Updated July 24, 2012
Which CEO
made $5 million stealing your kid's lunch money?
YouTube video runtime 4:37 Published on Jul 19,
2012 by bravenewfoundation
ALEC is working to ensure that public education
dollars get diverted to private profits. Their approach is working -- for them.
Not so much for the students who pay the price in the form of a subpar
education and poor performance.
FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2012
Common Cause of PA files
complaint over ALEC's tax status
Common Cause of
Pennsylvania this week asked the state attorney general to investigate the tax
status of the American Legislative Exhange Council (ALEC), the Washington-based
group that has advocates for a variety of conservative measures in state
legislatures.
In the complaint filed
with Attorney General Linda Kelly, Common Cause alleges that ALEC is "primarily a lobbying group and
may therefore be in violation of its tax exempt status."
“ALEC is a corporate
lobby front group masquerading as a public charity on the taxpayers’ dime.
Pennsylvanians shouldn’t have to subsidize ALEC’s agenda to limit voting
rights, undermine our public schools, spread Stand Your Ground gun laws, and
weaken laws protecting our environment. Tax fraud is illegal, which is why
Common Cause/PA is calling on the Attorney General to review ALEC’s
registration as a charity and whether its lobbying activities in Pennsylvania
are being properly disclosed,” said Common Cause/PA Executive Director, Barry Kauffman.
What You Need To Know About ALEC
Since the 2010 elections, when Republicans took
control of many states, there has been an explosion of legislation advancing
privatization of public schools and stripping teachers of job protections and
collective bargaining rights. Even some Democratic governors, seeing the strong
rightward drift of our politics, have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon,
seeking to remove any protection for academic freedom from public school
teachers.
This outburst of anti-public school,
anti-teacher legislation is no accident. It is the work of a shadowy group
called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded in 1973,
ALEC is an organization of nearly 2,000 conservative state legislators. Its
hallmark is promotion of privatization and corporate interests in every sphere,
not only education, but healthcare, the environment, the economy, voting laws,
public safety, etc. It drafts model legislation that conservative legislators
take back to their states and introduce as their own "reform" ideas.
ALEC is the guiding force behind state-level efforts to privatize public
education and to turn teachers into at-will employees who may be fired for any
reason. The ALEC agenda is today the "reform" agenda for education.
Exposing ALEC: How Conservative-Backed
State
- Nancy Scola is
an Atlantic correspondent
based in New York City
A shadowy organization uses corporate
contributions to sell prepackaged conservative bills -- such as Florida
The
recent blowing up of the Invisible Children viral video might have some of us
thinking that Malcolm Gladwell was onto something with his biting critique of
online politics, the so-called "slacktivism" debate. But the
attention to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and, even more so, the
connected debate over Stand Your Ground gun laws and the distancing of some of
the country's biggest companies from ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange
Council, shows how online organizing actually can work. And that, reasonably,
seems to be causing palpitations in the hearts of everyone from Coca-Cola to
the Koch brothers.
Parents Across America
The Parent
Trigger law was first passed in California in
2010, the creation of by an astroturf group based in Los Angeles
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pull support from ALEC
Raw Story By Eric W. Dolan Monday, April 9, 2012 20:00 EDT
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Monday vowed to
withdraw financial support for the American Legislative Exchange Council, an
influential conservative nonprofit that drafts model bills
for legislators.
Kraft Becomes
Third Corporation To Drop ALEC
Following Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, tonight Kraft became the third major
corporation to announce its departure from the right-wing business front group
ALEC.
Yesterday, Kraft told
NPR that “it was keeping its membership in ALEC.” But by this evening, Kraft
reversed its position, announcing it would no longer support ALEC. The company
has issued the following statement:
Boycotts Hitting ALEC, Group Behind
'Stand-Your-Ground'
NPR
by PETER OVERBY April 5, 2012
Two of America
ALEC promotes business-friendly legislation in
state capitols and drafts model bills for state legislatures to adopt. They
range from little-noticed pro-business bills to more controversial measures,
including voter-identification laws and stand-your-ground laws based on the Florida
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/05/150013705/boycotts-hitting-group-behind-stand-your-ground
ALEC also provides sample legislation and strategy for school
choice and other school privatization initiatives; here’s info on their
website:
School Choice and State Constitutions
Whenever school choice
legislation is considered, the stakes are enormous. Children, parents, teachers
and taxpayers all stand to benefit dramatically from well-designed programs.
That’s why it is so
important for all school choice legislation to be very carefully crafted,
starting with an eye toward its constitutionality under relevant state
constitutional provisions. Not only is this sound and responsible drafting, it
also assures that when a choice program is enacted and then challenged in court
it has the greatest likelihood of being upheld.
http://www.alec.org/publications/school-choice-and-state-constitutions/
Welcome to ALEC Exposed!
On July 13, 2011 , the Center for Media and Democracy unveiled this trove of over 800
"model" bills and resolutions secretly voted on by corporations and
politicians through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). These
bills reveal the corporate collaboration reshaping our democracy, state by
state.
ALEC bills, which
largely benefit the organization’s corporate members, have been introduced in
legislatures in every state—but without disclosing to the public that
corporations previously drafted or voted on them through ALEC.
http://alecexposed.org/wiki/About_ALEC_Exposed
Here’s an August 2011
DailyKOS Blog posting identifying 36 members of ALEC in the PA Legislature
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/05/1003221/-Exposing-ALEC-PA
Here's a list of corporate sponsors for ALEC's Annual Meeting
Financiers Of ALEC’s 38th Annual Meeting:
PRESIDENT LEVEL
BP Reynolds American Takeda Pharmaceutical
CHAIRMAN LEVEL
Allergan Altria American Coalition for Clean UnitedHealthcare Visa Walmart Walton Family Foundation
VICE-CHAIRMAN LEVEL
CashAmerica Entergy FedEx Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity Freepont-McMoran Copper & Gold Intuit Johnson & Johnson Koch Industries LouisDreyfus Commodities Louisiana Seafood McMoran Exploration National Rifle Association Pfizer Sanofi TogetherRX Access UPS |
International Paper Jacobs Entertainment LouisianaTravel.com NetChoice QEP Resources StateNet TimeWarner WellPoint
TRUSTEE LEVEL
American Federation for Children BlueCross Blue Shield of Lousiana BNSF Cleco CN Cox CSX Genesee & Wyoming Inc. Harris Deville & Associates HP Kansas City Southern Kraft Foods Lilly Louisiana Chemical Association Louisiana Railroads Association Louisiana Realtors Merck Norfolk Southern RestoringFreedom.org Society of Louisiana CPAs Southern Strategy Group Spectra Energy The Capitol Group Union Pacific USAA Walgreens |
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