavior with government regulations, but it's also wrong to try to limit corporate bad behavior by appealing to their self-interest? Got it.
ReplyDelete"Oh no, someone pointed out that the assholes I tend to lavish with rimjobs are scum! That's pure commieconspiracy." He sounds like a middle man caught in a scheme and sweating through the shirt he stole off another's back.
ReplyDelete"No, the purpose is to surface any such association so the cadres can move in and use the Web, mass Twitter
ReplyDeletefeeds, shareholder resolutions and media campaigns to drive private companies
out of the political arena, leaving politics in the control of
public-sector interests—i.e., the state rules."
To get the full dramatic impact of this column, you really need to see a bombastic, creepy-eyed old Italian man yelling it from a balcony.
If corporations don't run our government, who will? People? People representing people? People are shitty at governing, my friend. People invented legal entities that are treated better than people when they want to be and are not treated like people when the people behind those entities don't want them to be. That's pretty silly! If corporations don't write the laws, people will, and clearly people do not know what they're doing.
It's one thing to be critical of boycotts, lord knows I've heaped plenty of scorn on the Starbucks unappreciation day gun nuts. But Henninger plays an incredible FREEDOM IS SLAVERY trick here by asserting that the very idea of a boycott is itself undemocratic! How long before we start seeing WSJ articles claiming Get out the Vote is the left's version of kristallnacht?
ReplyDeleteThe Chamber of Commerce is the Resistance of Liberal Fascism.
ReplyDelete"...threatening companies that participate in politics with reputational destruction...."
ReplyDeleteYeah, right. I don't even know where to begin with this--corrupt lawyers convincing corrupt judges to give corrupt corporations the same rights as living human beings, or that ALEC is a lobbyists' boiler room masquerading as a non-profit, or that "participate in politics" is a hoary euphemism for legalized bribery and vote-buying.
The mere fact that ALEC, its subsidiaries and wannabes, along with all the CEOs of its corporate donors and elected officials that are members, aren't facing criminal charges and long jail time is an indication of just how badly we're being fucked in the ass by our elected representatives (oddly enough, the very same people responsible for making election and ethics law).
Until we declare all these fuckwits persona non grata, take away their citizenship and their charters and pack them onto the filthiest tramp freighter we can find, and then scuttle it at sea, they're gonna keep on jabbing us with that red, white and blue dick.
use the Web, mass Twitter TWTR +0.99% feeds, shareholder resolutions and media campaigns to drive private companies out of the political arena, leaving politics in the control of public-sector interests—i.e., the state rules
ReplyDeleteThat the WSJ leaves in the stock price of the private mechanism associations of private actors are using to combat other associations of private actors isn't quite as accurate or useful as an editor adding [sic], but it'll do.
"threatening companies that participate in politics with reputational destruction"
ReplyDeleteSo not only do corporations have a right to "participate in politics" (by spending zillions more than the average voter can), they also have a right to suffer no opposition from any voter who disagrees with their political positions? Suuuuure, that's consistent with sanity...
Yeah, you might be able to pick out the pattern from just those two samples.
ReplyDelete"YES."
ReplyDeleteBengahzi was there, but it got whisked away on a black helicopter.
ReplyDeleteHeads I win, tails you lose. Just like every other game they want to play.
ReplyDelete...threatening companies that participate in politics with reputational destruction....
ReplyDeleteGee, Mr. Henninger, what were you saying last week about unions?
threatening companies that participate in politics with reputational destruction
ReplyDeleteNot to be confused with actually destroying organizations that participate in politics in ways you don't like. Then, you're all for it.
Dear Lord, not petitions! AND THEY MADE AN AD?!!! Perspective, have some.
ReplyDeleteDamn shame what's happened to NC, my once adopted home. But I guess Chatham, Durham, Forsyth, and Wake counties never were representative of the whole state.
ReplyDeleteGoddamn it, I miss Carlin.
ReplyDeleteThe right's always talking about class envy, but what was always representative to me about North Carolina were the hick interlopers who'd make their way from the woods to ogle or try and shag the college students.
ReplyDeleteIf I've seen one old boar hog looking fucker with bad teeth checking out a kid's ass from one side and lecturing on jeebus from the other, I've seen a hundred.
Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh ought to become city states and let the rest of the hellhole cousinfuck itself to feudalism.
"Maybe he's just making it look good; the house can't win every time."
ReplyDeleteMaybe, but "He's stupid and he hates America" hasn't been wrong yet.
Asheville should fit in there somewhere, especially since Bob Owen moved to The Triangle.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I miss about Asheville is the old Wall Street, with the hippie dry goods stores.
ReplyDeleteI went to Asheville with an exchange student from Pau (France) and she said it was more like a European town than anything else she'd experienced in NC. She refused to do the Biltmore thing.
"Versailles is free to visit, and it's real".
To get the full dramatic impact of this column, you really need to see a
ReplyDeletebombastic, creepy-eyed old Italian man yelling it from a balcony.
"I'm mad as a hatter, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!"
I hope nobody's standing right under the balcony, unless they came equipped for a Gallagher show...
Italian? Shirley you mean German?
ReplyDeleteWhere did you get the picture of Monckton at Cambridge?
ReplyDelete"How long before we start seeing WSJ articles claiming Get out the Vote is the left's version of kristallnacht?"
ReplyDeleteAsk ACORN.
How long before we start seeing WSJ articles claiming Get out the Vote is the left's version of kristallnacht? I remember when they were saying that Obama took power in a coup. An electoral coup.
ReplyDeleteCan America afford to wait three more years for the chance to end Obama’s destructive socialist coup d’état? Alan Keyes
Jesus, Henninger... weren't you paying attention when Duck Dynasty fans threatened to bring Cracker Barrel to its knees after they removed those Chinese-made duck calls and stuffed mallards from their gift shops for a whole eighteen hours?
ReplyDeleteFor all of predatory capitalism's supposedly obvious and superior and wonderful advantages over every other system ever, it sure seems in danger of collapsing entirely a lot, like whenever someone offers even the slightest bit of criticism. If you replaced ALEC with ACORN, 'Democratic left' with 'Republican Right' and 'petitions and ads' with 'false accusations' and stapled it to Henninger's dumb fucking face, he still wouldn't get it. Whether it's because he's a complete moron or just a slimy liar who will say anything, well, I don't give a shit. People spend too much time trying to separate those two groups.
ReplyDeleteI know it's been said many, many times, but there is not even the attempt to sound logical to people like Henninger anymore. There's no point to this column other than to repeat what every teabagger already believes: Conservatives can do whatever they please, liberals aren't allowed to do anything, because conservatives deserve to control everything. Fuck him, fuck the WSJ, and fuck ALEC.
Also, Henny euphemizes with the best of 'em. He sounds like a character in a parody sketch of The Sopranos. "It ain't bribery, ah? It's just, ah, participatin' in politics! Yeah! So no more of dese questions, ahright?"
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that this flies in the face of the disingenuous argument they always made pre-Citizens United that anyone ought to be able to pour as much money into politics as they like as long as it's reported.
ReplyDeleteSo, they achieved the goal of allowing anyone to pour as much as they like into politics, and with the sleazy set-up they've been able to do a lot of it without disclosure...so now the problem is that someone is publicizing what the corporations have tried so hard to avoid - disclosing what they are up to politically. Which, of course, is what "conservatives" used to say they wanted - unlimited cash with full disclosure. Before they achieved the unlimited cash part of the equation.
I suppose that, just as corporations can be people without ever facing the criminal penalty of incarceration, now they're people who have the right to unlimited, anonymous free speech - rights that most of us don't possess even on a lot of internet comment boards.
"The Right of a Corporation to be fecure againft Reputational Deftruction fhall at all Timef be protected." You can look it up.
ReplyDeleteI wrote Coca-Cola customer relations a sternly worded letter about their ALEC participation, and about two weeks later Coke announced it dropped out of ALEC.
ReplyDeleteI brag about my accomplishment a lot, but at best it was just that last straw. Or maybe, "Even though JoyfulA wants us to leave, we're still leaving."