Connectile Dysfunction
There seems to be a minor flare-up concerning Mayor Harkins participation in an organization called “ALEC”. http://www.alec.org/. While some people may dispute the principles of ALEC (and we do) the important thing to remember is that we paid for Harkins to attend their meeting in Texas and his membership in it. (Yes, we know. He ditched the Sister Cities event while he was in Texas.) So far as we can tell, there is no significant groundswell of voter sentiment in Stratford to eliminate municipal government which seems to be what ALEC desires to achieve. For a price. So why are we paying for this?
A quick perusal of background information concerning ALEC leads to the conclusions that it’s core beliefs are chiefly that any government (Federal, State or Municipal) is bad and that every corporation is good. To be sure, no one we know has ever had the conversation with Harkins concerning his core beliefs. In fact, to the best of our recollection he has never stated them publicly either. We only have his actions to judge. By these actions we can determine a few key ideas: Unions are bad. Non-union employees should be substantially rewarded. Municipalities should not own anything of value. And perhaps most dishearteningly, taxpayers should be ignored.
Oh there is the usual conservative policies contained in ALEC’s propaganda. Corporations are more efficient, knowledgeable and in every way better than any elected form of government. The difficulty with that is that corporations can go out of business, relocate or simply develop new markets with new products. Municipalities are pretty much stuck where they are and going out of business is not an option. ALEC also promotes very similar ideas that we have all heard before from the Tea Party. Repeal Obamacare, repeal the minimum wage, eliminate unions and on and on. They actively invite corporate sponsors at exorbitant admissions costs to access local and state legislatures and executives (like Harkins) in order to “bid” on “transparent” projects.
So what? The “what” is what did we vote for? Did we actually vote for the sale of our assets to some random corporations? Did we vote for the salary elevation of appointed officials? Did we vote for the complete disregard of the voters will? Did we vote for the abdication of responsibility?
Maybe. Because that is certainly what we got.
