MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow (JD Lasica)
On her July 18 broadcast, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow went after ALEC, the shadowy corporate-funded group that works with allied legislators to introduce legislation—like the Stand Your Ground law that played such a controversial role in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case—at the state level.
Where did this law come from in all these states, that not many people had noticed before this marquee case in Florida suddenly shocked everybody with its implications in this case?
The law came from something called ALEC; this force for force, “Stand Your Ground,” defend your castle laws may have been an NRA priority. But the way the NRA pushed them was through the American Legislative Exchange Council–ALEC for short.
You can see here the legislative scorecard from ALEC for model legislation. The Castle Doctrine, which is “Stand Your Ground,” right there on the ALEC list.
This chilling marquee case in Florida attracts enough outrage that the big, mainstream corporate interests that belong to ALEC started to get embarrassed to be associated with the law, right? Because the uproar was not just about Florida, once people realized what this law was and how it had spread.
It was not just about the NRA or the “Stand Your Ground” law. It’s about the way the law had been written as model legislation by this group that the NRA and all of these corporations were part of. And the corporations, these other constituent members of ALEC beyond the NRA, they started to get embarrassed about being associated with this.
Why on Earth does Kraft Foods want a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later bill on its legislative agenda? So, Kraft Foods, yes, drops their membership from ALEC, which had been pushing these “Stand Your Ground” laws.
PepsiCo drops their membership from ALEC. Coca-Cola drops their membership from ALEC. Mainstream household name companies start dropping out of ALEC, one after another after another, and then, finally, ALEC announced, OK, we’re getting out of the “Stand Your Ground” business. We are eliminating our public safety and election task force.
I mean, why would Pepsi be working on gun laws? Right? Didn’t make any sense. So ALEC, when they got the pressure, started to see the pressure manifest as its corporate sponsors dropping out, and ALEC thereby dropped the issues.
But the laws do not go away.
Indeed. But you know what would’ve been a neat addition to that? An acknowledgement that among the corporations evidently not embarrassed to be associated with ALEC is MSNBC owner Comcast!
According to the Center for Media and Democracy:
Michael Wall, senior director of state government affairs at Comcast, represents Comcast as the state corporate co-chair of Georgia…. John Gibbs, vice president of state government affairs at Comcast, represents Comcast as the state corporate co-chair of Minnesota…. And Tom Krewson, director of state government relations at Comcast, represents Comcast as the state corporate co-chair of Missouri. Steve Proper, director of government affairs at Comcast, represents Comcast as the state corporate co-chair of Utah.
Comcast is also a member of ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force…and ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force.
In August 2011, Michael Wall received ALEC’s State Chair of the Year Award.
Why on Earth does Comcast want a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later bill on its legislative agenda? Maybe Maddow could ask her employers that.
There’s a simple answer to why these corps want such laws.
Anything that promotes division among the exploited strengthens their control, doesn’t it?
And there’s a simple answer to why Maddow didn’t mention her employer’s connection to ALEC.
So simple that I don’t think it needs stating, do you?
“Michael Wall, senior director of state government affairs at Comcast, represents Comcast as the state corporate co-chair of Georgia…. John Gibbs, vice president of state government affairs at Comcast, represents Comcast as the state corporate co-chair of Minnesota…. And Tom Krewson, director of state government relations at Comcast, represents Comcast as the state corporate co-chair of Missouri. Steve Proper, director of government affairs at Comcast, represents Comcast as the state corporate co-chair of Utah.”
You mean these are co-chairs of state ALEC affiliates, right? That is not clear from your blog post itself. It doesn’t make much sense as it stands unless this is what you are driving at.
As far as I am concerned about Maddow, I think she is a spicy meatball for MSM. But the trouble is — as you point out — she works for Der Zystem, and that system is not about to let her run her mouth TOO much.
With Comcast reigning over NBC now, I would not be surprised to see her contract expire without renewal next it comes up.
Great article. You guys are great. It is so good to be equal opportunity and remind people that are on our side generally when they may be missing, for one reason or another, a crucial piece of information or a chance to make a truly devastating critique. I am really happy for Maddow and all her work, and I am happy she gave this talk. But it could have been really powerful for her to stand up and also say, “by the way, Comcast, which owns NBC and the channel my show is on, MSNBC, has done nothing to distance itself from ALEC.”
Oh geeesh. FAIR continues to promote any story that attacks self-defense and the 2nd Amendment. I will never understand this characteristic of the left.
Anyone else remember the character from Richard Linklater’s early movie “Slacker”…the black t-shirt salesman wearing the Che shirt, who you hear saying to a potential customer, (and I paraphrase) “All I’m saying is that if I am going to be forced to pay taxes to buy guns for a government that oppresses me…I at least want to own a few.” Such a simple point…yet so easily lost in the Utopic worldview of today’s controlled left (not saying all the left or right is controlled of course…all though some comments and articles here seem to assume no one on the left is but everyone on the right is…which is pretty cute:-)
Life’s about making tough choices where sometimes you have to choose freedom with consequences over being controlled (which of course has even worse consequences but you won’t be reminded of those very often).
The assumptions latent in this article (that Maddow give a rats behind about anybody but herself and her corporate employer for instance, or that anything that promotes defending yourself or your property…Enlightenment Principles after all…are automatically bad, etc.) show why we are truly stuck with this corporatist system. Neither side can logically deduct themselves out of a paper bag let alone challenge the propaganda apparatus of the corporatists largely because they have a significant part of their ideology that relies on romanticism and cognitive dissidence. Until everyone on the “left” kind of “grows up”…and I mean that simply in the sense that they realize that, as Davy Crockett once said, “a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have”, they are completely ineffectual in attaining liberty on any large scale. Arguably, everything they promote will do the opposite yet the rhetoric will claim that was never the goal.
And that same lack of “growing up” on the right finds them in a similar situation…ineffectual from delusion and romanticism of power…where they get caught in the trap Einstein warned about, that “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
Liberalism and conservatism…in their modern forms…are clearly failed ideologies. Reducing the greatest minority, the individual, to a statistical member of some grand machine will never provide “equality” or freedom for anyone. Why isn’t this obvious to most people?
Oh the “Stand Your Ground” laws are the latest torch being carried by the liberal left. It is being held up as some evil piece of legislation which ostensibly is responsible for countless incidences of justified bloodshed. I would submit that most (in the 90-95% range) have no clue what this supposedly evil piece of legislation actually does.
STG law allows someone to defend their home and family without fear of being prosecuted for protecting their 3 year old daughter or pregnant wife. Prior to STG laws, if a homeowner killed an intruder, he/she would be arrested and charged with murder until (usually 10’s or 100’s of thousands of dollars later) they proved that they did it in self defense. Innocent until proven guilty did not apply because you admittedly took a life and were therefore guilty of murder UNTIL you could prove self defense. AND, proving self defense meant that you have to PROVE that you and your family could not escape without confrontation. So even if you won your case, you were still ruined financially and had to give up a year of your life to a trial, because some stranger chose to invade your home. STG laws shifted the burden of proof back to prosecutors. In self defense situations it once again became incumbent on the prosecutor to prove you were actually guilty of murder rather than self defense.
If any one of these anti STG Law people ever had to defend their family from a home invader, they would thank their lucky stars that their state had a STG law!
Maddow also conveniently leaves out that the stand your ground principle was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1877. Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes said: “[d]etached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.” [FN299] And, also for practical reasons, declared Holmes, there is no duty to retreat from anywhere that a victim has a right to be.
http://www.davekopel.org/2A/LawRev/Self-Defense-Cases.htm
STG law allows someone to defend their home and family without fear of being prosecuted for protecting their 3 year old daughter or pregnant wife.
Really? Then Please explain why a woman who was standing her ground from an abuse spouse, got 20 years for merely discharging the pistol. As always the “Law is pile of garbage being used to support lawless thugs” protecting nothing but their right to commit murder.
And even if the “Law” was intended for good, do we really wish the fact that these laws are being written for the coproration, by the corporation under the Aegis shielding them from public eyes? Laws written to benefit only those who can afford to pay the congress to make them, with no oversight, no input. What happens when the corporations decide that the people don’t need these guns to protect themselves, because they are using them to protect themselves from the corporations. Another law, created in the dead of night, by a handful of people who do as they are told by an even smaller group, for their benefit only, that’s what. And then what are going to do?
They already wrote laws making it illegal for people to stand up and defend themselves in the congress of lawyers and politicians, or did you also sleep through the fact of several states, being worked over ALEC representative that were put in place with Koch money , took away any rights to bargain in a group. If you think you as an individual will ‘stand up’ to ALEC and the Kochs that own it, then you can go back to sleep and live your in world, not the real one.
This not about ‘the second amendment’ or the Right to bear arms, or the Right Wing obsession with power, nor the Left wings belief that the Right is corrupted and Evil. This is about people who are using underhanded tactics to write laws for their own benefits without anyone else’s say or nay say. You can own all the Guns in the world, and they will do you no good if you can not make your self heard when the law are being made for you.
This is just an ant-gun hit piece with no real truth or logic. SYG laws protect people that are forced to defend themselves or family and not loose every thing they are and own. Just as Zimmerman will never be able to continue has life without Travon being in every conversation. Since the jury ruled he was not guilty, he should be able to resume his life. If the FL legal system would have worked Zimmerman would have never been charged with a crime. like or not that is the fact at this point in time.
Janine, did you read the response by “No Difference”? A valid point is made re the inadequately introduced CMD quotation.
Not to mention the typo in your third-last word.
To be ‘fair’ it should also be mentioned that some MSNBC hosts ( Maddow included) have in the past linked their employer to association with regard to negative articles. That Maddow missed or neglected this association is also not unusual, after all they are are working for ‘The Man’, and without a doubt there are restrictions on the debate. The problem with big media is the systemic financial incest that continues to corrupt…I am certain many people believe it may be trumped in time, but even if enough ‘progressive types’ gain positions of power, the structure it’s self is flawed and insular.
The assumptions latent in this article (that Maddow give a rats behind about anybody but herself and her corporate employer for instance, or that anything that promotes defending yourself or your property…Enlightenment Principles after all…are automatically bad, etc.) show why we are truly stuck with this corporatist system.
Ben, I would argue that this is in fact the manifestation of the corporatist ideals that culminated from a century plus growth of Progressive Era policies. For whatever reason, many people who embrace the label “progressive” today ignore the darker sides of that history or assume that those “darker qualities” have been resolved in some positive matter or discarded. I don’t see any proof of that whatsoever…and I think it would be a tough task for anyone to prove they have been discarded given the embrace of such issues as “population control” (it’s always the poor and minorities who represent the “overpopulated” when you drill it down, they just switched from couching the policy propaganda in “eugenics” to “population-control”), or an unflinching desire to eliminate basic civil liberties like self-defense (like this article) and instead create a true monopoly of legitimized violence in the hands of a corporatist state that has shown no reason to be trusted with such power. Nor have “progressives” offered any kind of rational or system to prevent that monopoly from being exploited by elites in the future. Very short-sighted, feel good kinds of things IMO.
We have a “progressive” government and a “progressive” media by any definitive standard (both generally promote the use of government to “reform” society constantly…in the case of the media it’s obvious everyday in their framing while in govt it’s generally only mischaracterized because those embracing that “progressive” label refuse to accept the existence of the “progressive republican”, an entity that has been in leadership of that party for decades now. Examples abound of course…the drug war is a great example.
The MSM and both major parties love to use govt to “reform” society in the ways they see fit…and from a completely elitist, top-down perspective. Fox News is as “progressive” as an MSNBC for example, they just want government to shape (“reform”) society to realize some different ends. The model is the same…the rhetoric is the same…they are just preaching to a different choir.
Jack…
I am not sure if having as honest of discussion as I have seen in my several decades of observation is necessarily a corporatist manifestation of current ‘progressive’ discussion….maybe just another adopted iconic image corporatist’s have hijacked…but that certainly does not lesson the authenticity of a Ari Melber, R. Maddow, Dylan Ratigan etc. or maybe I am missing your point. Also, what of popular and well known progressive’s as H. Zinn, N. Chomsky, M. Parenti and others, who worked within the system their entire lives and most certainly not only acknowledged the most egregious, ‘dark’ episodes of American empire, but published multiple documents, studies and books over the years concerning these episodes.
I would not doubt some of the basis of your synopsis concerning what I determine to be any real political impact…as I don’t think enough real change will ever come about in enough time in regard to the multiple catastrophic issues facing the human species with regard to the depth of current discussion and debate. But, I can tell you, 20 -30-40 years ago there was absolutely no depth of debate on any mainstream media out lets, barring a small group of intellectuals tied to the likes of Bill Moyers and a few instances of truth-out style episodes of Front-Line and Nova, which all three of those conduits were squashed before the Regan era ended.
Not sure this addresses most of your concerns, but some of your read definitely triggered the response…
No network talking head will implicate their network owners or the network commercial advertisers. No different than our elected officials gridlock along a party line. No different than Washington DC lobbyist writing laws to benefit them then donating to a politicians campaign.
The usual irrational blather. The ONLY thing the stand your ground laws do is codify that CITIZENS have the SAME rights to defend themselves as the police do. Anyone who is against Stand your ground laws would, if they were consistent in their beliefs, want to eliminate the ability for cops to defend themselves also. Ask yourself, if a cop had been in the SAME circumstances as ZImmerman, and had shot whoever it was who was beating his, the cops, head against the ground, would you be saying the cop murdered someone? Or should a cop just let an assailant beat his head in?
Biff Sarin: You are erroneously conflating the “Castle Doctrine” with “Stand Your Own” laws. The Castle Doctrine applies for the justification of using deadly force in protecting yourself and your family at home. Stand Your Own applies for the justification of using deadly force to resolve such confrontations, wherever they might occur … even on the street in front of your victim’s home.
> Maybe Maddow could ask here employers that.
“her” perchance?
According to one commentator “The ONLY thing the stand your ground laws do is codify that CITIZENS have the SAME rights to defend themselves as the police do.” Not exactly. Regardless of what such laws are supposed to do, their actual effect is to enable a disturbed vigilante to murder a completely innocent man and get away with it – “legally”.
Maddow (and the media at large) are SO wrong about “Stand Your Ground.” Regardless of who “pushes” it, it had little to no bearing on the Zimmerman case. See:
http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2013/07/19/zimmerman-verdict-the-stand-your-ground-element/
I’m wondering if any of the commenters have actually read the Florida Stand Your Ground Law. If they had they would recognize it as the charge that the Judge gave to the Jury, albeit not exactly as written. It goes way beyond the right of a person to protect their family in their home. These laws are shocking and allow anyone to make these claims. Had there been witnesses to the GZ/TM event, I expect the trial would have ended differently. These laws are simply bad laws and need to be recinded.
To those who think Travon Martin deserved to be killed, i.e., he was a tough kid who had a “record”, please remember that TM was NOT on Trial. George Zimmerman was. All the media hype that has defamed TM are just filling the airwaves with more blah, blah, blah to divert people from the real issue.
Im tea party and an NRA member(two organizations working hard to stop gov over reach)I also carry a gun with a legal permit.Most stand your ground laws are damn simple in their basic structure,I have not heard anyone here clearly contest what it is about them you don’t like.Arguing how they were legislated…well that is a spurious argument.In the zimmerman case only a ridiculous understanding of use of lethal force would of stopped Trey from being killed.In the end if George was a cop or a civilian or a martian ….all are carrying a legal fire arm.If in the dark of night,once attacked and fearing for their life ALL have the right to shoot.Arguing if George had any reason being there following what he saw as a suspicious character is a legal dead end.HE DID!We all have that right.It is called getting involved in the community protection.Dont like it?Like the no snitch rule better that rules the streets?Tough…………Why dont you ask Rachel about her security detail she sometimes uses.Are they armed?You bet ya.she figuratively is following people and organizations every day round the clock.if anyone takes offense and starts pounding her face in I hope she is armed ,and I hope she shoots.And I hope she does no jail time for doing so.That is the vasis of all stand your ground laws.Where it failed is in the Zimmerman case.Never ever should he of gone to trial.He should now sue the Federal government for unlawful incarceration and prosecution.
Oh and I have no problem with any laws being reviewed and firmed up.It sends a clear message to thugs on the street.Carry a gun….use a gun….attack a person,or threaten in any way,and you might get shot.Texas is a great example.I just dont want libs who in their hearts want all legal guns gone- to have any part in a conversation that they don’t believe in.Their motives being completely suspect.Tell me what rules you would set as when people can use lethal force,and we can talk.Tell me never ….and you relegate everyone to victim status.
Rachel Maddow is a smart woman with smart policy positions, but she’s also a hypocrite, has many dubious double-standards, is an ambitious careerist, and _always_ circles the wagons when her tribe is threatened.
Maddow has to walk a fine line. Of course she has to pull punches because she’s working for a private employer. (Come to think of it, that’s increasingly true even at PBS!) She does valuable work and I’m glad she is still there -for the time being; on the other hand, it’s legitimate and important to point out what she is forced to omit. Oh, and stand-your-ground laws? just the new incarnation of Reconstruction pro-lynching law, a manifestation of fear and hate.
Rachael:
Stand your ground girl.
For a number of years I have been an active voice against illegal war(s), and other nonsense, in my decidedly military town where, it goes without saying, I am not very popular. And yet despite my work and the voices of many others it seems like we lose another aspect of our sacred rights every week or so–even our capacity to, in the end, defend then against absolute tyranny.
And yet you are a very smart person and must be right! So, I’m going to give up my gun because I know that when they come for me, and it is certain now that they will, I know that you will stand with me, and be a powerful voice in my defense, right? JWC
Jay Im smelling sarcasm…..and I LIKE IT!
I wonder if she even wanted to report that small fact.
I have no medical opinion on this -but every time I watch her show I develop a twitch in my eye.How can anyone who seems to have a bit of intelligence- be so often wrong?She opens her mouth and whatever she talks about….she is wrong.I call her Wrong Way Feldon.If she flew a plane it would be backwards and upside down.She would espouse acupuncture for hemophiliacs.Screen doors for submarines.Kick stands on bowling balls.Up is down.Black is white.Its like a train wreck.I cant turn away.But enough about why I watch.