Thom Hartman: ALEC Is Writing Middle-Class-Destroying Legislation

August 12, 2013

ALEC is holding its annual conference in Chicago, where corporate lobbyists and Conservative lawmakers will get together – have a few drinks – and create more corporate-friendly, middle-class-destroying legislation. At annual ALEC meetings, corporate lobbyists sit down with Conservative lawmakers to craft bills – and then those lawmakers go back to their home states to get those bills passed and signed into law. According to Bloomberg, ALEC gets nearly 200 bills passed every year in state legislatures around the country.

ALEC was founded by men like Paul Weyrich, who infamously once said that he didn’t want everyone to be able to vote. True to form, ALEC‘s recent voter suppression ID laws are spreading from state to state like a bad cold. While ALEC is primarily known for voter suppression ID and Stand Your Ground Shoot-First laws, it’s reach goes much farther. The Conservative organization is well known for promoting voucher programs that drain public schools of resources by using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school profits. ALEC also uses its “model legislation” to push laws that to limit union rights and organized labor – primarily through so-called “right to work” laws.