File:American Legislative Exchange Council.jpg

ALEC

The American Legislative Exchange Council became the nation’s best-known “model”-bill factory over its four decades by providing more than fill-in-the-blank legislation.

The industry-sponsored group has weathered controversy and flourished because it also offers conservative Republican elected officials a social network, access to campaign donors and a blueprint for how to accelerate their political careers.

(Via USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity)

Excerpt from a news story produced as part of a collaboration between USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. More than 30 reporters across the country were involved in the two-year investigation, which identified copycat bills in every state. The team used a unique data-analysis engine built on hundreds of cloud computers to compare millions of words of legislation provided by LegiScan.

(2019)

Ready-made legislation comes in the form of so-called model bills. Each is a set of texts that lawmakers can copy and adapt for introduction as bills in their own statehouses. Model bills, many of which amount to wish lists for special interests, have become pervasive in the American legislative process, an investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity found.

Copies of models were introduced nationwide more than 10,000 times in an eight-year span, the investigation found, amounting to perhaps the largest unreported special-interest campaign in American politics.

Bills based on ALEC models were introduced nearly 2,900 times, in all 50 states and the U.S. Congress, from 2010 through 2018, with more than 600 becoming law

ALEC was established in 1973 and is associated with the extreme right of US politics. It was originally housed in the Heritage Foundation headquarters. It has featured speakers such as Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, George Allen, Jessie Helms, Pete Coors and Governor Mitch Daniels. Donald Rumsfeld was chair of ALEC's Business Policy Board in 1985.

In the words of ALEC's executive director, Sam Brunelli, "ALEC's goal is to ensure that these state legislators are so well informed, so well armed, that they can set the terms of the public policy debate, that they can change the agenda, that they can lead. This is the infrastructure that will reclaim the states for our movement."

• https://publicintegrity.org/?s=alec

ALEC Links:

• https://alec.org/

• https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-legislative-exchange-council/

• https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council

• https://kochdocs.org/2019/09/03/koch-industries-and-alec-a-history-of-documents/

• https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/alec-exposed-koch-connection/

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council

• https://www.mediamatters.org/american-legislative-exchange-council

• https://www.commoncause.org/connecticut/resource/what-is-alec/

• https://www.desmog.com/american-legislative-exchange-council/

• https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

• https://cldc.org/alec/

(2022)

• https://www.theenergymix.com/2022/02/14/koch-backed-alec-pushes-u-s-states-to-blacklist-investors-that-boycott-fossil-industry/

(2021)

• https://www.prwatch.org/news/2021/05/13725/kochs-americans-prosperity-launches-nationwide-campaign-oppose-bidens

(2018)

• https://citizenvox.org/2018/04/25/alec-the-chamber-of-commerce-and-the-kochs-inside-the-world-of-secret-money/

(2014)

• https://archive.thinkprogress.org/koch-brothers-and-alec-expand-fight-on-clean-energy-users-7cf4f9b58e47/

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