Common Cause's warning about ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)

[Cal33]

Have you met ALEC?





Have you met ALEC yet? If your state legislature has considered bills to weaken workers' rights, privatize schools or make it more difficult for citizens to vote, ALEC may already be at work in your state capitol.

ALEC is the acronym for the American Legislative Exchange Council – a secretive front group of hundreds of corporations that are investing millions of dollars a year to write business-friendly legislation at the expense of the middle class.

We're working hard to shine a spotlight on their nefarious tactics, and to put a stop to their end runs around federal tax and state ethics laws.



Can you help us by making a gift of $20, $50, $100 or more to support our work today?




Right this minute, Common Cause researchers are digging deep to learn all we can about ALEC's political spending. We've already found that the past decade alone, the 22 firms now represented on ALEC's "private enterprise board" have put more than $370 million into statehouse races and referenda. The board is a who's who of corporate America, including companies like AT&T, the tobacco giant Altria, Coca-Cola and trade groups like PhRMA, the drug industry's lobbying arm.

Meanwhile, our activists are also petitioning the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate ALEC's activities. ALEC claims that they spend absolutely no money on lobbying (which allows them to operate as a tax-exempt charity) – but their organization's main purpose is to develop and distribute model bills to state elected officials, with the intent that those bills be introduced and passed in as many places as possible. That sounds like lobbying to us.

We are also investigating whether legislators who are members of ALEC may have broken any state ethics laws.

It's time to put a stop to ALEC's elaborate masquerade as a nonpartisan public interest group.



Please help Common Cause turn up the heat by making a donation to our campaign today!




http://www.commonblog.com/2011/07/13/meet-alec-corporations-writing-laws/