You can try to argue that ALEC [the American Legislative Exchange Council] is a private group and can do whatever it wants in the privacy of its own annual convention. You can try to convince me that the “freedom” ALEC is constantly talking about defending also means freedom from listening to people who don’t agree with you.  But you won’t succeed in convincing me, because ALEC—while technically a private lobbying group—exerts tremendous influence over the public laws that are passed by our state legislatures.  ALEC pursues a radically pro-corporate, anti-union, anti-worker, anti-employee, anti-middle class, pro-business agenda state legislatures. Its membership roster includes legislators from every state, who, by attending meetings like the one in Oklahoma City [May 2013], are double dealing the voters who elected them by representing the corporate interests of ALEC. Their allegiance to the private interests of ALEC undermines their roles as public servants. In my view—and I’m far from alone in this—that gives the rest of us the right to pierce ALEC’s jealously guarded secrecy and to know what their minions in our state legislatures are up to.

So, it’s not okay that, when citizens and legitimate reporters tried to observe and [gasp!] report on the goings-on at ALEC’s 2013 annual meeting in Oklahoma City, ALEC circled the wagons, slammed the doors, and treated visitors as criminals.

In an articled called “ALEC ignores First Amendment, Assembles Most Wanted List,” Truthout reports that, in Oklahoma City, ALEC:

… assembled a dossier of disfavored reporters and activists, kicked reporters out of its conference who might write unfavorable stories, and managed to boot a community forum critical of ALEC from its reserved room.

… Oklahoma City Police Officers in full uniform — but reportedly off-duty and paid by ALEC — stopped anyone not wearing a name badge from entering ALEC’s sections of the convention center.

Most egregiously, ALEC put together a “Most Wanted List,” described by Truthout this way:

The Center for Media in Democracy [CMD] obtained a document titled “OKC anti-ALEC photos” at the ALEC conference. [Click on the link to see the most-wanted photo array.]

The page featured the pictures and names of eight people, four of whom work with CMD…It is not known whether the photo array of people who have reported on or criticized ALEC was distributed to ALEC members or shared with Oklahoma City law enforcement.

Other targets on the document included The Nation’s Lee Fang, who has written articles critical of ALEC, and Sabrina Stevens, an education activist who spoke out in an ALEC task force meeting last November. Also featured were Calvin Sloan of People for the American Way and Gabe Elsner of Checks and Balances Project, both of whom are ALEC detractors.

The name of ALEC Events Director Sarah McManamon was in the top corner, indicating the document was printed from her Google account.

It’s bad enough that, judging from their past actions in state legislatures, ALEC’s so-called public-sector legislators are clearly more beholden to their private-sector donors/allies than to the general public. It’s even more deplorable that ALEC’s bought-and-paid-for elected officials continually try to keep the public from knowing what they’re doing on behalf of groups other than the public. But creating a “Most-Wanted” list that portrays law-abiding citizens as though they are criminals? That’s a new low.

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I’ve been reading all the editorials and letters to the editor about bills in my state legislature that aim to further diminish the economic power of the working and middle classes in Missouri. It seems each week the writers are getting a tiny bit closer to the bull’s eye but are still missing the main point.

Whether it is defunding health services and public education, or undermining the unions that protect workers’ benefits, whether it is skewing the political process to favor corporate campaign donors or shifting the tax burden down the income scale, or whether it’s just down and dirty dishonest fact manipulation, the goal is the same. The real goal is to bankrupt the state so the pretense of “lack of funding” can be used while destroying all public programs and services. Privatize everything. Let private companies offer those services for a profit. Pay no attention to the obvious financial problems when 20% to 30% of a program’s income has to go for overhead as opposed to 3%-7% for a public run program. The goal is not delivery of the best product. It’s delivery of the greatest profit for the investors.

One letter-writer comes closest to the bull’s eye when he says that the American Legislative Exchange Council is behind the draining of resources from public education. The “free market” extremists in control of the current Republican Party, both in Jeff City and in Washington, do not believe it is government’s job to help individuals. Anyone who wants to understand the common thread running through all of the attempts to reduce government services should go to www.alecexposed.org and read all about it. The goal is to move the country away from the progressive political philosophy that produced the social programs of the mid-20^th century, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,  OSHA, the EPA, and Head Start. Reducing taxes is not just about fiscal conservatism; it is about “starving the beast” so there is no money for social programs.  Hysteria over federal deficits was not a problem when “big government” meant boatloads of money to defense contractors. Any honest fiscal conservative would know better than to start two wars and cut taxes simultaneously.

No, the real agenda is something much baser. And this is the political choice we are going to have to make. Do we value each other enough to “just say no” to the Republican leaders pushing us further and further down into the kind of poverty where we have no power to defend ourselves? Do we really want to go back to the days when only the rich could afford to go to school? Or when elderly grandparents slept in the cellar near the furnace? Or when the air was so black with coal soot that no amount of power washing could clean out our lungs? This is the “vision” of the people currently in control of the Republican Party. The Speaker of the Missouri House, Rep. Tim Jones of Eureka, is co-chair of the Missouri delegation to the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Let’s at least force them to say openly and honestly what their real intentions are. All of their arguments for not expanding Medicaid have been knocked down by professionals who know more than they do. What’s left is the ugly truth. They can’t expand Medicaid when their real goal is to destroy it and all the other social safety net programs. Bull’s eye.

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I started this essay a few days before the massacre of school children in Connecticut.  Looking it over again this morning, I’m glad I didn’t finish it because the ground is shifting under our feet and maybe, just maybe, the shaking has brought us to our senses.  Well, maybe not ALL of us, but enough to break out of the mental and emotional prison that has built up over the past thirty years.

What got me thinking about all of this was an interview last week on MSNBC of the father of a black teenager killed in Florida by a man who didn’t like the loud music the kids were playing in their car.  The man told the kids to turn it down, they didn’t, so he shot them.  The father of the dead boy was asked how African-American parents prepare their children to live in a racist society where they are in danger wherever they go.  The father’s reply got me thinking about how impotent our elected representatives in the national Congress are today compared with decades past.

The father of the slain teenager said he thought America was better than that now.  He recalled growing up in NYC during the 70’s when civil rights was the topic of the day and everyone made an effort to do the right thing.  His son had friends of all colors and nationalities, so he hadn’t had “that conversation that every African American parent dreads” with him. When asked about Florida’s “stand your ground” law and millions of residents with concealed carry permits, the grieving father said that the federal government used to step in when states “got too far out of line.”

That reminded me of how President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock in 1957 to guard the first few black students at the high school.  Each student was assigned a soldier to accompany him/her throughout the day to classes.  Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 actually meant something, and the federal government intended to enforce the law of the land.

As devastating as it would be for his own political party, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  He knew his party would “lose the South for a generation.”  The following decade, even under Republican presidents Nixon and Ford,  we saw an explosion of progressive laws, especially those protecting the environment.  Acid rain from factories in the midwest was killing trees and making people sick in New England, so we had to control that for the benefit of the common good.  We could do things like that back then.  We thought of ourselves as one nation, and we would no more harm our neighbors in other states than we would our neighbors next door.

When I taught American history in the 1980’s, I used Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s Cycles of American History  because it was so obvious.  I’d draw a long wavy line across the blackboard with the progressive eras on top and conservative backlash eras on the bottom.  Every 30 years like clockwork, the mood of the country would shift.  I’d walk five steps forward and two steps back to explain why the conservative cycles were necessary.  People need time to adapt to change, try the new rules on for size and adapt them as necessary.

After the explosive changes of the 60’s and 70’s, it was time for two or three steps back.  During the Reagan era, people stepped back to take a breath and digest all that had happened to our society.  It was during this needed pause that the conservatives regrouped and solidified their agenda.  Presidential historian, Douglas Brinkley said the other night on TV that the Roosevelt Era actually lasted until 1980 when the Reagan Revolution stopped it dead in its tracks.

One of the new “free market” groups that grew out of the frustration of conservatives during the 60’s and 70’s was the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC.)  With strong financial support from corporations, ALEC is able to host conferences where they bring state legislators together with lobbyists and officers of private companies to write model bills which then go back to the states for debate and votes.  If you can picture the “alumni” of these ALEC get-togethers as tadpoles turned into huge, angry frogs obsessed with having their own way, you might better understand why the U.S. House of Representatives last night had to leave town without voting on a tax bill.  The ALEC graduates in the House truly believe the government has no business helping individual citizens and should dismantle all the public programs that make up our social safety net.  Cut out food stamps and child care tax credits, but don’t annoy the billionaires who might want a new yacht for Christmas.

Now shift that focus to the state level.  Although Missouri has not received the national attention that Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Virginia recently have, we face many of the same issues – especially high levels of corporate political spending that can, if left unchecked, tip the balance of power away from our citizenry.   ALEC’s destructive power is most obvious when it comes to public education in Missouri.  In fact, Missouri gets the top grade in ALEC’s “Scorecard” for moving away from support for public education.  Whether it’s workers’ rights, pension funds, environmental regulations, photo ID laws, or “repealing Obamacare,” the end goal is the same – moving power and wealth from the many to the few.

Look at this link to one of ALEC’s web pages.

Then compare ALEC’s list of legislative priorities with those of the new Speaker of the Missouri House, Rep. Tim Jones.  The list might be reworded or shuffled around, but the goals are the same. Rep. Tim Jones is the co-chair of the Missouri delegation to ALEC meetings.  He held a “get acquainted” event in the Capitol building last spring and encouraged members to attend.  His plan now is to remodel the historic Capitol building to put offices for Republican legislators in the areas currently set aside for the public and the press.  There seems to be no end to this man’s drive for power.  He could very well end up an ALEC “alum” in the U.S. Congress if we don’t stop him at this level.

So what is giving me this glimmer of hope that we might actually be able to unite for the common good again?  Reactions to the Connecticut massacre by individuals all over the country, even owners of stores that sell assault rifles and private equity firms who are selling their shares of gun manufacturing companies, make me believe there might be a chance to revive what we’ve lost in recent decades – a sense of community and caring for our fellow citizens.

President Obama said it better than any of us can.

 “These neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

Enjoy some holiday cheer. Then get ready to storm the barricades.

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For now, at least, there’s not going to be a voter “protection” ballot measure on Missouri’s  November 2012 ballot, and that’s good news for voters. But this is not a local story, and it’s far from over. It’s just the one that I live closest to. And it’s emblematic of what’s happening in many states.

In 2011, the Missouri legislature passed a ballot measure that, if approved by voters, would amend the state constitution to make it easier for lawmakers to make it harder for people to vote. Ostensibly, this measure will “protect” us from voter fraud. Recently, [March 11, 2012], a Missouri circuit court judge rejected the ballot measure, which had the Orwellian name of “Voter Protection Act.”

Behind the “protection” subterfuge, of course, is the real motive: an effort to suppress voting by people who Republicans would love to keep away from the polls. The measure would require voters to present government-issued photo ID at the polls. The catch is that not everyone has a driver’s license or state ID, and to get one, you have to present your birth certificate or citizenship documents—and those cost money and time. And who are the people who don’t have these items? Mostly, it’s low-income and minority voters—and those demographic groups tend to vote for Democrats.

But what truly amazes me about the latest Missouri voter suppression bill is who is sponsoring it. It’s State Rep. Shane Schoeller, a Republican from Springfield, Missouri. Schoeller is currently a candidate for….wait for it…Missouri Secretary of State, and the juxtaposition of his voter suppression bill with his electoral quest is ironic, to say the least. In Missouri, the Secretary of State is in charge of elections. He or she oversees registration, candidate filing, voter registration and elections. You would think that the main missions of that job would be to make sure that everyone who’s eligible to vote can actually vote, to make sure the voting process is fair, transparent and therefore trustworthy, and to enfranchise as many people as possible, as a way of promoting participation in the democratic process. I guess that’s not how Schoeller sees the job. By the looks of the bill he introduced, it seems that he views  becoming Secretary of State as a way of ensuring victories for his fellow Republicans.

The judge who threw out Schoeller’s latest attempt at voter suppression said that the name of the ballot measure, the “Voter Protection Act,” violated truth-in-advertising requirements.The problem is that the wording in the ballot measure doesn’t contain the phrase “voter protection,” and, under Missouri rules, you at least have to show that your law is somehow related to what it’s named for.

Unfortunately, the most recent legal setback to the voter-suppression initiative hasn’t discouraged Schoeller from reintroducing the same thing all over again.  Apparently, nothing deters the vote suppressors from their mission: not the fact that photo voter ID was struck down by the Missouri Supreme Court in 2006, and not even the fact that that studies of allegations of voter fraud in Missouri have turned up no evidence of fraud that could have been prevented by requiring photo ID. Less than two weeks after the Cole County Circuit Court threw out the 2011 ballot initiative, Schoeller has introduced a new bill, with ballot language that supposedly more closely conforms to the rules, into the Missouri legislature, and just today [April 3, 2012], a Missouri House committee approved the do-over.  Schoeller hopes to get it passed before the legislative session ends in June, so that it can be placed on the November 2012 ballot.

Missouri is just one of many states that are working on similar laws, as part of a national, ALEC-driven effort to skew elections toward Republican voters. One can only hope that the courts continue to see through the fraudulent claim of voter fraud and that they and citizens realize the importance, in our increasingly fragile democratic system, of protecting voters from the vote “protectors.”

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In the recent case in Florida, an unarmed African-American boy, Trayvon Martin, was pursued and murdered by an Hispanic man, George Zimmerman, who claims that the boy was threatening him. The man is claiming the protection of the state’s “stand-your-ground” law. In a jaw dropping failure to do their duty, the police failed to question the man or investigate him. This tragic event has brought to light the dangerous proliferation of these laws around the country.

“Stand Your Ground” laws are a perversion of the Castle Doctrine, an ancient legal principle that states persons have no obligation to retreat when their home is attacked, and, if necessary they can use lethal force to protect themselves and their “castle.” Stand-your-ground laws allow persons to use deadly force when they feel or think they are being threatened in areas other than their home. They have no obligation to retreat and can legally use deadly force against the person they think is threatening them. The law further provides immunity from criminal prosecution or civil action for using deadly force in those circumstances. Basically, such laws are licenses to kill.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the National Rifle Association (NRA) have worked together to introduce and promote these laws in state legislatures. Since the 2005 passage of Florida’s law, similar statutes have been passed in 26 other states. It’s easy to trace the origin of the Florida law to ALEC because the wording of its model legislation and the Florida law is almost identical:

ALEC’s Castle Doctrine Act model legislation:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place [other than their dwelling, residence, or vehicle] where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another, or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

The Florida statute:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

ALEC: a right wing, corporate funded legislation factory

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) describes itself as the largest “membership association of state legislators,” but that attribution doesn’t tell the whole story. Two percent of its revenues come from legislator’s membership dues, and 98% comes from corporations and corporate foundations. Through ALEC, in the dark and behind closed doors, corporations hand Republican state legislators the pre-written “model” bills they want passed.

ALEC has hundreds of corporate members, including non-profits like the NRA, and the National Right to Life Committee. A few governmental agencies belong, including the Department of Defense. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. Conservative Republican legislators then bring these proposals home and introduce them in statehouses under their own name, as if the bills were their own creation, without disclosing that ALEC and corporations wrote the bills. Republican dominated legislatures pass them and Republican governors sign them into law.

Most ALEC legislation relies on racism, misogyny and paranoia to promote corporate ideas. They sell their bills with attractive words like “freedom,” “common sense” or “self defense,” and macho phrases like “stand-you-ground.” In legislation designed to limit women’s access to contraception and abortion, they coin words like “personhood” to describe a zygote. It could be said that the purpose of corporate supported ALEC legislation is to move the nation to the right in whatever way it can. ALEC legislation is designed to enhance corporate bottom lines. Concepts like the “public good” are irrelevant. And what better way to promote a corporate, right wing agenda than to provide ready made bills for Republican legislators and generous campaign donations for those who push them. It’s a win-win relationship.

ALEC writes model legislation to undermine environmental regulations and deny climate change; support school privatization; undercut health care reform; deny women healthcare including contraception and abortion; defund unions and limit their political influence; restrain legislatures’ abilities to raise revenue through taxes; mandate election laws that disenfranchise voters; increase incarceration to benefit the private prison industry, promote the oil and defense industries, and promote gun sales. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of its model bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five enacted into law.

If anything good comes out of Trayvon Martin’s death, it will be that a) the man who killed him, George Zimmerman, will be brought to justice, b) these dangerous stand-your-ground laws will be repealed, and c) ALEC legislation, written in secrecy, will be exposed as cynically promoting the bottom lines of corporations over the public good.

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A new website—ALEC Exposed—is shedding much-needed light on the politically conservative American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC]. Launched on July 13, 2011 by the Center for Media and Democracy, ALEC Exposed offers:

…a trove of more than 800 “model” bills and resolutions secretly voted on by corporations and politicians through ALEC. These bills reveal the corporate collaboration reshaping our democracy, state by state.

Until ALEC Exposed came along, these “model” bills were available only to members on ALEC’s password-protected site.

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.

Before ALEC Exposed published these bills, it was difficult to trace the numerous controversial and extreme provisions popping up in legislatures across the country directly to ALEC and its corporate underwriters.

The Center obtained copies of the bills after one of the thousands of people with access shared them, and a whistle-blower provided a copy to the Center.

The bills and resolutions, says ALEC Exposed, affect worker and consumer rights, education, the rights of Americans injured or killed by corporations, taxes, health care, immigration, and environmental issues. The Center for Media and Democracy has analyzed and annotated the bills and resolutions to help readers understand what the bills do, which often is the exact opposite of their public-relations-shaped and frequently Orwellian-double-speak titles.

Only by seeing the depth and breadth and language of the bills can one fully understand the power and sweep of corporate influence behind the scenes on bills affecting the rights and future of every American in every single state.

ALEC Exposed invites readers to engage in the analysis and dialogue—not just through comments, but as active analysts and reporters. The site encourages readers to report on ALEC-created bills in their own states and to document the corporations, organizations and politicians who are backing them. To this end, the site offers a Wikipedia-like format open to contributors’ findings and observations.

A good example of an analysis of how ALEC’s model bills have shaped state legislation–in Missouri– has just been published at Progress Missouri.The report not only shows the direct connection between ALEC’s model language and specific bills introduced in the Missouri Legislature, it also names names, revealing which state legislators backed the ALEC-dictated bills.

All of the above is the good news.  The bad news is that ALEC is far from new and has been molding [even that seems too weak a word] state legislative agendas and votes for many years. [In August 2011, ALEC is holding its 38th–yes, 38th!– annual meeting, this time in New Orleans.] I learned this disheartening fact a few months ago, when the topic of ALEC arose during a casual conversation I had with a former Missouri legislator known as a stalwart progressive. While the legislator was glad that people were wising up to ALEC and its far-right and far-reaching agenda, she was bemused by leaders of progressive blog world announcing that they had suddenly “discovered” this supposedly new and nefarious political force. To illustrate the belatedness of the left’s new-found awareness of ALEC, she shared a story: Many years ago, when she was a political newbie, she was invited to attend a regional meeting of ALEC, which she knew little about. A much savvier colleague clued her in, she remembered, and advised her, in no uncertain terms, to stay as far away from that meeting as possible.  She didn’t attend, but at least she knew what ALEC was up to, and that was long before the rest of us got the memo. Back then, “reasonable” people were shocked—shocked—at Hilary Clinton’s seemingly bitter and paranoid remark about a vast, right-wing conspiracy. [In the 90s, I would have had to encase that phrase in quotation marks. At least we’re finally over that.]

Clearly, progressives have been asleep at the wheel, while ALEC has been wide-awake, hyper-active, injecting itself with right-wing growth hormones and muscling —quite effectively—its corporate-sponsored, anti-democracy agenda. It makes you wonder: What else are we missing, ignoring or denying?

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You may think your Republican state legislator considers the needs of his or her district and introduces legislation accordingly. Well, think again. They don’t have to work that hard because they can get their legislation ready made from ALEC. It’s the political equivalent of buying your term paper online.

“ALEC” stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a hard-right, members-only group of Republican state lawmakers, corporations, and very wealthy individuals, who gather several times per year to write laws that can be taken back and introduced by the legislators in their home states. Billionaires like the Koch brothers and representatives of corporations deliver pre-written laws along with generous campaign support to legislators who then introduce the bills. According to Wiliam Cronon, professor at the University of Wisconsin, ALEC writes around 1000 pieces of corporate friendly legislation per year of which about 18% become law. The problem, according to Cronon, is that ALEC written legislation is presented to voters as being in their interest when their real purpose is to promote corporate agendas. (Because Cronon has been highly critical of Wisconsin’s Governor Walker and ALEC, the Wisconsin GOP, in retribution, is harassing him with a FOIA request for his university emails.)

ALEC and SB-1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration bill

One famous example of ALEC at work is the Arizona Immigration bill SB-1070, which was written by Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company, at an ALEC conference. The controversial SB-1070 allows police to demand any one suspected of being an illegal alien to produce papers. If they are not able to do so, they can be sent to jail. And of course, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the private for-profit prison company that has the contract to house federal detainees in Arizona, obviously makes a lot of money off the legislation they wrote. CCA, is a powerful, national prison business. Its business model is based on putting more brown people in jail and for longer terms of imprisonment. So they wrote that bill to increase their profits and passed it on to their friendly Republican State legislator who happily introduced it, and helped it become law.

ALEC was founded in 1973, by conservatives Henry Hyde, Lou Barnett, and Paul Weyrich, and has operated under the radar for decades. Its goal has been to draft “model bills” that conservative legislators can introduce in the 50 states. According to a recent article in the Huffington Post, “ALEC: The Behind the Scenes Player in the States’ Fight Against the Middle Class,” ALEC has two kind of members:

1. State legislators who pay $50 per year in dues and in exchange get junkets to luxury resorts, free or heavily subsidized vacations for their families, and other fringe benefits including free child-care and medical tests, Broadway shows, and dinners at expensive restaurants. ALEC’s membership includes 2,400 state legislators, which is over 30% of all state lawmakers in the country.

2. Over 300 corporate sponsors who pay up to $50,000 per year in dues plus up to $5,000 to sit on industry-specific task forces in their areas of interest such as energy, healthcare, telecommunications and taxes. The task forces write and approve the model legislation that conforms to the business interests of their corporate members. Tax records indicate that corporations collectively pay as much as $6 million a year. The corporate executives and their lobbyists then get substantial face time with the state legislators at ALEC’s retreats and other events.

Union busting, disenfranchising students, and rolling back environmental protections

ALEC has been behind efforts to dismantle environmental protections and to disenfranchise students. Most recently, ALEC has been a driving force behind the anti-union laws and union busting activities occurring in Republican controlled states, most notably in Wisconsin, and Ohio.

According to a recent article in the NYT, Michael Hough, director of ALEC’s commerce task force, said the aim of these measures was not political, but to reduce labor’s swollen power. “Government budgets have grown and grown because of the cost of employees’ pensions and salaries,” he said. “Now we have to deal with that.”

ALEC is not doing anything illegal, but it is troublesome that their corporate written legislation is introduced without any disclosure about who is behind it or who wrote it. If there was a legal requirement that all authors or consultants on legislation be identified, the public could have a more truthful discussion about the merits of certain bills and whether or not they truly serve the people of a state.

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