Florida Republican Submits Anti-Corporate Tax Bill Without Removing ALEC Mission Statement

Florida Rep. Rachel Burgin (R-56), a 29 year old
former legislative aide and graduate of
Moody Bible Institute

It is now the common wisdom of millions of interested parties that ALEC does not work for the vast majority of citizens, that it is a vicious corporate lobby and that it is thee main force behind the deterioration of personal liberties and workers' rights in the United States.

Arguing against ALEC's influence over state legislation has become more difficult thanks to efforts such as ALEC Exposed which display how similar bills advancing in GOP-controlled states are and from whence they originate.  Now, Florida Rep. Rachel Burgin (R-56), a 29 year old former legislative aide and graduate of Moody Bible Institute, has made the task of indicting ALEC for undue influence in state politics that much easier by forgetting to remove ALEC's mission statement from a bill (PDF) she suddenly "decided” to propose.  This bill calls on the federal government to reduce taxes for corporations (HM 685).
Burgin discovered her error, but not before Common Blog spotted it:


All ALEC model resolutions contain a boilerplate paragraph, describing ALEC’s adherence to free market principles and limited government.  When legislators introduce one of ALEC’s bills, they normally remove this paragraph. Sometimes (but only sometimes) legislators will make some slight alterations to anALEC model bill,perhaps to include something specific to them or to their state. Rep. Burgin didn’t do that.  Instead she introduced a bill that was the same as the model word-for-word, forgetting even to remove the paragraph naming ALEC and describing its principles.

As a Texas Governor might say; “Oops!” READ MORE

Stop AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from blocking fast and affordable Internet access.

Join CREDO and Daily Kos in telling the FCC to protect our access to fast and affordable Internet service.

ALEC is pressuring state legislatures around the country to ban cities from offering broadband Internet access. Nearly 20 states already have laws on the books stopping cities from providing fast, publicly-owned Internet access – and other states could soon follow suit.

President Obama just urged the FCC to make it illegal for states to block cities from providing affordable and fast Internet access–and the FCC is expected to make a decision very soon.

Many perennial funders and members of ALEC, including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner, stand to gain financially from these state laws because they eliminate the possibility of competition from city-run broadband services.READ MORE,  SIGN THE PETITION

ALEC, For-Profit Criminal Justice, and Wisconsin

by Brendan Fischer — July 18, 2011 - 6:06am 

Topics: Corporations, Democracy, Lobbying, Politics, Propaganda

Projects: BanksterUSA, Real Economy Project, Wisconsin Protests

 

 As the first half of 2011 has revealed, Wisconsin is not a moderate "purple" state, but a state divided between staunchly "blue" progressives and righteous "red" right-wingers. That rift is particularly apparent in legislative conflicts over the criminal justice system, a debate spurred by corporate interests represented in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and perpetuated by ALEC legislative members, including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Wisconsin's history and public policy reflects the red/blue divide. It is the state that gave birth to the Republican Party, which supported slavery abolition, and the John Birch Society, which opposed the civil rights movement. In the first half of the 20th Century, the state elected bothprogressive hero Robert "Fighting Bob" LaFollette and right-wing extremist Joe McCarthy. It is the state that elected both former Senator Russ Feingold (D) and Representative Paul Ryan (R).

Wisconsin also produced Paul Weyrich, who in 1973 co-founded both the Heritage Foundation and ALEC (and in subsequent years, Free Congress and Moral Majority). Weyrich's ALEC, it seems, has been a factory for many of the state's most recent right-wing policy initiatives.

Wisconsin's Progressive Traditions Resist For-Profit Prisons and Bail-Bonds

READ MORE

Wake UP America. A.L.E.C. is very dangerous.

Corporations Leaving A.L.E.C./Koch Brothers

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Jueseppi B. 

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a politically conservative  501(c)(3) nonprofit policy organization, consisting of both state legislators and members of the private sector, mostly representing corporations. ALEC’s mission statement describes the organization’s purpose as the advancement of free-market principles, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty. Among other activities, the group provides a venue for private individuals and corporations to assist politicians in developing what it considers model laws serving the economic and political aims of its members. ALEC also serves as a networking tool among state legislators, allowing them to research the handling and “best practices” of policy in other states.

ALEC currently has more than 2,000 legislative members representing all 50 states, as well as more than 85 members of congress and 14 sitting or former governors who are considered “alumni”. ALEC also claims approximately 300 corporate, foundation, and other private-sector members. A list of ALEC leaders in the states includes 73 Republican lawmakers and 7 Democrats.

The chairmanship of ALEC is a rotating position, with a new legislator appointed to the position each year. The current chair of ALEC is Dave Frizzell, a member of the Indiana House of Representative. Day-to-day operations are run from ALEC’s Washington, D.C. office by an executive director and a staff of approximately 30.

History    READ MORE

 ALSO SEE:

Slave wages in private prisons is bad but this is worst. In effect, it nullifies the 13th Amendment and creates a system where an employer can make a slave of an employee. (PDF)

Exposing ALEC's Corporate Influence On State Government

United States of ALEC

ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection

This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council, in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy. John Nichols introduces the series.
 
Hundreds of ALEC’s model bills and resolutions bear traces of Koch DNA: raw ideas that were once at the fringes but that have been carved into “mainstream” policy through the wealth and will of Charles and David Koch. Of all the Kochs’ investments in right-wing organizations, ALEC provides some of the best returns: it gives the Kochs a way to make their brand of free-market fundamentalism legally binding.

No one knows how much the Kochs have given ALEC in total, but the amount likely exceeds $1 million—not including a half-million loaned to ALEC when the group was floundering. ALEC gave the Kochs its Adam Smith Free Enterprise Award, and Koch Industries has been one of the select members of ALEC’s corporate board for almost twenty years. The company’s top lobbyist was once ALEC’s chairman. As a result, the Kochs have shaped legislation touching every state in the country. Like ideological venture capitalists, the Kochs have used ALEC as a way to invest in radical ideas and fertilize them with tons of cash.

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. Dozens of other ALEC bills would limit environmental regulations or litigation in ways that would benefit Koch.
ALEC’s model legislation reflects parts of the Kochs’ agenda that have little to do with oil profits. Long before ALEC started pushing taxpayer-subsidized school vouchers, for example, the Koch fortune was already underwriting attacks on public education. David Koch helped inject the idea of privatizing public schools into the national debate as a candidate for vice president in 1980. A cornerstone of the Libertarian Party platform, which he bankrolled, was the call for “educational tax credits to encourage alternatives to public education,” a plan to the right of Ronald Reagan. Several pieces of ALEC’s model legislation echo this plan.  READ MORE

Slave Labor, Prison Privatization, Prison Industry - ALEC Conservatives push this agenda nationwide!

Privatize, privatize, privatization of anything owned or controlled by the public or taxpayers is again being applied by Conservatives from coast to coast.  Sadly through the manipulations of ALEC and their thousands of legislative and corporate members, this agenda that began way back in the 80's is once again being used to usurp more public assets.  These assets include publicly built prisons, work-release centers, medical care facilities, schools and a myriad assortment of other buildings, programs and initiatives that now exists due to public funding.


ALEC claims that corporations can run and operate these necessary programs and prisons more efficiently than public employees.  They claim this will reduce government staffing and thus government payrolls and somehow make us all safer (corrections), smarter (school voucher programs), our kids better trained to enter the workplace (repeal of child labor laws) and help reduce municipal, city, state and county costs (using inmates in place of public employees).


Like any other pyramid scheme turned lose on society, this one is well funded by the likes of Koch Industries and their owners, Charles and David Koch, AT&T and other communications and telecom companies, PhaRma and related pharmaceutical manufacturers.  It is well advertised to the public through Republican and Conservative PAC's such as Heritage Foundation, Reason Foundation, Americans for Prosperity Foundation,  and includes the professional opinions of researchers and scholars provided by such as the CATO Institute, Manhattan Institute,Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy and the Tax Foundation.
  READ MORE

ALEC Act Would Give Legislatures Power Over AGs

May 11, 2012
 
The conservative group that helped spread Florida's Stand Your Ground gun law across the country holds a closed-door issues conference in Charlotte on Friday. On its agenda is legislation that would prevent a state's attorney general from pursuing lawsuits except as authorized by the state legislature. Peter Overby is at the conference and talks with Audie Cornish.
  TRANSCRIPT

Conservative Thinktanks Launch Campaign to Turn Americans Against Wind Energy

Photo Credit: Shutterstock/WDG Photo

Documents show for the first time that local anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry.

May 9, 2012

A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama's energy agenda.

A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using "subversion" to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.

The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project.

The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled 'wind warriors' from across the country in Washington DC last February.

"These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry," said Gabe Elsner, a co-director of the Checks and Balances, the accountability group which unearthed the proposal and other documents.  READ MORE

Rightwing ALEC Puts Wisconsin Anti-Labor Laws On May Agenda

Michigan's Koch-Funded Mackinac Center Is Bringing Wisconsin Act 10 Provisions to ALEC's spring meeting.

May 1, 2012

With the recent publication of additional American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) documents, new questions are being raised about the source of certain provisions in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's controversial collective bargaining legislation. Some of those provisions may be adopted by ALEC for introduction in other states.

According to documents posted by good government organization Common Cause, the Koch-funded, Michigan-based think tank Mackinac Center for Public Policy will ask ALEC at its Spring Task Force Summit on May 11 in Charlotte, North Carolina to adopt as a "model bill" a proposal that strongly resembles sections of Governor Walker's Act 10. Those provisions, requiring that public employee unions recertify with a majority of eligible employees (rather than just a majority of those voting) and do so regularly, were considered some of the most onerous burdens on unions imposed by Act 10, and their source a subject of significant speculation.

The Act 10 provisions that the Mackinac Center will bring to ALEC were recently struck down by a federal court in Wisconsin. That court also rejected the law's prohibition on voluntary union dues deductions, which resembled already-existing ALEC model legislation.  READ MORE

Washington Post’s Kaplan and Other For-Profit Colleges Joined ALEC

(Photo: Kaplan International Colleges / Flickr)

Friday, 27 April 2012 14:28 By David Halperin , Republic Report | Report 

Republic Report has learned that the Washington Post Company’s Kaplan for-profit college division, was, last year, a member of the controversial business advocacy group the American Legislative Exchange Council. Other major for-profit education companies also joined ALEC. Republic Report has obtained a July 2011 document showing Kaplan Higher Education and other for-profits as members of ALEC’s Education Task Force. This morning, in an email message to Republic Report, Mark Harrad, Vice President of Communications at Kaplan, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Washington Post Company that includes Kaplan Higher Education, wrote, “A unit of Kaplan was a member of ALEC for a one year period, which ended in August 2011.”

 For-profit colleges are the ultimate special interest. Many receive around 90 percent of their revenue from federal financial aid, more than $30 billion a year, and many charge students sky-high prices. In recent years, it has been fully documented that a large number of these schools have high dropouts rates and dismal job placement, and many have been caught engaging in highly coercive and deceptive recruiting practices. Yet when the bad actions of these predatory schools got publicly exposed, the schools simply used the enormous resources they’ve amassed to hire expensive lobbyists and consultants, and to make campaign contributions to politicians, in order to avoid accountability and keep taxpayer dollars pouring into their coffers.  READ MORE

Martin Death Spurs Group to Readjust Policy Focus

Could their other policies be any better?

By ERIC LICHTBLAU 

Published: April 17, 2012 

WASHINGTON — An influential conservative policy group that came under attack after the Trayvon Martin shooting for pushing Stand Your Ground gun laws nationwide said Tuesday that it was getting out of the law enforcement and social policy arenas and returning to its economic roots.

The group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, had suffered an exodus of big-name corporate supporters like McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods after recent attacks by liberal organizations.

While the group had already been discussing a narrowing of its work, the controversy generated by the Martin shooting “may have sped up the process,” Chip Rogers, a Georgia state senator who is the group’s treasurer, said in a telephone interview.   READ MORE

Meet ALEC's Equally Despicable Anti-Choice Cousin -- AUL

A sign at NYC's 2011 rally for women's health.

Photo Credit: Sarah Seltzer

 Think the anti-choicers in statehouses around the country are coming up with abortion bans all by themselves? Think again.

April 10, 2012

When statehouses across the country started passing abortion bans at the seemingly arbitrary threshold of 20 weeks, was it a mere coincidence? When the "right to know" bills that required mandatory ultrasounds -- sometimes transvaginal ones -- before abortions were introduced or passed, in state after state, from Virginia to Texas to Pennsylvania, was that a matter of chance?

Of course not: none of these trends were the product of diabolical mind-sync on the part of anti-choice legislators. Instead, these bills arise from the tradition of blueprint legislation -- the practice of borrowing bill prototypes or model bills from a central national entity and then adapting them for introduction in statehouses. The practice is used on both sides of the aisle, but is particularly insidious in the case of anti-choice bills, part of the "war on women"-- the campaign to erode Roe until it's all but nonexistent.

Blueprint legislation has come to light recently thanks to the spotlight on the right-wing, corporate American Legislative Exchange Council, and in particular ALEC's hand in the proliferation of dangerous "stand your ground" laws, like Florida's, and discriminatory voter ID legislation.

ALEC has taken a hit in recent days as progressive activists, including ColorofChange and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, have convinced major companies -- among them Mars, McDonald's, Wendy's, Kraft, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Intuit, plus the Gates Foundation -- to drop their affiliations with ALEC in light of the Trayvon Martin case.   READ MORE

How ALEC is Destroying the Teaching of Climate Change Science, One State at a Time

Photo Credit: Helder Almeida via Shutterstock.com

Tennessee just became the fourth state in the nation to include climate change denial in their science education curriculum. Who's behind this crafty legislation? You guessed it.

March 22, 2012

The month of March has seen unprecedented heat and temperatures. A rational thinking, scientifically-grounded individual could only posit, "Well, hmm, I bet climate change has something to do with the fact that in Madison, WI, it is 80 degrees in mid-March. Sometimes it's 60 or 70 degrees colder than this!"

While that individual would be positing something that is the well-accepted scientific consensus, in some states, under law, that is only a "controversial theory among other theories."

Welcome to Tennessee, which on March 19th became the fourth state with a legal mandate to incorporate climate change denial as part of the science education curriculum when discussing climate change.  READ MORE

 

New Hampshire Legislature Turns Policy Reins Over To ALEC

Posted: 28 Jan 2012 02:00 PM PST

Republicans in the New Hampshire legislature seemingly have ceded all control of the state to the American Legislative Exchange Council by introducing an unprecedented seven of ALEC's pieces of model legislation in the past week.

ALEC legislation is basically written by corporations to protect their own interests and the organization is behind a rash of legislation across the U.S. that has assaulted working families, attacked unions and sought to unravel the American social safety net. Granite State Progress is watching the progress of the New Hampshire bills:

"This is an incredible illustration of how the current leadership of the New Hampshire House and Senate are selling our state out to the highest bidder," said Zandra Rice Hawkins, Director of Granite State Progress. "Corporations already funnel unlimited money into our political system but to hand them the pen and paper to craft legislation is just plain wrong."
ALEC model legislation heard in committees this week range from repealing new consumer protections under the Affordable Care Act to creating specialized tax credits for businesses and privatizing education to limiting voter access at the ballot box.

"Each of these pieces of legislation benefit special interests at the expense of everyday, hardworking Granite Staters," Rice Hawkins said. "We need to reject corporate-written legislation and focus on ways to ensure New Hampshire state laws benefit New Hampshire state residents."

The ALEC-inspired legislation includes:

HB 1607 "Education Tax Credit": Would divert public education money to private schools in a way to effect vouchers

HB 1560 Health Care Compact: Would allow member states to opt out of any and all national health care rules, including Medicaid and Medicare

CACR 6 Super Majority Act: A thinly-veiled Taxpayer Bill of Rights clone that would handcuff state spending and devastate all services and programs

SB 289 and SB 318 Photo ID to Vote: A photo identification would be required for all voters, despite there being little to no voter fraud in the state, designed specifically to suppress poor and minority voters

HB 1658 Eliminating Support Services for Newborn Children: The title of this one is pretty straightforward and horrific in and of itself. It would specifically target newborn children whose parents are on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, so it goes after the poorest families

SB 372 "Education Tax Credits": Senate version of HB 1607 The New Hampshire General Court, the state's legislature, is controlled by Republicans 19-5 in the Senate and 298-104 in the House, but the governor is Democrat John Lynch, so it seems unlikely that most of these bills will make it into law. 

   READ MORE

Kids Eating Rat Poison Is an "Acceptable Risk" for ALEC

Bait Station (Robert McClure/InvestigateWest)

Submitted by Brendan Fischer on December 6, 2011 - 8:06am

Under the new rules, rat poison will no longer be sold "loose," in pellet form, for use in one's home or apartment, but can be purchased in "bait stations" (like the one pictured) designed to keep out children and other animals. Additionally, certain products known as "second generation," or "super-toxic" rodenticides, will no longer be sold to residential consumers, as they pose a special risk to wildlife. These products are sold under brand names like Havoc, Talon, Ratimus and d-CON. Both the second generation chemicals and other rodenticides will still be sold "loose" to professional exterminators as well as employees of farms, warehouses, and other commercial installations. But the pellets may not be used in areas where children may find them.
READ MORE

ALEC-Linked Group Revealed as Major Secret Donor In Referendum on Maine Voting Rights

Maine Gov. Paul LePage, 12/21/11. (photo: RumfordMeteor.com)

By Scott Keyes, ThinkProgress

30 December 11

ast month, Maine voters delivered a major rebuke to Gov. Paul LePage (R) and the Republican-held legislature when they approved a referendum restoring election day voting registration rights in the state. Earlier this year, state legislators passed a bill repealing the state's 38 year-old law allowing citizens to register at the polls on election day.

Tens of thousands of Mainers responded by petitioning for the matter come to a referendum. Issue 1 was one of the most-anticipated votes on election day this year, with pundits watching closely to see how citizens would react to the Republican-led war on voting, which ramped up in states across the country this year.

Recognizing the referendum's importance, voting rights opponents poured money into the campaign to repeal election day registration. In fact, just two days after the state's campaign finance reporting deadline, a secret conservative donor funneled $250,000 into the race, allowing the No On 1 campaign to make significant TV ad buys in an inexpensive media market.

Per state law, however, the identity of donors must be revealed within 45 days after the election. In fact, the entire $250,000 worth of late money came from a single source: the American Justice Partnership.

READ MORE