Bill Moyers on ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)
What is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)?
How has it been working quietly behind the scenes for decades to wield influence over legislation in statehouses throughout the United States?
Why is California’s 3rd Assembly District Representative Dan Logue a member of ALEC?
Here’s a description of ALEC from alecexposed.org:
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. 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.
- A partial list of ALEC-affiliated politicians (from sourcewatch.org).
- California ALEC-affiliated politicians (from sourcewatch.org)
- ALEC Exposed (from alexexposed.org)
- The Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch.org