Do you know What A.L.E.C is? Actually, I didn’t until I read about them coming to Oklahoma to meet with legislators from Oklahoma and others from all across the United States. I wondered who they represented and why they were meeting with legislators, so I decided to do a little research.
ALEC stands for American Legislative Exchange Council and according to Wikipedia, is composed of legislators, businesses and foundations which produce model legislation for state legislatures. Hey, wait a minute, I thought, what are big businesses like Exxon Mobile, AT&T, and Koch Companies doing meeting with my legislatures? Well, I found out that ALEC is a very big group funded mostly by very large corporations and guess what? These corporate members collaborate on model bills and drafts of legislation with the legislative members which these legislators then take back and present to their respective legislative bodies to be passed into law. Wikipedia also mentioned that approximately 200 of these collaborations are passed as laws every year. That’s a lot of business for big business to be doing with my legislators!
From my point of view, this is just wrong! Government is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people for the people (Lincoln, Gettysburg Address) not government of big corporations, by big corporations for big corporations. WE need legislators who can, “just do the right thing” and this is a wrong thing. Legislators should not be writing legislation with big corporations and excluding the people they represent. Again, according to Wikipedia, ALEC’s membership list and the origin of its model bills are kept secret.
ALEC currently has more than 2,000 legislative members representing all 50 states and more than 85 members of Congress also 14 sitting or former governors. They also have about 300 corporate, foundation and private-sector members. ALEC receives 98% of its funding from corporation and foundations. According to tax records, corporations have collectively paid as much as $6million a year to ALEC.
Perhaps you feel there is too much “big government” today but neither should there be too much “big business” in government. ALEC is just not a “do the right thing!”
This is the list by state of legislators who belong to ALEC
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ALEC_Politicians#Legislators_with_ALEC_Ties
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