If you live in eastern Walworth County (as I do) or Wheatland in Kenosha Co. or the Bohners Lake area in Racine Co., you are misrepresented in the State Assembly by the porcine likes of Tyler August.
Tyler doesn't want his constituents to know the intentions of the corporations he REALLY represents, so he has directed that all communication from the fascist American Legislative Exchange Council (fALEC) go only to his personal email and he has defied Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for these messages. As a consequence he is rightfully being sued by Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy for this information that legitimately belongs to the PUBLIC! Unfortunately, us constituents will foot the legal bills, instead of the fALEC Corporate interests who he serves, for his trying to keep us in the dark. That's a lose - lose situation for us "citizens". Thanks for nothing Tyler, you are a disgrace!
Yours Truly,
CorpSerf ID: IMFD-OURFD-2
Yours Truly,
CorpSerf ID: IMFD-OURFD-2
EXCERPT: Another of the legislators, Rep. Tyler August, R-Walworth, provided only his personal email address as a contact, according to ALEC Education Task Force documents, the lawsuit states.
To get an idea of corporatist agenda of fALEC's Education Task Force, including (of course) Vulture Schools you can go right to fALEC here: http://www.alec.org/task-forces/education/
To get an idea of corporatist agenda of fALEC's Education Task Force, including (of course) Vulture Schools you can go right to fALEC here: http://www.alec.org/task-forces/education/
to get more information on the fALEC agenda you can go here: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Education_Task_Force and here: http://www.alternet.org/education/inside-alecs-education-task-force-private-players-manipulating-public-education
Madison Office
Room 119 West
State Capitol
P.O. Box 8952
Madison, WI 53708
Telephone
(608) 266-1190
Fax
(608) 282-3632
Email
Rep.August@legis.wisconsin.gov
Voting Address
116 Evelyn Lane Unit 3A
Lake Geneva, WI 53147
Madison Office
Room 119 West
State Capitol
P.O. Box 8952
Madison, WI 53708
Telephone
(608) 266-1190
Fax
(608) 282-3632
Rep.August@legis.wisconsin.gov
Voting Address
116 Evelyn Lane Unit 3A
Lake Geneva, WI 53147
2 comments:
yler August's response to my email linked above follows:
Mr. Cranley,
Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding the American Legislative Exchange Council. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts regarding this organization. It is true I am a Legislative Member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, which I have never hidden.
I encourage you to continue researching the lawsuit you cited in your email. This lawsuit was settled right before the 2012 elections. As part of the settlement I allowed access to my personal emails to be searched by a third party and no emails relating to the American Legislative Exchange Council or any other official state business were found. In fact, any communications I receive from the American Legislative Exchange Council are sent to my taxpayer funded state email account which is, and should be, subject to open records requests and my office regularly responds to such requests in a timely manner.
I am sorry that a hyper-partisan organization has blurred the facts of the lawsuit and that the organization felt it necessary to file suit against me. However, I have hidden no records and my constituents overwhelmingly reelected me after the lawsuit was filed and settled with me having done nothing wrong or illegal.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to clarify this issue and if I can be of further service in the future please do not hesitate to contact me.
Tyler
Mr. August,
Thank you for the additional information. I took your suggestion and did do some additional research. I found some interesting and disturbing information. First of all I find it interesting and hypocritical of you to refer to these watchdog groups as "hyper-partisan". What could possibly be more hyper-partisan than the shady American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is totally dominated by Republicans and where the few Democrats involved are excluded from
inner circle meetings? Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy have done a public service through their lawsuit in helping to establish that public officials cannot keep items secret that relate to their jobs to represent the citizenry by directing them to their personal email accounts. It also proved false the claim by the very secretive ALEC that their efforts were "abusing the open records law".
You may not have had ALEC emails on you personal account, but some of your cohort did and all of you acted in a very evasive and obstructionist manner to the open records requests by repeatedly stating "Our office has no records" when in fact your office would not have records of you personal emails which was the very point! http://www.prwatch.org/files/August_correspondence.pdf Thus the law suit was made necessary by your obstruction of the public right to know http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/10/11825/open-records-correspondence-alec-legislators-wisconsin
You stated that, "It is true I am a Legislative Member of the American
Legislative Exchange Council, which I have never hidden." That statement is disingenuous at best and quite frankly better characterized as a lie. I searched your home page for terms related to ALEC and found nothing: http://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/august/search/results.aspx?k=American&cs=This%20Site&u=http%3A%2F%2Flegis.wisconsin.gov%2Fassembly%2Faugust I similarly searched your campaign website and again found nothing related to ALEC: http://tyleraugust.com/ Furthermore, there is no mention of ALEC on your Wisconsin legislature page: http://legis.wisconsin.gov/pages/leg-info.aspx?d=32&h=A or your Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rep.august And I'm have no doubt that you never mentioned ALEC in your campaign literature, speeches or any other communications with your constituents.
They say that news is what people want to keep hidden, everything else is publicity. You've done an excellent job of hiding your ALEC ties and activities from the voters and I'd bet that most of the of the folks that "overwhelmingly reelected" you have never even heard of ALEC, no thanks to you. If it's such a great organization and a benefit to those you're supposed to represent, why don't you run on those merits? Put it out in the broad day light and let the people make an informed decision, instead of sneaking around in the dark backrooms of hidden unelected decision-makers. Tell your constituents all about
the eight ALEC crafted bills that you have "Co-authored" and how they benefit the people of your district. You're not afraid to do that are you?
I thought Republicans stood for local control. What could be further from local control than letting global corporations craft and vote in secret on laws to rule the people of Wisconsin and the 32nd Assembly District? Nothing! In fact it's an unpatriotic and disgraceful betrayal of our founding as a representative democracy and a government of informed consent by We The People. Why are we paying you to be a conduit for laws to benefit global corporations? If we are to be ruled from afar by corporate overlords, then why don't we pull back the
curtains, cut out the middleman (YOU!) and make it a truly efficient system of corporatist rule that would make Benito Mussolini proud? Let Freedumb Reign!
Most Sincerely,
Sean Cranley
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