ALEC
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By Zaid Jilani posted Apr 6th 2012 at 9:00AM The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the most powerful corporate front group you’ve never heard of. The group, sponsored by some of America’s largest corporations, writes legislation that tends to benefit its donors and ships these template bills to state legislatures for compliant lawmakers to pass.
Meet The ALEC Staffers Who Help Corporations Write Our Laws
Parks Chief Blocked Plan for Grand Canyon Bottle Ban
Richard Perry/The New York Times Discarded plastic bottles account for about 30 percent of the Grand Canyon park's waste stream, according to the park service. Stephen P. Martin, the architect of the plan and the top parks official at the Grand Canyon, said his superiors told him two weeks before its Jan. 1 start date that Coca-Cola, which distributes water under the Dasani brand and has donated more than $13 million to the parks, had registered its concerns about the bottle ban through the foundation, and that the project was being tabled. His account was confirmed by park, foundation and company officials. A spokesman for the , David Barna, said it was Jon Jarvis, the top federal parks official, who made the “decision to put it on hold until we can get more information.”
Report: Natural Gas Industry Spent Millions to Avoid Fracking Regulations
According to a new report by the nonpartisan group Common Cause, the natural gas industry has pumped millions into Congress to avoid regulation of hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking." According to a new report by the nonpartisan group Common Cause, the natural gas industry has pumped millions into Congress to avoid regulation of hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking." (photo: Kara Newhouse) Fracking is a controversial method of obtaining natural gas involving injecting a mix of sand, chemicals, and water into a well at high pressure.
Koch Brothers Poised to Raise Influence With Massive Conservative Database - The ITT List
David and Charles Koch—billionaire brothers and infamous figureheads of libertarian activism—are set to further certify their status as lynchpins of the Republican electoral machine. As the Guardian reports , the two oil moguls are creating a database that unites far-flung conservative think tanks, activist groups, tea party organizations, fundraising gurus and free market ideologues into a comprehensive list likely to make GOP campaign managers salivate in advance of next year’s elections. Named Themis—after the Greek goddess who imposed divine order on humanity—the database will include valuable information for conservative organizers and fundraisers. Email lists, phone numbers and other contact information from disperse sources will merge into a comprehensive and streamlined political weapon.Next week, the American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC ) will host its 38 th annual meeting in New Orleans. A number of our state legislators are expected to attend. What is ALEC ? The American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC ) is a vehicle through which global corporations and state politicians collaborate and vote behind closed doors to design legislation to benefit the huge corporations funding ALEC . These so-called “model bills” reach into almost every area of American life and include things like imposing voting restrictions , undermining environmental protections , scapegoating immigrants to profit the private prison industry and defunding public education . Learn more here .
The Truth about ALEC and its role in Michigan « We Are The People
The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the Union Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”
The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor | Truthout
Meet the Three ALEC Supporting Corporate Giants Who Dare You to Boycott Them
By: Jason Easley April 5th, 2012 more from Jason Easley As the ALEC boycott continues to grow some corporations are not getting the message. Executives from Pfizer, Reynolds American, and Procter & Gamble are daring you to boycott them. Beneath the good news that Kraft and Pepsi have joined Coca-Cola in deciding to stop supporting ALEC, there are some companies who just don’t get it. According to Reuters , Pfizer, Reynolds American, and Procter & Gamble have all came out in support of ALEC.
Graphics from the Center for Media and Democracy. ALEC Naked: More news from the 'vast right wing conspiracy' By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / November 10, 2011
Naked ALEC and the Right Wing Conspiracy
Have you met ALEC ? The American Legislative Exchange Council ? You should meet 'em.
Meet ALEC, The Big Bus Driver
ALEC Politicians : This is a partial list of politicians that are known to be involved in, or previously involved in, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Not all dues-paying members of ALEC are included below because ALEC does not post its full list, but the following list includes politicians who have been in a leadership role in ALEC as a member of a task force or other publicly known role. It also includes politicians who have been featured speakers or who have accepted awards at ALEC meetings. (If you have additional names, please add them with a citation.
ALEC Politicians
Share this An American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) member is defying Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules limiting the sale of rat poisons that pose dangers to children and the ecosystem. ALEC representatives say that kids eating rat poison is an "acceptable risk" that does not justify government intervention in the market. For decades, tens of thousands of young children have become ill after touching or ingesting rat poison applied "loose," in pellet form. And a variety of wild animals, from bald eagles to bobcats to owls, have been found dead with lethal levels of a super-toxic rodenticide in their systems. EPA Rules Limit Some Rodenticides
Kids Eating Rat Poison is an "Acceptable Risk" for ALEC
The NAACP launched a campaign Monday against new state laws that tighten voter qualifications. The NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, two separate organizations, were set to release a report that finds that such laws tend to suppress minority voting — a trend the document says emerged after unprecedented minority turnout in the 2008 election and Census figures that show people of color gaining a larger share of the population. The groups will send the document to congressional leaders, state attorneys general, secretaries of state and the Department of Justice in hopes of prompting legislation to roll back laws requiring government-issued identification at the polls and reducing the number of early-voting days and other measures they say could disenfranchise as many as 5 million voters. The NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, will lead a march to United Nations headquarters in New York on Saturday to draw attention to the issue.
NAACP targets tougher voter qualifications
American Legislative Exchange Council
The Alec Republican States and Governors
STATE BY STATE CORP TAKE OVER
Gates Foundation Grants ALEC A Hefty Sum For 'Education Reform'
This is exactly why I've always been suspicious of Bill Gates' "philanthropy." Yes, I understand that he's done wonderful things in Africa, but the United States is where we live and there is a very real and lasting battle going on over the future of public education. While union-busting is certainly one goal of the privatization monsters, profit is the primary goal. Education for profit is lucrative and alluring, especially to people with large sums of money parked and waiting for investment in big-profit items.Charter Schools, Character Education & the Eugenics Internationale Behind the Conservative Curtain: Pseudo Grassroots Organizations Front for Corporate/Government Takeover By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth. Proverbs 8:15 & 16 Strategists for School Choice / Charter Schools
Charter Schools Strategists: Heritage, FOTF, NBR
ALEC and its members favor “federalism and conservative public policy solutions,” and ALEC representatives tell reporters that its mission is fundamentally “educational.” [10] ALEC spokeswoman Raegan Weber told the Los Angeles Times [11] , “Legislators should hear from those the government intends to regulate.” Founded in the mid-1970s, ALEC has no real counterpart on the left. Its closest equivalent, the Progressive States Network [12] , was founded in 2005, has about a quarter of ALEC’s funding and produces only a small amount of model legislation. Thanks to a critical mass of resources now available on the Internet, you, too, can trace which of ALEC’s model bills made it to statehouses, which legislators sponsored them and which industries may have had an interest in the success of the bill.