Watch Bill Moyers’ report or read the transcript and become OUTRAGED. ALEC unites Christians and Corporations to dominate legislation *EVERYWHERE*. Out of the asses’ mouths:
DR. MILTON FRIEDMAN: The real problem is how do we get to a system in which parents control the education of their children. Of course the ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it.
BILL MOYERS: But ALEC was spawned, in 1973, in part as the brainchild of a very different conservative icon.
PAUL WEYRICH: We are talking about Christianizing America
PAUL WEYRICH: They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. […] As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down. …
Moyers: And as ALEC grew more influential, it became a home not just for corporations and conservative politicians, but for their fellow travelers, the billionaire bankrollers of the American right: the Koch brothers. …
So, when your elected legislators are meeting with corporate lobbyists behind closed doors, ALEC thinks you – the public, the voter – have no right to know what they have done or even talked about.
Investigating ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council
Full Show: United States of ALEC — A Follow-Up
June 21, 2013
A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.
In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who’s behind it. Using interviews, documents, and field reporting, the episode explores ALEC’s self-serving machine at work, acting in a way one Wisconsin politician describes as “a corporate dating service for lonely legislators and corporate special interests.” …
FORMER WISCONSIN DEM. REP. MARK POCAN: This is part of a national conservative movement […] that’s involved in all 50 states, that introduces the same cookie cutter legislation state by state on behalf of their corporate paid members.
Investigating ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council
What is ALEC?
ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.
ALEC Politicians – SourceWatch – Legislators with ALEC Ties