Alec

It’s not Big Bird, but it sure is another reason to defund PBS. GRIT TV host and former Air-America Radio host Laura Flanders, substituting for Bill Moyers on PBS’s “Moyers & Company,” interviewed Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson on September 28. The two liberals used their taxpayer funded platform to attack the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC is a non-profit organization that promotes state-based policy initiatives. It’s been heavily criticized by the left for its politically conservative stance on many issues. In March 2012, a group of lefty organizations including the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Center for Media and Democracy (which are not the same group, despite the similarities in name), the Center for American Progress, People for the American Way, United Republic, Common Cause and Color of Change, launched a campaign to pressure the corporations that funded ALEC to withdraw their support.

Bill Moyers is at it again. In a documentary entitled “The United States of ALEC” aired as an episode of “Moyers & Company,” Moyers and the Center for Media and Democracy’s Lisa Graves attacked the American Legislative Exchange Council for half an hour.

“The United States of ALEC” was typical of a Center for Media and Democracy/ Common Cause hit job on ALEC. The documentary slammed the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries and attacked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at length, accusing him of being an ALEC pawn. Moyers also claimed that the state of Arizona is “practically an ALEC subsidiary.”

To Moyers’s nominal credit, this time he admitted at the beginning of the documentary that the research conducted for this project had been funded by both his own Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and by the Schumann-funded Center for Media and Democracy. Common Cause was also involved in the making of the video, although Moyers did not mention his connection to that group. The Schumann Center is listed as a donor on Common Cause’s website, but the amount is not specified.

Bill Moyers will present “The United States of ALEC” documentary in conjunction with Common Cause, which he also funds. The United States of ALEC will premiere on public television sometime in late September, 2012 (date and time still undetermined). Moyers, who Common Cause called a “veteran journalist,” has been instrumental in both funding and publicizing the attacks against the conservative group ALEC.

The official website for “The United States of ALEC,” which is run by Common Cause, refers to the documentary as “a presentation of Bill Moyers” and states that it will be featured on “Moyers & Company.”

In an email, Bob Edgar of Common Cause urged readers to “help uncover ALEC” by either watching the movie or hosting “a viewing party.”  The email called the documentary an “exposé of the American Legislative Exchange Council,” the “most influential corporate-funded political organization few Americans have ever heard about.”

Obama-supporting actor Alec Baldwin was David Letterman's guest on CBS's "Late Show" Wednesday evening, and actually had nice things to say about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

As Letterman moved the discussion towards Baldwin's cameo appearance with Palin on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" a few weeks ago, the "30 Rock" star said, "She was lovely," and told Dave a delightful story about what she said when they first met:

She said to me, (imitating Palin) "'I've been talking to your (conservative) brother Stephen and we've been chatting, trying to figure out how to knock some sense into you."

Although the interview with Letterman did include some Bush, McCain, and Palin bashing -- what would you expect -- it did have some delightful moments that NewsBusters readers should enjoy (video embedded below the fold):