{"id":320138,"date":"2017-08-03T20:39:31","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T19:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/governors-are-stiffing-workers-and-democracy\/"},"modified":"2017-08-03T20:39:31","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T19:39:31","slug":"governors-are-stiffing-workers-and-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/governors-are-stiffing-workers-and-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Governors Are Stiffing Workers \u2014 and Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The governors of many states are boldly stepping forward these days to stop grassroots democracy.<\/p>\n

Yes, noting that local citizens and officials have been passing local laws to govern themselves, a flock of right-wing governors are asserting an autocratic power called “state preemption” to overrule democratic decisions made by locals.<\/p>\n

Why do these governors hate democracy? Because their corporate funders don’t like some of the laws local people support.<\/p>\n

This isn’t a matter of a rogue governor here or there, but a coordinated effort by corporate interests to get governors to usurp local authority. The main coordinator of this power grab is ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.<\/p>\n

\"fight-for-15-minimum-wage\"<\/p>\n

(Photo: Shutterstock)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In 2014, when Fight for $15, and other activist groups began winning city campaigns for minimum wage hikes, ALEC responded by holding a corporate forum on how state officials can stop such local actions. ALEC circulated a model bill called the “Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act<\/a>” \u2014 and sure enough, it’s already been passed by nearly half of our states.<\/p>\n

Ohio was the latest<\/a>. By a large margin, people in the Buckeye State favor raising the wage floor, and Cleveland enacted its own increase last year. But a small group of corporate profiteers howled in fury.<\/p>\n

So, last December, the state\u2019s Republican leaders rushed to appease them by adopting the ALEC preemption bill and ramming it into law. It was a political mugging of the people’s will, retroactively negating Cleveland\u2019s increase and outlawing increases by any other locality in the state.<\/p>\n

Used sparingly and properly, preemption can be a democracy-enhancing tool to serve the common good. But when governors pervert this power to use it as a cudgel against the people, We the People must rise up against the governors.<\/p>\n

To learn more, visit MayorsInnovation.org.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This piece was reprinted from Other Words<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The governors of many states are boldly stepping forward these days to stop grassroots democracy. Yes, noting that local citizens and officials have been passing local laws to govern themselves, a flock of right-wing governors are asserting an autocratic power called “state preemption” to overrule democratic decisions made by locals. Why do these governors hate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2523,"featured_media":320139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-320138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}