Friday, August 5, 2011

Learn about ALEC, The American Legislative Exchange Council, and Fight It!


The Nation and the Center for Media and Democracy have put together a good article ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection.

What is ALEC? What does it do?  Well, it's a way of writing a bill so that it's extremely pro-business, and then when it is the way the Koch brothers want it they remove all traces that it came from ALEC and they get some bought and paid for empty suit in a state legislature to introduce the bill and though he wrote it.

This is how it works.  "Take environmental protections. The Kochs have a penchant for paying their way out of serious violations and coming out ahead. Helped by Koch Industries’ lobbying efforts, one of the first measures George W. Bush signed into law as governor of Texas was an ALEC model bill giving corporations immunity from penalties if they tell regulators about their own violation of environmental rules."  So, if you brag about violating rules then you can.  


Other phony ALEC type groups created and funded by the Koch brothers are the Americans for Prosperity, which funds the Tea Party.  Citizens for a Sound Economy.


John Nichols article ALEC Exposed is here.   He writes that ALEC's goals are to downsize government and to remove regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account.  


There is a treasure trove of documents at alecexposed.org 


Oh, and that breaded chicken cutlet / sandwich you may have had today? ALEC gets prisoners to make those. They do beef and pork too.  


 It's not cost effective to go to China anymore for cheap labor, just use the bums in prison.  









The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor

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