ALEC sent out an SOS to Breitbart bloggers:
Shortly after issuing a press release announcing that it was disbanding its “Public Safety and Elections Task Force” after 30 years, the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC) held a training for the right-wing blogosphere.
ALEC Director of External Relations Caitlyn Korb spoke yesterday at a Heritage Foundation “Bloggers Briefing,” begging conservative bloggers for help while prepping “a very aggressive campaign to really spread the word about what we actually do.” Korb appears to be a new ALEC employee who recently worked for the Cato Institute. Both ALEC and Cato have received funding fromKoch family foundations. The Heritage Foundation is anALEC member.
[…]
ALEC’s new FAQ is riddled with errors, including:
- “The potential solutions discussed at ALEC focus on free markets, limited government and constitutional division of powers between the federal and state governments.” It is hard to discern what voter suppression bills, tax breaks for big tobacco, bans on unionization, protections for companies whose products injure or kill, and “Stand Your Ground/Kill at Will” laws have to do with free markets.
- “The organization respects diversity of thought; it is a non-partisan resource for its members, which include more than 2,000 Republican and Democratic state legislators.” Diversity of thought apparently refers to Republicans talking to Republicans. Although touted as “nonpartisan,” when CMD launched ALEC Exposed, out of 104 legislators in leadership positions in ALEC, only one was a Democrat. It’s hard to believe that ALEC phone briefs on redistricting are totally nonpartisan.
- “Unlike in many private sector groups that offer model legislation, elected state legislators fully control ALEC’s model legislation process.” As ALEC’s public “Task Force Operating Procedures” (PDF, p. 8) and other documents reveal, corporate members vote alongside legislators in ALEC task forces.
- “Each state legislator and their constituents then decide which solutions are best for them and their states.” For the most part, constituents have no way of knowing that corporations wrote or approved ALEC legislation behind closed doors.
