The "corporate bill mill" that is the fossil-fuel-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is alarmingly busy: It's pushing bills mandating the “balanced” teaching of climate science - the hilariously named ”Environmental Literacy Improvement Act“ - in public schools in Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona in addition to the 11 states it's already invaded. Most egregiously, it's also pushing so-called Ag-Gag bills, or the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, making it an "act of terrorism" for anyone to point out the animal and environmental horrors of factory farms, in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska, having already introduced them in 10 states. They've passed in three; consumer and animal-welfare advocates successfully fought them in the other seven. With Groundhog Day this weekend, a suggestion to view ALEC and its corporate sponsors as a microcosm of our political system.

From Bill Murray in the classic film “Groundhog Day”: “It’s the same old schtick every year...They pull the little rat out, they talk to him, the rat talks back, then they tell us what’s gonna happen.”