CREDO lies. Do you care?

Ever heard of CREDO Action? No? Well the group that brands themselves as “more than a network – a movement” is one of the tentacles of the George Soros Socialism Express. They’re dedicated to puttin’ the whoop on companies that support conservative causes. Of course, they’re not honest enough to tell you where their funding comes from, nor are they above playing fast and loose with the truth. They’re far more interested in results than little inconvenient truths like honesty and reason. They are very good at what they do. And they’ve now turned their attention to another group you’ve never heard of – ALEC. And the results are not pretty.

ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council – is a non-profit organization that lobbies for conservative ideas. On a State level, they support laws like the “Voter ID” legislation that mandates citizens present a photo ID in order to cast a vote. They’ve also backed the “Stand Your Ground” laws that make it legal to defend yourself, instead of to attempt to run (even if that’s not an option) when accosted by someone or someones who want to do you bodily harm. Sounds like a reasonable agenda, right? Not to CREDO Action. Nope. And to fight the laws, they are making some pretty outrageous claims, and targeting corporate donors like Coke, Pepsi, Walmart and AT&T.

Do you want to buy a beer, bottle or wine, or hard liquor. Better have a picture ID on you, otherwise it’s no sale. Cigarettes? Same deal. How about buy a car? Yep. You need an ID for that, too. How about to cash a check? Natch. In fact, you need to present a photo ID for just about any kind of significant financial transaction. Yep. But not to vote. So voter fraud runs amok. In the last election, groups like ACORN were registering Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Buzz Lightyear, and others to vote. Now U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder claims there’s no voter fraud going on. But just this past month, a film crew documented a young white man going to a voting place and simply telling the clerk that he was “Eric Holder,” then getting a ballot. That’s fraud (well, it would have been had the guy voted.) And it conclusively proves that the system is broken, and that Holder is either lying or he’s an idiot. (I’ll take choice #3: “BOTH.”) A Voter ID law would have either prevented this, or made it exponentially more difficult to defraud the polling place and disenfranchise Holder. Picture IDs in our post 9/11 world are much harder to fake.

CREDO Action claims that Voter ID laws are a return to “Jim Crow” laws designed to deny the poor, the elderly, and minorities a right to vote. How? Is obtaining a $21 government-issued ID card a significant barrier to voting? Wouldn’t someone already have an ID, if they want to cash a check, receive food stamps, buy a pack of Luckies, or any one of another dozen or so adult pursuits. Here’s a clue: CREDO’s not interested in STOPPING voter fraud. They want to stop those that want to prevent it. Ask yourself “why”?

Stand Your Ground laws are an essential part of being able to defend yourself. Any time you have to defend yourself, by whatever means at your disposal, you run the risk of being portrayed as the bad guy. If a gun is involved, it gets worse. And if you have to shoot someone and they die, you can pretty much guarantee that you’re gonna be in court for the next year or so, no matter how righteous the shoot. What “stand your ground” laws do is to prevent you from having to prove you did everything you could to run away before defending yourself. The laws were needed because of conviction-happy DAs that tried to turn many a case where an attacker got more than they bargained for into a murder rap for someone doing nothing more than trying to stay alive.

CREDO hates the Stand Your Ground laws. Take those away, and owning a gun for self-defense becomes a far greater risk – you may survive the attack from the bad guy, but will you survive in court? But CREDO characterizes the law as being for the benefit of trigger-happy cowboys everywhere. They want you to believe it’s a bad law.

So what does CREDO do? They solicit people to petition companies like Coke to drop support for ALEC. Coke caved less than a day after an onslaught of emails from CREDO. Pepsi and Kraft foods caved in too. Walmart has stood their ground, thank God. So now, CREDO is targeting Ma Bell. Swell. And they lie to do it. Here are a few of the current “campaigns” CREDO’s e-thugs are pushing:

Tell Obama: Don’t let Shell drill in the Arctic.
Shell Oil’s drilling rig is on its way to the Arctic right now. Oil drilling could start this summer, risking, for the first time, huge devastation in the pristine Arctic waters, unless President Obama steps up. This is the eleventh hour for the Arctic. Take action now.

Tell your Senators to help America’s workers by raising the minimum wage
It is time to raise the minimum wage and jump start our economy. Tell your Senator to support Senator Tom Harkin’s legislation, which calls for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 per hour — a 35% increase.

Tell the EPA: We need stronger rules to limit carbon pollution
Yesterday, The Environmental Protection Agency finally proposed a rule to limit the carbon pollution that is causing climate change. Unfortunately, not by very much. Tell the EPA that stronger rules are needed to meet the urgency of climate change.

Obama: Lead on climate, don’t cheerlead on Keystone XL
President Obama went to Cushing, OK, “the Pipeline Crossroads of the World” to tout his expansion of oil drilling and call for the sped up approval of the southern portion of Keystone XL. Tell Obama to stop cheerleading for dirty oil and Keystone.

Tell the FDA: No BPA in food packaging!
The FDA will decide on March 31st it will continue allowing the toxic chemical bisphenol A (BPA) in food packaging like canned food and soup. It’s long past time for the FDA to protect us from this dangerous chemical. Urge the FDA to ban BPA in food packaging now.

Tell Senator Reid: Stop Republicans from doubling interest rate on student loans
We can’t let Republicans double the interest rate on federal student loans. Fight to put the extension of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 on the Senate agenda before it expires July 1 and keep college education affordable for the 99%.

Tell AARP: Don’t sell out on cuts to Social Security benefits!
We need to speak out now to make sure AARP, the powerful lobbying group that claims to represent 40 million older Americans, doesn’t sell us out on cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits.

Their causes read like a “Who’s Who” of bleeding-heart, Socialist causes. Here’s a passage from an email I just received from them:

More than 100,000 CREDO activists, along with 85,000 ColorOfChange members, have called on corporations to stop supporting the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) because of its role in voter suppression. Last week, news broke that Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft Foods and Intuit have all ended their relationships with ALEC — a major step forward in our campaign. But many major corporations are still funding ALEC.

AT&T is one of them. Our friends at Color of Change contacted AT&T to make sure it understood that through its membership in ALEC, it is supporting racially-discriminatory voter ID laws that have the potential to disenfranchise over 5 million people in the upcoming elections. But despite numerous emails and telephone calls, AT&T’s management will not respond. It appears that AT&T executives believe that if they ignore us we’ll simply go away.

BTW – “Color of Change” is funded by Soros, too, making them more or less a “sister company” to CREDO.

What can you do to stop this? I don’t know. I’ve written to Coke to tell them I’m done with them until they grow some backbone. Same for Pepsi and Kraft. I’m hoping AT&T hangs in there, as they’re my cell carrier, and switching would cost me more money than I’ve got, to buy my way out of a contract. But what ever you may think about doing – do it. For all that is necessary for evil groups like CREDO Action to prevail is for good people to do nothing.