Bad Deeds: ALEC

 

Right-wing States Rights – Conservatives talk a lot about how states should retain their individual control over how they handle issues. But at the same time, they are attempting to secretly impose one-size-fits-all legislation at the state level through a corporate and billionaire-controlled organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich and other conservative activists, ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics. ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more. In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by Republican governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alumni.

The details of ALEC’s model bills have been available only to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 300 corporate members. But thanks to a leak to Aliya Rahman, an Ohio-based activist who helped organize protests at ALEC’s Spring Task Force meeting in Cincinnati, more than 800 documents representing decades of model legislation have come to light.

ALEC’s billionaire benefactors include Tea Party funders Charles and David Koch. “Dozens of corporations are investing millions of dollars a year to write business-friendly legislation that is being made into law in statehouses coast to coast, with no regard for the public interest,” says Bob Edgar of Common Cause. “This is proof positive of the depth and scope of the corporate reach into our democratic processes.” The full archive of ALEC documents is available at a new website, alecexposed.org, thanks to the Center for Media and Democracy, which has provided powerful tools for progressives to turn this knowledge into power.

Below are links to further reading about ALEC:

The Koch Connection

Rigging Elections

The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor

Regards,

Jim