Confirming what has long been accepted: ALEC is nothing more than a front group for corporate interests The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) calls itself “a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public” that “works to advance the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism at the state level”. […]

You knew this was coming, right?

Progress Michigan released a report this week that outlines how the corporatist group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is working hard to turn our students into nice little profit centers by handing over their education to for-profit corporations. The report also shows how this pernicious campaign is playing out in other states, as well.

Michigan is home to nearly a quarter of the charter schools in the country and roughly 80% of our charter schools are run by for-profit businesses. What is their funding model? To funnel the taxes used for public education into their bank accounts. They do this by getting all sorts of breaks our traditional public schools do not get, including hiring non-unionized teachers.

ALEC, a corporate-funded group that produces a copious amount of model legislation for their corporatist legislative members to use in their state legislatures, has their on all of that sweet, sweet education money and their plans are playing out perfectly in Michigan.

Click through for much more.

How creative, how transparent…

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.

Not that this is a surprise or anything… 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 […]

Shameless shilling for their corporate benefactors

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.