The idea of absolute control means exerting one’s
will over every aspect of an organization from the very top down to the
lowliest position. In their drive to control America from the top down,
it is insufficient for the Koch brothers to control Congress and the
Supreme Court without owning the occupant of the White House any more
than controlling every Republican state legislature without control over
those state’s city and county governments. It is true the Koch’s are
poised to spend nearly a billion dollars to put a Koch surrogate in the
White House, and to completely take over the entire nation they are
paying an American Legislative Exchange Council subsidiary to impose
their corporate agenda on every town, village, city, and county in
America.
Many Americans have never heard of the Koch brothers
much less their legislative arm in Congress and, more importantly,
state legislatures across the country. What the American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) does is allow corporations to write legislation
for Republicans to introduce and then pass into law. Corporations pay
the Koch brothers’ ALEC for the privilege of allowing their operatives
to write corporate legislation for Republicans and it makes ALEC, and
now a subsidiary, more powerful than any special interest, lobbyist,
state legislator, and in the majority of cases informs how and why
corporations control Republican state governments. Apparently, though,
controlling state legislatures is not enough for the Kochs and their
corporate cabal so they set their sights on local jurisdictions like
city councils, mayors, school districts, and county supervisory boards
to round out their sphere of corporate influence on America from the
federal government down to the local village council.
The American City County Exchange (
ACCE) is an offshoot of (ALEC) that describes itself as “
America’s only free market forum for village, town, city and county policymakers.”
Beginning in 2015, ACCE became an ALEC-operated project and not a
separate Koch-funded social welfare 501(c)(3} charitable non-profit
organization. Like its mother organization ALEC, ACCE is wholly funded
by corporations whose operatives write and vote for “model legislation
and measures” for city and county governments to give the Koch brothers
and corporations complete control of every jurisdiction in the nation
regardless of size.
The only difference between ALEC and ACCE is that
where ALEC (the Kochs) exerts complete control over the United States
Congress and state legislatures, ACCE will seize control of all city and
county governments in the nation. As the Guardian accurately reports,
with Koch and corporations funding their operations, ALEC and its
subsidiary ACCE have effectively handed “corporate America a direct
conduit to control the policy making process of city councils and
municipalities” in every state in America. It is a bloodless coup
d’état, but bloodless or not, it is still a complete takeover of every
legislative body in America with absolutely no opposition or outrage;
that is the effect and consequence of a nation with an incredibly
ill-informed and stupid population.
Despite controlling most of America’s government,
the Kochs just were not getting the results they wanted fast enough
using ALEC as its legislative arm in Congress and state legislatures
along with ALEC’s sister organization, the State Policy Network (SPN),
SPN is tasked with abolishing public pensions, unions, minimum wage, and
employee benefits like sick leave, overtime pay, and worker’s
compensation in state legislatures, but they have not succeeded fast
enough for the Kochs and it is not for lack of trying. So the Koch’s
decided to create and use ACCE to impose corporate control of city and
county governments with the goal of imposing corporate control over
school districts, banning city and county-level union representation,
privatizing local public school districts, eliminating prevailing wage
laws, abolishing commercial zoning regulations, and eliminating local
environmental provisions their corporate funders and churches claim are
either communist intrusions on the ‘free market’ or a vicious liberal
government attack on religious liberty.
The American City County Exchange held its
organizational meeting last month in Dallas to help its corporate
operatives push policies important to advancing the Koch corporate
libertarian vision on all Americans. According to Jon Russell, ACCE’s
national director and town (not city) council member in Culpeper,
Virginia, “
There are some really good ideas out there that are
percolating, and those are the kinds of out-of-the-box thinking that we
are really pushing hard.” The “
out-of-the-box thinking”
Russell wets his knickers over includes pushing corporate operation of
city and county services like garbage pickup and providing water and
sewer services, eliminating collective bargaining and unions, banning
prevailing wage and overtime laws, and imposing corporate control of
public schools. ACCE’s
goals
are imposing ALEC’s state-level corporate control over every
municipality in America under the guise of free markets and fiscal
responsibility.
As a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles
who specializes in campaign finance, Jessica Levinson, noted, like ALEC,
ACCE’s mission is not fiscal responsibility, helping municipalities, or
improving conditions for Americans. Levinson is completely correct in
saying that “There’s a lot of money to be made in local government,” and
that for the Koch brothers “privatization makes perfect sense,
working hand in glove with corporations makes perfect sense, and
expanding (ALEC’S) corporate agenda to county and city governments makes
perfect sense.” A research analyst at Common Cause, Jay
Riestenberg, echoed Professor Levinson and said that ACCE opens the door
for corporate influence over local governments and profit from that
control. Riestenberg said, “This’ll ease the way for corporations to
take over all local services. The public sector is a $6 trillion
enterprise, and this is a huge money-making opportunity for them.”
It
is true there is an inordinate amount of public money corporations and
the Kochs want to steal, but absolute control of every aspect of
American government is much more important to the Kochs. As Professor
Levinson said, everything about using an ALEC subsidiary to impose
corporate control of government and pillage town, city, and county
coffers makes perfect sense to the Koch brothers. Because they will
never be satisfied until they have imposed corporate-ownership
libertarian-style on all aspects of American government. The new ALEC
subsidiary, the American City County Exchange (ACCE) will give the
Koch’s the control they so desperately lust, and the Koch cabal’s
corporations running local governments will profit handsomely from all
American taxpayers.
