Last week, State Rep. Greg MacMaster introduced legislation being described as a “forced privatization bill” that is essentially cut-and-pasted from model legislation developed by the corporatist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The new bill, H.B. 4549, is strikingly similar to ALEC’s “Public-Private Fair Competition Act” (pdf).
Click through for details on this hypocritical Republican move.
The American Legislative Exchange Council is a national pro-business, anti-worker group that creates model legislation for use by its conservative members who are in state legislatures. Not surprisingly, ALEC’s fingerprints are all over the new laws that make Michigan the country’s 24th Right to Work for Less state as shown by some excellent reporting by PR Watch this week:
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been around for 37 years. They are listed as a charitable organization, a 501(c)(3), and yet their entire goal in life is help pass laws around the country that favor corporations and wealthy individuals while harming their political enemies. Their model legislative bills are aimed at destroying unions, expanding voter suppression, restricting women’s access to abortion services, imposing harsh anti-immigrant rules, weakening gun control and expanding “stand your ground” laws, and limiting corporate liability when people are harmed by a product or in their workplace.
Across the country, ALEC is having an impact. Their model legislation is being passed into law at an alarming rate, aided and abetted by the influx of tea party lawmakers. Conservative and dogmatic, they are easy targets for ALEC’s cookie cutter laws. They simply make a few changes (or not, in some cases) and sponsor the bill. No need to write the law themselves; all of the hard work has been done for them.
This week, Progress Michigan published a 73-page report on ALEC in Michigan.
Eclectablog
LOLGOP
Amy Lynn Smith
Anne
BrainwrapAll original content on this website is copyrighted © Eclectablog/Chris Savage, Anne C. Savage & LOLGOP. Unless otherwise specified, permission to excerpt portions of our written work is given as long as you provide a link back to this website and the appropriate author is credited. Please contact us for use of photos.
Website by 
