Has America’s second civil war begun?

While the Koch Brothers, ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and their corporate allies plan to privatize government, they have gone one step further and fired a shot across the bow of democracy and the Constitution. The shot took the form of giving a pre-produced bill to be presented by Florida State Representative Chris Dorworth, (R—Lake Mary), HB2101, to influence legislation in the state legislature.

The object of this bill is to neuter the political power of unions by “prohibiting employees from deducting any amount from an employee’s pay for use by an employee organization (i.e., union dues) or for any political activity (i.e., the portion of union dues issued for lobbying or for supporting candidates for office)” as reported in These Times by investigative journalist Beau Hadai.

Thus as the Supreme Court has lent personage to the ilk of the Koched-out Brothers, whose millions (a fraction of their billions) have been generously schmeered over a wide range of conservative organizations, now the brothers and their minions would not just silence the unions of municipal workers, but offer in place privatizing options to replace all public services the workers perform.

If you can believe it, these options would be presented in pre-written pieces of legislation from paid spin-doctors for supporting candidates to present to voters, in order to remove this sector of municipal labor and services from the face of the earth in the name of budget austerity.

This is the boldest effort so far by the Koch brothers to obliterate collective bargaining, undermine the right to freedom of speech (which includes labor), and to subvert free elections. These rights are at the very heart of the democratic process. Of course, if Wisconsin is any example of privatization practices, we saw budget appropriations to Walker’s cronies rise dramatically in fattened contracts surpassing costs of unionized municipal workers performing similar tasks.

While attempting to defund public-sector unions like AFSCME, SEIU, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association by turning the collection of dues into a burdensome, ornate and costly task, the bill and all those that could be manufactured like it would open the door for the “radical free marketeers to profit from the privatization of public services.”

This shot across the bow of the vanishing bargaining table is no less than an act of civil war against organized labor and its millions of supporters, motivated not by cost-cutting but cost-expansion by profit, using private providers for government services, all of which can further bankrupt city and state governments.

The very bill in question was traced by author and investigative reporter, Beau Hodai, back to the paid penmen of the American Legislative Exchange Council, also on the “payroll” of the Koch brothers. After a request relating to the bill to ALEC, Dorworth’s office delivered 87 pages of documents, mostly drafts, emails and other effluvia. But buried at the bottom of this Pandora’s Box was an 11-page bundle of neatly typed material labeled “Paycheck Protection,” consisting of three pieces of model legislation, the words “Copyright, ALEC” at the end of each. If that ain’t war, what is?

Dorworth assistant, Carolyn Johnson, insists that though Dorworth is an ALEC member, neither she nor her boss have a clue how the ALEC model legislations wormed their way into the boss’s office. Perhaps it was by spontaneous combustion, the way early scientists thought germs developed into diseases.

Of course, Dorworth was unavailable for comment, probably because he was retching somewhere in fear of discovery. But both David and Charles Koch have been in on this subversion, going back to the February 23 Buffalo Beast airing recordings of a prank call to Walker from a Beast reporter posing as billionaire GOP donor David Koch. It then became painfully obvious how deep in Walker’s pockets the Koch boys were in their efforts to destroy the public sector unions.

Thousands of pages of documents from public records requested from six states, along with tax filings, reports from lobbyists, legislative drafts, court records, etc., have been gathered and reveal the overnight popularity of these anti-public employee bills. They may take tailored forms for different states, but were distributed as the “model legislation” by ALEC.

This is government by Koch brothers’ handouts: in two words, Corporate Fascism. Bills were introduced in 22 additional states: Arizona, California, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Vermont. Should we consider them our new Confederacy? Do we need to preserve what’s left of our ongoing Union? Yes.

In Hodai’s own words, “The purported goal of this nationwide movement has been to reduce the budgetary burden posed by public employee salaries by limiting the right of public employees to collectively bargain for pay and other benefits. These restrictions, along with ‘paycheck protection’ laws, curtail the political power of public employee unions by cutting off funds for political campaign and lobbying expenditures. These measures would effectively thwart attempts by public employee unions to resist privatization of government functions and to support candidates opposing elected officials who vote for corporate giveaways of public resources.” Is that us or a design for a plantation labor force?

ALEC feels the government, if you can imagine, has an “unfair monopoly on public goods and services.” I wonder if that statement borders on insanity or just plain ignorance. Government is created to perform public services, from defense on down. And we can see in the defense area, how incredibly more expensive, unaccountable and brutal private mercenaries can be compared to our own GIs, who sacrifice their safety and lives for considerably less money.

We see how healthcare monies are swallowed in private healthcare versus the streamlined cost of Social Security transactions. In Medicare, unfortunately, we see the government being disallowed from bargaining for its vast drug purchase and how several trillion dollars are sucked criminally into Big Pharma’s pockets.

Yet, Medicaid and the Veterans’ Administration, two other single-care providers, can bargain with Pharma for billions in savings on drug prices. So where do for-profit services out-perform not-for-profit government services? Where? And why would the Koch brothers and their ilk involve themselves in privatization for profit add-ons if not to bankrupt government services and enrich the rich providers.

Moreover, this octopus of greed wants to spread its tentacles into privatizing public education, transportation, regulation of public health, consumer safety, environmental quality, including bringing in corporations to administer services. That also includes foster care, adoption services and child support processing, plus school support services, custodial staff and transportation and prisons. Name it. They’ll game it.

I can only think back to the private bus service my son’s half-state/half-private Special Ed high school provided for the short trip to New Jersey from Manhattan. The buses were consistently late, in poor repair, the drivers unsafe, even crashing on occasion. I remember any number of mornings that I drove my son from the Upper West Side across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey to deliver him to school on time, safely, and without incident, then returning to do my work. It was painfully obvious the bottom line was the prime mover, not safety.

Meanwhile ALEC has a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit status. What an irony. Despite its reporting $6.5 million in tax-deductible donations from 1999 through 2009, ALEC is using its status to change public opinion for political reasons. This contradicts its 501 (c) (3) and non-profit status. During the same 10-year period, ALEC reported $54,504,702 in “gifts, grants” and other contributions from corporate and special interest members. They are fundamentally acting illegally, including chunks of that ALEC money coming from the Kochs.

ALEC attempted to justify itself in a memo to its “public center” chairs, Oct 29, 2010, this way: “[L]aws are not passed, debated or adopted during this process and therefore no lobbying takes place. That process is done at the state legislatures. . . . Just like teachers, farmers and ranchers, senior citizens and other groups, businesses have the right to representation and to inform legislators about their industry.” Not quite but nice try.

Fortunately, both HB 1021 and its companion, SB 830, died in their respective chambers following the pressure exerted by public employee union members. News of a huge action in opposition made its way back to Dorworth, containing a press release from a coalition of unions knows as Floridians Outraged at the Chamber of Commerce’s Attack on Workers.

It read in part “ . . . Workers respond to attacks from the Chamber of Commerce . . . Labor organizations and members withdrew close to $10 million in funds from the Chamber’s largest banks.” The release proceeded to say that the group was ready to send out further ‘waves of withdrawal’ and other activities.” So it seems in war one has to fight fire with fire. Hit them in the pocketbook.

Unfortunately, much of the ALEC-created legislation has crept through the rules of its 501 (c) (3) limitations. ALEC spends over $1 million a year for corporate lobbyists who meet state lawmakers at high-end retreats; lawmakers who will come back home to try to guide ALEC’s corporate-sponsored “model legislation” into law. As Hodai writes, “However, through accounting sleight of hand, ALEC hides the identity of the corporations that are paying for the lawmakers’ junkets and back the group’s model legislation.”

In Arizona, when asked to turn over a copious list of donors to the ALEC “Scholarship fund,” Russell Smoldon, ALEC Arizona “private sector chair, utility lobbyist and a member of the ALEC Private Enterprise Board tasked with raising the funds, declined to do so. “No,” he said. “I don’t want to start scaring people off. I have a hard enough time raising money.” Doesn’t sound like it judging by the numbers and the fact that even some “Tea Party Sugar Daddies” are kicking in big bucks along with the Koch brothers.

Through profits of their Wichita, Kansas-based Industries (and other Koch-controlled operations), the two billionaires, Charles and David, fund a whole host of right-wing policy foundations. All they need now is their own flag.

For still more intriguing information, read the balance of this 14-page article (linked in the second paragraph). Take time to carefully read it all. The number of scams involved will help you keep in mind the level of deluded commitment the radical right has to destroying our government, our unions, and their principles.

What’s more, the Koch brothers and their allies’ second civil war is not just to defeat fair treatment for municipal labor. Its notion of totalitarian privatization is to further bankrupt government agencies with corporate profiteering—and to willfully enslave the rest of us in the governments’ financial shortfalls.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, life-long resident of New York City. An EBook version of his book of poems “State Of Shock,” on 9/11 and its after effects is now available at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. He has also written hundreds of articles on politics and government as Associate Editor of Intrepid Report (formerly Online Journal). Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.