Some of you undoubtedly remember Hillary Clinton in the 90s saying that there was a "vast right-wing conspiracy" out to get her husband. She was roundly ridiculed, but of course she turned out to be right.
Many have commented that the sudden onslaught on legislation across the country attacking women, unions, government employees, public schools, health care reform, election reform, immigration, and middle-class workers in general seems too coordinated to be accidental. I assumed it WAS coordinated but couldn't put my finder on how.
All off a sudden last week, I happened to run into three references to a group called ALEC: the American Legislative Exchange Council. I started to browse their website and went "holy shit." There it was hiding in plain sight. One of the major progressive blogs, AmericaBlog, wrote about it on March 20:
http://www.americablog.com/2011/03/whats-source-of-these-anti-union.html
That story mentions a New York Times article that mentions the group ultra-casually toward the end of an article about union-busting:
The NYT says, "A group composed of Republican state lawmakers and corporate executives, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is quietly spreading these proposals from state to state, sending e-mails about the latest efforts as well as suggested legislative language."
It makes it sound innocent. Is the NY Times deliberately concealing info or is this lazy reporting? I found out a lot more within minutes of starting to investigate them.
This group writes and backs anti-worker, wealth- and corporate-favoring legislation of exactly the kind we're seeing bursting out of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan, among other places. It has a board of directors and a "private enterprise" board that appear to work together on this agenda. The board of director consists of state legislators across the country (Ohio is represented by Bill Seitz). The "private enterprise board" includes representatives for major corporations like Exxon, Pfizer, WalMart, and Koch Enterprises. They also have a "state chairman" in each state they are working in, a state legislator whom I assume is sort of the captain of their efforts. Ohio's is right-wing wacko John Adams of Sidney, the guy who has twice tried to introduce the "man's right to choose" bill, which would make the man the ultimate decider of whether a woman could have an abortion.
It's interesting that we haven't known anything about this group and its efforts. They haven't been open about what they're doing. They've been writing legislation that destroy quality of life for most of us, and doing it shrouded in secrecy.
Today Jennifer Brunner put up a post on her Courage PAC, saying that she has just learned about it today.
http://www.couragepac.com/what-is-the-american-legislative-exchange-coun...
That's what most people are saying. And she pointed out something I'm experiencing too: you can no longer access their website. This is a group that wants to control our lives but doesn't want us to know what they are up to. They obviously aren't happy with the spate of publicity they've had in the last week or so. They need secrecy to pull off their agenda. And they appear to be willing to engage in bullying and intimidation tactics to ensure they can continue to operate in secrecy:
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/118705194.html
Professor Cronon, whose emails the Wisconsin Republican Party is demanding wrote an expose of the group about two weeks ago on his blog:
http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/15/alec/
They hope to find he has violated university policy by using email to promote a political agenda. They will undoubtedly try to nitpick an offhand comment to cost him his job as a warning salvo to anyone else – especially a public employee — who tries to fight back against this group's assaults on them.
The MIlwaukee Journal Sentinel article included this exchange:
"The Journal Sentinel contacted ALEC officials on Friday to ask if they had any involvement with the crafting of legislation, specifically collective-bargaining legislation, in Wisconsin. Raegan A. Weber, an ALEC spokeswoman, replied via e-mail that ALEC had not worked with "Gov. Scott Walker or any of our members on any of the governor’s proposed legislation."
That's almost certainly a lie, since members of legislatures who support anti-collective bargaining laws are also members of ALEC. (I only looked at the Ohio members, and can't check to see who represented Wisconsin since their site has been hidden). That representative also told the JS that her group "was in favor of opening public-sector bargaining sessions and documents to the public and holding public sector unions to the same reporting requirements as private sector unions."
I'm pretty sure they are. I would like to hold ALEC to the same reporting requirements, especially when it comes to spending money to influence legislation. ALEC seems almost as fanatical about its secrecy as Scientology — but unlike Scientology, it aims to negatively impact the lives of virtually every American.
Please spread the word. We need sunshine here.
http://www.ohiodailyblog.com/content/alec-vast-right-wing-conspiracy
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